Jonni stood, naked, in front of her full length mirror, grimacing at the girl reflected back at her.
She was fat.
It was a hopeless endeavor, really. She'd tried for years to look thin, like those girls in the magazines, the ones that stood there glaring at you, lording their bodies over everyone. As Jonni leafed the pages it seemed as if they were mocking her. You'll never be like us, you cow, they would say, and Jonni could imagine the contempt in their voices. Never. And while part of her knew they were right, she refused to believe it. So she dieted---starved herself was more the term---ran until she was delirious, anything that could strip the fat from her body. It was a stubborn practice.
When she could no longer stand before the mirror, torturing herself with the living obscenity that was her body, she collapsed on her bed and began to cry. Weakly, for she didn't have the energy to really commit. She rarely had any energy for anything. Lack of food and a rigorous exercise regime that caused the world around her to fade left little room for much of anything else. Yet, she remained a cow. Everything she did was useless.
It was this uselessness that was behind Jonni's tears. She sat there, a sobbing lump--A sobbing fat lump, she reminded herself--until she heard her mother's muffled voice from behind her locked door.
"Jonni, dinner's ready," her mother said.
Jonni sighed. The thought of food awoke conflicting emotions in her: a nearly overpowering hunger, and an equally debilitating wave of nausea. While her stomach screamed at her for something to eat, the thought of giving in, of succumbing to the pain in her belly and eating something, made her want to throw up. She couldn't do that to herself. She'd come so far, she'd made so much progress.
Of course, she sneered silently, the explains the blob I see when I look into the mirror, Progress.
Her mother knocked again. "Johnna Lynn, you come down here and eat something. I know you haven't been eating lately."
"I eat at school," Jonni lied. "Please leave me alone. I've had a bad day and I'm tired." She could hear her mother sigh and turned to leave. She listened as her footfalls faded away to nothing.
Jonni climbed beneath her blanket without bothering with clothes. Ignoring the throbbing in her stomach, she squeezed her eyes closed and began to cry again. Soon, she fell to the mercy of sleep.
She never woke up.
When morning came, and Jonni hadn't made her way downstairs as per her custom, her concerned mother went up to check on her. Finding the door locked, she pounded on it vainly. Worried and nearing hysterics, she called up her oldest son to break the door down. Once inside the room, they found Jonni, still wrapped in her blanket, but cold as ice all the same.
Her mother pulled the blanket away and revealed her daughter's skeletal body.
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