[HarryStyles] Let Them Slip Out Of Your Mouth

Two.

Author's Note:

The beginning, the part in italics, may or may not be a trigger for some people, so skip over it if you think it might be, it's only two paragraphs.

Squatting down, I glance behind me, my eyes scanning the bathroom, making sure that the door is locked, checking for my toothpaste, I know that they're not home, that they're not going to hear me, no one can hear me, I’ve perfected this. They tell me that I should be skinnier, that they don’t understand someone without a flawlessly flat stomach got any of the parts that I've gotten, that I wear things that don’t make me look pretty, and I'm going to make myself pretty, I'm going to do it.

When I look in the mirror, I don’t like what I see, she’s a big girl, a fat one, overweight, she isn’t the happy girl she used to be, she doesn’t have that shine in her eyes, and she has these ugly bags painting juts below them. “She’s so ugly, they say. Look at her love handles, they say.” Laughing without any humor, a masochistic, humorless laugh, I run my hands through my hair, holding it back with both hands, as I lower myself to my knees. “I wish she died, they say. She swallowed the dress, they say.” And with that, I don’t even have to gag myself, I lean over the toilet bowl, and there goes the three crackers that I ate for lunch.

“Are you sure that you want to go out?” My dad looks up from his laptop, raising an eyebrow, cocking his head to the side, like he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if he should stop me or let me go, all of this is new to him, and I feel horrible, he’s in pain just like I am, and I don’t want him to be. He’s amazing, my dad, he raised two girls all on his own, I was seven when my mom left and Kayla was one when she left, he’s the best person in my whole life, he’s my hero, and I hurt him, I destroyed him, I kept all of my problems a secret from him, I broke our pinky promise that I would always go to him when something was wrong.

He found out when there was nothing he could do to help me, it was to the point where he had to send me somewhere, because I was so bad, I couldn’t stop, I had to do all of those things, I wasn’t pretty enough, I had to be pretty, I wasn’t happy, I would have walked in front of a train if I had the opportunity. I repaid him in the worst way possible, it was the first time that I saw him cry, when he drove me to Larkin’s Health Hospital, I didn’t like it, it made me feel worse, but I didn’t tell him that until I got better, I didn’t like watching my hero cry because of me.

Shrugging my shoulders, I run a hand through my hair, it’s not boney anymore, I can’t see my bones, the skin isn’t sticking to them, they never really were, I got to the point where starving myself and purging let me at a certain weight, I didn’t gain and I didn’t lose, but I'm healthy now, I weight what I'm supposed to weigh, and they're proud of me, I know they are, they remind me all the time. “I don’t know. I have to sooner or later.” Sitting on the stool next to him at the kitchen counter, I sigh softly, biting down on my lower lip, noticing that he’s emailing Simon, but I don’t say anything about it.

“Are you going to be comfortable going out?” Closing his laptop mid-email, he turns to look at me, raising an eyebrow, and I realize that my dad is no longer upset, he’s no longer in pain, and that makes it so much easier, because that became a huge problem when I checked into the hospital, how much pain I was putting him through. “Who are you going out with?” They told me that I should get used to him being like this, questioning my actions, overbearing at times, but I don’t see it like that, I would have seen it like that before, but now I know he’s just trying to protect me from what used to destroy me before all of this.

At one point, people were attacking my father, because he looks unconventional, because he has tattoos all over his body, because he’s built bigger than most fathers, and he didn’t really care. He asked us if we thought he was doing a good job, we told him that we wouldn’t want anyone else, that was all he needed, and he didn’t let it bother him. Clearly I didn’t get that trait from him, unless it really did bother him and he just dealt with it himself, in healthy ways.

I don’t know if I'm comfortable going out tonight, because I know that people are waiting for pictures of my first week back in the real world, outside of the bars of a mental institution. “All I know is that Beau wants to go out for dinner and I want to get out of the house. I’ve been in the house for three days now. I want to go out. Why don’t you and Kayla come with us? It will be like a family dinner.” Spinning around on the stool, I grip onto the edge of the counter, stopping myself, smiling up at him. “It will be fun. And you’ll be there to protect me.”

When my father realized that college wasn’t really a part of my career, that going to college would mean no more acting, and I don’t think that he liked it. I want to go to college, I can take classes online, but to him that’s not the same, he hates that I'm not going to college, that I'm not going to make lifelong friends like he did, but I'm not him, and I love acting. “Your sister wants to go to some restaurant in the Village.” The best part about living here is that when you walk down the crowded sidewalks of Manhattan, no one knows who you are, no one really cares, people don’t take notice.

They don’t like living here, they like it better at the house in California, but I love it in the apartment in New York, and I know that we have to go back to the house in California, since Uncle Jake needs the apartment back, they’re coming back from their vacation, they stay here, pay rent like anyone else would, only because Uncle Jake flipped when my dad said that they didn’t have to pay anything. “I just want something other than macaroni and cheese.” Lifting my shoulders, I let them drop, and he smiles, hearing me talk about food makes him happy.

&&/

“Braelyn, over here!”

“Braelyn, why did you go to Larkin’s Health Hopsital?”

“Beau, what are you doing out to dinner with the Jefferson family?”

“Do you think you’re like Demi Lovato?”

Running a hand through my hair, I look up and smile softly, not saying anything, a tight, closed smile, my teeth hidden behind lips, and I lower my head, hearing what they’re screaming, but not processing them, I don’t care, about all of them except the last one. I don’t sing, I will never sing, I have never been on a Disney show, nor will I ever get involved with Disney, and that’s just a few ways I'm nothing like her, partly because I'm my own person, and I'm actually an actress. That was mean, I take it back, I didn’t mean that.

“Braelyn, are you going to get back into acting?”

“What are you doing on your three months off?”

“You look a little different, Braelyn. Pose for a picture so people can see!”

Bowing my head, I squeeze on my sister’s hand that I'm holding onto, making sure that she wasn’t getting lost in the crowd of reporters, the paparazzi, and I know that they were going to be here, they were waiting. They weren’t allowed on the street that I live on, I live on a normal street, in a two story house, nothing extravagant, nothing that MTV Cribs would ever want to show, and our neighbors tend to call the police, not on us, on the paparazzi, so they just wait at the end of the street, I'm used to it, it never goes away.

“Do you like being called the female version of One Direction when it comes to fame?”

Laughing, Kayla tugs on my hand as I furrow my eyebrows, not understanding what the question means, it doesn’t make any sense, my career always came with paparazzi, I'm not like anyone, I don’t know why people keep asking me these questions, I'm my own person. The things that people ask, I don’t know where they get their information, what they expect me to say, I know better than to answer these questions, I’ve never really gotten angry enough to answer, and I don’t really intend on ever answering, they always twist your words or pretend that you said something to them anyway.

“Are you and Beau dating?”

“Did you go crazy? Is that why you went to Larkin’s?

“What happened to you being a judge on the X Factor?”

“We heard that you’re going to have a reality show on MTV. Is that true?”

“Ed Sheeran or Harry Styles?”

Who?