The "You're Not Fat" Campaign

I sit at lunch, watching Tessa pick apart a single leaf of lettuce. She isn't methodical at all, instead just stabbing at it until it is shredded.

Everyone else - black hoodie girl and Conner and Lillie and the boy with featherhair and the fat black girl with bright green braces and the boy with a patchy goatee and the awkward girl who talks too loud - eats and eats and eats.

I feel dizzy and lightheaded and when I stood up this morning I almost passed out, so I peel open an orange and slip one slice into my mouth.

The skin bursts and tangysweet juice floods my mouth and my stomach roars to life. Orange flesh crashes against my teeth and tumbles down my throat and I feel more awake and alive and frantic than I have in days.

fatfatfatfatfatfatfatfatfatfat you don't deserve to eat what the hell is your problem you're disgusting

I shove another slice of orange into my mouth, then another and another. This isn't food, it's fuel. I have to get discharged and to get discharged I have to seem happy/healthy/normal/better. I have to be on the road to Recovery! which is a bunch of bullshit. I don't have anything to recover from. I'm totally totally fine.

Lunch ends and we troop into the rec room. I sit at the table in the corner and color. Tessa sits with me. No one else is near us. Rockman, the nurse on duty, is playing pool with Colin. Tessa picks at her nails. Then she looks up at me.

"What's your goal?" she whisperds

I raise my eyebrows and grip the fatfatfat around my waist.

"Nothing," I say, my voice ragged. "I don't have a goal. I don't know what you mean."

"Oh." Tessa's face falls. I sigh.

"Fine. Yes I do. I have a goal." Her eyes brighten and she looks at me expectantly. I lean in and whisper the magicnumber into her ear. She leans back and stares at me. Her shadoweyes have gone from bright and excited to glassy and burning. She says her own magicnumber and it is lower than mine.

I will be the skinniest.

My magicnumber will make me skinnierthanher.