MOM and I rode to the house in silence. I knew a verbal lashing was coming about my lunchtime choices. She just didn’t get it. She ate grapefruit and stayed trim. I ate grapefruit and stayed fat. No matter how many miles I’d walked with her at Emerson Trails, the scale hadn’t budged. So what was the point in being miserable and fat? I might as well enjoy myself—or my food at least.
When we got home, I immediately went toward the stairs, wanting to avoid Mom as much as possible, but she called, “Come back here, Rory.”
With my foot on the bottom step, I turned back and eyed her. “I have a lot of homework.”
Okay, that was a lie. Unless my assignment was avoiding uncomfortable conversations and disappointed looks. Then I was booked until graduation and every school holiday for the next four years.
“You can get to it after supper,” she said, then turned toward the kitchen, expecting me to follow her.
I stayed on the step for a moment, considering just going upstairs and dealing with whatever rampage she went on afterward. But then she called, “Are you coming, Rory?”
I let my backpack slip from my shoulder to my hand, and I dropped it by the door on the way to the kitchen.
Mom was standing by the sink, her arms folded over her chest.
I walked with caution, trying to anticipate what was next. Another lecture over the government’s current diet recommendations? A lesson on the dangers of cholesterol? Eventually, I got tired of guessing and just said, “Let’s get this over with.”
She rubbed her temples. “Your health isn’t just something you get over with. It’s going to affect you for the rest of your life.”
I pressed my lips together because I was about three seconds from saying something I’d regret.
When she realized I wasn’t going to reply, she said, “I want you to make a healthy supper for us tonight so you can practice.”
“Mom, I know what’s healthy. It just doesn’t make a difference whether I eat it or not. The scale doesn’t change.”
She shook her head. “Even if you actually stick to a diet and the scale doesn’t change, that’s fine. Your body still needs the good nutrients.”
There it was again. The insinuation that I just cheated on my diet over the summer and that I had been going behind her back to sabotage myself. “You think I want to be fat? That I like knowing my weight repulses you?”
Her mouth went slack. “Rory, your weight doesn’t repulse me.” She stepped forward and put her thin hands on my shoulders. “I just want you to be happy. Can’t you see that I love you and want what’s best for you?”
My eyes burned with unshed tears. I was so tired of this. Of the rhetoric that said fat girls couldn’t be on magazine covers because you were idolizing unhealthiness. What about crash diets and obsession with looks? Wasn’t that just as unhealthy? People used drugs and slept around and were on the covers of magazines, but they didn’t catch half the flack plus-sized girls would just because of their size. And my mom was one of them. One of the people who would never see past my size.
The front door opened, and my dad yelled, “Rory! You got a letter from NYU!”
My lips quivered as I gave my mom a final glance and went to get the letter.
Dad grinned ear to ear as I approached, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Aren’t you excit—What’s wrong?” he asked.
I took the letter and headed toward the stairs. “Ask your wife.”
I carried the letter to my room, tears spilling over my cheeks, and sat on my bed with the red and white envelope. With shaking fingers, I opened it and saw the news. I’d been accepted.
I held the letter to my chest and hoped when fall came, I’d be accepted in more ways than one.
