Fat Girl

It's a Monday and the beginning of a new week, a new diet.

The wishful thinking of a slimmer, more beautiful person floods into Monica’s mind as she stares into her cereal: Special K. The concoction of milk and flakes hold that promise, the smooth voice of the woman in the commercial ringing in her ears.

Lies are always that much more gorgeous, she finds. So pretty and delicious, mocking in such a stunning way that she's consumed by awe, too much to realize that they're all pathetic fantasies, delusional.

No cereal could make her skinny, no special solution or special food or special anything could help a person that isn't that special at all.

She can't give up. She doesn’t want to lose weight, she needs to. Like a bird needs the sky, like a fish needs the water, like a baby needs love, it's essential.

At the thought, that funny feeling tingles in her nose, a newly formed lump crafts of the tears in her stomach and the chocolate chips she’d melted the night before presses against her throat. Choking her, suffocating her, taunting her.

Her eyes begin to water, drip they go down her cheeks. If only the calories could dissipate into the salty tears. Drip, drip, drip.

Cry, Fat Girl, cry into your food. That’s all your good for, besides eating of course. You're quite good at that, even ask your stomach.

And as that familiar sensation washes over her, burning in the pit of her ever-so large stomach, she remembers what matters most.

It isn't for herself, that dream that seems like a million miles away isn't so imperative because of Monica Rivers. It isn't for Bianca Fowler, and it isn't for Chance Perkins either. It isn't for James McGregor, the boy that she dreams in such a wistful fashion about- he isn't the one that she needs to prove that she is a person too. It isn't for all of those people that stare at her, that laugh at her, that mock her. Those strangers that she passes everyday that are so evidently sickened by her.

It's for that one little boy, the one with the name Owen. The one with that brown hair, those blue eyes, with those freckles splayed across his nose.

“Just leave me alone, Monica! I don’t want to see you anymore! Okay? I can’t take it! You’re disgusting!”

The one who’s words would always sting the most, like vinegar on a fresh cut, the one whose approval matters so much more than anyone else. The one who she needs to convince that she isn't a monster to, that she's just as much capable of love and compassion as anyone else. That she is someone he could be proud of.

Her younger brother, the one that refused to even look at her anymore.

Because his sister is just too fat.