Little Red and the Big Bad Wolf

“Alright, what’s wrong?” Puck sighed at my locker at the end of the day.

My eyebrows pulled together in confusion as I turned to face him. I was surprised that he even noticed that there was something wrong. As far as I’d been concerned, I’d done a good job at pretending like everything was totally okay.

Then again, maybe Puck knew me a little better than I figured he did. “What do you mean?” I replied after a slightly-too-long pause. If he hadn’t completely known that something was off before he asked, then he certainly did then.

“You’ve been weird since you came back from the bathroom…” He leaned closer and said, “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

I stared at him for a second, wondering if he was serious. “Alright, there are two problems there: One, why would I ever take a pregnancy test at school? Second, I haven’t even had sex yet.”

“Right…” He cleared his throat to cover his stupidity. “So…is someone else pregnant?”

“What is it with you and the pregnancy?” I laughed, shoving his shoulder. Looking at him seriously, I tried to send him the mental message, ‘See? Laughing and kidding around. Nothing wrong here.’ Clearly, he wasn’t believing it too easily.

“Because pregnancy…gets people into a lot of shit. So are you going to tell me what it was?”

“Honestly, Puck,” I muttered, opening the door to enter Glee Club, “I’m not even sure that anything is wrong. It’s just kind of a…feeling. You know what I mean?”

“So you’re worrying about something that may not even be something to worry about?”

Hm. “Yeah, exactly.”

Puck shook his head and sat down. “I wonder about your brain. Why worry about more than you already do if you don’t even have to?”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I agreed, “but it’s just how my mind works. So don’t worry about me, okay? Just make sure that your song is spot-on perfect.”

I reached into my bag to pull out my iPod, which he accepted with a grateful expression. While he listened to the song over, mouthing the words along with the music, I sat back in my chair and tried to calm myself down.

After all, who was to say that Callie made herself throw up? What if she actually was just sick, and I wanted to find some drama in that? It wasn’t like it would totally out of left field if I had done that; I was definitely one to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Mr. Schue came in a couple minutes later, greeting the group and snapping me from my thoughts. “Puck’s going first?”

“Yeah,” Puck answered, dropping my iPod on my lap. I caught it just in time before it dropped to the floor, and my heart still beat a little quickly, even though my fingers were closed tightly around the device.

Puck’s performance was quite awesome, his voice going perfectly with his version of the song and the words totally applying to his life. It didn’t escape my notice that he snatched quite a few glances my way, none of which I caught. I was such a nice person.

At the end of Glee Club, Puck and I were walking down the hallway when I saw Callie walking a ways ahead.

“Stay here,” I demanded, putting a hand on his chest for emphasis before scampering a little bit to catch up with her.

“Ellie?” Callie questioned when I caught up with her. “What are you still doing here?”

“Glee Club,” I responded, running a hand through my hair. “But I could ask you the same.”

“Just hanging around after school. I don’t want to go home yet.” She smiled a little bit, fixing her bag on her shoulder.

“Oh. Well, I was just wondering if you were feeling better. You know, from earlier.” I kept my eyes locked on her face, waiting for a twitch of a change of expression, anything at all to prove my suspicions true.

But, if she was lying, she was perfectly practiced. She simply smiled, as if she was happy that I’d asked again. “I feel better now. It was probably just something I ate.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t lie, I felt a bit relieved. I didn’t want something bad to happen to her, or for her to go through something as difficult as bulimia. “Well, that’s good then.”

“Yeah, I like to think so. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Sounds good,” I smiled, watching her bounce off toward the door. How could I have possibly thought that someone as bubbly as Callie could have something wrong going on with her?

“Everything okay now?” Puck asked, watching me carefully as I made my way back toward him. I was surprised that he actually listened instead of following me, overcome with his curiosity.

“I guess so,” I replied cautiously and slowly. For some reason, something still felt off, but it wasn’t as if I could prove that anything actually was wrong.

It wasn’t my business, anyway.

* * *

The thought didn’t stay away long, though. At dinner, Aileen picked up almost immediately that something was off. Thankfully, she didn’t ask until I pushed around my broccoli so much that it toppled to the table.

“Whoops,” I mumbled, reaching for a napkin to clean up the tiny tree thing.

“What’s going on?” Aileen wondered, cocking an eyebrow as her eyes followed my hand.

Sighing, I stared at her. “Say…Alright, say that you think something’s going on with someone, but you don’t want to get involved because it’s not really your business. What would you do?”

“Depends on what it is. If this is like that Full House episode, and you know someone who’s getting hit, you better tell me right now.”

“No,” I rushed, wondering where she’d pulled that analogy from. Maybe she’d seen it that afternoon. “It’s not like that…I don’t even know if something’s happening for sure.”

“What are you talking about, Ells?” I hesitated, so Aileen continued, cutting off my thoughts. “Listen, I can’t help if you don’t tell me. And I’m your sister, you can trust me, yeah?”

Biting my lip, I admitted, “I saw some girl throwing up in the bathroom today during lunch. I know that she already finished eating, so I’m wondering if…”

“She has bulimia,” Aileen finished, sucking in a breath as she leaned back in her chair. “Well, is this the first time you caught her?”

“Yeah. Like I said, I don’t know if anything’s really happening, but something just feels…wrong. ‘Cause if she did eat something bad, she would have food poisoning, right? So she’d feel sick all day and throw up a lot?”

“That’s weird, but I’d say that you should just keep back for now. If you see something weird again, then you should flat out confront her about it. You know what I mean?”

“Yup.” I took a sip of my Diet Coke and smiled. “Thanks.”

“No problem. And when you say that you ‘saw someone’…we’re not talking about you, right?”

“No. Definitely not,” I laughed. “I hate puking.”