Chapters (39)
- Cover
- Title
- Author’s Note
- Glossary
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Acknowledgments
She avoided Will and her other friends for the rest of the morning, slipping into lectures at the last minute and sitting alone in the back row. She told herself she was angry, which was a way of quelling the waves of humiliation that swept over her when she thought about people talking about her eating and running habits. They clearly thought there was something wrong with her, probably out of envy because they had no self-control. Particularly Debbie, who was forever stuffing her face. Clare winced, ashamed of her thoughts. It was unlike her to be mean.
As she walked towards her residence at lunchtime, head down to avoid seeing anyone she knew, Clare realised what she needed to do. She needed to eat. She’d put her books in her room, go to the dining room, queue with her friends, stack her plate as they did theirs, sit with them and eat. She’d chat to them as she cleaned her plate and after lunch, she’d find Will and apologise.
It was at that moment she realised she was no longer in control.
The trembling began below her ribs, and ran up her torso and down her legs simultaneously. She leaned against a wall. Her lungs were heaving but she couldn’t get enough oxygen into her system. Her head spun.
“Are you okay?” asked a girl walking by.
“Yes, thanks,” said Clare, staggering off the path and plonking herself on a bench where she pretended to examine a book.
The shaking had intensified. What was happening? Why did she feel so panicky? All she had to do was get to the dining room and eat. But she couldn’t. The thought of filling a plate with food and eating, without calculating the calories for every mouthful to be certain she could run far enough to burn them off, terrified her. She had never been so afraid of anything in her life. There was no way Clare was going to eat like everyone else. She couldn’t. Why? The word seemed to echo in her head. Why? Why? Why?
Because you’ll get fat, came the answer, and being fat is the worst thing that could ever happen to you because it means you have no self-control.
There it was. Clare was petrified of gaining weight, not because she’d previously considered herself overweight but because of what ratcheting up kilograms would say about her: that she had no control.
But it didn’t make sense.