Girls Under Pressure by Jacqueline Wilson Page B

male stripper wearing a few sprigs of holly in strategic places and a silly Santa beard. Nadine paints a fashion-model fairy on top of a Christmas tree. I do an extremely anxious turkey, eyes bulging, wattle quivering, beak wedged open while a farmer shovels great scoopfuls of food down its throat. It’s already so fat it can barely waddle. The turkey’s tail is a great fuzz of feathers. It’s starting to look uncomfortably like a self-portrait. Lithe little sparrows fly happily about the turkey’s head, free as the wind. I can’t seem to make it funny. It’s sad.
    “Oh, dear, Ellie,” says Mrs. Lilley. “Have you joined an animal rights group?”
    I don’t win the chocolate Father Christmas. I don’t know why I mind so much. It’s not as if I’d necessarily eat the chocolate anyway, not at 529 terrible calories per three and a half ounces. I have gloomily inspected every kind of chocolate bar for its calorific value and then shoved every one back on the shelf quickly, as if even handling them could make you fat.
    Mrs. Lilley is looking a little tubby lately, come to think of it. She’s always been quite skinny but now she’s getting a bit of a tummy and her waist is thicker too. Yet she looks OK in her denim shirt and waistcoat and long black skirt. She’s wearing a big chunk of dark amber on a long black cord round her neck. Her eyes glow the same color. She’s looking great even though she’s definitely put on a good ten pounds, maybe more, during this term. She doesn’t seem to care. She looks really happy.
    I think of pale sick skinny Zoë. I don’t really wish I looked like her, do I? Maybe I could go in for the Mrs. Lilley look, plumpish but still pretty in lovely loose clothes. Artistic.
    I
wish
I’d won the chocolate Father Christmas.
    Mrs. Lilley calls me over to her desk at the end of the lesson.
    “I’m sorry you didn’t get the prize, Ellie,” she says.
    “That’s OK.”
    “You know I think you’re really gifted at art, don’t you?”
    “Thank you.” I know I’m going red.
    “I do hope I can come back long before you do your standardized art exam.”
    “Come back?”
    “I’m leaving at the end of this term.”
    “Oh, Mrs. Lilley,
why
?”
    She smiles at me.
    “I thought you’d guessed! I saw you staring at my tummy today.” She pats it gently. “I’m going to have a baby.”
    “Ooh!”
    “Yes, I didn’t show for a while, but now I’m fast approaching the waddling stage. I feel like your poor Christmas turkey.”
    I feel like bursting into tears.
    “Cheer up, Ellie. Maybe you can come and see me sometime after I’ve had the baby.”
    “Mm, maybe. Well. Congratulations.”
    I have to rush away. Mrs. Lilley isn’t fat. She is pregnant. My role model for a reasonable figure—
still
thinner than me—is probably six months pregnant.
    Oh, God.
    Anna is preparing a huge spaghetti bolognese when I get home from school.
    “I can’t eat
that
!” I say, appalled.
    I eat half a small tub of cottage cheese garnished with chopped cucumber and carrots. It looks and tastes disgusting, as if someone else has already eaten it and thrown it up. The smell of spaghetti bolognese makes me feel faint but I manage to hold out. Somehow. If only I could seal my lips with Super Glue, then I’d feel really safe.
    I even dream about it at night and wake up sucking my own hand. I curl up tight and clasp myself. I mustn’t creep down to the kitchen and raid the fridge. I daren’t have another stuff-my-face session because Anna might hear if I make myself sick.
    I’m scared of getting really bulimic. I read an article in Nadine’s
Spicy
magazine (she’s its most avid reader now) and it says if you keep throwing up, the acid rots your teeth. This famous model went through a six-month spell of being sick to keep in trim for her fashion work and now she’s had to have a full set of false teeth fitted.
    “Thank goodness I’m naturally slim,” Nadine says smugly, reading over my