Page 35 of Crush
I laughed out loud. “Oh, God. You couldn't be more wrong.”
“Pfft. I doubt it.”
“You want me to prove it, then?” I asked, reaching for my cell phone.
“Sure.”
“A few years back, my mom got on Facebook and uploaded all these old family photos.” I loaded up Facebook and went to my mom's profile. “I immediately had to untag myself from all of them before anybody saw the evidence.”
“Ha!” Chloe hovered nearby, eagerly awaiting the pictures.
I found the old album and started flipping through the pictures of me in my awkward teen years.Ugh,just looking at those pictures transported my mind and body back in time. My brain released a chemical shower of those awful teenage hormones, and existential angst flooded my bloodstream.
“I thought I could handle this,” I said, cringing as one awkward picture after another flew by the screen, “but maybe I'm not as tough as I thought.”
“Oh my God!” Chloe giggled. “Your hair …! What happened?”
“Told you,” I muttered.
“Whoa. That shirt.Whoa.”
“Yup,” I agreed.
I saw the next picture—wearing an athletic bra, flexing my biceps—and quickly tried to flick past it before Brynn could see.
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Brynn yelled. “Was that you? You have to go back!”
Sheepishly, I pulled the picture up again. I was nothing but skin, bones, and muscle striation. It hurt to look at that picture, in so many ways, but I hoped it might help Chloe to see it.
Chloe's jaw fell. “Holysix-pack,Brynn! You were ripped! Andsoskinny! What the hell?”
“Yep,” I said.
“I knew you were a personal trainer, but I never knew you looked likethat.” Chloe looked at me, then the cell phone version of me, trying to reconcile the two in her mind.
“I spent a lot of time jogging, and a lot of time in the gym,” I muttered.
“Jeez. No kidding.” She raised her brow at me. “You don't look anything like that at all anymore. It's like you're not even the same person.”
Hearing that, the fifteen-year-old in me wanted to curl up into a ball and die. But the twenty-seven-year-old me knew that that was agoodthing indeed.
“It's how I dealt with being unhappy with my body, Chloe.”
“Getting super fit and shredded, you mean?”
I didn't want her to follow in my footsteps. “Ilookedfit, and I thoughtI was in great shape, too. But the truth was, I was the furthest thing from healthy. I wasn't eating enough, Chloe, and it caused me health problems.”
“Whoa. Like what?”
“My hair and fingernails started falling out, for one. Then I started to have chest pain and heart palpitations.”
“Oh my God.” Her face crumpled with horror. “Scary. I can't even imagine.”
“Yup. So don't be like me—learn to love yourself for who you are.” I smiled at Chloe and reached for my phone. “This has been very educational for you, I hope.”
“Wait, just a couple more!”
Chloe swiped her finger across my screen, looking at one picture and then the next—before a specific photo grabbed her attention. She stared at it, her head tilting with interest.
