Threads That Bind (Havoc Chronicles Series Book 1) (2 page)

But that night when I opened the ranch dressing, the smell was so overwhelming that just the thought of eating it made me feel queasy. Reluctantly, I decided to try eating the salad by itself and was shocked by the taste.

With my first bite I realized that I actually liked it. The flavors had somehow... changed. I could taste the subtleties of each vegetable. The lettuce seemed to be made up of several different tastes mixed together, the tomatoes had a hidden undertone of earthiness I’d never noticed before, and the green peppers practically exploded with flavor. I bit into a carrot, and it was as sweet as candy.

I ate my entire plateful and reached for a second helping. That caught my parents’ attention.

“Madison?” Mom asked. “You want more?”

“Yeah, this salad is fantastic.” I loaded my plate full and started eating.

Mom looked at Dad for a moment and finally shrugged. “That’s great,” she said. “I’m glad to see you enjoying vegetables.” Mom didn’t say anything else about it, but I caught her looking at me several times during the rest of the meal.

After dinner, I decided that since I had eaten such healthy food, and had survived my fiasco at the DMV, that I had earned some ice cream. I dipped up a big bowl of rocky road and sat down in the living room to eat. I took a bite and immediately spit it out.

The ice cream tasted like a combination of sweaty feet and rotten fruit. Ok, so I don’t actually know what sweaty feet or rotten fruit taste like, but something was seriously wrong with it. Disgusted, I took my bowl back into the kitchen where mom was working on her laptop at the table.

“Hey Mom, this ice cream tastes funny.”

Mom took my bowl and sniffed it. “It smells okay.” She grabbed a spoon and tasted it. “It tastes fine to me.”

“Really?” I scooped out another bite. Blech. I spit it out in the sink. “Are you kidding me? That tastes rotten.”

Mom furrowed her brows in concern, and looked at me with that determined glint in her eyes she got when she had made up her mind about something. I didn’t know what she’d made up her mind about, but it almost always meant she was going to make me do something she knew I wouldn’t like. 

***

I was right. The next day Mom made an appointment for me to see my ophthalmologist because, as she said, “Eyes don’t just spontaneously get better.”

I usually hated going to the eye doctor because I almost always came away with even thicker glasses than before, but this time I was all for it. Something strange was going on and I was just as curious as either of my parents to find out what it was. 

The doctor examined my eyes and said she had never seen anything like it. She checked over my chart several times and was at a loss to explain how my eyes could have healed. She wanted to do more exams and write an article about me for one of the medical journals, but Dad stepped in and politely, but firmly, declined.

I was scheduled to see my doctor the next day, but after our experience with the ophthalmologist Dad put his foot down and said “no”. I heard my parents arguing about it that night, something they hardly ever did – at least not when I was in the house. The argument gave me a sick feeling in my stomach, so I pulled the pillow over my head and did my best to shut it out. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

“What do you mean you don’t want her to go?” Mom asked.

“This isn’t something the doctor is going to be able to help her with,” Dad said.

I pulled the pillow tighter over my head, but my heart was pounding, and I couldn’t seem to shut them out no matter how hard I tried to plug my ears.

“We have to try,” said Mom. “Something is wrong with her. What if it’s some sort of brain tumor? Don’t we owe it to her to provide the best medical attention we can find?”

“Look, you saw what happened with the ophthalmologist. The doctor will examine her and have no idea what is going on. Then he’ll want to run her through a thousand tests only to come up with nothing.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

The discussion continued for another ten minutes, and grew in intensity and volume into a full-fledged shouting match. I couldn’t take it any longer. I threw off the covers and stormed into my parents’ room.

“Stop it!” I shouted. “Stop fighting about me!” Hot tears rolled down my cheeks. Whatever it was that had happened to my eyes hadn’t affected my tear ducts. Mom hurried over and pulled me into a hug. “It’s not that serious,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” After a moment, Dad came over and wrapped his big arms around both of us.

The next couple of weeks went by in a roller coaster of events and emotions. It wasn’t just ice cream that I couldn’t eat any more. The sugary comfort foods I had once loved were now so overpoweringly sweet that I gagged when I tasted them. Even the tiniest bit of chocolate was too much.

A few weeks after my failed driving test, I got the courage to go back and try again. That morning as I pulled on my jeans, I noticed that they seemed to be rather loose. I buttoned them up and pulled at the waistband. There was a serious gap there.

