Skippy Dies: A Novel

Lori is coping with Personal Tragedy. At school she doesn’t make a big thing out of it – instead she acts like the same old Lori, she smiles and laughs just like always and it’s only if you’re really paying attention that you’ll notice she’s a tiny bit quieter, a tiny bit paler, and sometimes she’ll look away, out the window, and a sort of sadness will cross her face? But Mom and Dad are really worried about her. They keep leaving little presents in her bedroom for when she gets home, and then on Saturday Mom said they were going on a Girlie Day Out – just the three of them, Mom, Lori and the credit card! They got their hair done and had facials and went to Brown Thomas and bought shoes, it was so much fun! But then when they were in the café Lori’s mom put her hand on Lori’s and said, Oh honey, and Lori saw tears coming down from behind her sunglasses and she started crying too and the two of them hugged and cried, all the other women in the café must have thought they were crazy!

He was a very sweet boy but he had problems, Mom said when they had finished crying. Your dad was talking to the Seabrook Principal, who is a very good friend of his, and he said unfortunately this was a boy with a lot of problems. There are people like that in the world and what you have to accept is that you can only help them up to a point, and after that there’s nothing more you can do. And – Mom started to sniff again – baby, I know it seems impossible now, but some day your heart will heal and you’ll be able to love someone new?

And for a second Lori felt a warm mochaccino glow rising up from her stomach but then Mom said that Dad wanted her to see a child psychologist and the feeling turned sickly cold. A child psychologist poking around in her brain, wanting to find everything out? Telling Mom and Dad what really happened? For a second Lori thought she was going to puke right there on the table, but then Mom said, But I told him I didn’t think it was necessary because you’ve been coping very well on your own, all things considered. You’ve been so brave, she said, I’m so proud of you, and then she started talking about the woman from the modelling agency who called up after seeing the pictures of Lori in the paper and wanted her to come in. We should really get you a new outfit, Mom said, and also maybe go to the dentist and have your teeth whitened, you only get one chance with these people.

Mostly the teachers and nuns and girls in her year have been really nice to her, but of course, like BETHani says, wherever there is someone who is getting attention or enjoying success you will find haters and people who try to bring them down with negativity, e.g. like yesterday when she overheard Mirabelle Zaoum saying, Oh God, all it takes to be a big star in this school is for some loser to write your name on a floor. Janine says, You can’t let them get to you, Lori, and she made Lori a card that read, Never frown even when ur sad, coz u never know whose falling in love with ur smile! And it’s true! So as she goes through the school doors into the buzzing swarming nest of blue-uniformed girls it’s with a big smile for everyone, !

Janine’s the only person she reveals her true feelings to. If you don’t know her Janine can seem like a bitch, but underneath it all she has the giantest heart. She wanted so much to help Carl and Lori get back together, it wasn’t her fault the Plan didn’t work out, and ever since what happened she has been the best best friend anyone could ever ask for. Lori would be so happy if Janine could find someone to love – underneath her tough exterior that’s all she really wants! And she looks amazing these days, like she’s totally lost that little you wouldn’t call it a spare tyre but anyhow it’s mostly totally gone? Still, Lori’s glad to have her to herself until everything gets back to normal.

Today at lunchtime they go up to the mall. Denise and Janine are talking about KellyAnn, she is totally wrecking everybody’s head talking about her stupid baby, you’d think she’d be embarrassed about it but instead she can’t shut up and she keeps putting on this wise old woman voice like speaking in this slllooooooowwwwww soooooffffffft way, like she knows something you don’t just because she got drunk and let that gimp Titch Fitzpatrick get her up the duff.

I wouldn’t mind so much except she keeps trying to give me like relationship advice? Denise says.

Me too, Janine says, I’m like, KellyAnn, you’ve totally ruined your life, the day I need advice from you just put a bag over my head and shoot me.

What do you think will happen when Sister Benedict finds out? Do you think she’ll be expelled?

I don’t know, Janine says, but if KellyAnn had any cop at all she’d be saving her money for a little holiday.

Lori is shocked. You mean go for an abortion?

There’s no way she’ll get an abortion, Denise says.

What else is she going to do with it?

Well, maybe Titch will help her take care of it?

Janine laughs. Have you ever met Titch’s mother? She’s like Godzilla in drag. There’s no way she’s going to let her precious Tom-Tom’s life go down the tubes just because some slutty Brigid’s girl couldn’t keep her knickers on.

