I am in third grade and already have breast buds that my mother's boyfriend has decreed are because I like to eat too much. This one--Andy--fresh from Vietnam, spends his nights working as a bartender and his days either hung over or painting pictures with muddy oils: mostly nude women who look vaguely like my mother but thinner and with smaller, pointier breasts, but my mother tells everyone that we must forgive him because he is still a little shell-shocked. I spend hours after school riding around on my bike, avoiding the tiny duplex with two bedrooms, a closet-sized room shoved with matching twin beds that is mostly the domain of my 3-year-old sister. It smells like pee. If I am not watching Battle of the Planets or laying on the cool concrete floor of the basement creating elaborate plots with Fisher-Price Little People, I am outside, riding my dark green Schwinn.

Through a lot of dark transference over unresolved issues with having left our farm in the middle of the night--amidst my stepfather screaming and my mother crying, and then learning later that we would never go back and that my pony Nakayah had been sold, along with all of our pets and animals--I have daydreams that echo the plot of Michael Martin Murphy's Wildfire. I dream of running away after my pony and then being tragically lost to a killing frost. The Schwinn becomes my surrogate horse.

I'm not sure where the Schwinn came from, although I'm pretty certain that it was a hand-me-down from either my aunts (who were only ten years older than me and therefore a veritable shopping mall of all the best stuff that they didn't want anymore) or from friends of the family. My great-grandfather replaces the ripped vinyl seat with one I pick out myself, a glossy white banana seat splattered with giant pink daisies with yellow centers. He also gives it thick bouncy all-terrain tires and pink reflectors in the wheels, so that I wouldn't be killed by a car. I secretly want pink streamers that flutter down from the ape hanger handle bars, but they only have red and white streamers at the store and so I refuse on matter of principle. I am very concerned with matching things, even then.

My mother takes me to the doctor for a standard check up. He tells me that I am fat. I already know that I am fat. I hear it every day. He tells me to not eat two freezer waffles in the morning, only eat one, with no syrup, and he asks if I get any exercise. "She rides her bike a lot," my mother offers as though talking about me in the abstract. "Good," the doctor says. "You just need to ride your bike around the block five or six times."

Horror strikes. Our block is abnormally large, a bizarre aberration of city planning. On the first day of moving into our duplex, I had tried to ride around the block and gave up, thinking that the road would go forever and ever and I would end up in Michigan before ever getting to turn right. Since then, I've mapped this block and learned that it is .98 miles. I try to convey this to the doctor, but what comes out is "Our block is really really huge."

"I can imagine. Five or six times around that block will just mean that you drop weight that much faster!" He smiles as though he's already taken all of this into consideration and is very very smart.

"It's like, super huge, though." I whisper miserably. Five or six times. Even just five times. It seems impossible. It seems like even Princess on Battle of the Planets would have a problem with such a feat.

That evening, after school, I saddle up the green Schwinn and coast down our hilly driveway. I pump the pedals hard, standing and putting my weight on the handlebars, trying to get through this as quickly as possible. By the halfway point of the first lap, I am starting to feel hot and sweaty. When I pass my house the first time, I go back up the driveway and get a drink of water out of the refrigerator.

"Did you finish your laps?" Andy asks, painting.

"No! Just one so far."

"Better get to it or you're going to miss dinner." This is ominous. Does he mean that without the five (or six, although the "or" is a Get Out Of Jail Free card, because the six, I already know, is never going to happen) laps, I'll be punished and sent to bed without eating? Or does he mean that I must pedal, pedal, pedal until my prescriptive exercise is complete, no matter how long it takes, and that my life is put on hold until the biking is finished?

The second lap, my side starts to hurt and my sandal has rubbed the back of my ankle red. On the third lap, my foot misses a pedal and it comes back around, slamming me in the shin. It is on this third lap that I start to smell a strange ammonia smell and feel light headed. I do a fourth lap and eventually a fifth, but by then, the quality of the sunlight has changed, the sound of the insects are more aggressive. There is no way that I can complete a sixth lap. That night, I wake up screaming with agonizing leg cramps. The next morning, I sit listlessly on a swing at recess, too sore to do my normal bit of Cirque du Soleil acrobatics on the monkey bars.  After school, Andy sends me out again. The blister on the back of my heel breaks before I round the first corner, by the third turn, the back of my white sock is red. I stop after the first lap. Certainly a wound will mean that I can have a day of rest, but a beige rubberized Band-Aid and a spritz of Bactine means that I am good as new. This is what my mother says. I am not good as new. Everyone else must be able to do five or six times around a block with no problem. Why is it so hard for me? There must be something wrong with me. I hate this stupid block that we moved to instead of living on the farm. I hate my pediatrician for saying "five or six" like it is a magical number. I hate the feeling of lightheadedness that comes after lap three. I hate always being too thirsty, always feeling sweaty, the way that the pressure on the bike seat makes me have to pee. I start to get chafing on my thighs from the side of the seats. I develop an infection on the back of my heel. I start only riding a few houses up on my bike, then waiting what seems like an appropriate time, turning around and passing the house again, then waiting again out of sight, then repeating, hoping that my mother or Andy would forget which direction I had just come from, praying that they would. This is how I trick them, because I am smart. I am smart but I am not capable. I am not strong. I do not want to be thin badly enough, not badly enough to do just this simple thing. This one simple thing. I feel betrayed by the Schwinn. I thought we were friends, but it's just another thing at which I am not good enough. I am a failure. I am a big fat failure. --Weetabix