I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself from the side. I was thinner than before. My face seemed to be somewhat narrower, and as I checked myself out from different angles, there was no doubt about it: my butt was definitely smaller. To get proof, I went into my parent’s bathroom and weighed myself on their scale. It was no illusion. I had lost ten pounds. 

I put on a belt and had to cinch it to a hole I had never used before. A month ago, if I had lost this kind of weight Mom and I would have celebrated. Now, I didn’t want to say anything to my parents because I didn’t want to cause more problems. The less they knew about my changes, the better.

This time Mom took me to the DMV, and I passed the driving test without any problem. When it was time to take the eye test, I could easily read the bottom line of the chart, but I cheated and moved up a line just to seem more normal.

Over the next few weeks, I shed weight so fast that it became obvious my clothes no longer fit. Mom and Dad had another argument, but this time Dad agreed to at least see if the doctor could tell us anything. 

The doctor poked and prodded me but after weeks of testing, just as Dad had predicted, he couldn’t find anything wrong. My vision was perfect, my blood sugar was fine, the MRIs and other scans all came back normal. Even my complexion had cleared up. According to him, I was in the best health of my life.

For two months these changes persisted, and then everything seemed to level off. After dropping sixty pounds my weight stabilized, my vision dulled slightly (but was still better than twenty/twenty), and even my sense of taste seemed less acute. I still disliked sweet and fatty foods, but I could at least taste them without wanting to throw up.

As school approached, Mom took me shopping for new clothes. Usually I considered shopping a painful experience bordering on psychological torture, but this time was different. Instead of hiding behind the racks while my mom asked the sales clerk if they had larger sizes in the back, I was easily able to find cute clothes that fit me. I didn’t have to buy pants that were too small just because it was the closest they had to my size or pick between two shirts that I couldn’t stand because they were my only options.

Mom went crazy and bought me anything that I wanted. She seemed to be enjoying the experience as much as I was, so I kept shopping with her. Who was I to ruin her fun?

Six hours later we came home with a car full of clothing. The trunk wasn’t big enough, so we had piled bags of clothes into the back seat.

When we brought the clothes into the house, Dad’s eyes grew wide, but Mom gave him a look, and he didn’t say anything.

The next day my best friend, Amy Patterson, came over and we spent the morning trying on my clothes and deciding which outfits looked best on me. I thought Amy would be bored since she was too short to fit any of my clothes, but she spent hours helping me mix and match outfits. When I asked her about it, she rolled her eyes and said “That’s what best friends are for.” 

In her own way, Amy had changed quite a bit this past summer too. My sudden dislike of chocolate and other comfort foods had affected her as well. Without me there to push her to eat my junk foods, she ate better and had lost ten pounds. Not only that, but she had worked all summer as a waitress and earned a big chunk of cash, the vast majority of which was going toward new clothes. 

In the final two weeks before school started, I got my braces off to complete my transformation. When I came home and looked in the mirror, I hardly recognized the girl there. The heavy, pimpled teenager with thick glasses and braces was gone - replaced by someone I didn’t know.

Yes, she was prettier. Yes, she was thinner. But who was she? My looks had been so much a part of who I was and how I interacted with people that I felt adrift without them.

I flopped onto my bed and stared at the ceiling. Wasn’t this exactly what I had wished for so many times? I’d watched the pretty girls at school and had assumed that being slender and attractive would make my life easier. Now, with the looming reality of school in front of me, I wasn’t so sure.

I didn’t sleep very well the night before school started. I had horribly vivid dreams about showing up to class in my underwear, looking the way I used to. Everyone pointed and laughed.

I woke up to a mixture of relief and annoyance: Relief that it was just a dream, but annoyance that it had to be such a cliché. I mean, underwear? Really? Didn’t my subconscious have a more original way of telling me I was nervous? Of all the millions of things that could go wrong, my subconscious was afraid I might accidentally forget to get dressed? Not exactly a high-probability occurrence. Had anyone in the history of high schools everywhere, ever shown up in their underwear and not realized it until they got there?

I quickly showered and got ready. Fortunately, Amy and I had already picked out our first-day-of-school outfits, so I didn’t have to agonize over that decision.

I ate a light breakfast – my stomach was too nervous to do much more – grateful that my sense of taste had dulled enough to let me eat a bowl of cereal without gagging.

Mom had already agreed to let me borrow her car for the day, so I got in and drove to Amy’s house. She must have been watching because she ran out the door before I even came to a complete stop.

