I dropped a small spoonful of chili on my plate too. Protein was good for exercise. I skipped the tacos and rice and started heading for the door.
“Thanks, Mom,” I called out, and immediately knew I should not have done that.
“Abigail, how are you not having the main part of the meal—the tacos?” There was laughter in her voice as I turned.
“Yeah, we have tacos so often at school, I’m really not into them anymore,” I said, trying to fill my voice with as much fake disgust as I could muster and sauntering back to the dishes as though I had not really intended to leave the room at all. “I will have some rice, though.” I flicked a small amount of rice onto my plate. I could probably count the grains on one hand, but hopefully it would satisfy my mother.
I glanced over at her, and she had gone back to focusing on her work. Relief flooded through me, and I escaped the kitchen as quickly as I could.
Jacob had finished loading his plate and was already in the living room, tucking in, by the time I got there. Jennifer passed me as I entered the lounge, and I swapped my plate to the other hand so that it was mostly obscured by my body. I took the long way around the television cabinet and ottoman to my seat on the other side rather than passing through where she would see me, and more pertinently, my plate.
“Mmm...so good,” Jacob mumbled to himself as he shoveled heaps of chili and rice into his mouth.
I positioned myself in my chair so that my plate was mostly hidden from the rest of the room. I stared at the plate of food in front of me and speared a cherry tomato with my fork. Although this was the first thing I would be eating all day, it really did not feel good in my mouth. It was like chewing cardboard. I wanted nothing more than to spit it out. After all, the less I ate, the better I would look in dresses the next time we went bridesmaid dress shopping.
The fact that I had not eaten all day and I really did not feel hungry at all just confirmed that I actually did not need this food, I reasoned. People get overweight when they don’t listen to their body cues and eat just because they feel like it, or it’s expected of them, rather than when they are actually hungry. People also overrode their full signals, which ended up confusing the body and resulting in out-of-whack levels of all the hormones that controlled the different metabolic functions. I had learned this in biology class, and I recalled the information now as confirmation that I was doing the right thing. Even though I knew those things to be scientifically true, I also knew that it was biologically impossible to exist without taking in any food.
My body was telling me that it didn’t need this food right here on my plate, though, and yet, there I was, shoving it in my face. I knew very well that if I didn’t, there would be questions asked, but I was failing my body by ignoring its full signals.
No wonder it hated me.
My body was telling me it did not need food right now by not alerting my hunger signals, but I could not listen because no one else would understand. It made no sense. I was pretty sure if I launched into a lecture about hunger and full hormone signals in response to a question about my portion sizes, I would be looked at like I was an alien. In fact, I knew that I would because I had tried it once.
As much as I loved my family, and I was definitely going to miss home when I went to college, it would be a lot easier to eat only what I wanted to. There would be no inquiring eyes and people that just didn’t understand how biology worked.
I had managed some salad and a tiny forkful of chili. My rice lay uneaten, dejected on the side of my plate. I pushed it under a lettuce leaf and took a deep, loud breath, blowing it out through my mouth noisily as you would when you are really full. I pressed my hand into my stomach to indicate to anyone watching that I simply could not manage another morsel.
“Phew. That was delicious,” I said, standing up and getting ready to take my plate to the kitchen.
“You have hardly touched your food,” Jennifer said, and I froze at the words.
My reply came more fluidly than I had imagined possible, the words slipping from my lips as though they had been preformed and stored somewhere in my brain. “I ate a whole load before you came into the living room.” I purposefully added some attitude into the statement, hoping it would encourage her to back off. Then I pulled Jacob into my ruse, knowing full well he had eyes for nothing but his own plate of food and occasionally the television between mouthfuls. “Ask Jacob, he was here.”
Jacob’s eyes shot up from the television screen. He looked at me and then at Jennifer, sensing that he had missed something possibly crucial. “I...uh...yeah, she was eating like a horse over there.” I giggled at his choice of words, and started to leave the living room, satisfied that I had once again dodged a bullet. “Hey, don’t waste that, I’ll eat it.” Jacob had an enormous grin on his face as though someone has just offered him the job of a lifetime. Leftover hoover.
He would be brilliant at that job.
“Heck, Jacob, I am starting to get a bit concerned that our grocery bill is going to exceed both our salaries!” Jennifer joked, and the brief tension of her line of questioning toward me was broken.
“I will just work harder for our tummies, babe.” He grinned.
I happily handed my plate over to him, and the sounds of the cutlery on the plate faded away as I headed upstairs to my room, once again victorious in my efforts. Damn, I was getting good at this.
5
My alarm blared through the darkness of my sleep, ripping me from a dead slumber with its high-octave claws. How could it possibly already be morning? I had literally just closed my eyes.
I slapped the ‘off’ button harder than intended, and the alarm clock jumped up and fell over on its side. Well, that will teach you, I snickered to myself.
It was 5:00 am and the world was still cloaked in the fading blanket of night, but I knew I needed to run. There was no way around it. Despite my efforts the previous night, I had still had to take in a lot of food, and I had to pump up my metabolism.
