I am 12. A boy has decided that he likes me. His name is Felix and he is only about an inch shorter than me and has dark hair and beautiful big eyes and is the smartest and shyest and fastest boy in our class. We play footsie across the aisle in class, and we walk around with gigantic bruises on our shins, wounds suffered in the battlefield of prepubescent hormones. And of course, we both emphatically deny that we like the other to our friends, lest we suffer the horrible embarrassment of being so vulnerable and letting our classmates tease us or sing the "Sitting in a Tree" song at us. Oh my god. It is a painful and awkward flirtation, full of missed hints and frantic backpedaling.

A classmate discovers that I have scrawled an "I Heart FV" onthe interior flap of my Trapper Keeper. I quickly invent an imaginary boyfriend who conveniently attends the junior high across town, and also (very conveniently) has the nickname of Fuzzy Vacon (which is Kevin Bacon's last name, only with Felix's last initial, because I am a genius at subterfuge). Sometimes Felix and I walk home together, the single block to his house. The shortest block in all the world, I decide. It is grand. I like a boy. He likes me. Maybe. At least, I suspect, but who knows. Oh my god oh my god oh my god! I feel like dying.

Shortly after the FV incident, his best friend comes up to me and asks if I ever want to join Felix and him for a swim after school in Felix's pool, either that afternoon or some other time, you know, if I have nothing else going on. I tell him that I have to go home because my grandmother is coming to dinner. This is a complete fabrication. I walk quickly across our single block of opportunity and then I avoid them for the rest of the autumn, until I am sure that his pool heater had been turned off for the season. There is no way I would let them see me in a swimsuit. If he sees me in a swimsuit, he will see exactly how fat I am and then he won't like me anymore. But he interprets my refusal and avoidance as not liking him back. We both pull back, afraid of looking hurt to the other. I never go swimming. He never invites me to do anything again.

*

When I am six, I want desperately to be a ballerina. I am the only girl who runs with a pack of neighborhood boys during "Let's Pretend" on Saturday afternoons, jumping down imaginary bunkers, rescuing comrades from robbers. My stepfather calls me a tomboy. When he drinks beer, he lets me try the beer. It makes him happy, somehow. I am confounded by it, but aim to please. When the school sends around the extracurricular activities sheet, I selected a pink marker and circled the Intro to Ballet--Ages 6-8, and then added some hearts around it. I know that it goes against the expectations of my tomboy-ism, but with ballet, there was a lot of pink satin involved. You not only had a lot of pink and white costumes composed of tutus and lovely swishy chiffon and sometimes, if you're in Swan Lake, loads of actual feathers, but you also had makeup and great shoes and perfectly constructed hairdos. In my head, I could see myself standing in a row of little girls, being the best out of the line, being told by a woman with a vaguely Slavic accent that I was graceful and could plié like nobody's business. Who would not want to be a ballerina?  No one. Robots, maybe.

I then also circle Tumbling--Ages 5-7, just in case my mother is feeling extra generous and my god, two classes! Two classes with tights and leotards and cuteness and fun. And at very least, tumbling sounds a little more rough, a little more tough, maybe if ballet is too girly, then I can still lobby for this thing with the mats and the rolling around. I'd still get to wear tights and jump around and maybe work up the ballet thing next time around.

I bring her the sheet and point out my selections. She reads the descriptions carefully and then looks at me and says, "Do you realize that you'd have to be wearing a leotard? In front of all of those people?"

I am struck silent. Yes, I realize it. In fact, I am hoping for it, except apparently I shouldn't have been. I have forgotten: I have a pudgy tummy. Tummies that are not flat needed to be hidden. Mine is too big. I had never realized that I was in danger of being teased. Was there really a possibility? I can't fathom it, but understand that there is some danger that she is protecting me from. Some horrible reality.

When it is a million degrees that summer and I ask my stepfather why boys could get away with not wearing a shirt, but girls had to, he invites me to take off my shirt too. I do and then he and his shirtless brothers laugh and laugh and pat me on the stomach. I remember that my tummy isn't safe. That summer, I insist on my first one-piece swimming suit.

*

After the Felix incident, at night, I stand naked in front of a mirror, staring at my body, and can see nothing but rolls of fat, burbling over like the Michelin Man. They go on and on and on. I am 5'7", am one of four girls in my grade who has to wear a bra and I weigh 160 pounds. In my head, I am so fat that my body has no boundaries. I get closer to the full length mirror until I can see nothing behind me, nothing around me, nothing but the pale pink roundness of my body filling the frame. I can feel everything swell in response. My bellybutton is an innie, looking like the knot on the end of a balloon, the kind that you can untie and send the balloon shooting every which way, bouncing off ceiling and walls until it deflates. If I could, I would.  --Weetabix