I heard she just gave him a BJ, Denise says.

You can’t get pregnant from a BJ, Janine says.

I know this girl whose sister’s friend gave this boy a BJ and then she got pregnant even though she was a virgin.

Did she spit it out? Janine asks.

I don’t know, Denise says.

And it’s so weird, one moment Lori’s listening to her friends and the next she’s on the ground and the shops on the mezzanine are whirling around her head like bluebirds in those old cartoons when the coyote gets whacked with an anvil or something.

Oh my God, oh my God, Denise flaps above her like a skinny bird. Janine is crouched down beside her. Oh sweetie! A security guard appears and looks down with dark-brown hair and a kind stupid face. Is she OK? he asks in a voice like Lilya’s. She’s fine, Janine says, she just needs some air. He moves in closer. She’s fine, Janine snaps and the guy cringes away like a dog you’ve thrown a stone at. Sweetie, she murmurs again and hugs her and for a moment Lori can hide in the warm friendly darkness, the Janine-smell she knows so well. But then everything comes down on her again, the day the night the Plan, she knew it wouldn’t work the moment she called him, the moment Daniel answered the phone she knew it was a bad idea, lying to him like that felt wrong, it made her angry, and he kept asking her questions – What’s wrong? How long have you had it? Do you have a temperature? – so she had to lie more and more when she just wanted him to go, and she felt so awful but she is a terrible person because then the second Carl appeared she forgot about Daniel completely, everything that usually made up Lori like memories and things she liked was instantly washed away and it was just her and Carl walking through the park, he looked so sad I missed you he said it was the first time he’d ever said anything like that she started to cry and then when he held her to cry and laugh at the same time I missed you too and that was just the beginning because then next he started to talk like really talk in a way he never did before like about how he didn’t think she cared about him he thought she was in love with Daniel How could he think that when he knew about Janine’s Plan but he did he thought she didn’t love him not like I love you he said oh my God but I do love you I love you I love you but he didn’t think she did because she wouldn’t have sex that doesn’t have anything to do with it she said but he wouldn’t believe her that’s why she did it the doughnut shop roof was sore against her knees the doughnut was like a giant halo round his head he kept saying I love you she felt like she was drunk with happiness his thing tasted strange but not terrible but it was weird the way it moved in her mouth like it was alive a little blind creature she liked the feel of his hands in her hair but then he shot the stuff and he wouldn’t let her take it out and it was going down her throat it kept coming not letting her breathe it was like she was drowning and then she saw what he was doing oh my God why Carl why she couldn’t get the phone from him he was shouting she broke free and jumped down from the roof she twisted her ankle and had to run all the way home on it she was crying and when Mom asked her why she had to say Amy Doran’s cat got run over and when Mom tried to hug her she wouldn’t let her because she was worried she might smell the stuff she couldn’t get the taste out of her mouth she could feel it on the back of her teeth all slimy she used up a whole bottle of mouthwash it didn’t do any good and the next thing Mom calls her down from her room and Daniel is there holding a frisbee why did he bring a frisbee in winter he always did everything weird like that like texting her poems that don’t even rhyme but anyway he’s looking at her all white with big round eyes and she knows that he’s seen the video and maybe she could have just pretended nothing happened he would have believed her but before he can even say anything before she even knows what she’s doing she starts screaming at him, screaming at the top of her lungs Get out, get out, fuck off, what’s your problem, I never ever ever want to see you again, screaming and screaming the most horrible things that came into her head loud as she could till Dad came out and put his arms around her and told him it was probably best if he went and he was looking back at her dad like he didn’t know where he was and she turned round and ran up to her room and next thing Kelly-Ann is calling her crying from the doughnut shop and then there are police cars outside her house and I am so sorry, I am so sorry, Daniel I am so so sorry! But she still knew in the middle of everything she wasn’t going to tell them about Carl.

And now Zora Carpathian is calling her the Death Girl and all over the school someone keeps writing LORI L’S DANIEL 4 EVER it must be Tara Gately, she copies everything Lori does, she has all of her things, bangles, hairbands, BETHani badge on the strap of her schoolbag, she’s probably never even kissed anybody herself well if she wants to be her so much Lori wishes she could just let her, say to her okay you can be Lori and see how you like it and I’ll be nobody I’ll just be some air in the sky up where nobody can breathe it but then what would she do about CarlCarlCarlCarl

They are back in the toilets in school. Janine is wiping Lori’s eyes and cheeks. Denise and Aifric Quinlavan are smoking cigarettes and talking about boys. Would you do it if you really liked him?

