Empty (20 page)

I move on to the next photo. It’s me. My hands are wrapped around the microphone stand, and I’m belting it out. My makeup actually doesn’t look too bad; Cara was right. I squint and study the photo. Her father zoomed in, so my socks and slides aren’t in the picture. Thank God. But my body is in the picture all right.

Shit. I am gigantic. I click back to Cara’s smiling photo and then back to me. I am easily twice her size. Maybe more. She probably weighs a hundred and ten pounds after a big
meal. A few more clicks back and forth between the photos, and I zoom in on mine. That’s when I notice the tag.

WHALE

Someone tagged me as WHALE. I stare at the word. Each capital letter punches me in the face. W-H-A-L-E.

I click to the next picture. Me again. It’s an even tighter shot of my torso and head. With a trembling hand, I click to see if this one is tagged.

WHALE

The next one is of me smiling. Oh, I’m soaking in the applause, I can see it in my charcoal-lined eyes.

WHALE

I choke for air. How many more photos are on here? I click to the next. It’s another one of Cara. I go back to my first photo and scroll down to the comments. Twenty-three comments. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.

My phone buzzes in my hand. It’s another text from Cara. She’s probably telling me not to look at the photos. Too late. I don’t read her text. I go right for the comments.

The first comments are all compliments. They deteriorate at about the fourteenth. Unleash the evil.

Taryn:
She’s a mannish beast!!

Chase
: mooooo, cow, mooooo. LMFAO

Taryn:
Chaser, where ru guys & why am I not w/u? Tell Brandon to wait for me.

Chase:
he’s already wsted. me tooooooooo. Cara, go get whale, i want to lafffff.

Taryn:
Even if she moos, Dell will always be a WHALE.

I DROP MY PHONE IN MY LAP.

Everyone can see that.
Everyone!

I’m going to throw up. Broken toe or not, I fling my feet to the floor and hobble to my trash can. Everything comes out. I stand in the shadows and gag a few more times. “Oh my God,” I whisper. I wipe the tears and spit from my face. I don’t feel any better.

Meggie rustles in her crib.
Please don’t wake up, please don’t wake up,
I repeat silently. As much as I love my sister, I could not face her right now. Not with vomit on my breath and WHALE tattooed across my forehead.

My phone buzzes and lights up with a new text. It’s gotta be Cara. I can’t deal with her. I want to be alone. I want to sleep. I want to dream and dream. Bed. I want to get back in bed. I have to stop midway and regroup because I think I’m going to faint. I can’t faint. I’d wake the neighborhood when I hit the carpet.

Deep breaths. In and out. That’s it. Calm down. Three more steps and I’m sitting on the edge of my bed. I made it. I grab my phone. Cara has deleted the photos. The comments are gone.

Fury shatters everything underneath my skin. I feel liquefied, my rage overflows. Drowning me. I’m nearly under.

The truth. I have to tell everyone the truth—what really happened at that party.

Without hesitation, I type in a new status on my wall and hit enter: Brandon raped me.

I stare at the words, expecting to feel some kind of peace. Instead of relief, I want to throw my phone and smash it to smithereens. No one will believe me. I need more pain pills. I breathe through my nose like a bull to keep the volume down. How my sister isn’t wide awake by now is beyond me. But she’s still sound asleep. I give up elevating my toe and rock back and forth instead.

Shit builds in my mind like a pyramid. So many hideous blocks. So much ugly. I shake my head back and forth. Fast.
Faster. I want the pyramid of shit to tumble to the ground and leave craters. Holes in the earth. I reach up and claw at my hair. I want the pain out of me. No matter how hard I yank my hair, I can’t get it out.

The weight of my skin is suffocating me. My hands have minds of their own and they pull my shirt up, revealing my dimpled, white fat rolls. They squeeze the fat. I want a knife so I can cut this heaviness off me. Then people would stop letting me down.

Then someone would love me.

I’m overpowered by the fat. I grab hold of the flab hanging from my arms and tug and pull. I scratch at my exposed skin, and it stings.

I flip over and yell into my pillow. It is about as satisfying as kicking the towel. I want to scream until I cough up blood, but I can’t risk waking Maggie.

If I were a good person, I’d text Cara and thank her for taking down the pictures. But I don’t care anymore. I told the truth in my post. Everyone can comment and laugh until their sides cave in.

Why can’t people leave me alone?

I want to be left alone.

I want to disappear.

I want to die.

I BLINK NERVOUSLY, LIKE SOMETHING’S IN MY EYE.
I repeat the four words.

I.

Want.

To.

Die.

I stop blinking. A little bit of agony releases. I think it again, and a larger chunk of misery floats away. Dying would make it all end.

Out of the blue, Anthony Baldino’s dead body pops in my head. Freshman year he sat next to me in math. He stole
his dad’s truck and a bottle of vodka. He got shit-faced and crashed into the back of a bus. He was only fifteen.

His dead body is the only one I’ve ever seen. I remember his older brother getting escorted from the church during the funeral because he couldn’t keep it together. Everyone talked about Anthony’s death at school. The counselors gave special presentations. The teachers didn’t assign homework for the first two weeks of school. Anthony’s buddies had bright red passes from the principal to excuse them from class if they needed some time alone.

It was a big deal.

I don’t want any of that crap. I want to die and not be missed. Or is that insane? I grip my sheets and squint. I want people to feel guilty. Specific people: Brandon, Taryn, Chase, Jacob the table-lifter, my old softball team, my father, DD. Even Cara. I want my fat face to haunt them when they go to sleep.

