Operation Skinny ✔️

CHAPTER 3: HELICOPTER MOM

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I lost eleven pounds, or approximately 5 kilograms in the past eleven days! I was finally down to 189 and I was so excited to keep progressing with my diet. It got easier, I realized. The not-eating and coming up with excuses to tell my mom at dinner.

It got easier each day. And it was no problem at school because I didn't need to come up with excuses for anybody. I knew nobody and sat alone in the bathroom for the forty-five minutes of lunch before treading to my next class.

The bus rides also became more fun and I quickly came to realize that even if my parents fixed my car, I wouldn't want to drive it. I'd made a friend named Ji-ho and he was great. I wondered if his desire to befriend me had to do with the fact that I was becoming skinny.

However, our friendship only existed in passing and on the bus rides to and from school. Ji-ho often ate with Jamison and their crew at lunch, but I didn't care. I'd made it a habit to hang in the bathroom at lunch and wait for the school-day to end so I could hang out with my new friend. He was someone to look forward to everyday and I'm not going to lie, he was a pretty good (and cute) motivator to get me going to school.

"Phoebe!" Ji-ho waved as he entered the bus and sat right beside me.

It made me uncomfortable since he usually sat in the seat across, in front of, or behind me— never directly beside me. I was jealous of his body; he was slim and tall and had a nice face. This made him an easy target for all the popular kids at our school, and he'd easily been swallowed up in their crowd. But, it also made me even more insecure because he probably realized by now that I was the scum of the high-school junior class. Nobody wanted to befriend me— in fact, many people talked badly about me.

I glanced at him nervously with my dark brown eyes that were the same color as my frizzy brown hair. Ji-ho sat beside me and I hoped I wasn't taking up too much space in the seat. I tried scooting closer to the window, but it wasn't like I could tell my fat to shrink and disappear. I was uncomfortable, but I would deal with it. It was a Friday after all, and we wouldn't see each other until next Monday.

"Ji-ho," I responded with the same level of enthusiasm in my voice while I adjusted my shirt, airing it out to cover my stomach— my stomach that I was desperately trying to hold in. I hoped my chest didn't look big when I did that.

"How was your day?" He asked, tossing his backpack carelessly in the burgundy seat in the row across from us. Ji-ho turned to face me. I wondered why he'd suddenly chosen to sit next to me on a Friday afternoon, a time when everyone would get a ride home instead of go on the bus. Aside from us, there were maybe four other people here, but they sat in the front and all talked like friends.

I wondered if I'd ever make friends after high-school. Maybe I would because my plan was to be skinny by the end of this year. I would continue my diet this summer and start my senior year with a fresh new face and body— Jamison and his crowd would never know that I was the same 'fat Phoebe' that they'd called me behind my back.

I'd heard it on multiple occasions, often during the five-minute periods we had between classes. People shared their unsolicited opinions of me and I couldn't comprehend what made me the subject of their conversations when I didn't even know them.

"Did you see fat Phoebe today? She dropped her pencil in my chemistry class and almost took the chair down with her when she tried to grab it. Gosh, I don't think I'd want to go to school if I ever got that big. Her pencil didn't roll as much as the rolls on her stomach. Disgusting."

"Phoebe bumped into me in the hallway and I almost fell; she's so big! I wonder when her legs are going to snap from all the weight." This one, I had heard from Gaby outside of the English class. And it only made me realize that a little over a week ago, she had been the one to cut my skirt and play dumb and innocent. It hurt to hear that. Suffice to say, I refused to speak to her afterwards and even requested a seat assignment change in English.