I wouldn’t ever like someone who would want me to do something like that.

They all want to do it, Aifric says, they see it on the Internet and then they want you to do it. You should see the stuff my brother has on his computer, it’s totally vile.

Like what sort of stuff?

Like, you know, men spraying their, you know, on girls’ faces? Like their semen?

Ewww, that’s so gross!

Or sticking their thing up your arse.

There’s no way I’m ever doing that, Denise says. Like why would anyone want to do that?

You can’t get pregnant, Janine says. If they shag you up the arse it means you can’t get pregnant.

How romantic, Denise says.

It’s like going to the toilet in reverse, Aifric says. It’s fucking sick, I don’t care.

He tried to talk to Lori at the graveyard but she ran away from him. She blocked his calls from her mobile and he hangs up whenever Dad picks up the house phone. At night she can feel him outside in the dark under the trees looking up at her window, and a part of her wants to go out to him in spite of everything. But Janine says, Stay away from him. She says he tried to talk to her too, after school one day. What did he say? I didn’t listen I just blanked him. And you should too, Lori. There’s something wrong with that guy, I’m serious.

And it’s true, what kind of psycho would do something like that? When he knew about the Plan, when she’d explained that it wasn’t real! But inside she knows why he did it, it was because he was jealous of her and Daniel. If only he hadn’t been jealous, if only he’d believed she just loved him! (Though then she thinks of Daniel’s hand on her breast…) And she thinks of him hanging around with all those weirdo knackers selling drugs, they give her the creeps, and of his horrible dad who had sex with a girl in sixth year and his mom wandering around the house stinking of drink and chain-smoking and listening to Lionel Richie, and Carl says he doesn’t care if they split up but that’s why he’s acting weird even for him, it’s got to be, and she knows what he really needs is someone to care for him?

Janine says, He’s a bad guy, Lori, I mean it. There’s something missing from him. He’s dangerous.

You don’t know him like I do, Lori says.

Janine thinks for a minute. Maybe not, she says. But I can still tell.

And she’s right, Lori knows it, he’s bad, he’s all fucked up, you can see it in the marks on his arms, and if her dad ever had a clue that a guy like him had gone near her she’d be sent off to boarding school in a split second because you can tell he’s never going to be all right or good, and he swears and he’s always in a bad mood and all he ever talked about was wanting to have sex with her like does he even really care about her but then she thinks of his teeth that are just the right amount of crooked and she thinks of his body crushing hers like a door into a world of mmmm and stuff she had never thought about before not really and now she can’t stop lying in bed and her mom came in I was thinking of you I had my eyes closed oh my god I’ve never done that before and when you press against a body did you think it could get so hot like your skin’s in flames and everything underneath like a volcano and even when you’re not touching me it’s like you are it’s like I can see the secret fire beneath everything even if we’re just standing outside McDonald’s or on the roof of Ed’s that time you were setting the paper planes alight and throwing them at the guy down on the ground I’d drunk a can my head was spinning I never laughed so much and then I stopped laughing and I lay my head down and looked at you and the black sky and I loved you and the air was full of burning full of sparks coming off the fiery planes full of candybursts of sugarflames of honey-fire of dreamruindisobey, I am never going home…

You were a million miles away, Mom says.

Thinking of your TV career, Dad says with a grin. Here is the news: Lori Wakeham is going to be famous!

It’s just a screen test, Daddy, she says, they might say no.

There’s no way they’ll say no. Look at you, you were born to be on television! I’ll tell you a secret – I always knew you were going to make it big.

Oh stop, Mom laughs, you’re embarrassing her!

Seriously, the day you were born, I looked at you and I thought, This girl’s got it. Star potential. Dad sits back and rests his hands behind his head. Something good may yet come out of all this, he says contentedly. And you deserve it too, after all you’ve been through.

She is back in her house. Mom and Dad are all excited because during the day the woman from the modelling agency called again, and a different woman from a different modelling agency, and a producer from a TV company who thinks she might be perfect for a new kids’ programme they’re making. Maybe Dad is right, maybe everything will work out after all. But tonight she just can’t concentrate on it.

She’s got this weird feeling in her stomach.

