kendall crawls back into bed. she has washed the red cryingness away from her face by smearing on the special face wash her dermo issued. her dermo issues a lot of things: face wash, gel, medication.
she wanders downstairs and finds the medication. her parents are upstairs in their room, probably reading. they are big readers.
many times she has looked at this bottle and wanted to pour out every little "crazy candy" (a term from laurie halse anderson's book wintergirls) into her mouth and gulp down a huge bottle of water.
she would float through the air, fueled by acne medication and pure desperation.
sometimes she thinks she should go to therapy. but she doesn't want to bother her parents and make them spend even more money on her than they already have. dance is so expensive. she quit dancing at abby's because it was much too stressful, and started dancing at a studio that was not an hour away. she is on the competition team, but they only compete four times a year, and they dance three times a week for three hours.
kendall takes two pills, like a good girl, and swallows them down.
her friends are out. they all have boyfriends now. apparently freshman need to get boyfriends in ability to survive. fatima is the only one besides kendall without a boyfriend, but that is because she and her family are muslims that do not allow their daughters and sons to date at fourteen. she and fatima occasionally text while their friends are on dates.
but even then she feels lonely.
she sees all her friends with boys who tell them they are pretty and charming. she wants a boy, or a random stranger, to come up to her one day and tell her she is beautiful.
her friends would look down upon such thoughts, but goddamnit she wanted someone to call her pretty. is that so bad?
she wants a flat stomach and hip bones, like she had when she was eleven. three years of not having intense, everyday rehearsals are making her chubby and puberty is making her curvaceous. she does not enjoy it. it does not make her gorgeous and tall like ryleigh and char. in fact, she's pretty sure she stunted her growth by doing so much acro as a young girl.
kendall retreats to her bed. she plugs her headphones into the jack and tunes into pandora. a song about a boy floods her ears.
there is a boy she knows.
a boy she was in love with. a boy who called her mean and nasty things. a boy who seemed to have changed.
he had lately been the source of her panic attacks - besides her wishing for a nice body, crowds, and self-deprecation.
his name is jared, and he used to be her best friend.
he had been perfect - not a usual arrogant jock like the other boys at her school. he liked the arts and writing. he was tall and handsome and new. he didn't really know all the cool kids.
and sure, he had really, really cliché plot ideas that usually ended up in suicide, but kendall was infatuated.
she asked him out after knowing him for a year. after a year, he had become friends with said cool kids, and had gotten a little jerkish
she didn't really care, and just ignored it.
then, oh then, she had to the coursge to ask him out. he had responded with no. she was ugly and annoying.
and a year later, they were placed into the same german and math classes. he began hanging around with her group of mates again, and they had all seemed to have forgotten the whole (as her friends trixie and dana called it) jared-kendall incident.
all her friends were nice to him, and she wondered - should she be?
she hated him so much. maybe he'd change?
kendall can feel her breathing restrict, and her legs swarm with fear. her head rushes with terrible thoughts. she twists her bed sheets.
stopstopstopstopstopstop.
the panic does not subside, and she violently listens to jaymay sing about a leg of frozen lamb.
she deepens her breathing and smooths her sheets.
goddamnit, she thinks, can't i have one week with no attacks?

YOU ARE READING
comparison ~k.v.~
Fanfictionthe secret life of "the ugly sister" colleen cosette goodman © 2014 {nominated for a summer 2015 dm award}