Page 7 of Power Play

“The feeling passed.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“I have afternoon rehearsal. I don’t want to feel heavy.”

Ashley looked toward my hips before catching herself.

The movement confirmed everything my mother had said. If there were nothing wrong with my body, Ashley wouldn’t have looked.

I set down my fork.

“You don’t look heavy,” she said.

“I never said I did.”

“You didn’t have to.”

My stomach tightened, and the food on my plate suddenly felt like something everyone could see me doing wrong.

I folded the napkin over the untouched eggs. “I need to study.”

“You forgot your notebook.”

“I’ll borrow paper.”

“You can eat and study.”

“I said I’m not hungry.”

The sharpness in my voice ended the conversation. I carried the plate to the trash and threw it away before anyone could watch how little had disappeared.

Hunger returned during algebra review. It became a hollow ache beneath my ribs while I worked through practice problems on borrowed paper. Every time my attention drifted, I forced it back by writing the equation again.

By the end of the session, the page held three versions of each problem. I rewrote every number until the columns aligned perfectly and each answer looked deliberate enough to prove I understood it.

The teacher paused beside my desk. “You only need to solve each one once, Charm.”

“I wanted to make sure.”

“Your first answers were correct.”

Pride warmed me for half a second before I noticed the red mark beside the final problem.

“What did I do wrong?”

“You changed the sign here.” She tapped the paper with one fingernail. “It’s a small mistake.”

“I knew that.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Can I fix it?”

“It’s practice. That’s what the review is for.”

“But I know how to do it.”

She moved toward the next desk before I finished. The red mark remained, one mistake among eleven correct answers, and it became the only thing on the page I could see.