Dad is talking about some big deal going down at work, secret plans to take over another company.

‘Mouth closed when we eat, darling,’ Mom says. ‘No one’s going to let you on TV with a mouthful of chewed food.’

‘Sorry,’ Lori says.

It’s different to earlier. Then she just felt empty. This is a definite tingling, like something is alive down there.

Lilya comes in and clears the plates. Mom tells Dad about a new kind of tan you can have injected into your skin. ‘Maybe we should get Lori a salon session before her screen test…?’

And now worry beats into her head, she feels it strike her temples and cheeks with each fresh wave of blood and she bows her head so Mom and Dad won’t see. (What if the stuff leaks through her stomach into her womb?) (Don’t be a spa, it doesn’t work that way, you know it doesn’t!) (But what if it does?) (But Janine said it couldn’t happen just from a BJ.) (But Denise said it could.)

Oh fuck. Another crash of worry, now she feels sick and there are tears in her eyes and the Taste in her mouth and the tingling in her stomach gets stronger. Why is she only thinking of this now? Why didn’t she think of it before, you can get that magic pill that Janine got that time she was with Oliver Crotty?

‘It’s a kids’ show, they’re not going to want her waltzing in like she’s just arrived from St Tropez,’ Dad is saying. ‘They want the natural look. That’s what Lori’s got. Natural, fresh-faced, innocent.’

‘But I’m telling you, this is how they all look these days,’ Mom says. ‘What if she goes for the screen test and all the other girls have tans?’

Lori is trying to remember the sex talk they had in school and what they said about getting pregnant. But all she can remember are the diagrams of the Reproductive Organs, all that equipment secretly packed in there, coiled up on itself like a bomb in a suitcase, waiting, and those freaky horrible words, womb, uterine, fallopian, that sounded like the names of aliens not her own insides…

‘Well, let’s let her decide for herself,’ Mom says. ‘Darling?’

‘What?’ Lori says.

‘If you had the choice, would you rather be a model or a TV presenter? Modelling’s classier, I think.’

‘But TV has more exposure,’ Dad points out.

‘I don’t know.’ It’s all Lori can do to mumble.

‘I think it’s a waste of a girl with Lori’s looks to just plonk her on the television,’ Mom says.

In the average ejaculation there are roughly 350 million sperms, that is another thing she remembers. 350 million! It’s like an army, it’s like a whole country marching through her insides – taking her over, searching for the egg – and suddenly it’s like she can see them, in the great hollow cavern of her stomach, white slithery terrorists hiding in the shadows, waiting till nightfall to creep into other parts of her body, their tadpole-tails flickering almost too fast to see – oh God, stop or I’m going to –

And then Lilya comes in and sets a bowl down in front of Lori.

‘What in God’s name is this?’ she hears Dad ask from a long way away.

‘It’s tapioca pudding,’ Mom tells him. ‘Remember I was telling you, about retro desserts?’

‘Retro is right, I haven’t eaten this in twenty years.’ Dad digs his spoon into the white-grey mess and lifts it to his mouth.

‘It’s a bit runny…’

‘May I be excused?’ Lori says.

As soon as she’s left the room she starts to run. She makes it to the bathroom just in time. Hanging over the toilet bowl she hears Sister Benedict’s voice ring through her head, saying, ‘Though God can do all things, He cannot raise a virgin after she has fallen’ – she sees the nuns ringed around her, staring at her big belly, they are shaking their heads and whispering slut to each other…

And Mom not saying slut but thinking it, and Dad not saying anything just going red and then walking downstairs to the gym and doing bench presses for three hours, and the woman from the TV production company saying, I’m terribly sorry, no sluts. But she’s not a slut, she just wanted to make him like her, she just didn’t want him to think she was frigid or a lesbian! Her stomach is so sore, the muscles there are crying out, and she is crying too, the tears dripping down into the bowl like kids coming down a waterslide, and after she’s finished she can still feel the things in her stomach! They’re still there! And in the distance the intercom goes and she hears Mom and someone else go mumble mumble mumble and then Mom’s voice rings out, Lorelei!

Oh my God, who is it? She looks in the mirror, she is hideous, her eyes are all red and her cheeks too and her hair is straggly and there is snot everywhere – Lori! Mom calls again. Oh no, is it the producer? This is definitely God punishing her, though if he punishes her this way maybe he won’t make her pregnant – Just a second, she calls down, and scrubs her face in the sink so it looks like she’s just been washing not crying and blows her nose which some sick has got into and then puts on some lip gloss and goes downstairs.