I allowed myself a few minutes to lie completely still in bed and realized how seriously exhausted I still felt. I could easily have turned back over and slept for another few hours without a problem. I knew there was no way that was going to happen, though; that other voice would scream me awake.
I used to run for fun. It was an activity that Jen and I enjoyed doing together maybe a couple of times a week. We would chat while we ran, take breaks in between, nothing serious at all. We did not have a strict schedule or anything; it was just something we decided to do when we felt like it after school or on weekends if we were both home.
With Jen now working and me having a different schedule to hers at school, that had become difficult during the week. She spent most of her time on weekends with Jacob, so that was often out too. When we no longer regularly ran together, I eased off on the activity myself until eventually I had not been running at all and my only exercise was walking home from school.
That was the problem, I thought. I had become horribly lazy and now I was paying the price.
For the last few weeks, maybe two months, I had been running almost every morning. Many mornings, I had felt so exhausted it seemed impossible to pull myself out of my warm bed and thrust my latex-clad body into the still-cool morning, but on most mornings I had. I guessed that I should be proud of that. I really had pushed myself, and there were very few teenagers that would have enough discipline to wake up at the crack of dawn to exercise—for all the difference it seemed to be making, which honestly felt like none at all. It definitely was not getting any easier either.
Despite my exhaustion, I pulled my running gear on and tied the laces on my running shoes. Just months ago, they had been pristine and white. Now, even after being scrubbed and run through the washing machine, they still looked grubby from my morning runs.
I wasn’t sure if my mom and sister actually realized I was running every morning. They were usually still fast asleep by the time I crept down the stairs, as they were that morni
ng, and no one had mentioned anything. Mom had been really distracted with a big project at work, and I usually did my own laundry, so she would not have noticed all the sweat pants and running shirts, or my scrubbed running shoes drying in the basement every week. It made it much easier to carry on, because I knew very well that if Mom found out, she would put a stop to it.
We had lived in this house pretty much all my life, moving here when I was too little to remember anything else, and I knew every inch of it like it was an extension of my own body. I knew every mark on the paint and could tell you how it got there. When we went on holiday, I struggled to settle in anywhere else, and that struggle was coming with me on my move to college. It was for this reason that I knew to skip the second-last step on the staircase with its old-man creak that echoed up the cavernous space above the stairs.
Jen and I had asked Mom more than once to have it fixed, but it was probably pretty handy as a warning system with two young girls in the house. In some ways, it was handy to make sure that no one was in the house that should not be there, but also to ensure that neither of us were sneaking about when we should not be. We had figured out how to sidestep that problem rather quickly, though, quite literally.
The house was absolutely still as I flicked the inside lock on the front door and checked the time on the big clock on the wall: 5:10. I grabbed my house keys off the rack next to the door and headed out, carefully closing the door silently.
For a long time, we had not even locked the front door. This was a really nice family suburb in Brooklyn, one of the few left that had not been swarmed, overcome, and sullied by the city, but nothing was what it used to be. Even here, our neighbors had experienced break-ins, one after the other, in cars and into houses, until Mom had taken action and we had increased security.
The break-ins had always happened when the families were not home. It was nothing as terrifying as a home invasion while they were asleep or watching television, but the invasion of privacy was bad enough. As the neighbors increased security along with us and everyone became more vigilant, accepting our new normal, the break-ins had subsided because we were not such easy pickings anymore.
The culprits probably moved on to another neighborhood, one that had yet to wake up and smell the stench of petty crime. I knew that they too would build up their security, and eventually those criminals would come back around, but hopefully that time was far off in the future.
Despite these occasional incidents, I still felt safe enough to run in the half-light of dawn. I knew my route well, having run this way with Jen, and I had thought that the familiarity of the route would also have helped me to get into a rhythm.
I was wrong.
When I had first started running regularly with Jen, it had taken some time to get used to the extended exercise, but with each run it had become easier until my body simply knew what to do without me telling it or exerting much energy. That was when running became enjoyable. Now that I was running alone, though, it seemed more difficult somehow. No matter how many times I had done this exact route for the same amount of time, it just did not seem to get any easier. My breathing was labored, and it seemed like every stride took all the energy in my body to complete. I was really glad that no one was around to witness this sweaty, bedraggled girl dragging herself through the park.
For the first few blocks, I ran past houses. Most were very similar in build and design to our double-story, wooden panel-clad home. In some houses, people were starting to stir already, and lights flickered on in kitchens as residents wiped the sleep from their eyes and switched on coffee makers, getting ready to power up for the day.
Most windows were still dark, though, and for a moment I envied those people still snuggled in the soft wombs of their beds without a worry in the world. I could have been there too if I had not allowed myself to get so lazy. Now this was my punishment until I got better.
