Shrink to Fit (11 page)

Leah finished about half the burger and most of the fries. She would get rid of it. She couldn't allow this food in her body. She would do what she did in L.A. It was the only way.

“I need to run to the restroom.” Leah finished her glass of water and stood up. “I'll be back in a minute.”

“No.” Jay met her eyes. “You won't.”

Leah blinked.

“Sit down.” The sunlight hit Jay's face in a way that hardened his jaw and suddenly he looked much older than a teenager. And sounded it, too.

“What?”

“I know what you're trying to do.”

“What do you think I'm going to do in there?”

“I'm not stupid, Leah. I know what you've been doing. Now, unless you want me to have a chat with the coach about your bulimia, you'll tell me exactly how it came to this.”

Panic Room
150 lbs

She'd
gained weight. She'd gained back two pounds and only had a week left till the
Jade
photo shoot.

Leah circled her room eyeing the newest addition, a beaten-up burgundy punching bag that she'd dragged out of the basement.

What the hell was Jay thinking, making her eat like that? He wasn't her mother. He wasn't even her boyfriend. What right did he have? He'd stuffed her stupid and left her on her doorstep.

Leah strapped on her gloves and gave the punching bag a hard thump. The only thing her father had left behind. A clunky, unwanted thing.

Like her.

Wham!
That was for Jay. That was for him acting like he cared about her, only to sabotage her modeling career.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Espresso Bean yowled in terror and ran for cover under the bed.

“Sorry, baby! I'm just
very
upset right now.”
Wham, wham, wham.

It felt great. She'd spent the day punching the hell out of the bag. Instead of going to school. Or practice.

She was too humiliated to face her teammates after being benched for next weekend's game.

And afraid. What if Jennifer had told the whole school about Shazan's pills? And how Leah was her partner in crime?

Wham! Wham! Wham!
That was for Jennifer's little button nose and rosy lips.

How dare Jay accuse her of having an eating disorder? Not everyone was obsessed with their weight like his precious Jennifer Chan.

Dumb bitch had ratted her out. Now Jay didn't trust a word she said. How dare Jennifer break up a perfectly solid friendship?

Wham! Wham! Wham!

“Ouch!”

Leah dropped her arms and rubbed her right shoulder. The shooting pain continued to travel down her arm to her wrists. She quickly unbound her hands and tried to rotate her shoulder.

“Ahh!” She couldn't help the yell.

God, what had she done? The championship game was just two weeks away. She couldn't do any damage to her throwing arm.

Ding!

A forum alert from the ANA Web site. That morning she had posted a frustrated note about the two pounds she'd managed to gain that week. Because of Jay. She had to be a hundred and forty pounds for the photo shoot. It was the only way.

Once her picture was in magazines, everyone would see. There was nothing wrong with her. She was fine. She was normal.

Leah noticed several replies to her post.

Drink only water. Yeah, right. That never worked. It just made her dizzy. She scrolled to the next one.

Exercise more. She was already running five miles a day despite her shin splints and a throbbing pain on the sides of each knee.

Sleep more so you're not awake to eat anything. Leah frowned. That wasn't bad. She could fake sick and stay in bed all week. Then no one would ask questions when she emerged ten pounds thinner by the end of the week. Stomach flu, she could claim.

Drink chicken broth. It keeps you full, people think you're eating and it has practically no calories. Dilute it with water.

Perfect. She loved this site. Chicken broth. Nothing but chicken broth this week and staying in bed.

She surfed through the pictures of thin girls on the Web site. Thinspiration, they were called. So thin, so perfect. Their slim arms, long fingers posed on slender hips. Chiseled cheekbones. Tiny thighs.

Girls like Nicole Richie and Mary-Kate Olsen pouted back at her.

They were so lucky. How did they stay so thin?

“Leah! Come downstairs please!”

“I ate already, Mama,” Leah called back. Not this again. Her mother hadn't forced her to go to the doctor when Leah had insisted she was too traumatized after Shazan's collapse.