But it’s not the producer or the woman from the agency. Instead it’s an extremely fat boy in a Seabrook uniform. Unless she’s imagining it, he’s giving her a really evil stare. In a cold Falcon Crest-type voice she says, Yes?

I have a message for you, goes the fat boy, and in that instant Lori feels her heart stop dead and freeze up like a ghost has wrapped its hands around it, even before the fat boy goes on, From Skippy. She looks down at Mom hoping she’ll say, I’m sorry, dear, we’re having dinner. But Mom has already gone back into the dining room.

Come upstairs, she says to him in a low voice.

Some fat people though not actually attractive can look cuddly or jolly. That’s not the kind of fat he is. As he climbs towards her he gasps for air. The stairs groan under his feet and when he reaches the top he has sweat on his forehead.

She leads him into her bedroom, where he peers around at everything like he’s never been in a girl’s room before, which is quite likely. Were you one of Daniel’s friends? she asks, slipping off her scrunchie and swinging out her lustrous black hair. I was his room-mate in school, he says, studying the pictures on her wall, the horses, BETHani and her boyfriend. It was so terrible, what happened to him, she says devoutly. He does not say anything to this, just releases a kind of a hiss, like steam from a pressure cooker. Suddenly she feels sick again. She wishes he would go. What was the message he wanted you to give to me?

He wanted me to tell you he loved you, the fat boy says. He says it levelly, icily, like a teacher telling you that you’ll never amount to anything. It was his last wish, the fat boy says.

I know that, she says.

Now he’s dead, the boy says.

Lori flushes. She doesn’t like that word being said in her room. She considers asking him to leave but another part of her is advising her to tread carefully, be diplomatic.

The boy has sunk into a chair and flops there motionlessly, staring at the floor. There is a black anger radiating from him.

Was there anything else? she says coldly, the way her mother speaks to shop assistants.

The boy doesn’t respond. He keeps clenching and unclenching his fat fists. Then in a low mean voice he says, It was you in that video.

Lori flinches. What? she says.

It was you on the doughnut shop roof. You and Carl.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lori says in a steely voice.

You pretended to love him, the boy goes on, so you and Carl could play this trick. And now he’s dead.

SHE DOES NOT LIKE THAT WORD BEING SAID, she does not like it, and in a flash she knows that Carl is outside and all she has to do is cry out and then the fat boy would know all about dead. But instead she says, Nothing you are saying makes any sense to me.

With that the fat boy erupts, his moon-like face screws into a horrible mask of hate, and he shouts, You lied to him! You kissed him, you made him think you cared about him, you used him!

That isn’t true! Lori finds her whole body is shaking, maybe vibrating in time with the fat boy, who is wobbling like a jelly made out of explosives, his face a big swollen blackcurrant. But then he becomes quite still. He stares into her eyes and he whispers, You are an evil person. You are a person who pretends to love people so you can control them. But you don’t care about anyone except yourself.

Lori wants to shout That isn’t true! again but she can’t because she is wondering if it is true and for a second the guilt-wave knocks her backwards. But then another wave rises up in her to meet it – a wave of anger, anger at Daniel for doing this to her, for making her feel this way, for weighing her down with death and making her carry it around with her for ever when she barely knew him! She barely knew him! And now jumping up she shouts back at the fat boy who has come into her house to do this to her, Daniel didn’t even know me! I saw him three times in my entire life! I didn’t ask him to write my name on the floor! I didn’t ask him to do any of that! Sparks are shooting from her, she is so sick of boys and all the things they want from her, endlessly endlessly wanting and pulling and draining her away – he didn’t know me, I didn’t know him. I didn’t know about his life, I didn’t know his mom was sick –

The toad’s little squinty eyes open in surprise. His mom? he says.

You didn’t know that? Lori’s dad had told her, he’d heard it from his friend the Seabrook Principal. But it looks like it’s news to toad boy. She’s dying, she says, how can you not know that? Weren’t you supposed to be his friend?

The toad boy looks at a loss.

How about the swimming team, did he tell you about that?

The swimming team?

How he wanted to quit but he couldn’t?

The toad boy frowns. Lori laughs, this is just too funny. Wow, some friend, she says. Do you actually know anything about him at all?

