Cassie is suffering from and eating disorder and it has beginning to spin out of control. She has lost everything and has no where to turn. There is darkness in her body and it is eating away at her soul.

I walk through the halls alone, though I am surrounded by a crowd of giggling, glittering girls.

I am an empty skeleton, full of secrets and lies. My skin is paper thin, translucent as glass. And one day its going to shatter and all the dirty little secrets will spill out in a pool of red. They will be the lies I have been fed and the ones I have told. Pretty little words all wrapped up in a big ugly package.

I see her, another ghost, barely there, flitting between the crowd. Her hollow eyes dart over to me and for a second, the past nine years rushes back. Then Courtney’s voice fills my ears, giggles erupt, and I force a carefree smile. I glance back but she’s already disappeared. I’m afraid when the crowd clears, I’ll see her there, crumpled on the stained, tiled floor. Her bones crumbled into powder, internal organs, shriveled and scattered about. Her skin will be folded neatly, a tidy pile of what it was not. Girls will scream and sob, as if they ever cared. Jocks and nerds alike will dare each other to poke it. As if they will catch the disease that turned her into a pile of debris. But there is nothing to catch, because there was nothing inside.
I remember our last conversation. I called her because I knew if I had to see her face, I would break down. Everything would seep out of the cracks slowly opening inside me. It would spill out and I would be left standing there, empty as a shell. Instead, the static of the phone allowed me to repeat the words taped to the wall in front of me. I closed my eyes and rushed through, willing her to feel the pain ripping through my chest with each word.
It was for the best.
I wanted nothing more than to tell her the truth. To hear how awful the hospital was and to make fun of the people who said she was too skinny. Too skinny? Lia-Lia was perfect. Skin stretched tight over bones. Bones you could trace like a ladder up her stomach, down her back. Each one more perfect than the next.
They think I’m better. They say it was all her fault. She corrupted me. She was a bad influence. She was out of control. She needed help.
Godammit help me!

I spent the summer building new friendships. When they asked about the freak who used to be attached to my hip, I said we simply grew apart. Put on a plastic smile, glitter, and laugh and they will accept you as one of their own. I came back to school and they saw the perfect school. They saw the facade I put on and they believed it. They believed when I said I was fine. And I desperately wanted to believe them when they said it was for the best.

That was six months ago. I haven’t talked to her since.

I don’t say a word.
Everything has become a blur. I’ve lost track of the days, the hours, the minutes. Time slips through my fingertips. It pulls me farther from my past, closer to my future. And I can’t tell which one I prefer.
  tick. tock.
The air grows colder. Oh, it’s November. The cold dragged in a neverending fog into my life. It settled low over my shoulders, burying my head with its thick, claustrophobic tendrils. It weighed me down, each step I took was like dragging a block of cement.
Maybe that was why I was so fat. This bulging stomach was weighted with rocks. These enormous thighs were stacked with bricks. I was bloated with stones.
I had to get rid of them.
Each lunch period  was followed by a trip to the bathroom. A stinging throat and a sour stench. Up they came.
Rocks and bread and sticks and ice cream and weights.
I emptied myself of all the evil that resided just below the stretched skin of my stomach.
But I would never be her.
She stood like a willow, bent against the whispers of the lunchroom. Even in jeans that sink low on her hips and a sweatshirt, her skeleton shines through. Twigs poke out of strips of fabric. Fabric that hides the frame of beauty.
I am pathetic. So goddamn pathetic. A pathetic whale, drowning even though the ocean is her home. I have forgotten how to swim, how to breath. I don’t want to remember, anyways.

  ::pathetic/loser/pathetic/stupid/pathetic/
worthless/pathetic/weak/pathetic/lost::