Girls Under Pressure (2 page)

She looks good. She may be too small, but she looks really cute, really sexy.

“Wow, get Magda,” I say to Nadine. “Come on, let’s get
out
of here.”

But Nadine is still staring. I pull her. She doesn’t budge.

“Nadine, please! They’ll think
we’re
going in for this model competition crap,” I say.

“Well. We might as well have a go, eh?” says Nadine.

“What?”

“It’ll be a laugh,” says Nadine, and she rushes forward to give her name to a girl in pink.

I watch Nadine stand in front of the camera. It’s suddenly like I’m watching a stranger. I’ve always known Magda is seriously sexy and attractive. She looked pretty stunning at eleven that first day I sat next to her at secondary school. But I’ve known Nadine most of my life. She’s more like my sister than my friend. I’ve never really
looked
at her.

I look at her now. She stands awkwardly, not smiling, with none of Magda’s confidence. She’s not really
pretty
. But I can see the girls in pink are taking a real interest in her, and the photographer asks her to turn while he takes several photos.

Her long hair looks so black and glossy, her skin so eerily pale. She’s so tall, with her slender neck and beautiful hands and long long legs. And she’s so thin. Model-girl thin.

“You’re next. Name?” says a pink T-shirt, shoving a clipboard in my face.

“What? No! N-not me,” I stammer, and I turn and try to elbow my way back through the huge queue.

“Watch it!”

“Hey, stop shoving.”

“What’s her problem, eh?”

“Surely
she
doesn’t think she could make it as a model? She’s far too fat!”

Too fat, too fat, too fat.

Too F-A-T!

elephant girl

I
run to get out of the shopping center. I want to run right out of myself. I’m surrounded by all these perfect pretty posing girls. I’m waddling way down at their slender waist level, the dumpy fat freak.

“Ellie! Hang on! Where are you going?”

“Wait for us!”

Magda and Nadine are chasing after me. I can’t escape. I’ve got tears in my eyes. Oh, God. I blink and blink.

“Ellie, what’s up?” Magda says, catching hold of me.

“Are you
crying
?” Nadine says, putting her arm round me.

“Of course not. I just needed some air. It was so hot crammed together like that. I felt faint. Sick. I still do.”

Magda backs away a little, getting her new furry jacket out of vomit range.

“Let’s go to the ladies’ room,” says Nadine. “We’ll get you a drink of water.”

“You haven’t gone white,” says Magda. “In fact, exactly the opposite. And what a shame you missed your turn to be photographed.”

“We can always go back and queue up again,” says Nadine.

“No thanks!” I say. “I didn’t
want
a turn. I didn’t have any idea it was for a crappy competition. I mean, who wants to be a model?” My voice cracks. I don’t think I’m convincing either of them.

“Oh, yes, it would be such an ordeal!” says Magda. “Think of all the money, the fame, the travel, the super clothes . . .
dreadful
! God, Ellie, don’t be so stupid.”

“Lay off her, Magda, she’s not feeling well,” says Nadine. “Anyway, it’s not like we’ve got any chance. There were heaps and heaps of really gorgeous-looking girls having a go.”

“Yeah, I reckon half of them were semi-professional anyway, which isn’t fair,” says Magda.

They natter on about it endlessly. I listen hard when I go in the loo. Are they whispering about me? Are they raising their eyebrows and shaking their heads over poor plain plump Ellie? My eyes smart. Tears spurt down my cheeks and I have to take off my glasses and dab my face dry with loo-roll. I don’t want to come out and face them. I don’t want to face anyone ever again.

I could be Ellie the reclusive loo-squatter. I could set up home in this tiny cubicle. It could be quite cozy if I had a sleeping bag and my sketchpad and a pile of books. In medieval times troubled young girls locked themselves away in tiny cells in churches and no one thought it strange at all. Nowadays there might be an initial flurry of media interest:
THE LASS LOCKED IN THE LADIES
’
. . . SCHOOLGIRL ELLIE STAYS SITTING ON THE LOO FOR THIRD DAY RUNNING
! But eventually people would take it for granted that the end cubicle on the right in the Flowerfields Shopping Centre ladies’ room is permanently engaged.

“Ellie, are you all right?”

“What are you
doing
in there?”

I have to come out. I try to chat as if I’m perfectly OK. I traipse all round the shopping center looking for Christmas presents. It’s no use. I can’t make up my mind about anything. I could buy Magda the red knickers and Nadine the black, tiny wisps of underwear, size small. They wouldn’t fit me. I am not medium. Soon I won’t even be large. I shall be outsize. Ellie the Elephant size.

I keep catching glimpses of myself in windows and mirrors. I seem to be getting squatter by the second. Magda drags us into Stuck on You, this new ultra-hip clothes shop that’s just opened at the Flowerfields Shopping Centre. It’s agony. I’m surrounded by skimpy little garments, skirts that would barely fit round one of my thighs, halter tops I’d have to wear as bangles. The assistants are staring at us. There’s an eighty-pound girl dressed in black with short white hair and rings in her nose and navel, and a slender black guy with a diamond ear stud in a tight white T-shirt to show off his toned body.

