by Leanne Davis
It left a small, slight smile crossing her face.
Finally she was empty. No more panicking, twisting thoughts. No more blinding pressure building in her temples to do more, be more, quit being such an epic failure. Finally the thoughts stopped. The frantic thoughts shut up so she could just be. But of course, throwing up wasn’t supposed to make all that happen inside her body and mind.
Every single time this happened she swore it was the last time. She stress-ate, but there was no way she could let all that food stay in her. She shuddered to imagine what all those calories and fat would do to her figure. She barely was able to maintain the size four she’d been for the last decade. It wasn’t easy. She wasn’t naturally this size. She wasn’t like Kylie, her sister, who could just not eat and weigh nothing.
The irony being, of course, everyone thought it was Kylie with the eating disorder. No. Not really. Kylie had just always flirted with not eating. She ate. She just never cared if she ate. She got no pleasure from eating. Sugar. Chocolate. Pie fillings. It didn’t matter what the food was, none of it called to Kylie like a seductive siren to come indulge. Kylie didn’t want any of it. She had no interest in it. But Ally did.
She tried hard to eat small, sensible, perfectly proportioned meals with nutritional balance and low calorie content. She succeeded some days. Until the never-ending, never-leaving, gnawing hunger consumed her. It took over all her executive functions of her brain. At that point all she could think about was to eat. She had to eat. Now.
It was almost animalistic. Survival-based.
And sometimes she did. Sometimes she gave into the overwhelming desire to eat herself sick. To indulge in every single craving and longing she had. She would go to a store far away from the radius of her life and splurge on everything she’d denied herself. Donuts, candy, chips, pies, cakes, hamburgers, fries, fried chicken, fettuccini; on and on the list went. She would eat so much her stomach would grow by three times its volume. She would look suddenly pregnant. She would lock herself into her room and gorge herself.
Then she’d spend the next few days getting it all out of her. Sometimes she threw it up. Quick. Easy. Done. Sometimes she took laxatives for days on end to expel it. Sometimes she did both. But this time it hadn’t totally relieved her. The grade was permanent. Forever. She now had a B+ on her permanent record. After three and half years of maintaining a perfect 4.0 grade point average, she would now have a 3.9.
She leaned back to fall onto her butt, burying her head into her hands and rocking back and forth. All that work, all those hours and hours studying. All that time she took from doing anything else, so she could study. She had maintained it for so long to lose it now? Tears fell down her face as the knowledge of the failure ripped through her once more.
The test sat thrown to the bathroom floor near her. She had been staring at it for five hours as she’d devoured a sheet cake, two pies, five candy bars and a bucket of fried chicken.
Now she was trying to undo all she’d inhaled. All the while staring and glaring and crying at the test. At the wrong answers. She’d missed the entire essay question. Everything else was right and yet she’d incorrectly answered just one essay question, her reasoning was all wrong and that earned her zero points for it. Ruining her test grade, her class grade, and her permanent record.
Who was there to tell? Who was there to console her? No one would understand. They’d pat her on the shoulder and roll their eyes telling her how good it was. Good. She nearly spit thinking about that word on her tongue. Good. What was good? Good was fine. Good was okay. Good was winning the participation award. Good was nothing. People, friends, relatives, her sister, even her mother would tell her how she was so lucky to have the kind of grades she did. No one would understand what she’d lost today. Having a 4.0 was something special. It was impressive, it was perfect. It was about performing and maintaining perfection. It showed everyone else that she was capable of an extraordinary work ethic and could maintain it for long periods of time. A 4.0 meant she had accomplished something. A 3.9 suggested she had almost accomplished perfection. She had almost done it. At that point, she might as well have had a 3.5 or 3.2; those grades were still considered honor roll. Those were still considered “good grades,” but those were not perfection.
