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  A few years later, I got the chance to play on a real grand piano in a music studio my piano teacher rented for our annual recital downtown. On the day of the concert, I spent equal time trying to improve my piano playing and trying to improve my appearance. I had this theory that I would play better if I looked good. About an hour before we were due to leave the house, I put on my best outfit and went to the bathroom to inspect myself in the mirror and see if I looked pretty enough to play beautiful music.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  Huge, red, and ready to ooze. An angry volcano sitting in the middle of my right cheek, pulsing with the fires of the earth’s core. I could see it throbbing steadily, preparing to erupt. I could almost feel the lava coursing down my face and dripping off my chin. I could only imagine the crater that would be left behind, a gaping hole where I once had a face!

  I ran to the bathroom, hand held tightly against my cheek, trying desperately to hold back nature’s fury. There had to be something I could do! Something that could make my face come back again. Then I remembered. Steve. He was old, almost three years older than me. He was almost fifteen. He might have something that could tame the beast before I had to show my face in public.

  “Steve!” I yelled, running down the hall. “I need your help!”

  “Why are you holding your face? Is it falling off?” My brother thinks he has a sense of humor. He is alone in that opinion.

  “I have a facial problem. I need some cream or something. You must have something.”

  “Move your hand so I can see.”

  “No! Just give me something to make it go away!”

  Steve rolled his eyes and came over to try and pry my hand away but I was too quick for him. Or so I thought for about thirty seconds until he caught up with me and managed to pull my hand away from my face. He stood back, still holding my hand so I couldn’t run and hide, and stared at me intently.

  “Oh,” he finally said, after what seemed like hours. “You have a zit. Wow, is it your first one? Starting young, are you? Would you like some zit stuff? I will get that for you.” He patted me on the head like a puppy and walked over to his dresser.

  “A zit! You make it sound so small! Look at me!” This couldn’t be defined with only three letters! Something this big deserved at least half the alphabet! “I can’t go to the concert!”

  “Maddie, get over yourself. You have a small zit – sorry, pimple – on your cheek. It will most likely be gone by tomorrow. You can hide it, anyway. Ask Mom for some makeup or something. You are seriously out of your strange little mind.” He turned his back on me and went back to his computer.

  I took the bottle he gave me, read the directions carefully, and put the cream on my face. The bump still looked totally disgusting and the bottle said it could take up to a week to cure it. I didn’t want to ask Mom for makeup because I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have any and even if she did, she would say I was too young to wear it and that pimples were a normal part of growing up. That was the kind of thing my mom said about a lot of the stuff I tried to talk to her about. Looking back, I guess it was mostly kid stuff, like friend troubles and school and hair starting to grow in strange places, but it all seemed important to me at the time. I was pretty sure pimples would fall under her category of normal.

  Annie didn’t wear makeup and she didn’t seem to have anything strange and new developing on her face yet, so I couldn’t really ask her either. It figures that if I was going to be better and faster than Annie at something, it would be growing pimples!

  So, I went to the concert, pimple prominently displayed on my cheek, and played my piece as badly as I had ever played it. My teacher was disappointed and didn’t seem too impressed with my explanation. She just didn’t see the connection between my cheek and my fingers. I told my mother that my teacher was disappointed in me and that I felt disappointed in myself. Mom said that I shouldn’t worry about it and that dealing with disappointment was a normal part of growing up. Then she mentioned that I had a pimple on my cheek and asked me if I wanted to borrow some cover-up when we got home.

  March 20

  I can’t believe it! They caught me! How could they possibly know? I am the champion of garbage removal. No fingers down the throat, no gross noises. Nothing. I’ve practiced for ages. I can’t believe they just walked in and caught me. Is there no privacy in this place? Obviously not. Score one point for the Redheaded Demon of the Ward.

  So now my whole good girl image is in the toilet along with the stupid protein shake. I can’t believe this place! What did I do to deserve this? I’m going to be sitting in this room forever if this keeps up. I’m on what they call an “individualized schedule,” meaning I’m a pain in their collective butts and I’m not out with all the model prisoners doing fun things like circle time and group discussions. I’d rather have my teeth pulled one at a time than be part of the gang mentality around here but if I don’t persuade them of what a good girl I am and join their little pseudo-community, I don’t know if I’ll ever get out of this place. It’s like we graduate from one level to another here. I wonder if there’s a ceremony. A cap and gown would be nice. Especially as, at this rate, I don’t think I’ll be graduating from high school any time soon! Anyway, most people start on the individual schedule, which means we have private counseling and work mostly in our own space. We exercise with a worker standing there keeping watch and eat on our own, with our own customized diet.

  They like to think that they give us choices here and they keep telling me I can join the group schedule when I feel ready. They really mean that I can join when I show them that I am behaving myself according to their rules. I don’t like their rules.

