I run as fast as I can down the hallway, feeling tears sting my eyes. I go into the first bathroom I see and the second I walk in, everyone leaves. I just felt so lonely, I had Nate but my happiness was totally crushed. This was going to be a hard week.

I stand at the sink and start wiping the pudding off, trying to keep my crying under control. Why did everyone turn on me this fast? I used to think the low point of my life was getting ice thrown at me. Now it was seriously having someone dump pudding all over my desk and flick it in my face. Having teachers harass me about a fake eating disorder. And it was all thanks to Sabrina Carmichael.

I knew she was doing this to teach Nate a lesson. Not even me, she just hurt me because she knew it would hurt him more. What bothered me was I knew she didn't even love him or care about him, she was just mad that she wasn't getting her way.

No matter what I wouldn't give-in to her, she'd have to do worse than some teasing. I knew what my mom and dad were working on and I think I'd be terrified if I was on the other end of that. Dad was treating this like she'd attempted to murder me and we all had a nice chat about it in family therapy.

Despite the circumstances, dad was taking an interest in me. He really seemed to care about this and for the first time, it felt like he really cared about me.

I wipe away the rest of the pudding and then get some of the paper towel damp to clean the rest of the pudding out of my hair. I sniffle and take some deep breaths, looking at my reflexion. Was I too skinny? How heavy was a girl my age supposed to be? Something told me I was too small from a medical perspective. If I could gain a few healthy pounds maybe you wouldn't be able to see my shoulder blades or my eyes wouldn't look sunken-in.

But how could I gain weight when I hated food? When all of it made me sick? Not eating enough on top of being this physically active exhausted me. But greasy meals or eating too much just made me feel awful. I couldn't function.

Maybe I just couldn't do anything about it. My mom always had a small frame and both of my parents were incredibly fit. I go over that list in my head, skinny? Sure, but who cares. Socially-awkward? Not really I had an alright group of friends. Flat-chested? Maybe, depending on how you looked at it. Virgin?......Not anymore. Daddy issues? Not in the traditional sense and my family was working on all of our problems.

I might be skinny but I'm not built like an eight-year-old, I know that. I'm older now......and I'm pretty. It seemed conceited to say it to myself but my therapist recommended it, and it did make me feel better about myself.

"Sasha?" I hear someone call into the bathroom and I sigh, knowing it was Nate.

"In here!" I call back, throwing away the dirty paper towels and getting out my make-up bag.

"Are you okay?" He asks and I nod.

"Yeah, just finished getting the pudding out of my hair." I say quietly and start to fix my concealer.

"Miles got detention for a week." He says quietly and I nod.

"Good, he deserves it." I mumble. "That pudding got everywhere."

"I'm sorry about all of this." He says quietly, wrapping his arms around me and I sigh, enjoying the way they feel.

"I'm just tired of thinking about it." I whine and he nods. "It's not wonderful to have people heckle me about it, but it's tolerable when I don't have someone dumping food on me."

"Miles is an asshole." He says quietly and I nod.

"How do people do that?" I ask. "Like wake up in the morning and say 'today I'm going to do this'. It's just hateful."

"I don't get it either, probably means there's something going on in their lives that's dissatisfying." He says and I sigh.

"I just have to get through tomorrow, I'm practicing until I leave on Thursday." I tell him and he nods.

"I can't believe we're going to be so far away from each other." He says and I press my face into his chest.

"I don't want to be." I say quietly. I started to get sad then that tomorrow was our last day together. Our last two days hadn't been particularly romantic and I wanted that back, I didn't want to feel like I had so many things going on in my life that I couldn't focus.

"Is there any chance you locked the door again this time?" I whisper and he laughs a bit shaking his head.

"You know you're like night and day sometimes?" He asks and I laugh.

"Can I have a kiss?" I ask and he laughs. "Please? This day has literally been the worst."

"Maybe just one." He whispers and gives me a quiet, personal kiss that makes my knees buckle. He pulls back and rests his forehead on mine making me smile.

"One more?" I ask and he laughs.

"If you insist." He says and I smile, feeling happy for the first time in over twenty-four hours.

>

"Hi Sasha, welcome back." I hear and turn to see my therapist standing in the doorway to her office.

"Hi Jennifer." I say and she smiles, gesturing for me to come in.

"Take a seat, do you want a glass of water before we get started?" She asks and I shake my head.

"No thanks." I sigh and she nods closing the door and taking the seat across from mine.

"Alright." She says and opens her notebook, pulling her glasses down to rest over her nose. "So last week we were talking about trauma, and the things you've been through. Do you find it's getting any easier to spend time with your parents?"

"Mom I'm alright with." I tell her and she nods, scribbling something down. "I.....I still haven't really spoken to my father."

"Why not?" She asks and I sigh.

"Because.....because I feel like he hates me." I tell her. "I feel bad about telling him to leave me and my figure skating alone but....I feel happy again. And knowing that I feel that way makes me feel guilty."

"Why do you think he hates you?" She asks.

"Because he hasn't exactly approached me either. He hated my brothers when they quit too." I whisper.

"Why do you think he's not making more of an effort?" She asks and I shrug.

"Well before I came home mom tried to get me to understand my father a bit better. She told me about how important figure skating was to him....and I think he shared it with me and my brothers because he loved it. I broke his heart by telling him I didn't want him involved in it anymore.