She got in the car and stared straight ahead. She took a deep breath and said, “Are you ready for this?”

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought Amy was nervous. Growing up, Amy had always been the outgoing one in our friendship. When I was too nervous to go somewhere Amy begged, pleaded, and cajoled until I finally gave in and went along with her.

I shrugged. “It’s just school,” I said. “It’s not the Bataan death march.” Although, gym class did have that sort of feel to it.

Amy turned and stared at me. “Just school?” she said. “Do you have any idea how important today is going to be for the two of us?”

And then I realized the source of Amy’s sudden cold feet - she had opening night jitters. To her this was not just the beginning of another year of school, but a chance to move up in the social hierarchy. New clothes and new looks meant that today was our audition for where we would fit.

“Do you really think that this year is going to be any different from last year?” I asked.

Amy pulled down the visor mirror to check her hair and makeup. “Madison,” she said, “have you no vision? Of course this year is going to be different. Everything has changed.”

We pulled into the student parking lot. Grabbing our backpacks and purses, we walked into the school. The familiar buzz of conversation punctuated by laughs and slamming lockers filled the air. The thick claustrophobic smell of too many people crammed into a poorly ventilated area wafted around me, occasionally interrupted by the overpowering smell of some girl wearing way too much perfume or a guy who had bathed in cologne.

Woodbridge High was a fairly small school, so all the students knew each other. But today, as I walked down the hall, I felt like a stranger. I knew I looked different, but seeing everyone’s reaction made it more real, somehow.

Up until now I had been a known quantity in the school, boxed and categorized. Neatly labeled and then dismissed. Now I was something different - unknown.

As I walked down the hall, eyes that had once slid past me now lingered and even took second looks. Amy turned to me and raised an eyebrow.

“Feels good to be noticed, doesn’t it?” she said. 

We stopped by Amy’s locker while she dropped off her books. I stood with my back to the lockers, watching people as they walked by.

Rebecca Alvarez had the locker next to Amy, so I moved out of the way as she came up. “Thanks,” she said. She had never been one of our close friends – Amy and I were pretty isolated – but she had been going to the same schools and in the same classes with us for the past ten years.

“How was your summer, Rebecca?” Amy asked.

Rebecca glanced over at her and did a double take. “Wow, Amy. Clearly my summer was not as good as yours. You look great.”

Amy beamed. “You think I look different?  You should see Madison. Now,
she
looks different.”

“Really?” asked Rebecca, clearly looking for some advance gossip. “How so?”

The smile on Amy’s face got even bigger as she realized that her guess was right and Rebecca hadn’t recognized me. She nodded her head in my direction. “Look for yourself.”

Rebecca turned to look at me, an expression of incomprehension clouding her face. She was a nice girl, but not always the quickest to catch on. 

“Hi, Rebecca,” I said.

“Madison?” she said. “You’re Madison?”

I nodded.

While Amy finished sorting her notebooks and folders, I gave Rebecca the ultra short version of the summer, telling her that I had eaten better and lost weight. I glossed over the mystery of my heightened senses.

“Wow. Well, you look great,” she said, her eyes darting around, clearly bursting with the need to tell someone what she just learned. She spotted Carol Vaughn and quickly made her exit. Within seconds they were engaged in what looked like an intense conversation. 

If there was any doubt about the topic, it ended when Carol looked over at me and her eyes widened.

Amy grabbed my arm and pulled me down the hall to my locker. “Get used to that,” she said. “By lunch you are going to be the talk of the school.”

I took a deep breath. Clearly this was going to be a bigger deal than I’d thought. The idea of having everyone in the school talking about me – positive or not – began twisting my stomach into strange and complex knots. The kind that only boy scouts or crusty sailors knew how to tie.

I shoved my backpack into my locker and we headed to our first classes; Physics for me and American History for Amy.

In Physics class, Aaron Parker, who I had known since the sixth grade, sat down next to me and began introducing himself.

I felt myself blush, partly because I was embarrassed, and partly because he was very good looking. He had beautiful dark hair and large blue eyes with the longest lashes I had ever seen on a boy. We’d been in several classes together and a couple of times had been assigned to work as partners. We’d never been friends or interacted outside of school, but we were at least on a first name basis. I couldn’t let this go on.

“I know who you are, Aaron,” I said.

He blinked, clearly confused.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” I said. “In sixth grade we did a report together on polar ice caps, and in freshman year you were in my English class and you, Peter, and I made a movie for our final project.”

