Free Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies by Erin Dionne Page B

sure?”
    I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Mom passed a cake-topped plate to my dad and kept slicing.
    “Celeste,” Aunt Doreen cooed, leaning across the table like we were the only two in the room, “you don’t have to worry about the Challenge. The HuskyPeach wants you just the way you are.”
    “Mom!” Kathleen said, shocked.
    “I can’t believe you just said that,” said Kirsten. My ears were so hot, I was pretty sure they were on fire.
    “Oh, honey, come on. Celeste is just nervous. You’ll do fine, sweetheart,” Aunt Doreen said, and patted my hand.
    “You’ll do fine,” Uncle Chuck repeated. He dug into his brick-sized piece with a grin.
    Falling into a hole in the floor would be fine right about now, I thought.
    “Just a small piece for me too,” Kirsten chimed in as Mom cut me a skimpy slice of cake and I tried to send a smile in Aunt Doreen’s direction.
    “I’m sure Celeste is just full. She’ll have another slice later, right, honey? She always does. Sometimes more than one,” Mom soothed. I stared at my plate.
    Like fattening a pig, Red Bathing Suit Woman whispered in my head. Two weeks ago Aunt Doreen could barely look at me in the Monstrosity, and now she was concerned with increasing my cake consumption.
    “There’s that one plus-sized model who’s pretty famous these days,” Paul jumped in. “I can’t remember her name . . . Daisy something? Rose someone? It’s a flower. Anyway, she’s big.”
    And this was supposed to make me feel better?
    “What are you saying that for?” Kathleen glared at him with a stare that would rival her mother’s.
    “Huh?” Paul’s face was covered in confusion. Then something clicked. “Oh. I didn’t mean big like big . I meant big like . . . popular.” He shoveled a piece of cake into his mouth, probably so he wouldn’t say anything else to get him in trouble. The tips of his ears were pink.
    Someone please give me my life back.
    Bathing Suit Woman only chuckled.
    After dessert, Kirsten, Kathleen, and I cleared the table while the moms looked at photos of bridesmaid bouquets for the wedding. Dad, Paul, and Uncle Chuck took Ben out to practice catching fly balls. When Ben ran upstairs to get his glove, he came back down with his football helmet too. “They’re making me,” he said with a shrug.
    “Poor kid.” Kathleen shook her head as she stood at the sink, rinsing plates. Kristen wrapped the leftover cake. “Gotta give him credit for trying, though.”
    I shuttled the plates to the dishwasher. “Uh-huh.”
    “So, are you psyched for this modeling thing, or what?” she said, turning to me. “You’ve barely said anything about it.” She smiled.
    At that second, with her perfect teeth and perfect hair and perfect skin and eyes focused on me, all that perfect helped me see how broken I was. I heard Lively’s jeers, felt the ache of Sandra’s continued rejections, and pictured the food log waiting for me upstairs while the Butterscotch Apple Crumb Cake of Temptation sat sentry on the kitchen counter. Negative Twenty never seemed so far away. Everything just rolled together and I couldn’t help it, I started to cry. Tears slid off my face and onto the dishes in my hands, mingling with the watery streaks of ice cream and crumb cake.
    “I—I—know,” I blurted, unable to stop myself and mortified that I couldn’t. My shoulders hitched as I tried to breathe, but stay quiet enough so Mom wouldn’t hear. “I don’t want to.”
    Kathleen stood frozen at the sink, like she’d stepped in dog poo and didn’t want to check the bottom of her shoe. The tap gushed. She blinked.
    “Wow, Celeste. It’s okay.” She turned the water off and grabbed a towel, then hustled across the kitchen, Kirsten following.
    I struggled to stop, but couldn’t. “I just—I just—” I scrunched my face in an effort to control myself. How babyish is this? I thought. Snot slid out of my nose, and I sniffed hard to suck it back in since I was