Everyone wants to live forever. No one can look me in the eye and say that they aren't afraid of death. No one knows what comes after that last breath. Sure, you can claim you believe in a God and heaven, you believe your soul will be reincarnated, you will lie rotting in the ground for the rest of eternity. But you don't know. You can't, not until you actually reach the light at the end of the tunnel. If there is a light. It's okay to admit that you're afraid. Everyone is.
Even I am, as I sit here, a mere twenty four hours away from my death. I keep trying to tell myself that it won't be bad, that it will be over quickly. But that scares me even more.
Before you ask, I'm not one of those crazy suicidal teenagers who stick their head in the oven like Sylvia Plath did. I'm not a copy cat. If I was, sleeping pills like Marilyn Monroe. Keep people wondering if it was an accident or the Kennedy administration. But, like I said, I'm not a copy cat.
Four years ago seems like a lifetime, I barely remember sitting cross legged on my mother's bed, reading Thomas Harris, talking to my best friend on the phone about America's Next Top Model. She said Tyra Bank's weight gain is beautiful. I disagreed. It's a weird combination.
Tyra Banks eating his liver with fava beans. While strutting across a catwalk.
Good luck getting that image out of my head.
"I wonder what she'll look like in 20 years," the best friend said.
"Exactly the same," I replied. They all looked the same. Clones of each other, no matter how old, thanks to Dr. Breast-Implant we no longer age.
God I wish I looked like them.
The best friend let out a laugh, and continued to munch on probably some vegan cookie. That week she was a vegan. Last week, so only ate pink food.
It didn't matter what she ate, she had that disease where you can't gain weight. At 15, food was a preoccupation for her. She wanted to be on America's Next Top Model. I wanted to be the next Stephen King.
It was my parent's anniversary. They never come home on their anniversary. This was the first year they didn't hire a babysitter. Last year, Kristen was my age. She went to my school. We were in Biology together. She spent the evening yammering on the phone with her boyfriend. Tried to get me in bed by 9. I responded by telling her how I was going to kill her. She spent the rest of the night in the bathroom with the phone.
At 15, I was a copy cat. All my writing sounded like something out of "how to write depressing fiction" book. Stories about girls who killed themselves, poems about how much life sucked, the usual. I wanted to write horror, I really did, but none of my stuff was really scary. It was laughable. Here is the ghost of a girl who slit her wrists, who convinces a prettier girl to slit her own wrists. Bad.
The first sentence from my story about the ghost went like this: "Even after I died, I still felt like ending my own life."
My best friend liked my writing. Or, at least, she said she did. I'd say she's the prettiest girl in school, of course you'll be a model, and she'd tell me how I'd win a Pulitzer, except she pronounced it "Pull-lit-zeer". The prettiest girl in the school was Mindy Wells, but I don't want to spend my last day talking about Mindy Wells, because she was also the best writer. I'd kill for her metaphors and bangs.
Reena, the best friend, was still talking about Tyra Banks when the call waiting beeped. "Just a sec," I said into the receiver, then hit the talk button.
"Hello?" I said to 'Private Number'.
"Hi, sweetie, it's me." Me being Mom. Must be calling from the restaurant. "I just wanted to remind you to feed Bates."
The great thing about naming your cat Bates is it can be either Norman Bates or Kathy Bates in 'Misery depending on its gender. Our Bates was a Kathy.
"Will do," I said, and then switched back to the other line. "You still there?"
"Yep. This cookie tastes like shit."
"That's because there's no dairy."
Reena paused for a moment, as if thinking it over. "I don't think I want to be a vegan anymore. Top Model ended. Now it's some special on celebs." I looked up at the television, as Brangelina's smiling, perfect faces appeared on the screen, and turned it off.
Grahams visited me last week. He's still attractive. I've thought it over a lot, and I think attractive is the right word for him. He put me, here, you know. But he was always very polite about it. I think he feels sorry for me, as if I'm just another victim of the media. I'm not a victim. Reena Thomas, Heather Collier, Mindy Wells, they're victims.
Sophomore year, I feel like I weigh more than the rest of my class, an insecure little prick. I only have two classes with Reena. The others I sit next to Veronica, a red head who killed herself last year. Stuck her head in an oven. Veronica writes clever little poems during class, more depressing than mine. She claims her step brother fucked her when she was eleven, but I think she just says this to get attention. She has crooked teeth and wears only dark colored turtle necks.
Veronica was a victim.