But it wasn’t anyone else who had lost a perfect score. A score she’d worked hours and hours to maintain and keep. People would pat her on the shoulder, amused with how seriously she took her work and her grades. Other students often told her how lucky she was to have such an amazing grade point average. Luck? Where was there luck in this? Luck didn’t touch this. There was no luck involved. It was all her. She had done it all. She had read every single word of text and memorized thousands of facts. She had written every word of every paper she’d ever turned in and solved every math equation. She had taken the Ritalin and Adderall frequently to stay up studying and reading and writing papers. She had managed to maintain it through the flu and family dramas. She had worked herself ragged and this… this one question on one test would derail it all? The unfairness of it had her wanting to start stuffing the Twinkies still in their packages by her feet into her mouth. And she’d done all this just to lose it fall quarter of her senior year?
Anger flushed her skin. She grabbed the test and ripped it up into a hundred small pieces. The rush of destroying it unleashed a hot feeling in her blood that had her skin flushing in warmth. She grabbed the pieces and threw them into the toilet and stared at them. It was symbolic, of course. It was where her bile and throw-up had just sat and now her work sat there too. She pressed the silver handle on the toilet tank and watched the pieces swirl down the hole with the water.
Sometimes she would watch whatever she’d put in the toilet disappear down the drain. She would marvel at how much she could get out of her and, sicker still, she knew she’d feel bright bursts of pride. It almost mimicked when she received back a test or paper and it had an A on it. That—what she could get out of her body—pleased her.
Even as the need to look at it made her sick with revulsion with herself. Who got off on such things as what came out of their body?
Luckily no one knew. Not a soul. It was her private thing. Her secret, her shame… her fulfillment. It was how she relieved the stress of her life and the pressure of her own expectations. But the problem was she’d performed at this level for so long that now the expectation she’d originally created for herself was now expected of her by everyone else.
Besides she wasn’t the screw up. She wasn’t the troubled sister. She was the functioning, put-together, and totally fine sister. Her mom’s entire belief system was based on this. Imagine if her mother found her like this? Crying on her knees at her toilet, sticking body parts down her mouth to make everything inside her come up and out. Imagine her mother witnessing Ally smiling with pleasure and relief at just how much came out. Just imagine…
Ally shuddered. No. Never. Her mom could not know. No one could. Luckily no one did know and would never, ever even suspect it. She was nearly perfect at everything she set her mind to, including hiding her… predilection. Unlike her sister Kylie, who had presented herself for so long as a hot mess of scary problems, and had everyone around her worrying over her safety, her mindset, her emotional balance, even her weight. But Ally? No. No way. Ally didn’t let anyone realize there was anything to worry about with her.
And so no one worried.
Because really there wasn’t anything to worry about. She managed it. She understood her own problem and unlike Kylie, who never seemed to totally understand what was wrong with her or why she acted certain ways, Ally knew exactly what was wrong with her. Kylie was clueless sometimes about why she acted how she did; Ally was not. She was in perfect control of what she did and why she did it. She knew when the urge would strike her and how to fulfill that urge when she was ready to. She didn’t just start stuffing her face and throwing up at random. No. Never. She waited until she was sure she would be left alone overnight. S
he bought her food far away and ingested it in the privacy of her locked bathroom. There were no windows. She shut her phone off and did not bring it into the bathroom with her. She was all alone. She was free to indulge then and there with no one to watch her. And no one to catch her. Because she was in control of the when, how, and where. Unlike Kylie, who indulged her crazy behavior everywhere besides a locked room and all alone.
Ally knew what bulimia was. She had a computer, she could find the answers herself. She knew what she did fell under that heading. So what? That’s what all the information and internet research had provided for her. She didn’t think for a second she was actually bulimic. She wasn’t anorexic for absolutely sure, because unlike her skinny sister, she ate. She ate quite often. She binged and purged. Sure. She’d seen talk shows and news stories; she totally comprehended what that was. But hers was controlled. She wasn’t out of control or at the mercy of this thing. It was merely a tool by which she dealt with life when it didn’t go how she planned. It wasn’t something that ruled her life.
