100 Days of Cake by Shari Goldhagen

V charges in, all shiny hair, platform sandals, and righteous anger.
    â€œSeriously, you couldn’t just reach over and turn this off?” she says as she smacks the alarm clock’s off button. “Pathetic.”
    Then she’s gone, the door rattling the frame when she slams it shut.
    Of course she’s right; I am pathetic. But it’s not like I want to be this way—the heaviest 120-pound girl in the entire state of Florida.

    A minute or an hour passes, and my phone rings. It’s in the pocket of the shorts I wore yesterday, which are slung over the back of my desk chair, which is miles and miles and miles away from the safety of the bed.
    Probably Dr. B. calling to ask where the hell I am.
    Gut punch of guilt. Mom will probably have to pay for the session, and even though Dye Another Day is going, like, gangbusters, we’re not one-percenters or anything. Plus, Dr. B. had promised to bring in some of his favorite old mix tapes for our session. Feeling that much worse for disappointing all these people yet again , I roll over.

    Time is kind of gooey on the life raft of my sleigh bed, and I sleep on and off. Our old house had those popcorn ceilings, and sometimes V and I would stack chairs on our beds and pinch off the little plaster balls between our fingernails. But in the model home, the ceilings are smooth and free of cracks. Just blank nothingness. I wonder what it would feel like to blend with the ceiling, become one with that.

    Elle—except she looks like Miley Cyrus—and her kid brother are chomping up a line of cakes like Pac-Man. Alex and T.J.are doing “I’m Not the Father” dances, and Mom and V are performing a mother-daughter tap number with feather boas. I’m just standing there.
    Not participating .
    Because even in my dreams I’m pathetic.
    When I wake up, I’m sort of hungry. Mom and V are both at work, so I head to the model kitchen to see if we have any non-cake food. The best I can find is a couple of string cheeses and half a tuna wrap Mom must have had for lunch a few days ago. It has that too-cold-fridge taste.
    The formal dining room isn’t on the way back to the stairs and my bedroom, but I go there anyway, and have a seat on one of the plush chairs.
    One of the few things we did bring from the old house is this framed ten-by-twelve family photograph of all of us that hangs over the sideboard. In the picture I’m in an OshKosh jumper holding this little doll that the photographer gave me; baby V is just blue-green eyes (like Mom’s and Gram’s and mine) peeking out from a swaddle of embroidered blankets; Mom, not even thirty, and so achingly beautiful; and Dad with his high-sloped forehead, wavy mouse-poop hair like me, and these giant hands as big as catcher’s mitts. He’s got one on Mom’s forearm, the other protectively on my shoulder—so large that his fingers reach all the way down to my elbow.
    I was three (well, almost three—the accident happened the day before my birthday) when he died, andthere isn’t much I really remember besides those hands and his voice, which was this incredibly deep cannon, like a DJ’s on a classic rock station. A voice that made everything, even Dr. Seuss books, sound important.
    As much as I love my mom and her misguided attempts to cure me with baked goods, I wonder—a lot, actually—how things might have been different if Dad hadn’t gone out that day. If he could have offered a different perspective to balance things out. Wonder if he could have shared stories about his own childhood and filled in all those blanks. Wonder if maybe, just maybe, his hands would have been big enough that they could still hold me up even now.

    I’m back in the sleigh bed when Mom knocks on my door around six. She asks if I’m okay and if she can come in.
    â€œI kind of just want to be alone,” I say.
    â€œAre you sure?” She’s got the