Art, English 2, Geometry, and P.E. are spent with Veronica's rain cloud. World Civilizations and French 2 are spent with Reena's Urban Outfitter's wardrobe. Lunch is spent with Reena. If Veronica and Reena were to ever met, which they never do, all I'd get from both parties is "Why do you hang out with HER?" One time, Reena saw Veronica in a hallway, and told me minutes later: "That outfit only makes her complexion look pastier."
Mindy Wells was in both English and History with me. Neither of my friends liked her. They'd find her imperfections and talk about it behind her back.
"Her themes are uneven. I can't tell if she wants us to like her main character or hate him."
"Her eyebrows are too thin. It makes her look like a mannequin."
"Plots are clichéd…"
"Hair too thick…"
Two girls, exploiting their own insecurities on poor, perfect, Mindy Wells. Veronica and Reena, clones of each other. And I was a clone of them.
"Her skin looks waxy…" I'd chip in. "Her descriptions run on too long…"
Mindy Wells was the only satirist in my English class. She wrote a story once from the point of view of an unnamed pop diva, who was completely oblivious to her influence on everyone, so would do these really stupid things, and girls everywhere would follow suit. She never rubbed the irony in your face, which was what made her a great writer. Had she lived past 16, should could have been Vonnegut.
In my French class was Mr. Sixteen Candles. Gorgeous. I thought I was in love with him before I even talked to him. Unlike Grahams. It wasn't until a few times after we met that I realized how attractive he is. He said he come visit me today.
I just realized something. Will Graham was the name of the detective who caught Hannibal Leckter.
Just another thing Hannibal the Cannibal and I have in common.
Sophomore year, my mother was still a size four. She was Miss Delaware in 1984, and you could tell. She proudly proclaimed that she lost her baby weight in four weeks. My dad spent his trust fund on wooing her back in the day. I never really knew what he did for a living, even now. I shouldn't say did. He's still alive. Just not to me.
My mother did everything on the treadmill and never ate cookies. Those were her diet secrets. She'd watch the jewelry channel, ordering anything pretty through the headset, while taking the treadmill. She'd talk to her mother while on the treadmill, watch her soaps, and file her nails. This was how she maintained her weight. She could eat ice cream and pasta, but not cookies. She never really struggled with her weight. Her face was young and full of life, and she mastered applying her make up.
Several times, I tried following Reena's fad diets. I never could. I didn't have the self restraint. As a result, sophomore year I weighed more than the rest of the class combined. My limbs were tree trunks. I always told myself I could be beautiful like Reena or Mindy Wells if I just lost some weight.
"I'm so fat." These words came out of Reena's mouth, not mine. She coughed. She always had a cough.
"You're not fat." My response was as natural as breathing at this point.
"Yes I am!" she let out a whimper. "My grapefruit diet isn't working."
"That's because you don't need to lose any weight. You're a twig." So fucking sick of this conversation. "If your fat, I'm huge."
"That's not true. Your fine."
"I weigh more than you," I stepped on the scale. 140.
"That's only because you're taller and have curves."
"I'm only an inch taller, and I don't have curves. I have lumps. How much do you weigh?"
"102," she let out a groan as she said this. "No wonder he doesn't like me."
She had a crush on the foreign exchange student from Spain. He reminded her of a young Antonio Banderas. He was a senior, Reena a sophomore. A year after high school, he would sign up to be in the army. He was shot and paralyzed from the waist down.
He was a victim.
I had this conversation with Reena every night over the phone. I never went to her house anymore. I'm not allowed. In 8th grade, I went over to her house with a light cold, and two days later her parents had to take her to the emergency room in the middle of the night because she caught it. The downside of her disease. Her parents forgot to wake and tell Reena's younger brother, Vincent, where they were going. When he woke up the next morning to find his family gone, he assumed the worst and tried to kill himself. He slit his wrists the wrong way, though, and was so embarrassed by it that he didn't tell anyone. Except me, when he saw my own wrists.
I don't miss going to Reena's house, though. It gave me the creeps. The entire house was painted white with white floors. The reasoning behind this was that they could tell any mess or insects right away, and could clean them up before they spread any new diseases to Reena. The furniture was covered in plastic, and all the food they ate was prepackaged. Reena's family had a cleaner on hand that lived with them and spent all day cleaning the house. Reena's room was covered with plastic furniture and there were even plastic bags that held her clothes. She had more clothes than anyone I knew, because she had to change clothes the minute she got home. The clothes she wore during her time at school were immediately washed. Reena was suppose to home school, but her parents agreed to let her go to school if she wore an oxygen mask and gloves when she got there. She only wore the gloves. As a result, she was sick half the time. The other half, she'd cough.
Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, spoiled Reena because they had almost given her up for adoption when they found out their beautiful baby girl was not healthy.
