Free It Was Me All Along: A Memoir by Andie Mitchell Page B

boy was going to ask me. I’d learned early on, at Friday night middle school dances, that no matter how straight I blow-dried my hair, no matter how sparkly my Bonne Bell lip gloss, no matter how hard I made them laugh in English or math or social studies, no boy asked the fattest girl in our grade to dance to one song, let alone fifteen of them in a row.
    But on the other hand, I knew that if I was the one doing the asking, I had a better chance of someone saying yes. It took me three weeks of November to decide whom to ask. And then it took six days of unrelenting anxiety to muster the courage to ask him. When I dialed his home phone number and he answered, I momentarily thought of hanging up and never going to school again. But no. The words came out of my mouth, “Will you go to the Christmas dance with me?” And in the second before he responded, I grabbed a handful of fat on my waist and squeezed it firmly, wanting the pain I inflicted on myself to hurt worse than what I was sure was a more painful rejection to come.
    “I’d love to.”
    I about died. I thanked him, hung up, played my Mariah Carey CD twice through, and kissed my Leonardo DiCaprio poster no fewer than three times. It wasn’t until the next day that the high of having a date settled down into a sort of bittersweet satisfaction. I hated—but couldn’t help—thinking that even though he’d said yes, maybe he’d done it because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I hated thinking that maybe he would still be embarrassed about going to the dance with the fattest girl.
    Still, I was glad to be going. Kate, Nicole, and I went to the mall to look for dresses. After thirty minutes, four horrible dresses, and three turns standing in the large and unforgiving three-sided mirror,I was no longer interested in looking. None of the dresses—not even sizes sixteen and eighteen—zipped. None even came close. What was more embarrassing than having to acknowledge that I couldn’t squeeze into the most matronly of women’s dresses was that Kate and Nicole were simply stunning in everything they tried on. They pulled off the most shimmering of pastel gowns, the salmon-hued silk numbers I’d wear if I could. If only silk loved me even a smidge as reciprocally. They pulled aside the curtains to their dressing rooms, and I noticed wide smiles first. Their hair was thrown casually into messy and unforced romantic, low-slung buns, their shoulders shifted back in confidence, their arms hung like long, graceful frames for a lithe silhouette. The dresses—surely sewn with them in mind—fit gorgeously.
    And there I stood, smooshed inside a two-piece, floor-length taffeta construction that fit my figure so poorly that I had to ask for help getting it onto and off of my body. I saw the flab bubbling over the strapless top where my boobs met my armpits and introduced them to my shoulders. I felt the waist cinching, an antagonizing corset reminding me of my belly. And then I turned to the side to view myself again in that terribly honest tri-fold standing mirror, sucking in my gut with breath held tight, as if a one-inch displacement of my mass was going to make a difference. I judged the dress I’d squirmed into, like all the rest, on a scale of one to five: one being “I’m wondering if that trash bag in my trunk would be a touch more flattering” and five being “This dress does not make me want to vomit and/or write hate mail to the designer.” I winced. I wasn’t unused to this. Years and years of trying on too-snug clothing with best friends had left me knowing that my shape was always more of a hindrance than anything else. Buying anything felt likechoosing the lesser evil.
Nothing fits as I’d like it to, as magazines illustrate things should, so what can I live with? Which shirt will be more forgiving? More concealing?
    I left the mall that day with no dress and even less confidence. I decided to try again at losing weight. This time, though, I moved