I thought he was the first person who could see me, but he was just the first person to speak about me with any authority. Told me he knew what I wanted more than I knew myself. He made me feel like a girl in a rock song, sugar turning to something poison. He loved to be the thing that poisoned me. He always said that. I told myself I wanted to be a good friend, but really I would have done anything for a boy to like me. When I looked outside of myself I knew that I was valid and worthy and good. I got straight A's and I was the newspaper editor and I was a cheerleader and I had enough friends that I wasn't totally alone. But I craved. Everything was happening to anybody but me and I was born with this big dumb body five sizes too big and if I could have skinned myself like a carrot I would have. There was not an inch of myself that I did not hate, did not want to hack off piece by piece until I was a bloody mess with a heartbeat humming a Taylor Swift song. By the 8th or 9th grade I realized everyone was sick of hearing me call myself fat and so I stopped. I did not give the feeling a language and kept it deep in a hollow inside myself. Would walk past a mirror and pinch my skin—arm, face, elbow, hand, it didn't matter—and wish it would be gone. Fall asleep at night trying to put my face on a skinny girl's body. Night after night I could never make the image make sense. I would have to start over, shave off piece by piece until I got a version of myself I could live with. Wonder how many pounds it would take to do that, and always assume it must be a thousand. Feel trapped in this stupid flesh that I never even signed up to inhabit. Never ask to borrow my friends' clothes, because it will not fit, and then I will die. So when a boy with black hair and brown eyes and a smile like it knew my secrets wanted to touch my heaving earthquake body how could I ever say no to that? It did not matter if he would leave me waiting for hours or if he would pick fights or sometimes call me things like a dumb slut stupid whore just it admit you know you are one. Because sometimes he would press his forehead against mine and trace his fingers against every inch of me. I want you so bad he would whisper with his hands full of my skin and for a moment, gasping, I would believe him.