Not Just a Number: A Young Adult Contemporary Novel

by Sara Michaels

  If I had Ryan’s guts, I might have just said, “My darling Ryan, I don’t want to eat. Please don’t pressure me, and keep your perfect nose in your own business.”

  But I hadn’t said that, and I never would. Instead, these lies sprang to my tongue like endearments. They crystalized without me even thinking about them. I had no idea where they came from or which part of my brain was suddenly manufacturing these deceptions, but it was becoming easier to do. Practice makes perfect, I guess. The only problem was the more I did it, the worse I felt. What became easier made everything else harder.

  Ryan had almost four years of experiencing my habits. Kya had much more, and yet she sat quietly, cutting her cheeseburger into pieces and placing them in her mouth. She seemed to be a little lost in her thoughts, and I briefly wondered what was going on in that pretty head of hers. She had always enjoyed her food, so maybe she was just relishing her burger.

  Ryan and I had quite literally stumbled upon each other in the first few weeks of high school. He had been making a hasty retreat from some bully—not running, mind you, that wasn’t Ryan’s style. He was walking fast enough and with enough focus on getting out of the situation that he hadn’t seen me in the stairwell, and I hadn’t seen him either. Luckily, we had only tumbled down two or three stairs before landing in a giggling heap at the bottom. His wide smile and easy energy had immediately drawn me in, and soon we were firm friends along with Kya. He had fit seamlessly into our friendship, adding so much and detracting from nothing. I had been concerned initially that Kya would feel like she was being pushed aside, but she had welcomed Ryan with open arms too, and they were now just as good friends as Ryan and I were. He had taken some teasing over the years for only having female friends, but it didn’t seem to worry him.

  “I have human beings as friends. Their gender, race, or other so-called identifying characteristics are unimportant.” That was Ryan. Straight-up, no-nonsense Ryan. We had bonded over our shared love for math and science, which was something artistic Kya and I didn’t share. He too loved the linear and logical nature of the subjects.

  As I sat in the cafeteria now opposite him, my stomach hard and hurting—because the truth was, I hadn’t eaten a single thing yet that day—I realized this was the first time I had lied to him. It broke my heart to be deceptive to him when all he wanted to do was make sure I was okay, but I really felt like I had no choice. It had to be done.

  What was the alternative? Even the though of waddling up the cafeteria line and shoving a grease-ladened burger into my mouth put a sour taste in my mouth. The thought alone might make me retch the shot of juice I had poured down my throat that morning.

  I just wanted to change the subject. In fact, I would not mind being engulfed by the ground so that I did not have to face this at all. I did not want to talk about my food intake or my weight, or anything vaguely related to those subjects, for that matter. Why were all of my conversations suddenly going this way? It just did not seem possible to have a normal conversation these days without someone harping on about how much weight I had lost or commenting on my portion sizes. Why did people think that was their business anyway? Could people not just mind their gosh-darn business?

  Then beautiful Kya with her waist-length ebony hair in the most perfect ringlets helped me out without knowing it. That’s my girl.

  She suddenly entered the conversation, placing a piece of burger in her mouth, then chewing as quickly as she could with her finger in the air indicating that the rest of her statement was on its way as soon as the burger went down her gullet. “Hey, Abigail, remember that time in kindergarten where we insisted our moms pack us the exact same lunch for a month?”

  I did remember, and laughed at our cheekiness now. “Oh my word, we were real little princesses, weren’t we? We would throw total fits if one thing was different from the other.” The memory was as clear as if it had happened yesterday. Our poor mothers had spent every night on the phone trying to figure out what each one had in the fridge so that they could line our lunch boxes up. Looking back, I was impressed at the effort they had put into it. “They sure beat us on that one though!”

  “Oh, hell yes!” Kya said, laughing at the memory.