Not like how Kylie let her problems show. It tinged how people saw Kylie and what they expected out of her. Not Ally. Ally had always known this and had learned that keeping problems to herself was far preferable to acting out in front of people.
Her freedom came in that no one expected this from her, so no one looked, whereas the entire family had watched over Kylie’s mental and emotional health since she was a teenager and their dad first left. Everyone, most especially their mom, worried over Kylie and what she was doing to herself or could do. Everyone knew Ally was capable of handling herself and was not emotionally fragile.
Still, this… this thing she did was not for anyone else to experience. It was for her and her alone, so she was careful to keep it very quiet.
Why wasn’t she feeling better yet? The ache of her failure was only marginally better, now a stinging reminder that would permanently follow her the rest of her life. Even if everyone else would just laugh at her because really, there was nothing to be this upset about, now was there? After all, it was just a grade on a test. Just a grade in one class, in one quarter of her college experience. It wasn’t like a real problem.
That was why it was so nice to have a way to be upset without anyone witnessing it.
Chapter One
“Finally finished, sunshine?”
Ally opened the door when the disembodied voice touched her ears. Startled, she glanced around to find Nate Stratton sitting on the bed. What the hell was he doing in there? She shut her eyes in frustration before turning back to flick off the bathroom light and enter the guest bedroom of her aunt’s house. She was sure she’d shut and locked the bedroom door. What the hell? How had Nate, the annoying prick, gotten in? And what was he doing in there? Fear stabbed through her heart. He couldn’t… no way, never could he have heard her? Her body turned hot as sweat broke out on her chest and the back of her neck. It would be so embarrassing; it would literally make her want to sink into the floor if he’d heard her. But no. No, no way. The bathroom fan had been on and she’d been quick and quiet. Just a little problem she’d quickly taken care of.
He was intently scrolling through something on his phone. He hadn’t glanced up as she entered the bedroom. His fingers flicked and moved with the speed of a peregrine falcon when diving for prey. His feet were planted flat on the floor and he didn’t even grace her presence with a glance.
“Didn’t I lock that door?”
“All you have to do is pick it. Not hard.”
“Didn’t it occur to you maybe I wanted privacy?”
“You had privacy. I didn’t touch the bathroom door. It’s a fact of life we all face, sunshine. You don’t have to be so bashful about it.”
She bristled. He often called her “sunshine” in that mocking voice. It wasn’t a sweet, affectionate nickname. It was actually his insult towards her because he found her too serious and intense and... what was his word? Sour. Yes, he found her too sour to be all that enjoyable to be around. So he’d started calling her “sunshine” of late. “I was just peeing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What are you doing that was so important you had to follow me into here?’
“I am trying to nail down this hot little number I met last weekend for a date.” He still hadn’t bothered to glance up. He grunted and then smiled, pleased by whatever was on the screen of his phone. Ally glared at him, but the narrowed eyes and scowl were wasted because he was totally focused on his phone. He finally clicked his phone off and stood while he slid it into his pocket.
“Done. Next Friday night.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. Her white cashmere sweater slid to outline her breasts. “Do you think I would possibly care what you’re doing next Friday night or with who?”
“Well, you should. You know you wish it was you.”
“Over my dead body.”
His smile was quick. “Dead body? A five-year-old could have said that back to me. Oh, sunshine, that retort was way beneath you. Come on, don’t you have anything better? Or are you sick? Off your game?”
She shifted the weight on her feet, and kept her arms firmly planted across her chest. He’d heard. He heard her throw up. It had been a stupid, reckless, and impulsive move. It was Christmas Day dinner at her Aunt Gretchen and Uncle Tony’s house. Everyone was here. Her aunt and uncles, grandparents and cousins. There was Aunt Vickie and her husband, who was Nate’s dad, and the reason why Nate Stratton had been invited to her family’s dinner for the holiday. It pissed her off beyond comprehension that he got to just show up. The dinner had been good, and she’d eaten way too much. Doing so in front of anyone, even her family, was way out of character for her. She’d snuck into here to simply alleviate some of the calories. Expel some of it. She’d locked the outer door. No one should have heard. Damn Nate and his bold, annoying antics. He thought he was so funny. So charming.
