CHAPTER ONE:
The blazing lights, with the smooth marley beneath. The enticing invitation to lose myself on the stage, among the bated breath with every flick of my damask head as I continue in yet another pirouette was too much to try and stifle. Pulling on my usually slightly too big ballet shoes, I had a bit of trouble. Apparently my foot had slightly enlarged.
Avoiding the questioning stare from Miss LaFleur, the Manhattan Ballet Corps president, I scrunched my aching toes into the pain-inducing shoes and stoof close to the curtain, feeling faintly dizzy. My cue sounded, and off I floated, into oblivion and onto the magnificent stage. My destructive home.
________________________________________________________________
"What caused you to become.......?"
Awkward silence, awating the victim to finish the question. No such idea.
"Pressure," the girl breathed, clutching her stomach as she did so. "Pressure and stereotypes are the culprits of all self image wrongs."
___________________________________________________________
Pirouette. Faster, harder now. Whip yourself around. C'mon. Keep going.
The room began to spin, the crowd watching on as I heaved a large gasp and collapsed, prima ballerina act disappearing in a flash, head smacked against the unforgiving floor. The lights, dizzying and now rays of iridescence, floating in and out of each eye socket but never making contact, never registering.
"Your not cut out for this," a voice in my brain hummed gently, sounding oddly sweet and embracing. "Your too big to dance. Always have been, always will be. Slave away from the food, my sweet." Comforting.
_____________________________________________________
"How much did you weigh before?"
"97 pounds." An ashamed voice, as if she detested the number. Spat it out, fear of it contaminating her terribly meager frame that could've blown away with a single gust of wind. Her ribs, sticking out plain and vibrant in the candle light.
"Now?"
A gulp. An embarrassed, yet prideful and still hungry clearing of the throat.
"69 pounds."
_____________________________________________________
"Are you okay?" A curly haired boy, who looked aroud my age, 15 or 16, was leaning over me. I could hear brief mutterings as I sat up.
"Look at her, wow, she fainted......."
"I bet she's like all those other dancers, drugged up on fifty million diet pills and laxatives.....a wonder she can even move her head.......but she can barely do that."
I focused my eyes, and saw the clearest brown ones staring back into my own, until I was pulled up hastily by two muscular yet dainty hands.
"Bye," he mouthed, and I pleaded with the sky to let me out of the person pulling me away's clutches, so I could speak to that heavenly face once more.
Slam of a door, and thrown into a chair.