Silence from downstairs, and then Leah heard her mother's footsteps climbing the stairs.

God. Not now. Leah quickly logged out of the site and left her Internet Explorer window open to the high school's sports page. Varsity cheerleader rushed to hospital after cardiac arrest.

“When I call you, you come downstairs. You hear me?” Victoria entered without waiting. She froze when she saw the punching bag. “Where did that come from?”

Leah rolled her eyes and gave the bag a slight shove. Her mother hated being reminded of her father, but she didn't care. She liked seeing her mother thrown off balance. Leah couldn't help but feel that maybe she had dragged the bag into her room just for the reaction. “The basement. You knew it was there.”

“I—” Victoria swallowed. “Yes, I did. Be careful. Don't—let it fall on you.”

“I'm going to lie down for a while, I don't feel too good. So, talk to you later?” Leah rubbed her shoulder. Still sore.

“You coming down with something?”

“I might be,” Leah lied. “I was feeling a bit feverish all day. Maybe I should stay home tomorrow.”

“Sit down.”

“Mama.”

“Sit. Now.”

Leah flopped down on the bed and closed her eyes. “I feel sick.”

“Jay called four times. Are you going to call him back?”

“No.”

“You cut school today.” Victoria's voice reached Leah through her haze of thoughts. “And Coach Richards called me to say that you were benched for the next game, but you didn't even go to practice today. What's up with that?”

Leah flopped onto her belly and started unraveling her bedspread. “I wasn't feeling well. I told you.”

“I'm rescheduling the doctor's appointment.”

Not this again.

“I just need rest.”

“Look. I know you're worried about Shazan, but you can't just stop going to school.” Victoria tried to reach for Leah's hair, but Leah quickly pulled away. She was still losing wads of hair every day. She didn't want a repeat freak-out like in O.C. “It's the week of Thanksgiving. We're not even doing anything in school.”

“You're going tomorrow. Understand? Now come down for dinner.”

“Fine.” Leah knew arguing wouldn't get her anywhere here.

Leah waited until her mother had closed the door behind her. She dialed the hospital again.

“Hello? I'm calling about the status of Shazan Ali. I'll hold.”

Leah continued to pace and paused in front of her mirror. Her cheekbones were fat puffs. A double chin. All the fat Jay had forced her to have. How could she be in a magazine like this?

Fat. So much fat on her cheeks. She had to lose it. She had a week.

“Hello? You're calling about Shazan Ali's status?”

“Yes.” Leah's heart pounded.

“I'm afraid because of privacy laws, we can't give that information out over the phone.” The voice continued to speak and explain that she had to be a member of the family or come in during visiting hours to see Shazan.

She hung up the phone without saying goodbye or thank-you.

She had a very bad feeling about this.

“Leah! Dinner! Now!”

Everything was spiraling completely out of control. School, the game, her friendship with Jay, now Shazan's health.

There was just one thing she had under control.

“Mama! Do we have any chicken broth?”

145 pounds

Leah obsessively searched the ANA Web site. There had to be more tips. The girls were becoming less and less shy and were starting to post pictures of themselves.

They were all so thin. No way was Leah going to post a picture. They would laugh at her for being so fat after so much dieting.

The chicken broth diet was working. She'd already lost four pounds that week. She'd convinced Victoria she had the flu and the only thing she could keep down was plain chicken broth and Sprite Zero. Her mother had allowed her a day of bed rest and school was out for the rest of the week.

The flu symptoms weren't hard to fake because of her feverish face and harbored breathing. Leah didn't know what was really wrong with her and she didn't care. She was five pounds away from her goal.

She'd called the hospital six times that week and they wouldn't tell her anything. No one answered the phone at Shazan's house.

She'd never felt so alone.

Refresh. Refresh. She refreshed the Web site for the umpteenth time. Everyone was saying to be as dehydrated as possible to look thinner. God, she'd just finished an entire bottle of water post her five-mile run. She had to get rid of it.

She pinched her hips. So much fat. So much fat left to lose. It was the chicken broth. It probably had way more calories than she thought.

