| Fan Fiction |
by heartsong
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“Ella?”
A weak smile crossed my lips as I listened to the endearing voice chatter away into my ear. She demanded that I put on my Sunday Best and go out with her to shop.
I did not know why I agreed, but an hour later I was in a pair of fitting jeans and a top that hugged my form more snugly than I would have liked.
She insisted on it.
My only comfort was that though this outfit hadn’t fit me for years – my figure had been too full – it was so loose now that without the belt, the jeans would have slipped clean off my hips.
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Hebe dragged me into stores that contained frilly clothes and outrageous dresses. She made me try them on and painted my face with mascara, eyeliner and lip gloss.
She pulled outfits over my head and made me stand in front of mirrors to look at myself.
Pretty soon she made me laugh, too, like she always had.
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“Hey Ella, this bag is gorgeous!”
I wrinkled my nose and shook my head at her. The bag was transparent and had stenciled flower designs on it.
“Who wants a transparent bag?” I said, a tad too loudly. The male sales attendant – who was cute, but no way cuter than Chun – stared at me with a bewildered expression.
Then I started to laugh – a sound now so foreign to me that I startled a moment, before I started laughing again.
Hebe looked at me with a half bemused, half relieved expression on her face, “Hey, what’s so funny?”
I laughed some more, barely managing to choke out a sentence, “What if you have a – a sanitary pad in it? Or – or a tampon? Or worse, a stained skirt? Hebe, what are you thinking, getting a transparent bag?”
I was laughing, and it felt wonderful. Every single bit of it. The wholehearted laugher, the ache in my sides as I doubled over, my eyes crinkling into outlines of crescent moons, my mouth stretching so wide I thought it would crack.
But the best part was the sound that escaped my lips in what I pictured to be multi-coloured bubbles of sound, rounded on the syllables of genuine happiness.
I heard Hebe laugh alongside me in genuine amusement as we stumbled out of the shop, the attendants staring, offended, after us.
Their eyes burned holes into our shaking backs, like pokers used to make a mark on sheep, cows, or even pigs.
We only laughed more. The sound was pure, unadulterated joy. It was full of peace and contentment.
I couldn’t have asked for anything better.
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We talked about how the guys in some of the shops were really cute, and how great we both looked in some stuff.
She asked for the reason behind my sudden loss in weight. I all but shrugged; shooting her a smile I felt didn’t belong on my face. It was a borrowed smile, and it wasn’t my own.
Somehow the earlier delight and jokes had vanished the moment she mentioned that she thought I was too thin. I hadn’t counted on anyone noticing; because to me, I was still fat, and getting fatter.
I said I’d gained weight recently, and had been working out a lot.
It wasn’t true.
She didn’t have to know.
I suppose we came to a silent agreement, after all, that he wouldn’t be mentioned.
But we both knew that I would be thinking about him, inevitably.
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The world couldn’t be this small – we were sitting at a shop selling Crepes – the best ones in town. Hebe and I frequented this place.
Hebe asked me when the last time I ate was – I looked haggard and far too thin. I smiled tiredly but didn’t answer. How long, really, had it been?
I think I’d lost count.
“Ella, eat some,”
“I’ve eaten, in the morning – it was such a big meal, really, Hebe. All of those scrambled eggs and ham – and bread, yes. Bread, and – and cereal!” I stopped, noticing Hebe was giving me a look.
“Ella, you have to eat. You’re too thin.”
I shook my head silently, staring, numb inside, at the plate of – of food she’d bought me.
Food. It was such an alien term.
I couldn’t touch it. I smelt the butter that had been used to bake it and I nearly hurled there and then. I just couldn’t stand the smell. It was so clogging, so oily – so vile.
I watched Hebe fit bite after bite into her mouth, registering only the fact that the meal was disappearing slowly. I couldn’t stand to see it but I was so fascinated, in a sick way.
This was what I used to do – take big, appetizing bites of food like nothing else mattered. This was what I had done, and it was the main contributing factor to making me fatter. Larger.
How could she stand it? How could she eat that – that vile stuff without feeling any guilt, any guilt at all? How could she not think of the calories that she was going to put on just eating that?
How could she just give into the temptation like that? It was so – I couldn’t imagine it.
But no matter how repulsed I was by the fact that the meal contained preservatives and oil and, hell, calories that Hebe happily consumed, a really small part of me was envious at the fact that she had something I didn’t.
Hebe was really slim.
She was petite.
She could eat without inhibitions.
She could eat and not get fat.
She could eat, period.
But I didn’t want to eat – no, I didn’t, it would make me fat and undesirable. No, I didn’t want to eat.
Food was the vilest invention ever and I couldn’t sand to be near it, I couldn’t stand to smell the oil, the sweet, cloying scent of sugar, of syrup, of honey. I couldn’t stand the tang of lemon – the light sour citrus fragrance.
Hebe looked up at me, her eyes questioning, worried – dark.
She opened her mouth as if to say something, her lips rounded on the syllable of an inquisition.
I jerked my gaze away to break the connection and ensure that she would not ask.
Then I shook my head slowly, again, and yet again, until Hebe returned to her food.
I leaned back in my chair as far as I could and turned my face away so I wouldn’t have to smell the food.
I could feel the gastric juices churning around in my stomach at the mention of food, ready to expel something – anything.
I couldn’t stand it.
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And just as Hebe finished her Crepe – I didn’t eat after all – He walked in, holding the petite, delicate, smooth-skinned; perfect hand of my sister.
I gagged, and nearly threw up the water I’d chugged down earlier to suppress the hunger; insisting I wasn’t hungry.
I grabbed the nearest thing that could occupy me – Hebe’s water bottle. It was full.
I lifted the opening to my lips and began to gulp the water down, for lack of a better distraction, and I didn’t know how much I drank.
I drank until the water turned bitter on my tongue; and flowed a tad too smoothly down my throat. I drank until I could not breathe, but still kept going. I drank until I nearly choked on the water, and acid bile rose up in my throat, a protest, a warning.
I drank until; at last, when I couldn’t take it, I threw up.
I felt like someone had reached into my alimentary canal through my throat and pulled out my insides so they were all inside out. I felt like there was nothing in this body of mine, like I was a shell – a husk that used to contain a grain full of love, full of passion and optimism.
Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind I managed to wonder where that grain had gone.
Hebe took my hand and led me gently outside of the eatery, where she disposed of the paper bag that contained nothing but water.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Chun watching us.
The sun was blinding; white hot.
Too bright.
I looked down, in time to see that the patterns – the vintage swirls on the tiles – had started to spin lazily.
My throat – and my chest constricted uncomfortably. I needed air.
My eyes were filling up, so full, with tears.
I breathed, and suddenly the sky was spinning, spinning, spinning around me.
I couldn’t make sense of anything that was going on.
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I hope you all enjoyed this chapter just as much as I enjoyed typing it(: