Corinne

(selection from my new book, Secrets I Don't Dare Tell)

Secret #2

August 20, 2011

“I Didn’t Know It Would Feel Good.

The first time I ever threw up on purpose was after scarfing two pieces of birthday cake.  The first time I ever threw up on purpose, it was after I tried to get Tim to notice me.  The first time I ever threw up on purpose was also right after the first time I ever smoked pot.  These things really happened, though not necessarily in that order…”

Juliet

Juliet:  I don’t want to do it.

     I have to do it.

     I don’t want to—

     Have to--

I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

I can.  Juliet, you can do it, you’ll be okay, I tell myself.

You’re not dying, it just feels that way.  It’s just a panic attack. 

Wiping cool sweat from my brow, I hit the space bar on my laptop, waking it up.  Open Safari, sign in to Youtube.  Open iMovie, and I’m almost ready to record. 

I don’t want to do this, but I have to because I can’t breathe and it helps when I’m someone else, performing, playing to my fans but also revealing something from deep inside, my voice--

I am a star, I whisper inside, afraid of what I might say if I dare to speak -- that it might be the wrong thing, that someone’ll get hurt if I even breathe.

Pulling my hair back, I stuff it into the piece of black stocking I use so no one will recognize me.  Sometimes, all I wear is the stocking.  Sometimes I pull it down over my forehead, eyes and nose. 

Today, I put on a snarled Hannah Montana wig from when I was ten and loved Hannah Montana and loved to parade around pretending to be her and now I don’t know who I’m pretending to be anymore or if I’m pretending at all.

Next, a Mardi Gras feathered mask over the upper half of my face.  Then, get my wastebasket.  At last, with the tap of a key, I am recording.  Show’s on!

     Sticking a finger down my throat, I throw up for the camera.

Nora

Nora:  I follow Gina into her room, and then freeze.  Maybe my mouth hangs open for a moment, but I quickly shut it and continue into the room – pretending I’m not humbled, awed, diminished? By the hundreds of pictures of supermodels.  Cut-outs from magazines paper the walls.  The dresser drawers.  The closet door.  Even the headboard of Gina’s bed is a rainbow of eyes, faces, bodies.

I guess I didn’t hide my surprise so well, because Gina says, “My mom and I cut out pictures of women we admire.  They’re for inspiration.”

For what?  I wonder.

As if she read my mind, Gina says, “It’s supposed to help me get thin.”

“Uh huh,” I say.  So lame. 

Gina crosses the floor, her corduroys swishing because of her thighs rubbing together.  That’s exactly why I never wear corduroys.  But if Gina is embarrassed, it doesn’t show.  Still, after patting down a curled corner on one of the pictures, she turns to me – a long way from supermodel thin.  A long way from any kind of thin – and she says, “I don’t think it’s working, and I don’t know why.  Don’t tell anyone, but I’m bulimic.”

I didn’t think I could feel any smaller than I already do, with all those beautiful eyes staring at me.  But I do feel smaller, less than.  And something burns in me – jealousy.