The Freak By Hannah T. Ruffles

Senior Short Story entry

A girl stumbled out into the light from the darkness of the lockers, shaking and clutching her food and a book portraying a beautiful, slender warrior-girl on the cover. She could hear the words roll over and over in her mind.
Tubby. Roly-poly. Tub-boat.
She walked quickly as she could over to a seat under a shady tree and sat down. Some girls already sitting there glanced over, then one stood and motioned for the others to go.
They’d like you if you weren’t fat.
The girl unwrapped a coffee bun, greedily licking the icing as it dripped, sweet and sticky, onto her fingers. Opening her book, she began to shuffle through the pages. She froze as she heard a voice.
“…Yeah, mate I know,” the voice came from the middle of the yard. The girl sat, too terrified to move. “I mean, who reads at lunch? What a weirdo.”
“She’s fat, too,” said another voice, a girl’s. “Have you seen the blubber rolls on her? Get a bigger uniform, Fatso.”
The tears were coming now. The girl hunched over her book, burning with pain and humiliation.
“Yeah. I heard she even reads on the weekends. My mate lives near her, and he sees her every day with one book or the other. Get a life!”
“Seen the pimples on her? Looks like a pepperoni pizza. Spotty! Here, Spot!”
“Did you see her in HPE earlier? She was trying to run. Coach only told us to run the oval. She almost had a breakdown!”
“Loser.”
“Loner, too. She doesn’t have any friends.”
The voices whispered like dry leaves in her ear, making her blind and deaf except for the voices.
Loner.
Loser.
Spotty.
Fatso.
The voices rose to a crescendo, becoming louder and louder, blocking out even their owner’s voices.
FREAK!
The girl let out a choked sob, scrambling to her feet. She left her lunch, she left her book, she left everything as she fled. Every voice was laughing, laughing at the way her thighs wobbled as she ran, at the way she labored for breath. They laughed at her.
The girl finally reached the toilets. Stumbling into the cubical, she sat down on the toilet, sobbing freely. She pulled a chocolate bar out of her pocket and, ripping the plastic off with her teeth, stuffed the bar into her mouth.
Darling.
The voice echoed round the girl’s head. ‘No, no, no,’ she thought, groaning through the chocolate. She put her head in her lap, wrapping her arms around her head. ‘Not again. I don’t want to do it again.’
But you’ll be thin, darling, my precious one. They’ll all know how gorgeous you are. You’ll be beautiful.
“But it hurts,” moaned the girl aloud, reduced to a child with fear and pain.
I know, my lovely. You could stay as you are, but then they wouldn’t see you for the angel you are. Come on, sweetheart… Just once more.
The girl slipped off the toilet seat, falling hard on her knees. She ignored the hurt, instead listening to the voice as it crooned in her ear…
You can do it, honey. You always get scared before you go on a ride, don’t you darling? Think of this as rollercoaster to being beautiful.
“Okay,” murmured the girl. She leaned over the toilet bowel, swallowing hard. Then she jammed her fist into her mouth, yanking hard on the larynx at the back of her throat. The voice comforted her as she retched.
She heaved and coughed, but she could feel something wrong. It wouldn’t come out. She gagged, trying with increasing desperation to breathe. Her throat was clogged. She reached up again to clear her airway, but her vision was going dark. She fell forwards as blackness overtook her.