Four blocks down from my house, I turned left and crossed the almost empty road into Bigsbury Park. At only three acres, it was not a scratch on New York’s more famous Central Park, but it was well-maintained and beautiful in both the summer and winter. For neighborhood residents, Bigsbury Park was a focal point, the place where everyone gathered in the summer, and the smell of barbeques wafted across the emerald green grass. The running and cycling trail was very well kept by the city, and even with the light only now breaking across the horizon, I could confidently navigate the trail without fear of tripping or turning an ankle.
There were sturdy benches along the trail too. Some had been donated by long-time residents in memory of family members, and when I had more time, I liked to look at the names and the birth and death dates inscribed on the bronze plaques on the benches. I would wonder how the person had died, especially the younger ones, and how they had lived. What had they done that was so special that their family donated a whole bench in their honor? Would anyone do that for me?
The trail wound for miles, but I had worked out a route that suited my time constraints so that I could get my run in and still shower and get to school on time. On weekends, instead of turning to follow the path back to the road, I would continue on deeper into the thickets of trees that lined the edges of the park, pressing on until the trees were so thick that I could only see a short part of the path in front of me as I ran. From there, you could mount small hills from which you could see views of Brooklyn Bridge, and beyond, in clear weather.
It was pretty much just me out here most mornings during the week. Occasionally, a cyclist would come by and we would greet each other politely with a nod or a raised hand, but other than that it was just me and my phone playing music into one earphone.
As safe as the area was, I still did not take stupid chances, and I made sure that I would still be able to hear anyone coming up behind me if necessary. I knew the world was not a perfect place and that there were people everywhere with nefarious intentions.
When running on the road, which was the second half of my route, I needed to be able to hear cars too. My running shoes had reflectors on the back so that cars approaching from behind me could see me on the side of the road. Mostly I stayed on the pavement on that section of the route, but there were places where that was not possible and it was necessary to move into the road after a quick glance over my shoulder.
I paused briefly at a bench which marked the end of the park trail to slow my breathing. I was feeling a little light-headed and figured I was breathing too fast, getting too much oxygen in and not enough carbon dioxide out. Most people did not realize the importance of exhaling properly. Everyone is concerned with breathing deeply, but what they don’t realize is that if you do not exhale for at least as long as you have inhaled for, all that carbon dioxide builds up in your body. Excess carbon dioxide makes you short of breath and light-headed. I figured that was what was happening to me right now.
I stood at the bench stretching for a while, getting the lactic acid moving, and breathing in and out for equal lengths until I started to feel a bit better. I scrolled through the tracks on my phone to find something with more of a regular beat, hoping that would regulate the second half of my run, and then I started off again.
The second half of my run was no better than the first, unfortunately, and by the time I got home I was exhausted rather than feeling the pump of endorphins. I collapsed on my bed, heaving in great gulps of air until my heart rate slowed to normal. I had never been a super-athlete, but my body’s serious difficulty in handling a normal morning jog was becoming worrying. Had I really let myself sink so deeply into couch potato mode that weeks of exercise could not lift my fitness levels? The only thing to do was keep pushing, I guessed. I could seriously just lie there and fall asleep, though. It would be so easy. My eyelids were heavy, and I thought about just napping for half an hour.
It was already past 6:30 am, though, and I knew that a nap could make me late for school if there were any other unaccounted-for delays. Instead of indulging my increasing laziness, I showered,
pulled on jeans and a clean baggy t-shirt, brushed my hair out until it was fluffy and had a bit of life in it, and let it fall around my shoulders.
I did not bother to waste time looking in the mirror, knowing that it would only depress me.
I could hear my mom getting ready for work, and I knew very well that she was going to ask if I’d had breakfast. The kitchen was still empty when I got down there, Jen probably still asleep as her day only started a bit later than mine and Mom’s.
I grabbed a bowl out of the cupboard and the milk out of the fridge and glanced over my shoulder at the kitchen door before splashing a small amount of milk in the bowl and swirling it around with a spoon. I pulled the sugar-laden multicolored cereal that Jen and my mom loved so much out of the cupboard and crushed a few of the colorful grain loops into the puddle of milk in the bowl, adding one whole loop for realism’s sake. I placed the bowl in the sink. That should be enough to convince my mom that I’d had breakfast.
Putting the cereal box back in the cupboard, I realized that I did actually need to eat something I guessed after that run. I opened the grocery cupboard, and my eyes scanned the various boxes and packets.
Pop Tarts? No.
Toaster waffles? Definitely not.
Corn chips? No.
Rice cakes! Yes.
I grabbed two rice cakes from the box, looked at them, and put one back in the box. With a single rice cake in hand, I opened the fridge.
I could still hear my mom walking around in her room upstairs, so I had some time.
I grabbed a handful of blueberries and looked at them. Too many, high sugar content. It was natural sugar, of course, and not processed, but still. I let half the handful fall back into the container in the fridge. It still looked like too many—at least fifteen, if not more. I counted out five blueberries from the container in the fridge, put the rest back, and headed back upstairs to my room.
Not Just a Number: A Young Adult Contemporary Novel Page 6