  Our moms eventually had enough, having spent one evening on the phone strategizing on how to end the madness. The next day, instead of our usual cheese sandwiches, or miniature packs of animal crackers, we had unpacked our lunch boxes at lunchtime and opened them up to find two identical containers filled with raw vegetables. They had even counted out identical numbers of broccoli florets and green beans. I distinctly remember tiny versions of Kya and I looking at each other in horror as we surveyed our mothers’ treachery.

  These days, both of us ate vegetables without an issue, but back then, we were going through a bit of a phase. Clearly the women who had birthed us knew that a lunch box filled with vegetables would turn us off our new insistence for the same food.

  They were not wrong.

  If having matching lunch boxes meant we got vegetables, then we did not want matching lunch boxes after all. After that, we had gladly eaten whatever we had been given without issue as long as it wasn’t vegetables.

  We both smiled at the memory, and I was glad the topic had changed. We were still talking about food, but at least it was not focused just on me anymore.

  I suddenly longed for the simplicity of those days. Everything was structured for us, there were very few things to worry about, and I would happily run in the street in my pajamas with no shoes on without even brushing my hair. I’d had no concept of appearances or fitting in, and certainly bridesmaid dresses weren’t even on my radar at that point.

  As Kya and Ryan finished their burgers, and Ryan occasionally scooped ketchup from a tiny sachet with a French fry, seemingly determined to finish his food, I unscrewed my water bottle and took a long gulp. The cool stream sailed down my throat and into my empty stomach. That would hold me for a while.

  “You get the letter from college too?” Ryan asked.

  I had indeed. The letter from the University of Chicago had come in the mail, old-school, to confirm the email they had sent. I thought it was a nice touch that they did both. Hardly anyone sent snail mail anymore. Ryan and I, quite by chance, had chosen the same college to go to. It was an awesome coincidence and likely had a lot to do with the university’s fantastic math programs. When we had discovered that we had both chosen the same college, we had then waited for the acceptance emails. The physical letters had just been the final touch.

  “I did!” I was glad the conversation was finally moving away from food, although there was no doubt it would swing back there before the end of lunch. It always did. “I’m so excited. It's not long now.”

  “I’m terrified,” Ryan said in his blatantly honest way, and although I agreed, it was not as easy for me to say so.

  Instead, I laughed. “Yeah, it’s going to be a whole new ball game, that’s for sure.” I unscrewed my water bottle again and took another sip. It was a good way to avoid saying anything else. A whole new ball game was an understatement because it was not just college that was going to be new. Everything, every single thing was going to be different, and already was.

  “I’m going to miss you guys so much!” Kya exclaimed, and Ryan put his arm around her shoulder. Anyone watching from the outside might think there was something going on between them, but we knew better. Ryan was like a brother to us, just like Kya and I felt like sisters.

  “Me too. You’re going to do amazing, though, and we’re going to be coming back here to see our families anyway, so we’re totally going to see each other as much as possible.” Kya had enrolled in a local college with an excellent art program.

  The thought of being separated from her after having spent our entire academic lives together was painful and scary. If I was honest, I felt like I was losing absolutely everything. Consciously, I knew I was gaining a lot too, a whole new life really, but that did not dull the pain and anxiety of everyt
hing changing all at once. It was all becoming a little too overwhelming, and I wondered how everyone else around me seemed to be dealing with it so well.

  Even Ryan, when he said he was terrified, still seemed buoyed against the fear—like he was terrified, but still fine.

  I was so not fine.

  “Your Mom must be struggling too,” Kya said to me, her voice taking on a serious tone. “Both you and Jen are leaving the house at the same time.”

  I felt bad then, because that had not even occurred to me. Jennifer had studied teaching at Brooklyn College, so she had saved dorm expenses and just continued living at home. Now she was getting married, and she and Jacob were already looking at apartments together, and it was coinciding with me leaving for college.

  Mom was always the pillar of strength in our family. She had had no choice considering she had raised us alone. That was probably why I had not even thought about the fact that her whole life was changing too, and yet she didn’t seem to be crumbling the way I was. She remained steadfast. Maybe she would crumble once we were both gone.

