Counting Letters

The bus screeched to a stop on Red Road on a mild Spring day. A petite teenage girl skipped down the steps, her backpack flopping behind her. Four, three, two, one step before her white sneakers hit the gravel.  Mel broke into a sprint when the doors closed and the bus pulled away. Her watch said 4PM. It’s 4PM on a Friday–which means it is officially the start of the long weekend. With three days off from school looming ahead of her, Mel’s mind went into overdrive. 

What to do first?

She could read, of course. And then, perhaps she’d journal or play a computer game or crochet or go for a walk or clean her room or call Ariel or…

Mel didn’t realize she was gnawing on her fingernail until the cuticle began to bleed. A drop of blood landed on her new jeans as she forced herself to drop her hand from her face. She pinched the tainted fabric, at the same time latching on to a soft spot of her thigh.

The feeling of the fat between her fingers was worse than placing a hand on a bed of nails, but she couldn’t help herself. Looking down, she estimated there were two extra inches of fat on her thigh. Two too many, though it’s better than three, which is how many were there last month. Did anyone else notice? Her therapist would say “no”. And Mel would reply, “Yes they do!”

“What are you looking at, Mel?”

Her mom’s voice jolted Mel back to the present. She was frozen in place at the bottom of the porch. Instinctively, she opened her hands and offered her mom a smile. 

“Something spilled on my new jeans.” Mel shrugged. “I better rinse them so it doesn’t leave a stain.” Her voice sounded light but felt heavy as a ton of bricks, though she hoped her mom didn’t notice. Walking through the front door, Mel made a beeline for her bedroom to change out of the jeans and into a comfy pair of leggings. 

“Dinner’s at five!” Her mom called out, just as Mel slipped into her room and shut the door. The mirrored closet greeted Mel as maliciously as she expected–emphasizing her body’s every flaw.

The chubby cheeks, flabby arms, and her dreaded thighs, which still brushed together when she stood up straight. Heart pounding to the beat of her racing mind, Mel opened the closet so the mirrors no longer faced her. The leggings were on the second shelf to the left. 

She ran her hand over one, two, three pairs of black leggings in sizes large, medium, and small. As she touched the fabric, Mel focused on the decreasing size. She was aiming for extra-small, but hadn’t reached that milestone yet. Settling for the small, she pulled them on, feeling the band a bit snug on her stomach today. Stretching at the fabric, Mel wondered if she gained. 

Eyeing the food journal on her nightstand, Mel finally opened the marble notebook and skimmed through this week’s logs. __ for breakfast, ___ for lunch, and ____ ____ for dinner. Every. Single. Day. The numbers were all there tallied up at the bottom of the page. 

That’s 7 days of ___ calories per day. That’s a ___-calorie deficit each day for 7 days. ___ calories total. ___ calories to a pound. She should be down __ pounds. So why did the leggings feel tight?

Only one way to find out. She pulled out the scale from under her bed and positioned it in the center of the room on the floor, ensuring it was perfectly level. With a deep breath, Mel stepped on the device that determined her worth, today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

She waited for the screen to populate, but when it did her jaw dropped.

XYZ.UM

That can’t be right. She stepped off then back on.

BHN.CD

What the hell? How much do I weigh? Where’s the damn number?

No matter how many times Mel stepped on and off the scale, the display screen continued to show nonsensical letters as a measure of her weight. How could she know if it went up or down? Which is higher - a two or a K? A nine or a Z?

Maybe if she lined up the numbers to the letters of the alphabet…but how would that even work? Would everything just be in multiples of 26? That might be it!

She stepped back on the scale to get the most recent reading.

GLK.YZE

Completely different from every other reading, but it was something to work with. G, that would correspond to 7 and then L would be 12 and K would be 11. 71211…

Well, there’s no way that’s in pounds or kilograms. Could it be ounces? 711211/16 ounces is still 4,450.6875. Ok, so my letter-to-number theory is wrong.

Mel’s breathing quickened until it was almost impossible to see straight. The room spun before her and the red walls closed in like a suffocating rag. That’s when she realized she truly couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t breathe. Was she dying?

The number. She needed to know–she needed to know the number or something terrible would happen. And then if the number was too high something else terrible would happen. If it stayed the same something bad would happen. If it went down, maybe she could breathe again.

But why?

As the question formed in her mind, Mel felt some air come in and out of her lungs. She focused on her breathing, forcing it to slow.

Why? She asked herself again.

Now the walls slowly retreated to where they belonged. The room was normal size again.

Why? The question replayed, a broken record, but somehow it grounded her.

Now the room stopped spinning. She looked down at the scale to check one more time.

TUV.ZA

A smile slowly spread across Mel’s face. No more numbers. 

If there was no number on the scale, she wouldn’t have to worry. 

Without the numbers, the scale had no power. Without the numbers, she didn’t even need it.

She shrugged, sighed, then slid the scale under her bed. Laying on her stomach, she squirmed far enough under the bed to push the scale all the way against the wall. No need to reach that anytime soon. 

Why? Because Mel didn’t know how to count letters.