She had to throw up the chicken broth she'd drunk for dinner. And all the water.

She closed and locked the door of her bathroom and kneeled on the floor. Nothing.

She gagged.

“Try again. Try again,” she chanted. She stuck a finger down her throat and waited.

Nothing.

“Come on, come on. You can do this.” She forced her finger down her throat again. She spit up water.

She leaned her head against the toilet and cried.

Best in Show
140 lbs

Leah
couldn't stop shivering in the dressing room. She was wearing a thin robe over her underwear and was literally trembling.

The modeling shoot was in full swing at the Chateau Marmont in L.A. The
Jade
crew had taken up an entire set of suites on the top floor and girls were running in and out of the rooms, half dressed and half made-up.

Victoria had deposited Leah into a room with a chair labeled Lynnette M and a stack of
Cosmopolitan
magazines. Leah hunched down in the chair and tried to warm her cold, dry hands.

Was no one else freezing? Some blond Hollywood starlet was sitting across from Leah looking bored and typing on her BlackJack while makeup artists worked on her face. She was wearing a sleeveless minidress and didn't look even the slightest bit frostbitten.

“Sweetie, you ready for hair?”

Leah jumped. Ken, some celebrity stylist, stood in front of her. He flicked his perfectly styled blond hair and held up a swatch of hair extensions. “We need to do something about that hair of yours.”

Leah touched her scalp. She'd managed to hide her hair loss with bandanas, but apparently the hairdresser wasn't fooled.

“Come, come! Lots of work. Very little time!” Before she could blink, he tilted her head back into the sink and turned on the water.

“Have you seen Victoria anywhere?” Leah asked. Her mother had disappeared over half an hour ago and Leah was wondering if she was going through the same treatment.

“I did her hair a while ago. God, she's stunning. Isn't she stunning? That skin! I would sell my grandmother to the Middle East for that skin!”

Leah was sorry she asked.

A gentle scalp massage lulled Leah into a deep sleep. She dreamt she was floating on one of those huge rafts in a swimming pool. No one else was in sight. Just her. Alone.

She wished she could have stayed in the dream.

When she opened her eyes, Ken was gone. Instead she saw a stranger staring back at her in the mirror. The stranger looked like Beyoncé at the Oscars. She had long cascading light brown waves that tumbled over her shoulders. Her eyes were huge and almond shaped. Her cheekbones slim, her lips glossy and full.

Who was this?

Leah stood up on trembling legs and touched the mirror. How had this happened? Did she really look like this?

Gaunt fingers touched hers in the mirror.

“What do you think?” A soft voice startled Leah. She glanced in the mirror and saw Alfreddo settled into a swivel chair in the corner of the room, hands shoved into the pockets of his pin-striped pants.

How long had he been lurking there? And how had she not noticed him?

“Look at you.” He stood up and started to move toward her.

“Yeah.” Leah ran a hand through her hair. How much of it was hers, she couldn't even tell. The extensions were silky coils that sprang perfectly back into place.

“You are the most stunning here. By far.”

Leah didn't take her eyes off her reflection and noticed Alfreddo didn't either.

The chill she'd been feeling earlier returned.

“Let's get you into wardrobe so you can choose first.”

Leah hesitated. Where was Victoria? She'd thought her mother would be here with her, hovering, making sure everything was just right.

“Come on. I saw this green item that would be incredible on you. I want to see it on you before anyone else.”

Leah shivered again. His eyes hadn't left the front of her robe. She pulled it tighter around her. “Let's go, then.”

The wardrobe room looked like Mariah Carey's closet on MTV's
Cribs.
An entire floor of the hotel with racks and racks of dresses, hats, scarves, coats, everything. In the center of it all was a lady who was a dead ringer for Meryl Streep in
The Devil Wears Prada.

“Who's this?” The lady peered over her stylish half-rimmed plastic frames. Stepping closer, Leah realized they had no lenses, they were just a fashion statement.

“Leah, er, Lynnette Mandeville.”

