Gradually, I lost my appetite, which was convenient because we didn’t have much food in the house anyway.
When we came out to California, we shopped mainly at the 99-cent store. Being the new girl at a private Catholic school where everyone lived in a house and was gifted a Mercedes for their sixteenth birthday, that was another concern of mine. I was trying not to add fuel to the fire by having people know my family took me to Marshalls and the 99-cent store. I was lucky the trends at the time turned to grunge. That was something I could afford. I also liked shopping in thrift stores. It was something to do on the weekends.
I practically lived in a pair of corduroy baby-blue elephant bell bottoms. They had the widest flare ever, completely encompassing any platform shoe I wore, and I wore very high platforms, as much stack as I could find. They dragged so much my father asked if I was “cleaning the floor.” He didn’t understand fashion. It was the “look.”
Hyper-fueled, I got skinnier by the day. Some days all I ate was a bagel or a few handfuls of store-brand Lucky Charms.
One evening I went into the kitchen looking for whatever was in the cupboards and found a chocolate bar. Like everything else in there, it had been there a minute or two. Not much in the apartment felt like a home anymore. I unwrapped the candy bar, popped a piece in my mouth, and immediately knew something wasn’t right.
I looked down at the bar and it had white stuff on it. I ran to turn on the light.
Small worms.
I gagged and scraped my tongue and washed my mouth out.
What the fuck was going on here?
I can’t be here anymore.