They only wanted one child. The beautiful baby boy, who was healthy, was a mistake.
Reena was not allowed to come to my house because of Bates. Bates was, quote via Mrs. Thomas, "A disease carrying rodent". So we'd go to a mutual location, like the mall, under the condition that Reena wore an oxygen mask and gloves.
She only wore the gloves.
I thought my life was over when I saw Mr. Sixteen Candles with Heather Collier, the thin blonde with stylish big sunglasses that made her look like an insect. Sixteen Candles was too smitten to notice me wave.
"Who's that?" Reena asked, taking a sip of the cranberry-grapefruit Sobe.
"He's in my French," I responded. Reena looked him over, before focusing on the girl.
"I think those sunglasses look awful on her. It makes her chin look invisible. Cute skirt, though." Reena always analyzed people's outfits. Whenever I went out with her, I felt required to where something fashionable. It never looked as good on me as it did on Reena. I'd see her with a layered look, but when I tried it myself, it just made me look fatter.
Freshman year, I told myself that if I hadn't gotten down to 108 by the end of the year, I'd kill myself. I only lost a pound. I slit my wrists. My parents must have found me, because I woke up in the hospital. I could hear the conversation outside my room.
"I think we should put her on suicide watch," I could hear a doctor saying.
"No. It's just a call for help. If she was really serious about it, she would have used a gun," this came from my mother. "When I was her age, I'd always try stupid stuff like that to get attention."
I still don't know if I really was serious about ending my own life.
When I got back from the hospital, I spent a lot of time in my room, writing depressing poetry online. Vincent drew. He put up his artwork on the same site I put up my poems. We were friends that summer. That was my only suicide attempt. Vincent had four more before his parents finally put him away in an institution. He is the only one who writes to me now.
Vincent Thomas is a victim.
I visited him once in the mental institution. The walls there are all white. The floors there are all white.
Sophomore year, I was the elephant in the room everyone talked about. I imagined people calling me 'love handles' behind my back, even though they didn't. I imagined girls sticking out their stomach to pretend to be me. I started wearing only sweaters to cover up my body.
I found a place, biking distance, five miles out of town, really off the beaten track. It was a house that had been mostly burned down in some fire, and was now reduced to a tower of charcoal. Only the basement was unharmed, and it was hard to access. You had to use a ladder. If you fell down, it would be months before anyone found you. By then, you'd starve to death. It was a great place to write, nobody claimed the house. Sometimes, I even made a bonfire where the kitchen used to be. I used the fire to get rid of things I didn't need anymore, it was liberating.
At home, my mother was a size 4. She was serving pasta. I ate it, and then went into the bathroom to stick my finger down my throat. I couldn't throw up. So I just sat by the toilet and cried.
"I can't live, with or without you…" the stereo blasted. I turned it on so they couldn't hear me. Not like they'd come to comfort me anyway.
I couldn't do it alone.
Bates crawled into my room, and jumped up on the bed, purring a little. She had a beautiful black coat.
"I can't do this alone," I said aloud, petting her.
Junior year, a girl who went to my school went missing. They never found her body.
Sophomore year, I picture myself too big to fit in the desk. I started running in the morning. In the beginning, I couldn't get more than a couple blocks without running out of fuel.
"Did you feed Bates?" Mom asked from the treadmill, turning the volume down on Dr. Phil.
"Yes," I lied.
That week, Reena was on South Beach. She was coughing her lungs out, and the color seemed to be drained from her face. Her hair was limp. She was probably getting sick. Hopefully it wasn't the flu. Last time she got the flu, she was out for a month and a half.
Mindy Wells got a story published, about a man who started his own religion. The teacher was so proud, he read it aloud to our class, even though we had heard it when Mindy read it herself after she first wrote it. Mindy came to school with a black eye and a bruised lip, and spent most of class trying to cover it up with make up. She didn't talk much, except when she read stories aloud or was called on. We wondered if it was her father or boyfriend, but either way figured she deserved it. She gained about five pounds, but wore it well. There was a rumor she was raped, but she still came to class on time, every day.
Veronica was trying to get published. The publisher sent her a letter of rejection, saying "Plots are clichéd, characters incoherent, themes uneven…"
I wrote a story about Vincent. The week before, his parents had found him trying to drown in his bathtub. It was the third time he had tried to kill himself, but only the first time his parents found out. I wrote about Vincent killing his parents. I called him "Victor". Reena thought it was the best thing I ever wrote.
The first sentence from my story about Vincent Thomas went like this: "The only thing my parents were concerned about was the blood stain on the living room carpet."