The toad doesn’t reply, he is totally confused because he’s come to punish her and take revenge on her and put the blame on her for what’s happened but now he’s finding out it might not be so simple as the video, it might be that some other things were bothering Daniel too that someone else might have been able to help him with, e.g. him fatso his so-called friend. You can see it sinking in, he falls back into the armchair with a look of shock crossing his face, but instead of wanting to make him feel better and say, Hey it’s OK, we’re in this together, and share the pain they’re both feeling between them instead she finds now the tables have turned she wants to finish him, she wants to pay him back for what he’s done, for making her feel evil and loveless, for making her feel rotten and black inside, when if he knew the first thing about her he’d know that she’s a lovely sweet person that everyone likes, and that Love is all she cares about and all she thinks about all day long, FYI Mr fat slob, Mr disgusting monster, Mr giant repulsive toad who nobody will ever want to kiss even if they’re blind, she wishes he was dead cold in a grave somewhere too, she would love to put him there, she would love to really hurt him, she would love to go over to him and scratch his face, scratch and scratch and dig and dig until there’s nothing left no face just red like a plate of spaghetti Bolognese after you’ve eaten all the spaghetti off it and she even gets up and takes a step towards him and emerging out of his reverie she sees his eyes widen in terror –

Everything OK in here? Mom’s face in the door.

Yes, thank you, Mom. The face that Lori presents back to her is sweet and composed.

Would your friend like some OJ? Or some Pepsi? Mom wonders.

No thank you, Mrs Wakeham, toad-thing says.

Actually he was just about to leave, Lori adds.

On cue, the fat boy rises from his chair. Mom nods and closes the door again. Lori and the fat boy stare at each other. He is trembling, in his eyes there is despair and not-understanding as far back as she can see. Goodbye, she says. He goes to the door and down the stairs. She hears him open the front door and shut it. Crossing over the landing she pushes back the curtain so she can see him in the driveway. He is standing there in the light of the security lamp, clutching his head as if he’s experiencing a tremendous pain. Maybe it’s the same pain that’s in her stomach. He stays there so long without moving that the security lamp switches off. She pulls the curtain closed in one quick motion and sinks onto the bed and cries until the duvet is soaked.

I did love him, she croaks through snot and tears to Lala the teddy bear, and as she says it she knows it’s true, and she knows that Carl knew it too even before she did and that’s why he did what he did. And she realizes that love doesn’t go in straight lines, it doesn’t care about right or wrong or about being a good person or even about making you happy; and she sees, like in a vision, that life and the future are going to be way more complicated than she ever expected, impossibly, unbearably complicated and difficult. In that same moment she feels herself grow older, like she’s finished a level in a video game and moved on invisibly to the next stage; it’s a tiredness that takes over her body, a tiredness like nothing before, like she’s swallowed a ton weight…

And so she’s glad when her phone buzzes with a new message and she can stop thinking about it. When she checks, she finds that in fact she’s got messages from lots of people in the last hour – from Janine, from Denise, from KellyAnn, Shannan, Richard Dunstable (Seabrook), Graham Canning (St Mary’s) and Leo Coates (Gonzaga); she reads them one by one, replies, replies to the replies, time slipping by, phone buzzing, messages wrapping around her like a cocoon, protecting her from the thought of the toad-boy, of what is in her stomach, of everything else.

Obviously the text from Shannan she deletes without even reading. Lori and Janine have been ignoring Shannan ever since Lori found out Shannan told Kimberley Cross that Janine hates Lloyd Dalton even though she knows Kimberley’s boyfriend and Lloyd Dalton are best friends. It’s as she’s sending the message to the trash that she gets her idea. When something annoying or stupid or evil or all three like Shannan is in your life, the best thing to do is treat it like it doesn’t exist. So, that’s what she should do with the invaders in her stomach too! While they are living inside it, she will cut her stomach out of her life, just like she and Janine and Denise have cut out Shannan. She will act like it’s not there until she’s sure the problem has been solved.

She knows her body will not like this. Her body wants to eat food, it wants to grow and make itself stronger. Even now her stomach is mewling with hunger, not knowing that it’s in control of the enemy. But she has the answer to this too, in fact the answer has been here all along – tucked away inside her favourite bear, a baggie of at least one hundred pills, enough to last her for a couple of weeks at least. She reaches for Lala, finds the secret tear underneath his left arm. She’ll start now with one pill or maybe two. Soon she’ll have everything back under control.