Chapter Twenty
I stagger through an open door. It’s the theater. The place where I’m supposed to have my biggest triumph. I stumble down one of the side aisles toward the front of the stage, sinking into one of the seats in the first row. The lights are all on, but I’m in the dark.
I should laugh, really. It’s funny, right? Jackson liked me all along, and I threw it away. I screwed every thing up by myself.
And then I went and did all this, thinking I could win him back. The surgery. The new clothes and hair. The drama class. Everything. For what?
“You are still fat and ugly. None of it mattered. You don’t matter.” Skinny is here, too, and she isn’t whispering. Her voice echoes through the empty auditorium.
“You will always be alone. Your father has Charlotte. Your mother is gone. There is no one for you.”
It was never about Jackson. I was in love with a memory, so unreal and fleeting it doesn’t even matter anymore. The truth slashes into my mind. It is about me . . . and Skinny. I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts. Skinny is haunting me like a ghost, chasing after me like a shadow. She won’t quit saying her horrible words, her lips to my ear.
“Stop.” My voice is shaking, the tears flowing freely from the edges of my eyes. I’m standing on a cliff, the rest of the world beneath me. I’m broken and I’m never going to heal. I cry until my throat is empty.
Skinny is waiting just offstage. Behind the curtain. I feel her. I hear her breathing there in shallow little horrible rasps. She’s farther away, but her voice is even stronger. Unmistakable. She’s no longer tiny and fluttering around to whisper in my ear. Solid and life-sized, she’s standing just behind that stage curtain. A shiver of fear runs up the nape of my neck.
“If only you were skinny like Gigi. Then he would love you,” Skinny hisses from offstage. “But you will never look like her.” Her whispers crawl around inside my dress. I swallow, hard.
The truth is I could have had everything. I lost Rat to Briella, and I ruined things with Jackson. It wasn’t about Gigi. I did it. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault. Skinny has it all wrong, but she’s not listening.
“You’re a hippo. A fat cow. An elephant!”
She’s yelling now so loudly I can’t hear anything else. I clap my hands over my ears and lower my head to my knees. Shutting my eyes tightly, I breathe carefully in and out, in and out. For a moment, all I can hear is my own breathing. Like I’m underwater. Or already buried deep underground. Six feet under.
“Stop it,” I whisper, but she refuses to listen.
“Fat. Huge. Ugly. Hideous. Pitiful. Alone,” she chants.
I open my eyes and stand, facing the darkness waiting there in the shadows of the stage.
“Shut up,” I say louder, but my words come out through gritted teeth. My hands are clenched tightly at my sides. It’s now or never.
“Come out here where I can see you.” My voice is stronger now as I wipe the tears away from my cheeks with the back of one hand. She can’t stay in the dark anymore. It’s time we came face-to-face.
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Skinny chants softly.
“I want to see who . . . what . . . you are.” I walk up to the front of the stage, waiting. My pulse jumps wildly in my throat.
“You don’t need to see me. Just listen.” Skinny’s voice comes from the shadows. “You’re a big, gigantic whale. Listen. . . .”
Wait. Something huge and powerful stirs in my brain. Like an elephant charging out of the jungle. Everything is changing except for Skinny. She’s been my one constant — the nagging fairy godmother whose voice led me down this path.
“Elephants don’t back down,” I say, “and I’m not afraid to see you.” Slowly, with my thoughts, I pull her out into the light and onto the stage. And I see her.
Finally.
My mouth falls open in surprise. She doesn’t look like some cool, goth Tinker Bell. She is me. But not me. I blink to clear my eyes, but the image doesn’t focus. It’s like looking into one of those warped mirrors in a fun house. Her mouth is slack, no sign of emotion. Her eyes stay fixed on the floor. I put my hand out into the space in front of me and she ripples away like touched water. She still doesn’t look up at me, her eyes hidden beneath lowered lids, but the shadowy figure mirrors my movement.
“Your arms are so fat they shake when you point to something,” Skinny says, but it is a soft voice that twists away into the air. I can barely hear it.
“You aren’t looking at me,” I say, and she starts to blur even more, her edges spinning away into the dark space of the stage.