Page 106 of Almost Always

Blergh, pookie.Does she think we’re in a sitcom or something?

“We are, but I wanted you to meet Daisy first.”

“Why?” Now her confusion was genuine and maybe even borderline disgusted.

“Because she’s my best friend and I want both my girls to know each other.”

My girl. Swoon.

Daisy rubbed her lips together to hide her smile, head dipped down as she basked in that. Sure, she was going to ignore the fact that he lumped her in with this vapid human.

“Your girls?” she asked, clearly attempting to be cute and teasing, but sounding more pitchy than she probably intended to.

“Uh…milkshakes?” Rafferty asked to defuse the moment.

Vivian nodded and shoved him out of the booth. She dragged him to the counter, leaving Daisy alone to catch her breath. She wasn’t someone who treated another girl badly because they had what she wanted, but when the same person wasVivian, it was easy to hate her.

Reminder, you’re just jealous.

Lifting her head, she saw them kissing and her heart dropped. Hands were everywhere and both of them looked so into it. Daisy’s stomach turned and she looked away. When itbecame clear that it wasn’t going to stop or get any better, she made the decision to leave. Carefully sliding out of the booth, making sure the leather seat didn’t squeak or fart, she smoothed down her clothes and cleared her throat as she approached the couple.

“So uh…I’m going to…go,” she told them, doing her best not to make eye contact with their linked mouths. “You two have fun.”

She hurried outside, sucking in deep breaths. She knew he would follow her, but didn’t stop until Rafferty was tugging on her hand.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “Don’t particularly feel like being a third wheel.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, you go have fun.”

He faked a pout, his eyes dancing with amusement. “But I wanted you to meetpookie.”

Daisy rolled her eyes and a laugh burst out of her. “Gross. Please don’t ever use that term again.”

“I might, if only to make you laugh like that.” He poked her side and she stepped away, aware that Vivian was watching them. “You’ll get home safely, yeah?”

“Obviously.” With an awkward high-five, she turned around and started for the bus stop. That was not the day she was going to tell Rafferty that the girl he liked was an evil asshole.

Maybe I’ll tell him tomorrow?

As she predicted, Vivian was insufferable the rest of the week. She’d obviously told her gang of witches who Daisy was and gave them specific roles in bullying her. Someone spilled ink on herwhite blouse, her locker was broken into and filled with tampons and sanitary napkins. They even stole an assignment the day she was supposed to submit it. Most of all, they spread rumors about her. Despite every effort to get to the bottom of it, she couldn’t figure out exactly what the rumors were. It was terrible enough that everyone whispered when she walked by.

When Daisy didn’t cry or react the way they predicted, the girls took it up a notch. They started leaving notes in her locker calling herugly bitch, fat cowas well as talking about how her dark skin resembled dirt. She refused to give them the pleasure of her reaction at school, but would lock herself in her bedroom and cry afterwards.

It wasn’t the first time those terrible things were said to her, but back then she didn’t realize how harmful the words were. She was so young when her mother, Catarina, told her she was worthless. At that point, she didn’t fully understand the weight of those words. All she knew was that she was making her mother angry and unhappy, and the only way to fix that was to do everything she was told.

“Nobody likes fat people. If you’re fat, you’re ugly and you’ll die alone. Beauty is important. If you’re not perfect, you’re not worth a second look. Chocolate is not your friend. You need to eat smaller portions or starve. I will not have my daughter be the ugliest person in every room. It’s bad enough that your skin is so dark. Now I have to train you to eat less. This is why diets and fairness creams were invented.”

Now, at thirteen, she understood what those words meant and accepted them as the truth.

If everyone thought she was ugly because of her skin and her body shape, she needed to fix it, right? So she started rationing her food and being careful about how much she ate. There was no logic to what she was doing, but she knew that starvation was the right method. If her father was out of town and she was atthe Ames house, she pushed food around on her plate to make it seem like she was actually eating.

She put on a brave face every single day, making sure Nonna Ames and Rafferty didn’t know what she was doing. Her mother would never see her again or appreciate how much effort Daisy was putting into being acceptable and perfect. But she could earn everyone else’s appreciation and love, right? Maybe then Vivian and her friends would stop picking on her.

A few months after the day at the diner, Daisy came home to an empty house. She stripped out of her baggy clothes and changed into one of her father’s old shirts. With the food Nonna had made for her sitting on the table, she pulled out the weighing scale in her father’s bedroom and stood on it. She believed that she could see how much weight she was putting on if she ate standing there. Especially since she was so hungry after starving herself for so long.

---