  In an attempt to make light of the situation and hide the fact that I hadn’t considered my mother’s feelings about all this, I joked in response. “She’s probably already planning all the fun things she’s going to do now that she doesn’t have to worry about us anymore.”

  Ryan started talking about empty nest syndrome, but I wasn’t listening anymore.

  His voice hummed in the background as chairs scraped the linoleum two tables away and Brandon and Grace took their seats. Brandon was carrying both his and Grace’s lunch trays, and I realized that I could not tell the trays apart. Grace was a surprisingly big eater.

  Her Levi’s were so tiny that they looked like they had to be from the children’s section, and she wore a fuchsia wraparound top that showed off her tiny waist and the fact that she had developed far faster than most of us. The sun caught her golden hair, and it shone against her tanned skin. They sat beside each other, and if their chairs were any closer, they would only need one. Why didn’t they just sit in each other’s laps?

  Grace grabbed a French fry and dipped it into ketchup. As it neared her mouth, a drop of ketchup dripped off the French fry and landed on her chest. She squealed as she wiped it off with a napkin, and Brandon got a goofy look on his face as he eyed the spot where she had made a mess.

  I wanted to throw up.

  “Earth to Abigail.” Kya’s voice snapped me out of my obsessive tunnel vision. My eyes still lingered on the pair for a moment. I turned to look at her and Ryan, quickly replacing the scowl that I realized had developed with a forced relaxed expression and a small smile. “Still tough to see them together?”

  Tough was an understatement. I didn’t know if there was a word to describe this feeling.

  Instead of articulating that, I looked down at my hands in response, and then back at Brandon and Grace. “She is really pretty, isn’t she?” I asked this to no one in particular and continued before I had an answer. “And she seems really nice too, you know? She’s not even one of those mean pretty and popular girls.” I did not break my gaze for a moment as I spoke. I may well have been speaking to myself as I had no interest in hearing anyone else’s opinion of what I was saying. Wrapped up in my misery, I wondered if I would feel better if she was mean and if I knew that Brandon was miserable. Would his misery ease mine at all?

  He was feeding her French fries now, and although I knew if he shifted his gaze a few inches he would see me staring, I could not stop looking at them. My gaze was fixed. It was like driving on the highway and seeing a car wreck surrounded by ambulances, flashing lights illuminating the air and spelling trouble. You knew that if you looked at the scene, you were very likely going to see something that you didn’t want to see. You should just turn your head and look out the other window, but despite that, you could not look away.

  “I guess she seems nice enough, but I don’t know how nice you can be if you get involved with a guy that has a girlfriend.” I could always rely on Ryan to tell the truth, no matter how painful it was to hear it. He had been disgusted by Brandon’s behavior, and equally so by Grace’s. It took two to tango, he’d said.

  “I don’t know for sure that they were,” I sought a less heartbreaking word, but found none, “together when I was still officially with Brandon.” Everyone at the table including me knew that I was speaking utter rubbish. It was clear. They were together pretty much the day after Brandon broke up with me, so it was very clear they had connected while he and I were still officially dating.

  Neither Ryan nor Kya voiced the point, though; they knew that I was well aware of the truth. They likely did not want to dig the knife any deeper because that was not what good friends did, and they were certainly good friends.

  “I wonder what he must think of me now.” I had not actually intended to say the words out loud, but they had exited my mouth nonetheless.

  “What do you mean?” Kya asked gently, a quizzical look on her face.

  I explained. “Well, he spent almost a year with me, and he probably now sees what a waste of time that was because he could have been with someone like her.” It seemed perfectly logical to me. There was silence at our table while the cafeteria buzzed around us, and I continued staring at the scene unfolding in front of me.

