My Secret Life (16 page)

‘Well then,’ she continues, ‘this will make him like you. You just have to do it now or else you’ll never know.’

Still unsure of what to do, I take the card from John, who looks nervous for me now. It’s not like he can say anything against the girls anyway but deep down, I appreciate his evident concern. I remove the card from its plastic covering and open it up, looking at all the kisses running down the inside of it. Whoever made this must have really liked kissing.

‘Well go on!’ the ringleader insists. I take the pen in my hand and shakily, scribble down on the card:

To Emmet,

Happy Valentine’s Day.

From, Leanne.

I write his name on the envelope and just as I’m about to tuck the card away into the paper, the girls around me start demanding to see what’s written and telling me to stop hiding it. Even John is interested now to see what I have written and rather suddenly, the card has been snatched from my hand.

‘That’s crap!’ shouts the ringleader. ‘You didn’t even put in any kisses.’

‘You have to put kisses in at the end, otherwise it doesn’t really count,’ another informs me. I refuse and try to grab the card back out of her hand. I’m not quick enough and the other girls form some kind of human wall around her.

‘I’ll put them in for you, if you’re too chicken to do it’, she bellows. I knew this was a bad idea. I want to go back just two minutes in time and not take that pen in my hand. I have a lump in my throat and am scared of what’s going to happen. The girls are all smiling broadly with those dangerous smiles that always set off alarm bells in my chest. By now, most of the boys have taken interest too and are laughing at top volume. There is no teacher in the classroom to protect me and give out to them because all the teacher’s are on their break, with someone walking the halls to keep all the classes in order. I pray in my head that they will walk into our classroom, tell everyone to sit back down in their seats and to stop messing.

I watch as one scratches two kisses beneath my name on the card. Then she shouts, ‘Look! She put kisses in and everything,’ to the rest of the class, holding the card up high like a golden trophy. I feel flustered and then I snap at her, telling her to stop messing around.

‘Oh relax,’ one tells me, ‘we’re only having a bit of fun. Why are you such a buzz kill?’

‘It’s okay, Leanne,’ the ringleader announces, ‘I’ll give the card to Emmet.’

‘No.’ I say, not even stopping to think. A knowing look of insult flashes across her face.

‘Why not? I’m trying to do you a favour here. Are you telling me you’re going to walk up to him yourself and give it to him?’

‘No,’ I mumble.

‘Right, well then it’s settled. I’ll give it to him when we go outside.’

When the second bell rings and everyone starts to shuffle their way out the door, I’m already sick to my stomach. I had a five minute wait before lunchtime was over and it had felt like hours, giving my tummy time to curdle and my anxiety to catch every organ in my body and set them alight. I haven’t said a word or touched any of my food. I want all this to stop now but know it’s too late, everything is out of my power and there’s nothing I can do. I trot outside the classroom and make my way to the yard. I can see Emmet up ahead of everyone laughing and joking with his friends.

I’m going to be the butt of that joke soon
, I think to myself.

When we’re finally outside, I sit down on the curb with a few of the girls from my class. They’re all buzzing about the card but I’m not saying a word. Eventually, one of the girls finally seems to notice me for the first time, as if I had just walked over a moment ago.

‘Oh Leanne,’ she says, ‘so I’m going over with the card now, okay?’

Everyone giggles. I don’t reply. I wish I could sink into the gravel at my feet and stay there until all this has passed.

‘HELLO?’ she insists.

‘Yeah, okay,’ I say under my breath. With that, herself and another girl start trotting off across the yard; they’re giddy and nearly hysterical as they leave. Most of the boys are playing football in an empty space in the middle of the yard. I watch as the two approach Emmet mid-match. There seems to be a moment of confusion when all the boys notice what’s happening. A crowd encircles them and soon enough, roars and howls can be heard echoing all around them, bouncing from the concrete walls all the way over to the church beside us. All the boys are laughing, while one of the girls continues to talk to Emmet, who looks down at the card in his hands with a blank expression.