"I fed your cat. She seemed pretty hungry, she scarfed it down. Are you sure you fed her this morning?" Mom was on the treadmill, shopping online.
"I might have forgotten. Sorry," I apologized. At 134, I couldn't fit through the doorway.
Junior year, when two other girls went missing from my school, the media was trying to find a link. The bodies were never found. Our little town was getting famous. CNN interviewed the principal.
Everyone wants to be famous. Fame is our fountain of youth. Celebrities are our immortal gods. With your name being spoken by everyone's tongue, even after you die, you're still, in a sense, alive. Everyone wants fame. Everyone wants to live forever.
I will live forever. I sacrificed my life to be a legend. As the hour comes closer, I'm trying to stop being afraid. I will live forever. I will live forever. Yet I still fear death.
Sophomore year, at 125, I could barely fit in the classroom. I felt disgusting while I ate my one meal a day, dinner with my family. Reena was coughing, as she looked me over.
"You lost weight," she said. I was her fat security blanket, no matter what she weighed, I always weighed more.
"Just a few pounds."
"What diet are you on?" Reena was on the Zen diet.
"Just one I made up," I said this looking down. She had been sick for two weeks. Today was her first day back.
"That's cool," she said so with a cough.
Hunger is an emotion, like sadness or anger. It passes if you wait it off.
Mom was worried about the cat.
I ran two miles in the morning, non stop. Heather Collier lived on my block. She'd run in the morning, too.
Sometimes I'd see her. I'd never say hi. I didn't know her, and I hated her.
I felt the same contempt towards Mindy Wells, who gained another five pounds, she had a cast around her arm, and she said she had broken it when she fell down the stairs.
I heard her dad pushed her.
Grahams told me that Mr. Wells was one of the first suspects when the three girls went missing. Apparently, he had a thing for girls my age. Grahams is 41, but he looks a lot younger. Mr. Wells was 41 when he was a suspect, but he looked a lot older.
Sophomore year, 118, I was fat enough to be in a freak show. I still couldn't throw up the dinner, but I ate less of it. I stopped trimming my fingernails because they stopped growing. Sixteen Candles smiled at me. I nearly melted.
"You seriously have to tell me your secret," Reena said. She was getting sicker, and thinner. Her body had caught an infection, and it was no longer allowing food into the system. She was in and out of the hospital. She was wearing the oxygen mask.
Veronica was rejected two more times, and had given up on poetry. Her new thing was songs. Her songs were more depressing than her poems. I limped a little from the hunger pangs, but I was getting use to it.
It will go away if I ignore it.
Junior year, Heather Collier went missing. The last person who saw her was her mother, saying goodbye to her before she went for her morning run.
After Heather Collier disappeared, our town was making headlines. The police were trying to find a connection to the missing girls.
Junior year, 100 pounds, I was the heaviest person in the world. Reena was worried. She was paler, too. Her parents made her stop going to school, because the doctors didn't know what went wrong. I was allowed at her house again. Her parents thought I could cheer her up.
"You look deflated," Reena said through the oxygen mask. She had to wear it at home, now. "Not like you."
I was wearing a sweatshirt to hide my arms. "What do you mean?"
"You're too thin. Have you been eating?"
"Yes," I said, remembering the night before, turning on Coldplay so my parents couldn't hear me in the bathroom. I couldn't brush my hair anymore, when I did, it would fall out.
The cat's fur was falling out, too. My mother didn't know what was wrong with her. She took her to the vet, who said that the cat was dehydrated and malnutrioned, maybe the cat was throwing up the food.
Because I was putting laxatives in it.
Bates had to be hooked up to an IV. She was half bald.
"Are you throwing it up?"
"Why are you on my case? I'm fine," I said this, storming out of the room. It was night now. I didn't head home. I walked for about forty minutes, before I saw a girl that I knew. She went to my school. I didn't know her name.
"Can I borrow your cell phone?" she asked me, looking around. "My ride was s'pose to be here fifteen minutes ago."
I first met Grahams after Mindy Wells was found. He came into the classroom with a tape recorder in his hand. He talked to us one by one. Reena wasn't there. She was hooked up to an IV. Like the cat. I was 92. So huge I was falling off the planet. I was called next. I followed him into the empty classroom. He shut the door behind him, and turned on the recorder.
"So, you had classes with Mindy Wells?"
"Last year, I had English and History with her."
"Did you know her well?"
"Not really."
"She had a diary, you know. She mentioned you in it."
"Really? What did it say?"
"That she thought you were one of the best writers in the school. But she got the impression you didn't like her. Is that true?"
"I suppose."
"Why not?"
"I was jealous."