  Suddenly, Ryan stood up. “Right, that is enough of that,” he said, grabbing Kya’s lunch tray. What did he mean? “Are you done?” There was one more bite on her plate but she nodded, and he continued speaking to her. “I’m going to get rid of these, and you are going to get Abby out of here. I’ll meet you outside. I think we could all do with some fresh air.”

  I did not actually want to leave. I wanted to torture myself by staring at the all-American perfect couple, but at the same time, I never wanted to see them again. It was perfectly painful, but I deserved the pain.

  Regardless, Kya touched my hand, and I reluctantly grabbed my now almost empty water bottle and followed quietly. I would have to refill my water bottle at the water fountain before the end of lunch so that I would have something to occupy myself and fill my stomach with.

  We made ourselves comfortable underneath the old oak tree at the edge of the football field. It was a place we came to often to just unwind and relax. I would really miss that spot, just as I would miss so many things about this place and its people. It had come to represent the center point of our friendship. Under that tree, we had celebrated passing difficult exams and supported one another when life got tough, as it inevitably did when you were a teenager. It had become our stronghold, and although it was not going anywhere, we all were. I wondered how many generations of students this tree had seen come and go. How many secrets had it heard uttered, and how much pain had been poured into its roots?

  The guys on the football field behind me shouted instructions to fellow players with all the seriousness of a heart surgeon barking instructions at a nurse for a vial of medication or a suction of a blood pool during surgery. I guess we all found different things important. Occasionally, a cry would erupt from the bleachers, and I could just picture the line of blonde heads bobbing up and down as they discussed the physique and form of the players.

  Brandon had not been a football player, but he was the school’s star hockey player, so he fit right in with those guys. I had gone to many of his games, and I had always felt slightly out of place. The other girlfriends of the hockey team players were not quite the blonde girls on the bleachers, but I had definitely had very little in common with them. When we had gone to parties, I had hated it when Brandon went off on his own because that meant I had to try to find someone to talk to, which inevitably didn’t work in my favor. I would usually end up sitting on the couch next to some really drunk guy who would likely not be interested in talking to me when he was sober. One guy had ended up vomiting up his dinner on the couch.

  Grace would fit in much better with that crowd, and I could not picture her ever feeling out of place, whether she wa
s with Brandon or not. She was one of those people that just melded in wherever she was because everyone wanted to be around her.

  Kya seemed to sense that my thoughts had circled back to Brandon again, so she made an attempt at changing my mental track. “My brother is in so much trouble.” She sounded delighted. I raised an eyebrow in question. I really thought her brother, Stuart, was a nice guy. Kya, on the other hand, had a standard sibling rivalry in place with him, and was gleeful at any sign that he might be in trouble with their parents. “He went to a party with the football team last weekend and he totally missed his curfew by, like, hours.”

  I giggled at her absolute joy around this incident. It was strange, if I was honest, because Kya’s brother was one of the smartest and most straitlaced jocks I knew. It was easy to fall in with a bad crowd, though. Everyone made mistakes.

  It was almost time to get moving back to class for the second half of the day, but I would much rather prefer to sit right there for the rest of the day. The tree wouldn’t ask me about my eating habits or question my intentions. The whole world could just carry on without me, and that would be just fine.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, leaning back against the huge trunk of the oak, feeling its bark prickle and knead the tight muscles in my back.

  This solid tree had supported our hopes and dreams for the last four years, and even though we were now leaving, it would stay there, ready to support the dreams of future high school students. Next year, another group would find this tree and live out their high school days under it.

  By then we would be long gone, just a memory to its roots. At least some things stayed the same.

  4

  I was grateful that Jennifer had quickly moved past my behavior on our shopping trip despite the fact that I had never apologized. I wondered if she had told Mom what had gone down, but figured that if she had, Mom would have pulled me aside by now. She had never really been able to hold a grudge, and for that, now at least, I was grateful. Throughout our childhood, whenever we disagreed, it did not take much to get her to crack a smile again. It was one of the reasons that our relationship as sisters was so strong. She was forgiving, and I was all too willing to be forgiven.