Some apparently outrageous comment is passed and sets the cluster of people off into chaos. While the boys start hopping around Emmet, thumping him on the back, the ringleader glances back at me with a threatening glint in her eye. I’m frantic now and look to Emmet’s face; I can’t tell if he’s smiling or laughing. All I can see is that his cheeks have flared red. He stretches out his arm and tries to give the card back to the girls from my class and that lump in my throat is huge now. I want to cry. The ringleader puts her hands up, refusing to accept it and then she hurries back to the rest of the girls and I on the curb. One or two of the boys from a different class follow. Emmet stuffs the card in his back pocket, still red faced, shoving all the boys off him and eventually resumes his football game.

‘What did you say?’ I ask them upon their return. It’s all I can think about.

‘Nothing, relax,’ she replies. She’s lying. I know she is. Within moments of the lie falling from her mouth, however, a boy called Luke runs up and makes a sudden halt in front of me. Luke is one of Emmet’s friends.

With no warning, he blurts out, ‘Is it true you actually did all those kisses on that card?’ Horror descends over me. One of the bullies had told everyone that I had put on lipstick and kissed all over the inside of the Valentine’s card.

‘No!’ I fret. ‘No, I didn’t! It’s just the design.’

‘Liar,’ Luke laughs.

‘I’m not lying! Rub the card and you’ll see, it’s just the design on it.’

‘As if anyone’s going to touch where your lips have been!’

With this last statement, Luke and the other boys stroll away, holding one another up as they laugh. Yet again, I am the laughing stock of the entire year. I want to stand up and scream at these girls for making me do this and for lying to all the boys about the kisses on the card. But I remain on the ground, afraid that if I stand too quickly the adrenaline I feel now will fade and I’ll crumble and maybe even cry.

‘Why did you lie to them?’ I demand.

‘Oh Jesus,’ she says, rolling her eyes, ‘you’re no fun at all. We’re only joking, have a sense of humour.’

This is the end of the discussion and I know it. If I push the matter any further, she and I will have a fight and then the girls won’t talk to me for ages. That’s the last thing I need now. When it’s time to go inside, I’m relieved to finally leave the yard. As we walk to the classroom, all the boys are still hooting and laughing at me. While Emmet shuffles as fast as he can down the corridor and out of sight, his face still blooming pink as he goes. The walk down the corridor had seemed so long and when I finally sit down, I think I can’t feel any worse than this.

A girl from my class called Shauna walks over to me. She’s a nice girl who is very quiet but doesn’t pick on me. I look up to her and she awkwardly whispers, ‘Ehm, Leanne, you know that card you got off John? Well, I thought I should tell you, he brought it into school today for you.’

My heart plummets with guilt and regret. Not only had I let the girls make a fool out of me again, I had given away my very first Valentine.

‘Leanne, are you coming out with us this weekend?’ one of the girls asks later during class time. I don’t answer because I can’t bring myself to talk to her. I can see it all over her face how much this irritates her and I’m scared again.

‘Leanne,’ she repeats. ‘We’re still friends aren’t we?’

‘Yeah.’ I mutter.

‘So you’re coming out with us this weekend then?’

‘Yeah, I am.’

***

I am very fortunate to have always kept diaries from a very young age. They are usually forgotten until once in a blue moon, I may choose to take a trip back through the nostalgia of my past. It’s ironic; the many times I have read back through diary entries about these girls, I have cursed myself blind. I tell myself that I was a foolish girl for not seeing them for the bullies they were and for not refusing their friendship. And yet for all my self-righteous hindsight, the patterns of history seem forever destined to resurface and replay all over again. My relationship with bulimia during my teens wasn’t that much different to my relationship with these girls.

I both hated and feared my bulimia as I had done with those girls so many years ago. Yet in both cases, I simply could not bring myself to refuse them or let them go. No matter how much my bulimia or those children hurt me, I would always return to them when they called, unable to push them away. It’s difficult now to interpret what psychological mentality I was operating under – both at the age of 12 and again at 18 – to constantly surround myself with people and environments that would hurt me. It seemed a lot of the time I chose to do this. Sometimes I think over that issue of self-worth when I think back on such things. When it came to all the hurt, all the self-loathing and humiliation, deep down I think I chose these things because I felt it was what I deserved.

