"Haven't you ever seen Nightmare on Elm St.?" He was getting excited now. It really didn't take much.
"No. Actually I've never seen it. I'm not a big fan of blood and gore." I yawned. There was nothing else I could do.
"What rock have you been living under? Damn girl, you don't know what you're missing!" Trust me, I did.
"No, I don't suppo--"
"Well, just when you least expect it, Freddy comes in with those blade things on his fingers and it's like SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! Blood goes squirting everywhere, it's great! Practically nobody lives in the end, and the ones that do go insane!" He jabbered. Why had it taken me so long to notice that he was a jabberer?
I shot him a derisive glance over my extra value meal and wished that he would just shut his mouth. He thought he knew everything. My favorite restaurant? Wrong. We were sitting in a snug booth at next to the bathrooms of a dimly lit McDonalds. My favorite color? Wrong again. The scarf he had given me for the occasion was not a soft royal blue. It was a muddy brown that bore an uncanny resemblance to the water filling a pothole in the parking lot.
Our anniversary? He had even gotten that wrong. It was too much work to convince him that it was not for another week, especially after he had spent so much time insisting that he was planning a truly special evening. I gave up. We were now supposed to be gazing lovingly into each other's eyes over a romantic meal of Big Macs and Cherry Cokes. Big Spender had even sprung for Super Sized Fries.
The feeling of his rough hand on mine brought me out of my mental rant. After a moment I realized that he had ended his diatribe on the wonders of blades and blood. "You're so beautiful." He whispered so softly that if the words had been said by any other man in any other restaurant on the planet, they would have been tender. I had enough. Excusing myself to the bathroom, I prayed that Freddy Krueger was waiting there to rescue me. I was already insane.
The last six months had come to this. The bathroom lights were harsh, but I couldn't blame them. I was harsh too, hating the girl that stood in front of me. I thought I recognized her, but she was a mere shadow of the girl I thought I remembered.
Her skin was pale and had taken on a yellow tinge. Dark circles had gotten comfortable under her eyes and mingled with red rims. A thin veil of concealer had been no match for these unwanted tenants. Sallow skin stretched like plastic wrap across jutting cheekbones and a protruding jaw line. The size small tank top that she would have never given a second thought all those months ago now hung loosely on her bony shoulders. The tightness that would have once made her cringe had dissipated, and the shirt billowed around the awkward angles of her overly pronounced ribcage. Swaths of denim desperately clung to hips they were supposed to be hugging. She sighed and ran a hand through limp hair, wishing that the expensive volumizing shampoo she bought had worked the miracles that it promised.
I would have laughed at her if I hadn't been completely sure that it would have broken her. Over the past six months, I had come to hate the mirror.
***
The first time I met Taylor was at my best friend Audrey's Senior Year kickoff party. I was sitting on her white Italian leather sofa and trying to look inconspicuous, and moreover, trying not to spill the beer that was resting between my quaking hands. He sat next to me, talking about the latest Scream movie that had come out the weekend before. I was dumbfounded that he had graced me with his presence, enough so that I looked past his drooping eyelids and breath that had turned rancid from one too many shots of whatever his poison happened to be and two too many cigarettes. Most of all, I had forgotten to be completely disinterested in all he had to say on the matter. I lost track of how long his monologue lasted, but it felt like the grandfather clock standing regally in the far corner of the room ticked away an eternity before I felt his hand at my waist. As he leaned in slowly I held my breath, partly because his breath danced dangerously with my gag reflex, but mainly because I knew what was about to happen next held the potential to be the defining moment of my teenage life.
"Hey babe," he slurred. "Take it easy on the beer. It goes straight to the gut." Taylor pinched my side, winked at me with a bloodshot eye, and stumbled off the couch. I watched him until he disappeared into the kitchen, looking to reclaim the buzz that had begun to wear off somewhere in the middle of Scream. I headed to the bathroom, suddenly feeling very full.
***
Standing in the dank light of the restaurant bathroom, I thought of my mother.
“You’re getting chubby. We need to get you started on a diet.” It was the fourth time that week my mother had reminded me of her dissatisfaction with my twelve-year-old body. I nodded and quietly and sucked in my stomach, hoping to make myself small. I threw away the candy bar I had won that day in the class art competition. Second place had felt like first until I showed Mama my ribbon and the Snickers I had chosen from my teacher’s Treasure Chest as a celebration of my accomplishment.
She took my chin in her hand and looked at me. Running her fingers through my corn silk hair she sighed. “You used to look like a little cherub baby,” She mused to no one in particular. “What happened to my girl?”
Blood rushed to my cheeks, as the coldest water the faucet would allow splashed onto my face. I leaned over the sink, my head parallel to a red sign reminding all employees that they must wash hands. The sign bobbed in front of me as my chest heaved, the white letters barely discernable through a haze of involuntary tears that was finally beginning to clear. For a moment I thought that I was hyperventilating, so I closed my eyes and tried to send gasps of the sticky perfumed air to my lungs at more regular intervals.
It was different this time, worse, as if every other time had only been as bad as a stubbed toe or a scraped knee. Lowering my face, I brought my cracking lips to the rushing water and took a sip of the cool moisture. Swishing it back and forth between the insides of my cheeks, I tried desperately to rinse away any evidence of my indiscretion. I spat. Watching the traces of crimson from my burning throat stain the otherwise clear liquid swirling down the drain caused my stomach to lurch involuntarily, a feeling I had become well acquainted with. This time was different. This time was worse.
I took a deep breath and swallowed, feeling the air working to settle my stomach. By then it didn’t matter if my stomach was still turning more wildly than a roller coaster car along the loops of a spiral track. I was empty. A coarse brown paper towel dried my face and removed the mascara smudges from my chronically discolored under-eyes. As I exited the bathroom into the air of the restaurant, heavy with grease, and took the few steps between the bathroom and our romantic dinner, I prayed he wouldn’t notice.
He looked at me and grinned. “Everything OK?” Clueless.
I gave him a tight-lipped smile, my muscles too fatigued to produce anything more genuine. “Fine. Everything’s fine,” I said, and went back to picking at my fries.