I
want to sleep forever.

I look at the clock. It’s almost one in the morning. I quiet my mind and ask myself one question: Do you really want to die? I let the question sit there, like a turkey on a platter. I don’t repeat the question. One asking is sufficient. It’s the king of questions. The pungent taste of vomit mixes with my spit as I swallow.

My answer is clear: I do.

I suddenly feel light, like a feather, a balloon, a bird.

Free.

This does not surprise me, this weightlessness. It simply feels right. Like something I’ve been waiting to experience, but I just didn’t know it.

My sister moves in her crib. She can’t see me dead. It would mess her up for life.

Will my killing myself ruin my mother? I get still and think hard on this one. I know she hates the clothes I wear, buying enough food to feed me, saving for my college education. And my weight.

She hates
me
.

If I go, then she won’t be so anxious. She’s going to outpatient rehab, so she’ll be clean soon. Will she feel guilty? Maybe. I don’t want her to feel guilty. If I word my suicide note right, maybe I’ll be able to lessen her remorse. In time she could even be happy. She has Meggie.

Meggie’s too little to understand. She’ll be confused for a little while, but she’ll be all right. She has my mother. They’ll always be there for each other, I know that. Life will be much easier without me. Meggie will get a lot more attention, and she can have every penny of my college fund.

I can’t believe how clearly I’m thinking right now. Everything
makes sense. I’ve never been so sure of anything. My heart quickens because if I’m doing this, I’m going to have to make some stuff happen. I have notes to write, pills to take, and—

Where can I go? I can’t do it in the apartment. I don’t want to die in my mother’s car because she’d picture me every time she had to drive in it. I am out of ideas.

I pluck the prescription bottle from my damp jeans and pour the Vicodin onto my palm. Only five pills. Even with the three I’ve already taken I know that won’t be enough. I’m a big girl. I hobble to the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet, and grab the first bottle I see. It has a little sticker on the side telling people they shouldn’t operate heavy machinery. I dump the pills on top of the Vicodin. This should be good. I carefully rearrange the pill bottles on the shelf so they appear untouched.

I’m halfway to my room when I think,
Water—I’ll need water.
I pause and tell myself I’ll grab a water bottle on my way out once I figure out where I’m actually going to die.

Maybe I’ll borrow my mother’s car, drive to my father’s apartment, and spread out on his front walkway. That way he and DD would be forced to step over me. My stupid father. I didn’t even consider how my death will affect him. He’ll probably cry some phony tears and then run off to the spa with DD to alleviate the stress and tension of my suicide.

I don’t care what he thinks.

Cara will freak out. This I know. She’ll be bummed. But she’s got new girls who will hug her and pet her. She’ll be fine. She’s got college and sex and parties and husbands and children to look forward to. She will move on. She was ready to dump me as a friend anyway. This can work to her advantage, pushing her straight into the arms of new friends.

I yank my backpack onto my bed and grab a pen and my math notebook. Again I lift my bum leg and situate my pillows behind me. I need to write a suicide note. I jot on a fresh page:

Dear World,

Fuck off.

∼Dell

I scribble it out.

Saying good-bye is hard. What the hell am I going to write? How do I put my feelings on paper? I suck at writing. I’ve never kept a journal. How will I compose decent suicide notes? I want to write one to Meggie, Cara, and my mother, and an eff-you to my father. Do people do that? Write more than one note?

I put the notebook and pen on my lap.

Tears roll down my cheeks as I think of random things I’ll miss. I will never again taste chocolate melting on my tongue, hear the birds singing. I will never again feel my sister’s little hand in mine. Never smell Meggie’s perfect smell.

I wipe the tears from my face and stumble to her crib. I need to smell love right now. Meggie is facedown with her little butt in the air, and her blanket is in a twisted ball just next to her head. I carefully pick up her blanket, and inhale. Can I leave her? What if she needs me? What if she cries for me? Misses me? Can I do that to her?

WHALE

Too fat to play

Fat fuck

Held him down

WHALE

Each thought is a knife stabbing through the fat. Making fresh wounds. I can’t face those people again. Even though I posted the truth, I know everyone at school will still believe I held Brandon down against his will and forced him to have sex with me. People will think I pursued him, coaxed him upstairs, and sat on him, practically squashing him while he begged me to stop.

I choke into Meggie’s blanket to silence my sob.

Taryn Anderson believes Brandon’s story because it’s easier for her to accept. Her gorgeous, popular, boyfriend was nearly killed by beast Adele as she forced herself on him. There’s no way she’d recover from the truth. That he flirted with me. Kissed me tenderly. And then held me down and raped me.

I’ve lost everything that matters to me. Softball, my family, my friend, my dignity, my dreams. The only things I’m full of are food and pain.

Someday my sister will understand. When she’s my age and dealing with this mixed-up part of life, maybe my death will make sense to her. I have to believe that. I sniffle and wipe my nose. I’ve gotta stop blubbering and get moving.

I reach down and, with the lightest touch, rub her little back. Meggie doesn’t stir. The tears gush from my eyes. Drip. Drip. Drip on the mattress. I bury my face in her blanket again. I inhale deeply and smile through my tears.

This smell is . . . heaven.

I CURL UP ON MY BED WITH MY SISTER’S BLANKET
across my face. I have to figure out where I’m going to die. I’ve visualized every possible location around my apartment complex, but none seems big enough for me to lie down.