Under this logic, the most venomous thing in my life has always been me. I was my own worst enemy, choosing to envelope myself with things and people who I knew would cause me pain in some way. It was as if this punishment somehow acted as justification to my very existence, which for the most part, felt unwarranted. I was a prisoner of my own self-destructiveness and I could trace the pattern back years.

By the age of 18, however, some of the pattern had been broken; or at the very least, simply transformed into new methods of self-abuse like bulimia. You see, though I battled a raging eating disorder in the labyrinth of my mind, I was blessed to have the most devoted group of friends. I met most of these people around the ages of 14 and 15. The repercussions of the social misery I experienced before that point would have an immeasurable impact on my life in later years. But after that age at least, I would never again suffer what I had before at the hands of the people I called friends. The friends I met in my early teens were extraordinary souls who brought out the very best in me, while always accepting the very worst without judgement. I never knew people like this existed until that time. I was dazzled by them and forever in awe. To this day, such feelings retain that same tenacity as before and our bonds have been strengthened over the years. They were and always will be the collective heroes of this story.

However, prior to the day of my aforementioned doctor’s visit, it had been weeks since I’d spent a decent amount of time with my friends. I knew they were questioning my absence but no longer even had the energy or the notion to care. Something inside me had changed and I had let them go along the way. I had forgotten why we were friends and more worryingly, I had forgotten why I needed them so much. They knew about my eating disorder long before I ever did and had individually used the term in their many outbursts surrounding the issue. What’s more, they hated it with such a passion that I sometimes wondered if that person in my mind cowered from them in fear. Looking back now, a part of me hopes she did cower.

While that’s very easy to say now, of course the matter was an entirely different thing then. They became annoyances in my life. They were people I had to hide from and lie to because if I didn’t, they would give me and my secret ‘friend’ a whole world of trouble. In order to keep her safe, I had to distance myself from my friends as much as possible. Indeed, I think I lost a friend or two along the way; a regret that still lingers over me today. You would think – as I was convinced would happen – after so many arguments about my eating, so many tears and so many failures, that these people would eventually give up the fight and leave me in the depths of my disease. But they didn’t. In fact, they clung to me like glue, as if letting me go even slightly would cause me to slip through their fingers. In fact, their presence in my life was most apparent at the times I least wanted it, the times she saw it as inconvenient. They threatened her so much because above anything else, my friends were the constant living proof that I could care for something more than I cared for her.

One of the biggest turning points in my illness came with a simple phone call. The girls had arranged a lunch in one of their houses. Like everyone else, I agreed to join them. But when the minutes starting ticking closer and closer to the hour, uncontrollable trepidation set in. If I went, I would most certainly have to eat, as what person attends a lunch and doesn’t eat it? Coming home to purge would be no good because my mother would be home by that time and certainly question what would then be my second shower of the day. I contemplated trying to purge straight away after the lunch by excusing myself from the table, but knew that my friends were now watching me too closely for that. No, it had to be avoided completely.

I rang to say I couldn’t make it because I wasn’t feeling too well. It was an exhausted excuse by now but was all that came to mind in the moments of internal hysteria. They said they would come up to see me instead and naturally – perhaps even too hastily – I refused point blank. Something was different about this phone call. The tone of voice on the other end was wrong somehow and while chatting to just the one person, I could detect sounds of consternation and alarm in the background chatter. I hung up as soon as possible, slipping back onto the sofa with my empty stomach and comfortable in the knowledge that I could sleep until my mother came home.

When the unexpected knock came at the door, I didn’t hear it because along with everything else, my hearing seemed to be numbing away. But when the doorbell rang throughout the house, waking me up with an electric shock. Agitated by the abrupt awakening from my post-purge coma, I knew things were going to get worse when I opened the door to my friends. They said very little, as if afraid I would shut the door in their faces and instead bustled their way past me and into the sitting room. Confused and somewhat resentful about what I interpreted as utter rudeness, I sat down with them in the sitting room, a cold look darkening my wearied face.