“How much weight have you gained? Ten? Fifteen pounds?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
My skin was crawling. I wanted to escape my body.
“Don’t you keep track? Most girls weigh themselves every day.”
“I’ll start eating better. Exercising,” I pleaded with him.
“Whatever, Liv. You obviously don’t care about yourself.”
He left me crying on the doorstep.
Ollie spread his version of the story around the entire school. He said our relationship wasn’t working out because he was an athlete and I wasn’t “disciplined” enough, which was obviously code for eating too much and not exercising enough. Everyone looked at me like I was the biggest loser. But Ollie was right. I was a fat cow. I immediately went on a revenge diet. I started fasting for days at a time, but then I would get so hungry that I’d binge and eat way more than any normal person should—pasta, burritos, ice cream, whatever was available—and feel so guilty about bingeing that I’d puke everything up.
I’ll never let myself gain weight again.
I’m a yo-yo girl. What goes down must come back up.
I’ve been keeping myself from bingeing pretty well the past couple of months, but I still have to purge. I hate the feeling of being full. It makes me nauseous.
I smash the gum between my teeth, partly to cover the acrid smell, but mostly to give my mouth something to do. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. I try to push away the thoughts. I’m stronger than my hunger. I take a cleansing breath to clear my head.
One.
Food is disgusting. It never made you happy.
I exhale slowly. My breath is my mantra. My focus.
You are not a slave to your hunger.
Two.
I’m finally ready to take on this torturous rite of passage.
I leave the bathroom and am walking around the corner of Decker Hall when a guy staring down at his phone runs into me, nearly knocking me over.
“What the hell?!” I say, then I realize I know him, a smile forming on my lips.
It’s Sam. We’ve been best friends since elementary school.
“Sorry,” he says. “I was looking for you... You left class early.”
“Obviously.” I roll my eyes and make a sarcastic face at him. “I had to prep. Don’t wanna turn out wretched in my yearbook photo.” I look down at my simple, sleeveless black dress. The color suddenly seems so wrong. “What was I thinking? I look like a vampire. And not even the cool kind.”
“Oh please,” Sam says, laughing as he puts his arm around my shoulder. “You look great.”
“Greatly appalling,” I say. “Do we have to do this?”
I twist around to look into his deep blue eyes, trying to plead with him to cut class with me, but Sam doesn’t cut class. He actually likes school. He’s really smart—I’m sure he’s going to be a genius-level scientist someday—and handsome in that geeky, still-needs-to-fill-out kind of way, but there’s no way I’m ever going to tell him that.
“Why even bother asking?” Sam says.
“Fine,” I say, moving his arm off my shoulder. “You can at least walk me over to the shark tank. And button your shirt.” I don’t even wait for him. I start doing it myself.
Just like when we were kids. They don’t go anymore, but Sam’s parents used to take me sailing with him and his older brother, James, on the weekends. I remember standing on the deck, the boat going full speed, the wind whipping my hair back and forth across my face, feeling weightless and completely free from the prison of my own body. Sam may not be the best at dressing up for yearbook photos, but he seemed so confident on those sailing trips. The way he handled the ropes so deftly, how he steered the boat with ease. I envied him, because Sam was the master of his own destiny on the water.
I miss those days.
“They’re yearbook photos. Who cares? We’re all just going to stuff them in our closets anyway,” Sam says.
“Wrong,” I say. “Yearbook photos are like diamonds. They’re forever.”
“Actually you’re wrong,” he says. “The whole concept of a yearbook is obsolete. Everyone blasts their lives on social media now, so what’s the motivation to rummage through some old book?”
He takes over buttoning his shirt when I get up to his neck.
“Have you not seen the awful yearbook photos of celebrities on the internet? Just because they’re not on social media to start with doesn’t mean they won’t end up there.”
A tie hangs limply from his pocket. “Do you know how to tie that?” I ask.
“I watched a tutorial,” Sam says. “It can’t be that hard.”
I laugh.
We must look like a couple, but everyone knows we aren’t together. I love Sam. We always sit next to each other in classes because our names are so close. Sam Bailey. Olivia Blakely. He’s super smart and will probably do something exceptional someday, like work on a giant particle accelerator. He’s also the most loyal guy I know.
He’s had a crush on a few girls over the years, but neither of us has been that lucky in love.
“We better get going,” I say, continuing on my way. “I want to be early.”
I start thinking about Zach. Again.
If only he knew that I exist. And that I’m totally in love with him.
He’s always off and on with Cristina Rossi. God. That girl. Model gorgeous. And, since this is Los Angeles, she actually is a model. She even appeared half-naked for a Calvin Klein underwear campaign on a billboard next to the Chateau Marmont this summer. They both look like works of art. Ms. Day, my studio art teacher, might call them “aesthetically pleasing.” Well-proportioned. Shapely. Statuesque.
Sam pulls the tie out of his pocket. He tries to tie it as he walks. It’s as defiant as his unruly hair. He can’t manage a Windsor knot to save his life.
“How ’bout just ditch the tie?” I say.
“Help me out, Liv. You’ve known how to tie these since the fourth grade.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see a guy with brown, slicked-back hair and a gray suit striding across the quad like he owns the school. Jackson Conti. He’s a mass of muscle and has the confidence to match. We sat near each other in biology sophomore year, but I haven’t hung out with him outside of school or talked to him much since then. I hear he’s planning an event with Zach, who happens to be his best friend, in Marina del Rey on a 148-foot yacht that belongs to Sean Clark, an up-and-coming action movie star.
Did I mention that Zach is also an actor?
He played a minor part in one of Sean’s recent movies. Sean’s letting him borrow the yacht to throw a killer party for his friends and cast members while Sean’s out of town. It’s not the actors I’m interested in though—except Zach, of course. I overheard Cristina’s best friend, Felicity, whose father is a big art dealer, telling someone that Geoff LeFeber, a major contemporary artist, is supposed to be visiting from New York and might be going to the party. I guess one of the executive producers of the TV show Zach stars on knows him. It seems like a long shot that he’ll attend, but anything’s possible in Los Angeles. It’s a smaller place than people think.
I have to be there. LeFeber’s my favorite living artist. He puts together these insane installations that completely alter your perception of reality. I’ve never been to one in person, but I watched a YouTube video the Museum