“Let’s go,” I beg.

But Magda is eyeing up the boy and wants to try stuff on. Nadine is gazing enviously at the clothes and is happy to hang around too. So I have to wait for them both, feeling more and more like a guinea pig in a ferret’s cage.

“Don’t you want to try anything on?” the white-haired girl asks.

That’s what she says, but she’s smirking as she says it. It’s as if she’s underlining the fact that nothing in the shop would fit me anyway.

“Hey, Nadine, Magda,” I whisper through the changing-room curtain. “I’m going home, OK?”

“What? Oh, Ellie, don’t go all moody,” says Magda. “We’ll only be a minute. Can you ask that guy if he’s got these jeans in another size?”

“You ask him. I really have to go.”

“Are you feeling sick again, Ellie?” asks Nadine.

“Yes. I want to go home.”

“Well, wait, and we’ll
take
you home,” says Nadine.

“I can’t wait,” I say, and I make a run for it.

They’re still in their underwear so they can’t come after me. I rush through the Flowerfields Centre. Up at the top the lights are still flashing and the queue is even bigger and all around me there are girls much taller than me, much prettier than me, much much much thinner than me.

I really do feel sick. It’s no better when I’m out in the open air. The bus going home lurches so much I have to get off several stops early. I walk through the streets yawning with nausea. I catch sight of myself in a car window. Yawning-Hippo Girl.

Thank God there’s no one at home. Dad has taken Eggs swimming. Anna’s gone up to London to have lunch with some old school friend. I go straight upstairs to my room and throw myself on my bed. The springs groan under my great weight. I rip my glasses off and bury my head in the pillow, ready for a long howl. I’ve been fighting back tears for hours but now that I can cry in peace they won’t come. I just make silly sniveling noises that sound so stupid I shut up.

I roll over onto my back. I feel my body with my hands. They mountaineer up each peak and descend each valley. I pinch my waist viciously to see if I can grab a whole handful of fat but my clothes get in the way. I unbutton my sweater and pull it over my head. I struggle up off the bed. I remove everything else. I can see my reflection in the wardrobe mirror but it’s just a pink blur. I put on my glasses.

It’s like I’m looking at my own body for the first time. I look at my round face with its big baby cheeks and double chin, I look at my balloon breasts, I look at my flabby waist, I look at my saggy soft stomach, I look at my vast wobbly bum, I look at my massive thighs, I look at my round arms and blunt elbows, I look at my dimpled knees and thick ankles, I look at my plump padded feet.

I stand there, feeling like I’ve stepped into a science fiction movie. An alien has invaded my body and blown it up out of all recognition.

I can’t believe I’m so fat. I’ve always known I’m a bit chubby. Plump. Biggish. But not
fat
.

I whisper the word. I think of greasy swamps of chip fat stagnating in the pan. I look at my body and see the lard beneath the skin. I start clawing at myself, as if I’m trying to rip the flesh right off me.

The girl in the mirror now looks crazy as well as fat. I turn away quickly and pull my clothes back on. My jeans feel so tight I can barely do up the zip. My sweater strains obscenely over my breasts. I brush my hair to try to cover my great moon face. I keep having one more look at myself to see if I might have changed in the last two seconds. I look worse each time.

I’ve never exactly
liked
the way I look. I suppose it was different when I was a little kid. I can remember my mum brushing my wild curls into two big bunches and tying them with bright ribbons, scarlet one day, emerald green the next. “You look so cute, Ellie,” she’d say, and I
felt
cute. Maybe I even
was
cute in my dungarees and stripy T-shirts and bright boots to match the ribbons. I was cuddly, that was all. I was definitely cute, with my happy hairstyle and big dark eyes and dimples.

But then my mum died. Everything changed. I changed too. I felt empty all the time so I couldn’t stop eating: doughnuts and sticky buns and chocolate and toffees. The sourer I felt inside the more I had to stuff myself with sweets. So I got much fatter, and then Dad noticed I frowned whenever I read and I had to wear glasses and Anna my new stepmother tried to dress me in conventional little-girly outfits that made me look like a piglet in a party frock.

I knew this but somehow I still stayed
me
inside. I could still
act
cute. People still liked me at school. They thought me funny. They wanted to be my friend. Even at Anderson High School I still fitted in. I wasn’t the most popular girl in the class, I wasn’t the cleverest, I wasn’t the most stylish or streetwise, I didn’t come top in anything apart from art. But I was still one of the OK Girls. I wasn’t a swot, I wasn’t a slag, I wasn’t a baby, I wasn’t covered in spots, I wasn’t fat. Not
really
fat, like poor Alison Smith in our year, at least two hundred pounds, waddling slowly up and down the corridors as if she were wading through water, her eyes little glints inside the huge padded cage of her head.