  So they can just wait because I’m not ready to play the game their way yet. There has to be a way out of this place without doing what they want me to do.

  chapter 3

  When I was a little girl, I used to think my mom knew pretty much everything. She was the one who told me what I needed to know about life. She taught me things like how to ride my bike and swim, and she helped me with my homework. I thought that she had all of the answers. The older I got, though, the less she seemed to understand about real life. My real life, anyway. It’s not that she was mean or anything like those evil mothers you see on TV. She was just sort of off in her own space. Motherland, where everything made sense to her in her own mind and she didn’t think she had to look inside mine. She couldn’t see what bothered me or scared me or embarrassed me any more, even when I tried to tell her. Like the day she took me to buy my first bra.

  When my body decided to make its journey from kidhood to adolescence, the first thing that decided to “blossom” was my chest. That’s the polite way of saying that I started growing boobs before pretty much anyone I knew. I know that this is supposed to be a good thing. These wobbly mounds of flesh are supposed to be attractive and womanly and sexy and all those wonderful things. Only, I was just a kid, like eleven, and none of those things mattered to me at all. What mattered to me is that I suddenly looked funny in a T-shirt and that boys were looking at my chest instead of my face and I was embarrassed to change for gym class. The worst part is that it took my mom forever to notice and when she did, her solution to the problem wasn’t much help.

  I made it very clear that I was not interested in bra shopping with my mother. It seemed to me that bras were like underwear or socks, the kind of thing your mother should buy for you when you are somewhere else. My mother did not agree and insisted that I come with her. I discovered another new fact about growing up … there is nothing more embarrassing in the history of the world than being in the lingerie department with your mommy and having someone you know from school walk in.

  I can still picture it in every mortifying detail. My mom took a very small white bra off the rack and held it up to my chest while I closed my eyes and tried to will myself into another dimension. Not just a small bra. A Training Bra. What exactly were we supposed to be training them to do? Sinc
e I didn’t even want them, I didn’t see why I had to spend time training them!

  I opened my eyes and there they were. Tony Giardino and Cody Bellefontaine, the two cutest guys in my class. Just standing there while my mom tried to figure out if my boobs were going to fit into my teeny tiny white cupless bra. Well, they weren’t exactly standing in the bra department. They were over by the CD racks in the next aisle but they could definitely see me and I could see them. I was sure they were looking at me and I think I saw Cody gesture in my direction. I pushed my mother away, trying to point at the guys without them seeing me.

  My mother looked somewhat blankly in the direction that I was pointing. “What are you doing?” she asked calmly.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing? Can’t you see them?” I yelled, which wasn’t really the smartest thing to do under the circumstances. The guys laughed and walked away before my mother actually bothered to focus. By the time she looked there was no one there but a salesclerk sorting out CD cases. I could feel my cheeks starting to burn along with my eyes. I don’t know why I felt like crying. My stupid eyes welled up at the dumbest times. I told them sternly to stop. My mom would think I was being a baby if I cried over underwear.

  “See who, Madison?” she asked me, in that very mild tone she always used at times like this. “Do you mean that sales-clerk? I don’t think he is very interested in your underwear, honey.” She held another bra up to my chest. She was right; the salesclerk didn’t even give us a second glance.

  “There were two boys from school. Over there by the CDs. They were totally looking at me and my stupid training bra!” I explained, trying not to whine.

  “I’m sure they weren’t looking at you. They were probably looking at CDs and not interested in what we were doing at all. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it was your imagination.” My mom went back to taking bras out of packages and holding them out for all to see. She really didn’t get it at all.

  My mom has always said that I have an overactive imagination and that it’s my father’s fault because his head is always in the clouds. Back then, she said I imagined things as so much worse than they really were because I was starting to deal with my adolescent angst. I didn’t know that I had angst of any age. Mom said hormones had something to do with it and that I would grow out of it. In the meantime, she said I should try to tame my imagination. Like a dog. Down, boy.

  March 23

  They weighed me today. I’ve gained a pound in the last two weeks. It’s those stupid protein shakes. At this rate, I’m going to weigh three hundred pounds before they let me out of here. Then they’ll have to send me to a fat farm to get rid of it and then they’ll send me back here to put it back on. I’ll end up spending the rest of my life being told what to eat and when to go to the bathroom.

  I can’t even exercise when I want to. They control that too. I have it in my special schedule once a day for one hour with someone standing there telling me what I can and can’t do. Look out: Big Redheaded Sister is watching you.

  This place is getting to me. It’s full of messed-up girls who spend their whole time moaning about their bodies and asking for other people to tell them what to do about their life. I don’t fit in with them. I’m in control of my body and my life. I know what I want and I don’t need some counselor to tell me how to live. I didn’t ask to be here.

  Why is it that it’s mostly girls in here, anyway? Is there some rule that says girls have to worry more about how they look than boys? I think there is a rule like that. Most of the girls I know think about their looks all the time and talk about their bodies non-stop. I don’t see my brother doing that. He eats what he wants and spends about five minutes getting ready in the morning. As far as I know, he doesn’t worry about makeup or hair products or whether his jeans make him look fat.