“Size?”

“Four?” Leah said hopefully. Last week a four had fit her loosely. She'd never been so thin. Size-small jeans had never slid that effortlessly over her hips before.

The wardrober looked her over. “I don't think so.”

Leah's heart sank. All that hard work for nothing. They would send her home. She would be humiliated. She glanced over at Alfreddo, who was frowning.

“You're a zero or, max, a two. No way can you fit a four.”

A happiness Leah had never known fluttered through her body. A
zero!

“Try this.”

The white dress was backless except for thin silver threads in a cobweblike pattern. The satin skirt flowed easily over her hips and thighs.

“It's a little big. See? You might be a double zero. We don't carry those because we don't want models that thin.” The wardrober plucked at the spaghetti straps. “Let me pin you. Make sure you don't turn sideways to the cameras.”

Too big. Something was too big on her.

“Please try to put on some weight, sweetheart. You don't look very healthy.” The wardrober gave the gown a final tug. “I can barely keep these straps on you.”

Leah picked up the train and hurried into the hallway where Alfreddo had waited while she changed.

“That's it. I'm going to buy that dress for you after this shoot. In a double zero of course.”

Leah smiled at him for the first time. A double zero. If only she could show Shazan this dress. Her friend would be so proud of her. She would post a picture of herself on the ANA site tonight.

Leah slipped her feet into silvery sandals and was ushered to a black velvet room by Alfreddo.

Victoria was already there, perched on a piano. Her mouth dropped open when she saw Leah.

“Leah, please take your mother's spot on the piano. Victoria, we're going to have you sit on the bench as the pianist.” Alfreddo moved next to the photographer and gave his orders.

The director, a balding man with a jaunty beret, nodded. “Oui. Excellent. Chop, chop!”

Leah felt herself glowing as the spotlight shone down on her. She noticed a tightening around Victoria's lips as her mother poised her fingers on the piano keys and pretended to play.

“Fans!” the director called.

Leah tossed her hair back as a cool breeze blew over her face. So this was what it was like. No wonder her mother loved it so much.

“Look this way, darling. Alfreddo, she's a bit too thin. We need to hide her chest bones as much as possible.”

Leah glanced down. With the low neckline, she could see the outline of her ribs. Wasn't this what they wanted?

“Turn this way, Leah,” Alfreddo called.

Flashbulbs popped nonstop over the course of the next hour.

Leah changed into the jade-green minidress Alfreddo had mentioned. The hem stopped at midthigh and rode up farther as she leaned against the Grecian pillar.

The fiery, tomato dress with the plunging neckline was next.

The finale was a black one-shoulder goddess gown.

She was the star of every shot, with Victoria fading into the background.

Every command the director called out began with “Leah, give me sexy. Victoria, please smile more.”

It was over way too soon. As soon as the last picture was taken, Victoria left the room with a slam of the door.

I don't care,
Leah thought bitterly.
Serves her right.

Leah stood in the dressing room, still in the one-shoulder gown, unpinning the shoulder strap and the hem. A size 0 was
way
too big for her. How had this happened? Her collarbones jutted out and she could see every vein in her neck.

Finally. She'd been waiting for this day for so long.

A knock tore her eyes away from her reflection. “Come in.”

“Need help?” Alfreddo closed the door behind him. “I can't stop looking at you.”

Leah turned to tell him to get out. Instead, she turned around straight into his arms.

“Alfreddo, I—”

He kissed her, his tongue probing her mouth deep inside. “I'll take you to the top.”

“Me?” Leah pulled away.

“You don't need riffraff hanging around like that photographer in O.C. Stick with me. Your mother is washed out. Over. You're the new Victoria.”

The new Victoria? She, Leah, was more beautiful and desirable than
Victoria?
How was this even possible?

He kissed her again, harder. This time his hands slid the strap of her dress off her shoulder. “This isn't just business. We can be really good together.”

“Oh.” Leah's eyes opened in time to see her mother, a shocked expression on her face, as she stood silently in the corner of the room.