I give a little gasp. Another stare in the mirror. I know it’s mad but I’m suddenly starting to wonder if I’m actually as fat as Alison.
Fatter??

If I don’t watch out I could become an Alison. I’m going on a diet. I’m going on a diet right this minute.

It’s lunchtime. Magda and Nadine will be sitting in the ice cream parlor sharing a chicken club sandwich with crisps and little gherkins, and sipping huge frothy strawberry sodas.

My tummy rumbles.

“Shut up,” I say. I punch myself hard in my own stomach. “You’re not getting fed today, do you hear, you great big ugly gut?”

It hears but it doesn’t understand. It gurgles and complains and aches. I try not to pay it any attention. I get out my sketch pad and draw myself in elephantine guise and then I pin the picture above my bed.

Then I draw myself the way I really want to be. Well, I
want
to be five foot eight with long straight blond hair and big blue eyes, only there’s no way this could ever happen. No, I draw myself the way I
could
be if I only stuck to a proper diet. Still small. Still frizzy-haired. Still bespectacled. But thin.

I wonder how long it will take. I’d like to lose twenty-five pounds at
least
. I went on this diet once before. It was all Magda’s idea. The aim was to lose a couple of pounds a week. It’s not going to be quick enough. I can’t stand being so fat. I want to change
now
. If only I could unzip myself from chin to crotch and step out of my old self, sparklingly slim.

I wonder if Magda will go on a diet with me again? She was useless last time, she only managed a couple of days. So I gave up too. But then Magda doesn’t really need to lose much weight at all. A few pounds and she’d be perfect. And as for Nadine . . .

I think of her standing there at the
Spicy
magazine competition, effortlessly, elegantly skinny. I don’t know what I think about it. I’m pleased because Nadine’s my oldest friend. I’m envious because I’d love to be that thin. And I’m angry because it’s so unfair. Nadine often eats more than me. I’ve seen her eat two Mars bars on the trot. OK, she often skips meals too, but it’s not deliberate, she just forgets because she isn’t always hungry.

Not like me. I am
ravenous
. I hear Dad and Eggs come back from swimming. There’s a lot of chatter down in the kitchen. And then this smell. It wafts under my bedroom door, over to my bed, up into each nostril. Oh my God, Dad’s frying bacon, they’re having bacon sandwiches. I
love
bacon sandwiches. Dad’s not that great at cooking but he does wonderful bacon sandwiches, toasting the bread and spreading it with great puddles of golden butter and crisping the bacon until there are no slimy fatty bits . . .

“Hey, can I have a bacon sandwich?” my mouth shouts before I can stop it.

I hurtle downstairs. Dad looks surprised to see me.

“I thought you were out somewhere with Nadine and Magda.”

I don’t have to conjure up some convincing explanation because Eggs starts talking nonstop.

“I dived in, Ellie, a real dive, well, the first time was a sort of fall, I didn’t really mean to do it, but then Dad said go for it, Eggs, that wasn’t a fall it was a dive, so I dived again, I dived lots, guess what, I can dive. . . .”

“Big deal,” I say, breathing in the bacon smell.

I can scarcely wait. I want to snatch it direct from the frying pan.

“
You
can’t dive, Ellie, not like me.
I
can dive. I’m a good diver, aren’t I, Dad?”

“Sure, little Eggs, the best. Though Ellie can dive too.”

“No, she can’t!” Eggs insists, outraged.

“Can can can,” I say childishly.

“You can’t, because you don’t ever go swimming,” says Eggs, with six-year-old logic.

“She used to be a cracking little swimmer once,” says Dad, surprisingly. “Remember when we used to go, Ellie? Hey, why don’t you come one Saturday with Eggs and me?”

“Yes, then I can show you how I can dive. I bet you
can’t
dive, well, not the way I can. I want the first bacon sandwich, Dad!
Dad!
I want the first one!”

“Pipe down, Mr. Bossy,” says Dad, and he hands the sandwich over to me.

It’s not often I get put before Eggs. I smile at Dad, and then wonder if he’s just feeling sorry for me. Maybe all that sniveling has left my eyes puffy. In my great big piggy face.

I look at my bacon sandwich sizzling in splendor on the blue willow pattern plate. I pick it up, and it’s still so hot I can hardly hold it. I raise it to my lips. There’s a little fold of bacon poking out of the toast, glistening with goodness.

No, not goodness. Badness. Fat. To make
me
fat. How many calories are there in a bacon sandwich? I don’t know, but it must be heaps. If I eat pig I’ll turn into a pig, a great big swollen-bellied porker. I imagine myself a vast sow wallowing in muck—and I put the sandwich back on the plate.

“Here, Eggs, you have it if it means so much to you.”

“Really?”
says Eggs, astonished. He takes a big bite immediately in case I change my mind.