Morning all. I hope you are set for a fabulous Friday. Let’s jump into this morning’s prompt and see what we come up with. Timers set and off we go.
I like this set up. It is clearly condensed by the timer but I really like the idea of someone living with people who sabotage her for their own reasons and her learning that the sabotage has nothing to do with her. Seems like it could be a fun cast of characters to play around with.
Friday, May 15th: It required careful management.
It required careful management. Allie tried losing weight before. She had a plan and for a while it worked well. The problem was letting everyone else know she was working on weight loss. That was where things fell apart.
Kat, her stepsister, who had always been thin would wait about a week into Allie’s diet. Then she would start looking at Allie, studying her in a way that made Allie feel like she had to ask.
“What?” she would always say assuming she had toothpaste spatter on her shirt of face or her hair was doing something strange. That was never it. The comment would always be about how Allie’s diet clearly wasn’t working.
The comments were always dropped like bombs and then Kat would walk away with a hip swaying saunter. Then for the next few weeks Kat would watch her when she ate, every mouthful of anything cause for an arched eyebrow.
That’s when her stepmother, Gena would become involved. She would see Kat’s arched eyebrow and look to Allie’s plate. She would sigh and shake her head disappointingly.
“If you don’t stick to your diet, you are never going to lose the weight,” Gena would say. The sentence would be almost always identical just as Kat’s reply.
“Some people have no self control.”
This time she decided to do something different. She didn’t mention it. She said nothing. She had a system but part of the system was careful management of the family. As most of the time they paid her little attention, all she had to do was keep quiet. It was hard, especially when she started having some success.
She had enough success that her clothes started to be slightly baggy. Comments were made within her hearing about how some people thought bigger clothes hid the fact that they were fat.
Allie ignored them. When she really did need a size down, Allie slipped out to the thrift shop near work and picked up a few items in a better size. She dropped off the too large ones the next day.
Hiding the exercise wasn’t too hard. As long as she left the house at the same time every day and was home for dinner no one questioned what she did or where she was. Allie did find that she had to conceal the work out clothes she used in the rest of her laundry. She often didn’t fold them right away. When she took her laundry basket of freshly washed clothes back to her room, Allie shoved the work out clothed in the bottom drawer of her dresser and then folded her regular clothes. Then just before bed, when she was certain no one would pass by her room, she folded them.
As her weight decreased, Allie thought someone would finally say something. No one did. She made progress and felt good about it. There were setbacks of course, but she moved through them, past them. She kept at it, but continued to say nothing. What started as motivation became a game.
How long would it take them to notice she was changing? And what would happen when they did?
Ten til Midnight 