I slide my hands into my dress. I pull it down and the material gives easily. Of course it would. I would need it to, since I’m not exactly model material.

It fits just fine, not showing too much of my ridiculous torso. The bottom flows when I move and, for a second, I feel pretty because I can finally wear something all the other girls wear. That would be enough for me to feel comfortable, but I look toward my arms and decide I’ll need something to cover myself up with.

Destiny, the beautiful blonde and seemingly fragile girl that I know is made of armor, watches me frown at the mirror. She knows what I’m thinking. We’ve been over this time and time again.

So she won’t mention that I’m feeling a little bloated. Actually, I’m feeling like a whale and I definitely just swam into the wrong part of the ocean.

I brush my hair, turning away from one of my closest friends, and bite my lip as tears start to form. I close my eyes and breathe out. Not now. That would have to wait.

“Are you excited?” she asks, smiling over at me as her curly hair falls over her bare shoulders.

I turn to her, look at her fitted dress that perfectly complements her skin tone. I nod.

“Of course,” I say, “why wouldn’t I be?”

She laughs and I join in. I brush off my doubts and grab her wrist, pulling her toward the door. We’d have to leave soon or we’d be late. Then, she stops short because the rain is pouring and I’m almost disappointed that the night we’d been planning for weeks could be canceled at any moment.

Almost.

But my teacher calls minutes later, telling us that end-of-year newspaper banquet won’t be interrupted.

“We’ll be fine,” he says.

Will we?

Our staff’s table is near the back of Tierney’s Cafe. There’s warmth everywhere I turn: in the candles that carefully line the room, on my friends’ faces, in my heart.

I greet everyone, face flushing as they take in my appearance.

“I get it, guys,” I say around a laugh. “I’ve never worn a dress before. It’s alright.”

Everyone smiles at that. I wish I could smile at that.

I pull at the hem of my dress, suddenly feeling like I shouldn’t have shown up in the first place. I sit next to my friend Anthony. Surprisingly, he cleaned up well. He’d be leaving me behind next year, along with many of the other staffers who I’d come to know as family. I tried not to think about losing my friends.

Instead, I thought of losing weight.

I know I should have skipped the desert. The Reese’s Cream Pie I’d split with another boy hadn’t been worth it.

I could still feel the Reese’s cups burning down my throat and the cream settling over.

I felt sick.

I felt like the whole table was watching me take another awful bite. While I knew that it wasn’t true, my heart squeezed in protest. That piece of pie would probably go straight to my thighs. I’m pretty sure that they were already twice the size of my head.

I just couldn’t have my only friends judge me for indulging just this once. I set the fork down, let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

“Is it time for the awards yet?”

I keep my tight grip steady, rocking our bodies in the process. I’d have to let go at some point, but this couldn’t be the time. My friends and I part one by one, bidding our farewells and promising to text or call soon. Or maybe just text.

Calling is still too weird.

As I walk to my grandmother’s car, I turn back and watch the soon-to-be adults throw around their usual banter. It’s a bittersweet ending to an otherwise bearable outing, considering how I’d felt like I’d been big enough to fill about three chairs that night.

I slide into the car, throw my purse on the ground and turn to greet the one person who could always sense my mood swings with a bat of her eyelashes.

“How’d it go?”

“Fine.”

“Did anyone say anything about your dress?”

No, no. They didn’t.

No one commented on the dress, but I know what they would have said. And I don’t want to hear it echo in my mind on a night where I had to say goodbye.

But I’ve heard it all before, from my beautiful and thin and kind friends that see through my playful glares. They don’t know that they’ve made me cry because the only compliment they can provide is that I almost look like Adele.

That’s on a good night.

“Yeah,” I lie. “They loved it.”