  Women are supposed to be thin and beautiful. It’s the way of the world. Anybody who watches TV knows this. When you see a chubby girl on TV, she’s usually the funny one without a boyfriend. Overweight women who are trying to be amusing seem to only talk about being fat, and people laugh even though we all know they secretly want to be thin. I don’t think being chubby is very funny. I think it’s sad. Unless you’re a guy, that is. If you’re a movie guy you can be old, fat, and gross and still be married to some impossibly gorgeously slim young thing. I think the old fat guy should be put on a serious diet or the woman should dump him. That’s what would happen if it was the other way around.

  Actually, I think I did see a guy here yesterday. It was just for a second and I may have been imagining it. He walked past my room and seemed to be looking at me. I was going to try to sort of like nod at him in a friendly way, or something daring like that, but he moved away too fast. I went to my door to see where he was but he was gone. Oh, well, I’ve never been good at the whole guy thing anyway. I’ve never been able to coordinate my brain and my mouth long enough in the presence of an interesting male-type creature to actually say anything remotely intelligent or interesting. I tend to stutter and stammer just enough that I end up drooling, which seems to always put an end to any romantic possibilities.

  chapter 4

  Fast forward. Grade eight. Puberty in full swing. Pimples and hips competing to see who can get the biggest. My friends are all getting taller and I just seem to stop growing. My legs are long enough to reach the ground, I guess. I begin to learn the first lesson of being a short person: Food is no longer your friend.

  No really, I’m not kidding. Once your body stops going up, it has nowhere to go but out. I still liked to eat the same old food but I didn’t seem to have as many places to put it, so it made new places. Mostly it landed on my hips and thighs. I knew I wasn’t the only one this was happening to, but it felt like it sometimes. Annie sure didn’t seem to be changing much.

  I didn’t really worry about it until my thirteenth birthday. I mean, I knew my body was changing and everything, but at the risk of sounding like my mother, I also knew it was kind of normal. Everyone has to grow up, right? We all do it in different ways, right? I didn’t always have to like it but it wasn’t as if I was sick or deformed or anything. So I was understandably pissed when my mother informed me that I had to go to the doctor for a checkup. I didn’t think I needed to be checked up. I knew that I was in one piece, nothing seemed to be growing where it shouldn’t be and even if I wasn’t always thrilled with where it ended up, I was feeling relatively healthy. I frequently felt somewhat nuts, but I knew from health class that feeling crazy was an expected side effect of adolescence. I knew this was true because all of my friends, except the always cool Annie, were having meltdowns every couple of weeks or so about all kinds of truly insignificant things that seemed desperately significant when we were thirteen.

  “Mom! I don’t need the doctor if I’m not sick!”

  “You’ve had regular checkups since you were little. That doesn’t change. If anything, it’s more important now.”

  “Why? I have been going to him since I was a baby. I don’t need to see him anymore. What’s he going to tell me? That I’m not sick. Quite the newsflash.”

  “Don’t use that tone with me. I already made the appointment and you are going.”

  “You made the appointment without asking me? Half the time you tell me how grown up I am and then you treat me like a little kid. Nice, Mom.” I flounced out of the room before she could comment on my tone again. Mom seemed to be commenting on my tone a lot in those days. I didn’t know what she was talking about because I was using the same tone I had always used. She was the one who was using a tone. She was talking to me like I was three years old half the time and like I was thirty-three the other half. I never knew what she wanted from me and everything I said was wrong. I couldn’t win with her at all and apparently couldn’t even make my own decisions about something as private as a doctor’s appointment. I was not impressed but I didn’t really have the guts to out and out refuse to go. So I went under protest. My mother noted the protest but was unmoved by
it.

  Have you ever had one of those full physical things? If you haven’t, don’t bother. If you have, my sympathies. First they make you strip in a little room with an unlocked door where you’re afraid someone is going to walk in on you and see you in your naked glory. They give you this ugly blue gown to put on that ties behind your neck and back and flaps open on your bum. I put it on, trying to tie the string as tightly as I could while grabbing at the back, trying to hold it closed.

  “Hello there,” the doctor said cheerfully as he entered the room. Glad he was having a good time.

  “Hi,” I muttered. At least, I imagine that’s what I said.

  “Hop up on the table for me, please.”

  Hop? How do you hop when you’re trying to hold your gown shut? I got up onto the table, but I did not hop. I eased my way up carefully, looking like a total idiot when I ended up sitting on the hand I was using to keep my modesty.

  I noticed the shiny pair of silver stirrups attached to the end of the examination table when I walked in. I knew what they were because I watched TV. I was glad that I was still basically a kid and wasn’t anywhere near that type of totally embarrassing scene.

  It was still embarrassing enough. I won’t go into the details, but let’s just say that more skin got exposed than I was planning on showing anyone for a while, let alone a wrinkly old man who didn’t seem too worried that he had totally invaded my personal space and blown it away. The whole thing was uncomfortable on a number of levels and so totally unnecessary that I swore it would be the last time I went to a doctor unless I was sure I was dying of something dramatic. I also swore at my mother a few times under my breath for making me come here in the first place.