"I'm no fool, I know my father. I know he's stubborn beyond reason and this is just an example of it. He loses if he comes to me and he's waiting to see which one of us is going to make the first move." I say and she nods, writing a few more notes. "It just frustrates me that we don't have a regular relationship."

"Tell me about the relationship you had when you were younger." She suggests and I sigh.

"It used to be pretty nice. He was there for me and trained me, so we spend a lot of quality time together when I was really little. Then everything changed, suddenly it was all about winning. It was never fun anymore, it was just hard work and he tore me down constantly. I felt like he didn't love me." I say feeling a tear run over my cheek and Jennifer passes me a box of tissues.

"I'd spend time trying to impress him, I always thought, 'maybe if I can just win this competition'. I just wanted him to look at me and tell me he loved me and he was proud of the work I'd put in. I watched other people in my club getting hugs and smiles from their parents, going out for ice cream afterwards. I always wondered what I had to do to have that."

"How did that make you feel?" She asks and I burst into tears.

"Terrible." I sob. "I felt like I was only there to skate for him....not be his daughter."

"Alright, just take a breath." She says and I sniffle. "Sasha what I want you to do with that is take it." She encourages and I nod. "And I want you to put those horrible memories and feelings into a box." I nod, listening to her. Jennifer's weird tools did make me feel a bit better. "Now I want you to take an imaginary roll of duct tape, and just keep wrapping the box until there's none left on the roll. Now take that box full of awful memories and burry it somewhere you can't dig it up. Tell me, where are you putting it?"

"I'm going to drop-kick it into the Mariana's Trench." I tell her and she smiles.

"Good." She says. "Now it's far away, deep in the back of your mind. I know it's something that you've talked about a fair bit, so I hope that helps to keep your mind a bit emptier."

I smile realizing it had worked, I did feel better. It wasn't there at the front of my mind anymore.

"Now I'd like to talk to you about what happened at school yesterday." She says and I sigh, feeling those ugly memories rush to the surface. "I know you were really broken up about it, but I know it involved a flyer?" She says and I nod, reaching into my bag.

"This is it." I say passing it to her. "They're all over school, people make fun of me for an eating disorder, how twisted is that?"

"Tell me what you felt like when you first saw this." She says and I press my lips together.

"It broke me, Jennifer." I admit and she nods. "It was all a personal attack on my body and the way I looked. They said I was flat-chested and had the body of a kid. Then I just thought about the way everyone looks at me, did they all believe that too?"

"Of course not, kids can be cruel. Did you do what we practiced? Standing in front of a mirror and telling yourself good things?" She asks and I nod.

"I try to remember, but it makes me feel shallow." I admit, fiddling with my hands.

"I know it feels that way." She says. "Does it make you feel better?"

"Yes." I tell her and she nods.

"Good." She says and flips over the page in her book. "Now Sasha, we've spoken plenty about self-esteem and confidence. You've told me plenty about your diets and food, and you spoke once about feeling like you don't eat enough. Tell me about that."

"I....don't know what's wrong with me anymore." I say quietly. "It's like I can't stomach sugar or large amounts of calories. If I eat more than two pieces of dry toast in the morning then I feel sick all day. I don't push food away because I don't want to be too big, it's because I'm never hungry, because it just turns me off."

"And do you throw up after you eat?" She asks and I sigh.

"Not after I eat, every so often but I think that's probably more associated with stress." I tell her and she nods.

"I'd say you're probably right about that." She says and I nod. "I think it would be good when you come back from your skating competition, if you could go see your family doctor and have them take a second look at what I'm proposing."

"What are you proposing?" I stutter.

"Sasha I'd like to put you on an anti-anxiety medication." She says.

"For what?" I ask. "Do you think I have an eating disorder?"

"No no." She says waving her hands around. "At least not in the traditional sense. I think you have a lot of anxiety around food, but it's not around being thin or keeping yourself thin. I think the reason you have a hard time eating is because of anxiety."

"But I'm not anxious about anything." I assure her. Did I really have some type of eating disorder?

"It's not an active thought process, you want to win and skate better and some of it comes from being weighed and conditioned at such a young age. Part of it is probably due to the fact that you just don't eat much junk-food, your body isn't used to it." She assures me.

I just stare at the ground feeling my mind spiral, I knew there was something wrong with my relationship with food, I just didn't think it was this bad.

"I know this is a lot, but I'm certain you'll feel a lot better. I know you get excited at the idea of eating food, but you-"

"Get grossed-out at the fear of getting sick." I conclude and she nods.

"I'll set you up to have your blood taken just to make sure everything's clear and you'll have a meeting with your family doctor to prescribe the medication." She says and I sigh, feeling that weigh on my mind now too.

Nationals, Nate, Micheal, Sabrina, my-now very possible-eating disorder, my family. How on earth could I take all of that on at once?

"Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?" She asks and I sigh.

"I have more things to talk about, than not talk about." I mumble and she smiles.

"We've got the rest of our session, the floor is yours, Sasha. Tell me what's on your mind." She says and I nod.

There was really nothing better after years of bitting my tongue and not saying the things I wanted to, to have someone to really listen to me. Jennifer would never interrupt me, she always let me talk it all out. The only person I liked talking with more than her, was Nate.