“If you must know, I have a slight bug and I didn’t want to miss Christmas with my family, so I came anyway. It makes things not settle well.”
He stepped back. “Is this perfect-Ally speak for you were coughing up chunks?”
She rolled her eyes. He made everything sound so undignified and gross. “Why do you persist in coming to our family get-togethers?”
“My family too, Ally-cat.”
He flipped between “Ally-cat” and “sunshine” and every time, each name set her teeth on edge, which was no doubt why he did it. She had known Nate for almost four years unfortunately. He’d come to some family dinner, one of their family member’s birthdays, on the arm of their Aunt Vickie. She was in her late thirties at the time and Nate was eighteen. He’d been sleeping with their aunt and was seemingly proud to be. That was all during Ally’s freshman year in college and the dynamics of that had completely freaked her out. It was so gross! But then, even stranger, was when they quit being together and Vickie started up with Nate’s father and was married to him by Ally’s sophomore year. Then, Nate started coming to their family get-togethers on a regular basis with his dad and new “stepmom.” It was the sickest dynamic Ally had ever witnessed. Both a father and son with one woman? And the way they were all amiable with each other was incomprehensible. Nate’s dad, Dane Stratton, acted completely at ease as he witnessed his wife and son interact. Nate and Vickie’s interactions were usually tinged with a mild but still obvious flirting and Dane didn’t seem to care in the least.
All of which set Ally’s teeth on edge. But then Nate had started showing up in a large number of her classes until she figured out they were majoring in the same subject and hence he was taking the same precursor classes. He was constantly in the periphery of her life now. She detested it and him. There was no sugarcoating it and he knew it. How was she supposed to like or be respectful to a guy who slept with his stepmother? Okay, so she hadn’t been his stepmother at the time, but he still was way too forward with Vickie.
And he’d made it his special mission to obviously and ove
rtly bug Ally. He went to great lengths to irritate and bother her. She wasn’t imagining that. He actually tried to be in her sphere and then irritate her. She detested most interactions they shared.
“They are not your family. They are mine. You are simply some add-on tag-along who likes to flirt with your own stepmother. It’s gross. And I, for one, don’t need to witness it.”
Nate rubbed his hands together and stepped closer to Ally. She held her ground, teeth grinding, as that knowing little half smile of his moved closer. He often invaded her personal space. “You sound a little jealous, Ally-cat. I swear you spend time trying to sharpen your claws to get to me.”
She pushed his shoulder so he had to step back and rolled her eyes in exaggerated annoyance. “As if I give you a thought when I don’t absolutely have to.”
She was halfway to the door when he asked, “So how did the geology test go for you?”
She stopped dead as her hand was in mid-air to grab the door handle. She dropped her hand to her side. That class. It was that class she’d gotten the B+ in. How did he know? She was sure in that moment he knew she’d bombed it and now was gloating to rub it in. For he never inquired how her classes went. He didn’t care how her classes went.
“Fine.” She kept her voice even and kept her back to him.
“I thought it was a killer. But I’m sure you aced it, right? You always do.”
Yes, she always did. Always. Her brain felt like it was going to short-circuit at his mockery. He knew. There was no other reason. If she lied he’d obviously call her out, as that was most likely was what he hoped she’d do. “I didn’t. I didn’t ace it.” She kept her voice low and casual like it was a mild disappointment to her. It was just one of those things that sucked but didn’t send a girl off wanting to hurt herself.
“Are you for real? You didn’t?”
She held her back erect, her neck a degree higher so her chin was raised up. He could not know how it had affected her. He just wanted to rib her about it like he did every other area of her life. But she wasn’t sure right now she could handle it.
