4She slips her hand down her shirt and enthusiastically adjusts her bra. We're walking down George St and we look like twins, only she is the beautiful one. I fall back a step and admire her as she struts along. It's beautiful, the way her bones stick out of the side of her knees. And it's beautiful the way the inner of her thighs curve outwards and meet in the shape of a perfect bow. I catch my reflection in a shop window and decide I have too much thigh muscle to ever be as beautiful as she is.
She catches me looking at my reflection and stops to join me, gleefully. "Perfect!" She swivels from right to left, admiring herself from every angle. "I could work a little on my stomach," she muses, and pats it. Her stomach seems sunken in, a small cave with ribcage for a roof. She mutters something about skipping lunch and continues to walk. I follow eagerly and suck my stomach in as far as I can.
We sit in front of her enormous dresser table mirror painting ourselves pretty. These products assert that they don't test on animals but that is about as true the lies we told our parents about where we are going tonight. Surely the dress code for church youth group wasn't skin tight black minis with sky high platform heels. As we tramped off down my front yard, we laughed hysterically. And now we sit in front of the dresser painting ourselves pretty.
"Contouring is important," she says, as she swirls her brush in the shitbrown powder. "If you do it just right, your face will look skinnier than it actually is." She sweeps it in one clean motion, just above the hollows of her cheeks, and she looks even more gaunt than before. And it looks beautiful. She hands me the palette and the brush and I hungrily swirl the brush around. "Careful placement is the key," she adds as she watches me, and I sweep it on. I stare at myself and decide that my cheeks are too chubby to ever be as beautiful as she is.
She only has a mother and they couldn't be any more similar. Their skin clings to their bones, and clothes drape on them just as if they were hanging on coat hangers. And it is beautiful.
It is dinner and I'm playing with the peas on my plate. Her plate is untouched, and there is an uncomfortable silence surrounding the table. She told me earlier not to eat anything her mum cooks, it is just carbs and carbs and carbs. She says she has a few Weight Watchers bars hidden in her bedroom, and we'd feast on them afterwards.
Her mother looks tired and white hairs radiate from her scalp which is gathered into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. I notice how much her wrist bone juts out from her skin, just like her daughter's, and think how lucky they are, to be so skinny. And so beautiful. Her cheeks are not even caked with the shitbrown powder and her face looks so long and lean. She eats her food and I wonder how she keeps her figure.
We wait impatiently in the waiting room of the tanning salon. She twirls her beachwaved hair in between her manicured fingers, and chews loudly on her bubble-gum. She says that's the secret, "If you chew gum after you eat, something in your mouth releases something to your brain, and you will eat less." I've tried this, but all I get after five chews is the artificial taste of plastic. Sometimes I admire the strength she has. Maybe if I were stronger, I would be as beautiful as she is.
She stands up with the receptionist lady calls our names, and motions towards me. We walk together into the room, and strip down to our underwear. She turns on the radio and winks at me. "When we get out, we'll be beautiful bronzed babes. All the boys will want us." And she will be beautiful, I tell myself. She steps into the tanning bed and closes the lid. I do the same, only I decide I will never be as bronzed a babe as she is.
I am at home, sitting in front of the television with my older brother. I remember sometimes when she came over they would talk as if they were long lost friends, and she would bat her eyelids and lick her lips, and it was beautiful. She doesn't come over as often anymore, and my brother and I don't talk.
Before my brother used to ask me why I am friends with her, and I tell him she is beautiful, and I want to be just like her. My brother would scoff and tell me she has no substance, but I would just ignore him.
We sit in my room, on the bed, and it is some time after school. I no longer remember what time school ends, we never go. "What is the point of school?" she says to me, and I can't find an answer for her.
Sometimes she lets me brush her hair, and she specially brings me her favourite pink hairbrush to do it with. When there are tangles she bites her lip and tells me to keep going. "Beauty is pain," she says, "And beauty, is what the world revolves around." And she says it with such conviction, I start to believe her too.