I'm A Mess || l.c

11- Not Avoiding Me, Are You?

James: Hey sorry, I'm really busy today so we can't hang out. Some other time, though? Sorry for this! My dad realylneeds my help bye

It had already been two days and it was heartbreaking to read this message, knowing that James had stated that we would do something soon. Of course, that wasn't going to happen in a while now. What bothered me even more was that he had made a typo and didn't even correct it. I chucked my phone away and tried to calm down. He was just doing things for his dad. It wasn't as if he was trying to avoid me or anything. Besides, didn't I say that I would wait another week before hanging out with him? Maybe my unhealthy obsession with James was still lingering in my mind. What use was it to distract myself when I was only going to think about him again after the distraction? I had to do something. This wasn't good at all.

I tried to focus my attention on a pen laying on the ground, instead of thinking about James and how busy he was. Maybe I should've occupied myself with doing something productive. I wanted to redesign my room and make it look more... mature, I guess. I had to get rid of the posters of One Direction, 5SOS and Cody Simpson. I wasn't twelve anymore. That was too long ago.

As I got up from my bed, I walked over to connect my phone onto a speaker so that I could play some music while redesigning my room. I quickly made a playlist and hit play on the first song that came up which was Brave Honest Beautiful by Fifth Harmony featuring Meghan Trainor. I used to listen to that song repeatedly quite a while ago.

I danced along to the beat as I ripped down the posters from my wall. As I did that, I remembered that one of my friends, Elli, had gifted me scented candles that I hid away in my cupboard and never used even once. Once my posters were all ripped down and chucked in the bin, I went to retrieve those scented candles. I made space on my bedside table by clearing away the random things I had put there.

After getting matches and lighting up the scented candles, I decided to put a book on the bedside table to make it look more sophisticated.

The two hours went by very quickly as my room slowly transformed into a work of art. Once my room was done, I could honestly say that it looked like a sixteen year old girl's room. I didn't even have to buy anything. All I needed was some music, a creative mind and the work had been done.

I smiled like a silly six year old who had just been given free candy floss, as I walked out of the room and bragged to no one in particular about how amazing my room looked.

"Good, now help me in the kitchen," Katherine ordered as the smell of delicious food dragged me closer to the kitchen.

"But I'm so tired!" I complained, knowing deep inside that I still had the energy to help.

"As if," Katherine said as she rolled her eyes. I groaned and tied my hair up with a hair tie that lay on the dining table. I took out an apron from the mini apron rack and tied it around my waist, hoping that Kath wouldn't make me do much.

*

"Lauren, why are you eating an apple? It's lunch time," Christina stated. I froze just as I was about to take another bite from my apple. Christina didn't know about my goal to lose weight.

"I-um, I'm not that hungry. An apple will be fine. Besides, it's healthier," I mumbled.

"Are you okay? You're not on some kind of stupid diet now, are you?" How could I lie now? Christina could see through all the lies so there really was no point in arguing that I was not on a diet when I was.

"I am. I need to lose weight," I said. Christina's face turned sour as I spoke those words.

"You've got to be kidding me! Is this because I'll be leaving in about a few months? Are you trying to purposely torture me?"

"This isn't even about you!" I exclaimed. I should have known that the conversation would head to Christina leaving. As much as I didn't want to talk about it, I had to tell her her that I wasn't on a diet because she was leaving. That was such a stupid reason anyway. I would never do that. "I just want to look healthier, you know? I decided to start the diet way before you told everyone about you and Nick."

"Lauren, you really shouldn't do this. You're still young and you already look healthy!" Christina said, obviously trying hard to get me to stop the diet.

"Nothing can stop me. This is my decision and it's for the best anyway because you're the one who promotes healthy eating, don't you? I'm following your rules so that should be a good thing. Besides, I'm sixteen now so you can't exactly say that I'm too young. Yes, if I was seven or eight, it wouldn't be so wise to be on a diet but, I'm freaking sixteen! Just leave me alone!" I could tell that Christina was disgusted with the way I was behaving but I was just trying to get her off my case and I couldn't think of any other way to get her to back off.

"Eating an apple for lunch is not a healthy option, Lauren. You should know that by now. Healthy eating is not about eating very little for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You need to eat a proper lunch. There's some tuna and vegetables in the fridge so make yourself a salad or something. You can't go by with eating an apple for lunch. That's just crazy!" I bit my lip and looked at the apple that I was holding. Why did it never occur to me that skipping breakfast and eating an apple for lunch was unhealthy?

Maybe hanging out with James had caused a dent in my brain somehow. I definitely wasn't thinking straight about anything these days.

But that was stupid to think. How could I blame someone else for my own stupidity?