Read Online Secrets of a Former Fat Girl by Lisa Delaney - Free Book Online Page A

first time—the story of the pro football player who dies of leukemia after standing up for his friendship with an African American player. A classic tearjerker. Watching the movie in the den with my family, I moved from the couch to the floor as the plot became more and more upsetting. I lay on my stomach with my hands cupped around my face so no one would see my tears. I used that strategy while viewing many a made-for-TV movie over the years.
    And God forbid that anyone—my brothers or my Dad, especially—suspected me of having a crush on a boy . They’d launch into a rendition of “Lisa and [boy’s name here] sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” or torture me with smooching noises on the rare occasion that a boy actually called me on the phone. In response, I learned to hide those feelings, too. I was embarrassed by them, almost as embarrassed as I was when I slipped and fell that day in the living room.
    As I shut out the outside world, my inner world exploded with life. I daydreamed constantly, conjuring up entire relationships and conversations with kids at school or in the neighborhood—kids I didn’t have the nerve to speak to. I lived through my books, diving into the worlds created by the authors. I loved books by Judy Blume whose heroines were often girls like me, girls on the outside looking in. I loved Nancy Drew, because she was so not like me—taking chances, speaking up, stepping forward. I loved Jo in Little Women . I wanted to be her, the instigator, the driven one, the champion of self-expression. I read whatever I could get my hands on, and when I found a favorite, I went back to it repeatedly, revisiting the characters as if they were old friends.
    When I was in fifth or sixth grade, I discovered Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. Harriet was this little mousy kid, kind of nerdy and supersmart, the underdog protagonist typical of many books for preteens and teens. (Think Hermione from the Harry Potter series, without the wand.) Harriet fashioned herself as some kind of secret agent, keeping notes on the kids and goings-on around her.
    Like me, Harriet had a secret life, a life where she could be smarter, more creative, stronger, braver. Where she could be everything she wanted to be—everything she felt she couldn’t be in the real world.
    No wonder I related.

    I was hardly the only kid who was ever teased or experienced some kind of spectacular failure. There are millions of them: the directionally challenged peewee football player who scores a touchdown for the other team; the unfortunate girl who is caught without a pad when she starts her period and everyone can tell (by the way, that happened to me, too); the stomach virus victim who pukes on her desk during second period (uh, me again). There are certainly worse things that can happen to children, that do happen to children. All you have to do is watch one of those twenty-four-hour news channels to know your place in this sad spectrum. The blooper reel of my childhood is nothing compared to what some people—maybe even you—have gone through.
    I don’t blame my parents for not protecting me or my brothers for, well, being brothers. But for some reason, comments that might have rolled off other kids penetrated my spirit like needles in a cushion. You know how it feels when every slight stings like a slap, every joke belies a secret truth, every criticism is a condemnation. And any mistake I made, however minor, only served to support my sneaking suspicion: I am worthless .
    In response, I shut down. I activated a defense mechanism that I used for many, many years to safeguard the vulnerable parts of myself from outside scrutiny. And part of that defense was my weight.
    As I grew older and heavier, my weight became a way of hiding. It gave me an excuse to retreat from tryouts for school plays, from band and choir and sports. Not only that, the weight itself became a cloak, like the cloak