Page 15 of Easy Reunion
Chapter 6
Kelsey
“Are you crazy?” Angel yells at me. We’re sitting around her kitchen drinking coffee—mine fully loaded, while Angel’s is decaf. “Why didn’t you talk to him? For Christ’s sake, Kels. You could have known instead of always wondering why.”
I shrug because her words sting with the bitterness of truth. Instead of an incredible night of sex, I could have had answers to the questions burning deep inside of me. There’s a nest of hurt feelings I allow few to see because few are permitted to get that close. Angel knows how deep my scars run, and not just the physical ones left over from my surgery. After all, she helped me to battle off a whole new host of bullying when she became my roommate at Pepperdine.
Only Angel understood the emotional wars I fought as I walked next to her in the cafeteria, eventually eschewing it for Styrofoam noodle cups or oatmeal in our room. Angel appreciated when I struggled to get to class on time because I was out of breath or sweating so hard.
Angel understood how hard it was not to give up on my dreams because of humiliation.
And Angel is the only person who ever asked why I weighed so much—if there was some hurt holding me back from being the beautiful person she knew I was.
That night, I told her about the car wreck that took my parents’ lives where we lived in Florida—how they’d been fighting over my mother’s recent discovery about my father’s affair. They both assumed I was asleep in the back seat, but I wasn’t. My father attributed my mother’s weight gain after giving birth to me as the reason he strayed over and over again. After throwing that out there seconds later, he swerved to avoid hitting a wild boar—something as common to see in our community in North Florida as alligators. Instead, he overcorrected and hit a tree at high speed, killing them both and leaving me trapped in the back seat.
I was at Wolfson Children’s Hospital being treated for a severe concussion with those words seared on my brain when my grandparents came to get me.
“At first, I ate because it was a sign of comfort and love from my Nana,” I’d told Angel. “Then it was a way to hide. I mean, if I wasn’t pretty, who would ever hurt me the way my daddy hurt my mama?”
Angel just sat there, holding my hand and crying. She nodded, waiting for me to continue. Taking a deep breath, I did. “My grandparents wanted to make sure I had the best schooling; they had the inheritance from my parents to pay for my schooling, you see?” At Angel’s nod, I continued. “So, they sent me to this private school—. God, Angel, it was awful. The things I was called…” My face heated; the tears flowed over my cheeks in remembrance. “Then I ate to forget. I remember stopping at the local grocery store in the mornings. I’d go to the deli counter, and I’d get pounds of meat and cheese. I’d sneak out to my car to eat it in between classes.” I think I broke my own heart a little when I said in a small voice, “Food became the only friend I had. It was so easy. I was never scared of the truths it would tell me.”
We both sobbed as I kept talking. “I’d see how the kids would watch me, and I don’t know what was worse: the emotional or physical pain.”
“They touched you?”
“Oh yeah. Slammed into lockers, into walls, desks, you name it. I hid the bruises as much as I hid the fat.” Even I heard the bitterness in my voice. “That pain almost seemed tolerable in comparison to the words. God, I can still hear them.”
“Get rid of them. Give them to me.” And so I did. I pulled the box I hastily packed from the closet and described the viciousness of Juliette Bernard to her. I explained how broken my heart would be each time a new folded note would stick out of the locker or slip into my bag, how people would guess at my weight. That someone tried to trap me in the nurse’s office to get on a scale before I ran away and started screaming.
And finally, I told her about the razor blades that would occasionally be left with a note telling me to end it all. After all, the letter suggested, it would be better for everyone if I did. I’d take up less space on the planet.
“I won’t pretend to understand what you’ve been through, Kels, but I promise you I won’t treat you like that.” Angel sounded as broken as I felt. “This”—she shoved her hands against the box of stuff we’d sifted through—“doesn’t define you. This”—she laid her hand on my heart—“does. It’s strong and courageous if it can withstand what you’ve endured. There’s something beautiful waiting to emerge. I can’t wait to see it.”
I collapsed in her arms crying. We ended up skipping classes the next day in favor of watching movies likeSixteen CandlesandThe Breakfast Club.
It wasn’t until weeks later that Angel noticed I’d stopped eating. She raised holy hell.
A nutritional science major, my new best friend did her best to help me. That is after she stopped screaming at me for endangering my life. “No! This isn’t how you fix what’s wrong. I’ll help you, but we’re going to do this right. I’m not losing you now that I found you.”
For years, we ate healthily and worked out regularly. No combination of caloric intake plus exercise seemed to work; I’d lose some weight, but not a lot for the effort I was putting in. I was even stumping her professors, who she enlisted to help. Through some research, we determined I had damaged my metabolism as a result of the weight gain. “Great,” I lamented. “Nothing’s going to work.”
That is until Angel’s senior year when she did some research and found a bariatric surgeon in Long Beach who needed part-time help in his billing office. “He has a three-year waiting list, Kels. But if it’s one of his office staff, maybe he’ll make an exception.”
I gave it some thought before I applied. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was work in an office; I was a creative writing major, after all. I had dreams of working for a publishing house, maybe being an editor. I certainly didn’t dream about working in an office where I’d always be reminded of the single thing that could send me spiraling into a severe depression. But after some thought, I figured what did I have to lose? Certainly not my pride. That was long gone. I was both mildly surprised and somewhat disappointed when I was brought in for an in-person interview. I thought they’d throw me out the minute they saw me. Instead, I was blunt when I was asked why I wanted to work there. “Because I need help, and Dr. Toli is my last hope.”
“What makes you think that?” his office manager asked.
“Because I can hear my heart beating too fast every night I stare out my dorm room window. I’m afraid that’s because it’s going to stop and I’m going to die.”
I was offered the position the next day.
I worked for the famed surgeon part-time for the rest of my senior year and full-time the next year and a half after. Between what I managed to save and the remainder of my parents’ estate, I had enough money to cover what insurance wouldn’t. A chance for hope. And it worked. I lost and have kept off over two hundred pounds.
Blessed isn’t close to how I feel when I think about the miracles I’ve been given over the last decade between my health, my career, and my family—namely, my grandparents and Angel. My regrets, well, most of those are tied to Forsyth.
“It’s not like I’m ever going to see him again, Angel,” I reiterate calmly.
“You don’t think he’s not smart enough to realize you’re…you?”
