You could never understand the despair.

It began in the afternoon, usually, sometimes the evening. That day it was brought on by her weight when she weighed herself at six o’clock. (As a minimum, she liked to weigh herself when she woke up, at noon, at four, at eight, and at ten, which was just before she went to bed.) For breakfast she had eaten what she was used to eating, a bowl of Cheerios with almond milk and a white chocolate macadamia Clif bar, approximately 550 calories, although calories didn’t have much clout with her, so she didn’t keep close track.

At noon she had weighed herself and everything had been fine. The following day’s projected weight was 113.25 pounds, one pound down from that morning. But that was only if she didn’t eat for the rest of the day, which was unlikely, considering how hungry she was.

It was justified, she decided, to eat a few pretzels. That wouldn’t make a difference. A half pound at most.

At 6:30, before ballet class she weighed herself again. 115.5 pounds, meaning that if nothing changed she’d weigh 114.25 the next day, half a pound more than expected and exactly the same as what she had weighed that morning. Now her situation was precarious. Even just a few sips of water could cause her to weigh a quarter of a pound more the next day. It could cause her to gain weight.

She knew it wasn’t real weight, she knew that, really, but it never made her feel any better. Hopefully that day’s class wouldn’t be very hard, and she’d only need to drink a little, and everything would be okay. Everything would be fine, she would be fine, it wouldn’t be ruined.

At the start of class she was always thin, or thin enough. But somewhere between tendus and ronds de jambes, she grew. Her thighs especially looked unwontedly huge and it took enormous effort to suck her stomach in enough that it looked concave.

Inevitably someone would start complaining about how they’d gained weight. That day it was Sam, who was as thin as most celebrities but still on the fat side for a dancer.

“Last night I ate like half a box of the Girl Scout cookies I got from Mary. I feel liked I’ve gained like ten pounds.”

Sam directed that to Matthew, and then she started demonstrating all the different kinds of crunches she’d done to forestall her stomach getting fat.

By then barre was finished and she and everyone else went out to get a drink from the water fountain. Just one sip, not so much that she could feel the water sloshing around below her sternum.

A strange thing happened when everyone reunited to do center, starting with quarters. As long as she sucked her stomach in and stood up straight, she was thin enough again. Though it was strange it wasn’t unique, because that was what happened every ballet class, every day.

Things continued on in basically the same way during pirouettes, and when the teacher used his truncheon to keep time for chaînés, all the way through grands jetés when her feet refused to point sufficiently. But at the very end of class, they did fouettés. Everyone stood at the back of the room save for the two or three people currently turning.

For some reason she thought she looked bigger from the back of the room, and for some reason it was her thighs in particular that drew her eyes. It was the tights, partly. She was wearing the Capezio ones that were more white than pink and therefore made her thighs look bigger, especially because of how the lividness of the tights contrasted with the dark purple of the leotard.

Fortunately there was just the one thing left, not a calvary, and after that she was able to go home. Before she left she took her hair down, because it always got so frizzy during class and she wanted to avoid being seen like that as much as possible. As usual her mom wasn’t there yet, and she had to text her and wait for her to arrive.

Once she got home but before she changed out of her dance clothes and weighed herself, she took her medicine. It was Prozac, 20 mg, but she really needed to be taking more of it if she wanted to be able to do her homework on time for the rest of the year.

Sometimes the Prozac burned her throat, in a chemical kind of way. The pill would feel like it was stuck obliquely in her throat, and then a few minutes later it’d start to burn all of a sudden. It could last for an hour, and there was nothing she could do to get rid of it. If she ate it’d feel better temporarily, but eating was not allowed. To eat would be callow.

That night she was lucky and nothing went wrong. She’d weigh herself, and then watch TV or read, and then go to bed. No complications, nothing to worry about.

But instead of the expected 115.25 pounds, she remained 115.5. It was such a small thing, but to her it honestly felt like the end of the world. Like she had completely failed at her whole life and might as well give up one everything. There was nothing to be done, though. All she could do was ignore the blandishments telling her that she might as well eat all she wanted now, and try to get through this crucible.

She wanted to cry and she vowed to never eat again (as she often did), but at that point things were simply immutable.

She didn’t have school the next day so there was really no need to go to bed early, but at that moment she really didn’t want to live with herself, so she watched old Nickelodeon cartoons on Netflix until she was tired enough to fall asleep.



The next morning her alarm woke her up at 8:30, and by then she felt a bit better about everything. The chance of a fresh start did usually help. Once she had checked at least four times that the bathroom door was locked (OCD and nearsightedness do not go together well) she weighed herself, finally resigned to the expected 114.5 pounds. But instead, almost to her incredulity, the scale balanced at 114 pounds, and closer to 113.75 than 114.25. As absurd as it seems, and as she knew it was, that made her inconceivably happy.