"She said you wrote horror. Did you also watch a lot of horror movies?"
"Just read it. I mean, I've seen the old Steven King adaptations, original Nightmare on Elm Street, but I really prefer the books. Thomas Harris, Ann Rice, you just can't transfer that stuff."
"Do you know anyone that might want to hurt her?"
"There were rumors of abuse, her father, her boyfriend, but I don't know anything solid. Like I said, I didn't really know her."
"That's all." He turned off the tape recorder.
"Do you have any leads?"
"I can't discuss that. Maybe you could write a story about her death."
"How did she die?"
"We don't know. We only found her head."
A few weeks later, some pictures of Mindy Wells's head were leaked to the internet. We all saw what she looked liked. Red, permanent ink covered her pale skin, outlining her lips thicker, eyebrows thicker, and cheeks thinner. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, giving her a look of contentment. A closer look, however, showed that the red ink wasn't ink at all. It was the scars from where the incisions were made.
Three girls had disappeared. Heather Collier and Mr. Sixteen Candles had broken up. After a quick pep talk to my mirror, I asked him out. We went to the movies.
I let him choose the movie. He choose something with Jake Gyllenhaal. Heather Collier was at the movies too, with a not as handsome guy. She became somewhat possessive over him, and no drugs could amount to the high I felt. She was enveous. I was too thick to notice Sixteen Candles was behaving the same way to me.
The next day, he told me he was getting back together with her.
He was the one who would find her head. He's still in therapy.
Sixteen Candles is a victim.
It was after Mindy Wells was found. There were rumors that Heather Collier had a similar makeover.
The press called it the Botox Killings, because a homemade chemical similar to Botox was found injected into their skin, to freeze the facial expressions.
The first sentence from my story about Mindy Wells went like this: "Even after I laid, bleeding on the ground, I couldn't bring myself to hate him."
At 87 pounds, I was finally perfect. On the last day of her life, Reena, from the hospital bed, said I looked like a skeleton. I had to wear a wig, because most of my hair had fallen off. I stopped getting my period. It was the pot calling the kettle black. Reena was 50 pounds, and starving to death. She was still coughing. With each coughing fit, her entire body would curl up, and then relax again. Her skin was pulled tight across her face, and her eyes were glazed over. She already looked dead. The IV drip wasn't working. All the medicine they gave her only made her sicker.
The only class I cared about anymore was Chemistry. I was writing a story about Mindy Wells. Speculation on who beat her, who raped her, who killed her. I was even failing English, for the sake of the story.
Reena's parents entered the room, and tried to shoo me out. Reena grabbed my shirt. She didn't even have flesh on her fingers. "Don't die like me. It's not worth it."
I pulled away with no difficulty, and left the room. Her parents closed the door behind me.
They put Bates to sleep.
They put Reena to sleep.
Grahams came by my house. He was asking all the neighbors about Heather Collier. He was polite and stayed for the cat's funeral. He asked the usual: "Do you know anyone who might want to kill her…"
I volunteered the boy she went to the movies with, on my only date with Sixteen Candles. Then I offered Sixteen Candles.
"Do you know what killed her?" I asked him again.
"No, but we know the head was removed post-mortem," he replied, turning off the tape recorder. "How's the story going?"
He is asking me the same question now as he accompanies me down the long hallway. We're walking slowly.
"It's done. Will you publish it for me?"
"Yes." I think he's telling the truth, though he won't look at me.
The Botox killer, the paper said, was impatient with Heather Collier and Mindy Wells. It's believed that both girls overdosed on sleeping pills. They were forced down each girl's throat.
The common belief is that the other three girls starved to death, but the bodies were never found.
They were victims.
There was also a sixth victim. Thanks to this sixth victim, they found the Botox killer. She ran five miles into town, half starved, and collapsed in front of a man's house. He called the police, and she told them her story.
How she been kidnapped, and yes, she got a good look at the person who did it.
I declined my last meal.
I don't know how the bitch got out of the basement, my burnt down Fortress of Solitude, where the three girls I starved stayed for three weeks.
I should have worn a mask.
When Bates cheated with the IV, I had to find someone else.
I couldn't do it alone.
Grahams looks at me with sympathy as he follows me into the last room I'd ever be in.
"Why did you do it?" he asks softly, as a guard straps me in.
Everybody wants to be perfect. It doesn't matter how thin, rich, beautiful, talented you are. You always want to be thinner, richer, prettier, and more talented. Everyone has a different idea of perfection, yet no one can achieve it.
Not even me.
I guess I am a victim.
This is way creepy... But good. (: I remember reading the beginning of it a long time ago.
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