Triple update because I'm excited!!!

Yeri (RV)

Day 6026

I feel guilty about how relieved I am to be a normal size the next morning. I feel guilty because I realize while before I didn’t care what people thought, or how other people saw me, now I am conscious of it, now I am judging alongside them, now I am seeing myself through Jessica’s eyes. I feel like I’m becoming more like everyone else, but I also feel like I’m losing something very important.

                Yeri looks a bit like Jessica’s friend Irene – dark straight hair, little freckles, round eyes. Maybe she’s a little smaller and has softer features, but they’re about the same. She’s not someone you’d go out of your way to notice if you saw her on the street, but you’d definitely notice her if she was sitting next to you in class.

                Jessica won’t mind me today, I think. Then I feel guilty for thinking that.

There’s an email from her waiting in my inbox. It starts like this:

            I really want to see you today.

                And I think, That’s good. But then I continue to read.

      We need to talk.

                And I don’t know what to think anymore.

                And so the rest of the day becomes a waiting game, a countdown, even if I’m not sure what I’m counting down toward. The clock brings me closer and my fears pound louder.

                What if she wants to stop?

                What if she ends all this?

                What if I’m too much for her?

Jessica’s told me to meet her at the park by her school. Since I’m a girl today, I’m guessing that’s safe neutral ground. No one in town is going to see the two of us and assume something R-rated. They already think male metalheads are her type.

                I’m early, so I sit on a bench with Yeri’s copy of an Alice Hoffman novel, stopping every now and then to watch a jogger pass by. I’m so lost in the pages that I don’t realize Jessica’s here until she sits down beside me.

                I can’t help but smile.

                “Hey,” I say.        

                “Hey,” she says back.

                Before she can tell me what she wants to tell me, I ask her about her day, about school, ask her about the weather – anything to avoid the topic of her and me. But this only lasts for about 10 minutes.

                “Tae,” she says. “There are things that I need to say to you.”

                I am fully aware that this sentence is rarely followed by good things. But still, I hoped.

                Even though she’s said things, even though she’s implied there’s more than one, it all comes down to her next sentence.

                Not looking at me, at all, she continues. “I-I don’t think I can do this.”

                I pause for only a slight moment