It didn’t take him long to figure it out. “Madison?” His disbelief was clearly audible.

I shrugged. “That’s me,” I said.

“No way!” He hit the guys sitting next to him to get their attention. “Hey, check this out,” he said and pointed at me. ”Guess who this is.”

And so it went for the rest of the morning. People I had known for years stared at me, baffled at how much I’d changed over the summer. Boys ogled and girls glared – that was something new for me. Apparently, I was now officially perceived as a threat.

By lunch time I just wanted to crawl into a corner and hide. For someone accustomed to being effectively invisible, this was too much attention and completely overwhelming.

Amy wasn’t in my lunch period, so I planned on eating in a corner by myself, away from prying questions and uncomfortable stares. I grabbed a salad in the lunch line – it was one of the few options that my acute sense of taste would let me even consider eating - and scanned the lunchroom until I found an open table in the corner. I debated whether to sit facing the wall, so I could be alone and have a moment of normalcy, or sit facing the crowd, knowing that people stare and gossip about me. After a moment’s hesitation, I opted to face the crowd. I was a compulsive people-watcher and the thought of spending the entire lunch period staring at a wall didn’t appeal to me.

I carried my tray towards my chosen spot and noticed someone approaching out of the corner of my eye. Not wanting one of those collisions where two people walk into each other in the cafeteria and their trays fly up into the air, I stopped to let the other person pass. But when I looked to see who it was, I found myself gazing into the beautiful eyes of Josh Lancaster. A familiar mixture of adoration and panic overwhelmed me.

Normally when I crossed paths with Josh he would keep walking. Sometimes he acknowledged me like he did at the DMV, but most of the time he hardly even noticed I was there. This time, he came to an abrupt stop and stared at me, a confused look on his face.

The confused expression only lasted for a heart beat before it was interrupted by Louis Packer, who hadn’t noticed that Josh had stopped, running into him from behind. He knocked Josh forward and his food flew off of his tray in a graceful arc before crashing to the floor with a splat and the clatter of utensils.

The students in the cafeteria burst into enthusiastic applause. Josh stared at me with a horrified look of embarrassment on his face, something I’d never seen before from him. He quickly broke eye contact and scrambled to clean up his mess.

Not sure what to do, I continued to my secluded corner and sat down. I had a nice view of the cafeteria and was able to surreptitiously watch Josh while eating my lunch.  

The janitor came in and mopped up the mess while Josh got back in line to get another lunch. He crossed the cafeteria – this time without incident – and sat at a table with his friends, looking sheepish. The guys slapped him on the back in commiseration and the girls all gazed intently at him and looked for excuses to lean close or touch his arm.

I tried not to be obvious that I was watching him, but a couple of times I saw him look at me and then lean in and talk to the people at his table. When five of them turned around at once, I knew they were talking about me.

Not wanting to be caught staring, I put my head down and concentrated on my salad. A few minutes later a shadow crossed my tray. I looked up to find Josh standing right in front of me.

“Madison?” he asked.

I had a bite of salad in my mouth and suddenly found it extremely difficult to swallow. I nodded to buy myself some time and took a drink. The wad of lettuce in my mouth felt roughly the size of Roosevelt’s head on Mount Rushmore.

In my haste to swallow, I ended up choking and coughing. Fortunately, I managed to keep my mouth shut and not spray anything out, because if I had sprayed bits of chewed lettuce onto Josh Lancaster, the heat generated by my resulting blush would have caused me to spontaneously combust.

“Yes?” I managed to squeak out.

Josh pulled up a chair and sat down. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. He was just a boy. He was just a boy. He was just a boy. Oh, who was I kidding? He wasn’t just a boy. He was
the
boy. 

“I just wanted to apologize for nearly dumping my tray on you earlier.” He shrugged and gave me a rueful grin. “I mean, I heard you had changed over the summer, but I didn’t know what to believe until I saw you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m still a bit in shock myself. It was... an interesting summer.”

Josh flashed me his signature grin that always made my knees weak. “I bet,” he said. He motioned over to the table where he had been sitting. “Why don’t you come eat with us and tell me about it?”

Panic washed over me. Yes, I had changed physically, but it would only take a few minutes of conversation for them to realize I was a fake. On the inside I was still the same fat girl with glasses they had ignored or made fun of since middle school.

Why was I hesitating? This is what I had wanted my whole life – acceptance. Now it was being handed to me on a silver platter. If Amy were here, she’d yank me out of my chair and shove me towards Josh’s table.