skinny ↠ diza

1

There are 24 hours in a day. 60 minutes in an hour. 60 seconds in a minute. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Half a minute is gone already. Half a minute of everybody's varying lengths of life. Those 30 seconds might have been someone's last. No, no, they definitely were. Somebody else just died as you were reading this. And again. I hope it wasn't someone you knew, that you loved, but it must've been someone that was known, that was loved, by at least one. I'd hope.

Liza pauses, her fingers resting on the black keys of her laptop. There's a strange white residue on the letters she doesn't want to explore, but it scrapes away at the touch of a nail.

She's done, probably. Writing her thoughts has become a habit of Liza, a habit that amassed a grand total of 2,018 tumblr followers. It felt like a lot, a lot of people to be reading her thoughts, her private thoughts.

Her finger slides across the mouse pad until it reaches POST. For a moment she watches her feed. All the ugliness she tries to stay away from always finds its way there eventually. No one cares about fat girls, it says. Liza stares at it, thinking of how cliché it is, but even she knows in the back of her mind that it makes her feel something.

Still, she disagrees, and reblogs an old painting of some roses, preferring to pretend she never read a word at all.

The time, the time Liza was thinking of so harshly just before has ticked and tocked over her head, as she glances over the clock she realises she has 20 minutes to get to class, so she flips the white blanket she was burrowed beneath across the best and sits up slowly before standing for the first time all morning. Closing her laptop and placing it on the floor, she walks the short, short, short, short distance between her bed and her dresser and picks one of her many large sweater and jean combinations.

-

Liza stays after class in the art studio, the teacher long ago giving her permission to stay and use the supplies. A small statuette sits in front of her, the bland face of a man, a crooked nose but otherwise perfect. She traces her finger along the line of his mouth, exploring the bowed shape, before roughly drawing it on the paper with charcoal and smudging.

Her art is definitely imperfect, but tumblr will love this one especially. The smudge of the cheekbones and under-eyes are a bit too dark to appear normal, he looks too thin.

Does anyone care about fat boys? No one cares about fat girls, apparently. Do they care about fat boys?

Liza touches the edge of the paper accidentally, the black charcoal staining her fingers transferring directly to it. She stares only for a moment, frustrated, before she rips the page in two, then four, and then she throws the four pieces of paper in the bin, looking at the black fingerprints now on all four pieces.

-

The moment Liza enters her apartment she hears sizzling and smells something cooking. Gabbie is definitely home then. The hallway seems especially long as she walks down to her room and drops her bag on the floor. Her shoulders ache from the way the straps had dug into her skin.

Afterwards, she walks into the kitchen to see what Gabbie is making. The smell of the food literally makes her feel nauseous, but she smiles widely anyway.

"Hey Gabbie, Gab, Gabbo, The Gabster." Liza jokes, making a finger gun in Gabbie's direction and sitting on one of the stools by the breakfast bar. "What are you making?"

"Stir-fry." Gabbie says, stirring the greasy noodle mess around the wok. "I needed some comfort food today."

Liza stares at the noodles, knowing exactly how Gabbie makes stir-fry. Oily, more meat than vegetables, large servings.

"Why do you need comfort food?" She asks.

"I saw Zane today and he was hanging out with some girl." Gabbie replies, staring intently at the wok, "Could mean nothing. Could mean something. I don't know."

"Awe, you're a mess Gabbie." Liza says in a high-pitched voice, batting her lashes. "Wittle Gabbie still hasn't told Zane she wuvs him?"

"And wittle Gabbie never will." Gabbie replies while turning off the stovetop. She stirs through the noodle dish one more unecessary time.

"You're usually so open with guys, I don't get it." Liza says, staring at the noodles, "Saying you've been friends for ages is, like, the worst excuse."

"You don't understand." Gabbie says, "It's literally so different compared to, like, crushing on someone you've just met."

"Baby." Liza laughs, hopping off her stool and grabbing two plates for the two of them. Gabbie grabs a pair of tongs and serves herself a generous portion before grabbing a fork and sitting down at the breakfast bar, taking the stool Liza was just sat on. "Hey, that was mine." She says, knowing the other stool is more rickety, less stable.

"You snooze, you lose." Gabbie says, grabbing out her phone.

Liza scoffs and takes a small portion of the stir-fry onto her plate. She takes a fork from the cutlery fork and stares at her meal for a moment.

There's broccoli in there, and water chestnuts, and some sort of leafy vegetable. Liza takes a water chestnut onto her fork and takes a small bite of it.

"So, today while I was walking to class I saw an albino pigeon." Liza says, waving the fork nearby her mouth and sitting on the rickety stool. It teeters from leg to leg.

"Really?" Gabbie asks with a mouthful of noodles.

"It was like, just sitting there and staring at me. I've never seen one before." Liza continues, dropping the water chestnut back onto her plate and splitting it in half with the side of her fork. Gabbie looks up and Liza pretends to chew and swallow something. "Also! I saw some guy wearing a shirt and all it said was beetroot in the middle in the tiniest, normalest font. I mean... most normal font."

Liza takes half a mouthful of noodle into her mouth and swallows before she continues talking. She talks and talks and talks until Gabbie is done, then she takes Gabbie's plate and puts it on top of her own mostly full plate of food. Gabbie doesn't see the food left on Liza's plate, concealed by her own, and Liza goes to put the plates in the sink.

She scrapes her left over stir-fry into the bin, reaches in and places a box from the bottom of the bin atop the mess she made. Her chest swims with some sort of twisted pride as she puts her now empty plate into the sink.

"I'm going to go have a shower!" Liza yells.

The bathroom is cold, and her reflection is right there staring at herself. She can't help it, lifting up the bottom of her baggy sweaty to see the skin underneath. She sucks in the hardest she can, before sighing and watching her stomach return to normalcy.

Like usual, she opens the shower door and reaches her arm across to turn the faucet as high as possible, as powerful as it can go. The sound of the water harsh is against the glass of the shower door, like a million tiny water bullets pelting the walls, the floor. Then, like every other day, Liza grabs her phone from her pocket, puts her music on shuffle, and drops to her knees on the ground in front of the toilet.