This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Laura Dockrill
Cover art copyright © 2019 by Donna Adi
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in paperback in the United Kingdom as Big Bones by Hot Key Books, an imprint of Bonnie Zaffre Ltd, a division of Bonnier Publishing, London, in 2018.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 9781984849281 (trade) — ebook ISBN 9781984849304
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v5.4
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For my same, my ride or die, you are beautiful in every way, thanks for saving my vegetarian bacon
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Crumpets
Fingernails
Wings
The Food Diary
Sardines
Bones
Big
Croissants
Waffles
Bakewell Tart
Avocado
Chocolate Spread
Trifle
Planet Coffee
Sick
Pomegranate
Cheeseburgers
Squash
Cheese Toasties
Baked Beans
Summer Rolls
Pho
Honey
Scones
Muffins
Apple
Noodles
Shepherd’s Pie
Egg-Fried Rice
Bum Tills
Back to Rice
Camomile Tea
Rose Water
Turkish Delight
Rice Pudding
Stale Poppadoms
Tuna
Old Shepherd’s Pie
Dog Food
Toast
Cornish Pasty
Latte Hearts
Vinegar
Cold Pasta
Tongue
Tacos
Tea
Panini
Melting Panini
Cheese
Mould
Spring Onions
Mars Bar
Crepes
Iron
Powdery Hot Chocolate
Cauliflower Cheese
Ready Brek
Cherry Drops
Some More Toast
Quail
Bad Fats
Coconut
Millionaire’s Shortbread
Seasoning
Cinnamon
Salt
Hawaiian Pizza
Popcorn
Tiger’s Milk
A Patronising Pastry
Fish Fingers, Chips and Beans
Cream Crackers
Gum Shield
Scrambled Eggs
Hot Eggs, Maybe Mexican Style
Fruit Salads
Sausage
Chlorine
Banana
Corn on the Cob
Jaffa Cakes
Greek Salad
Energy Drinks
Cucumber
Capers
Pesto
Soup
Sweet and Sour
Dried Mango
Blood
Sushi
Bagels
Salad Cream
Green Tea
Oil
Ice
Pie
BBQ
Marshmallow
Thai Red Curry
Bread
Chocolate Cornflake Cakes
Midnight Feast
Cheese and Pickle Sandwiches
Bluebelle’s
Pistachio Ice Cream
Vitamins
A Favourite Recipe from the Author
About the Author
CRUMPETS
The first thing I ate after my asthma attack was a crumpet. OK. Not a crumpet. It was more a set. A set of crumpets.
“Can you push them down again, please? They still look raw.”
“As if that’s what you’re thinking about now, BB, after you’ve just nearly died,” Dove snaps as she pushes the crumpets back down into the toaster. “Besides, you don’t get a raw crumpet, you idiot.”
I am not one of those people that just can’t eat. I can always eat. Even when I’m sick. Even when I’m sad. I can even eat when I watch people being sick on TV.
“Don’t call me an idiot. You’re lucky I’m alive. Push them down again.”
I like my crumpets really toasted and slathered in thick butter. I like it when all the butter trickles into the holes of the crumpet and leaks through the bottom and puddles onto the plate, then you get to soak up the salty yellow pond with a warm sponge of crumpet innards.
“You know Mum’s gonna make you go to the doctor’s now, though, don’t you?”
“Yep.” I pull a clump of mascara out of my eyelashes and roll it into a little black ball like a squished fly. “And Dr. Humphrey is going to tell me I’m fat.”
“Overweight. They don’t say fat at the doctor’s.”
“Fine, overweight, then. Whatever.”
“It’s stupid anyway. Everyone is basically overweight on that stupid chart thing.”
“You’re not.”
“On that chart thing I probably am.” NO WAY IN HELL. Dove could make an HB pencil look fat. She leans her arms onto the counter, taking her weight. She hovers there, kicking her legs like she’s tiptoeing on thin air.
“Although I do think those nonsense BMI chart things were, like, created in, like, the fifties when everybody was tiny….Have you seen Grandma’s wedding dress? It’s like a dress for a doll. I wouldn’t even be able to get one leg in that. The things are tiny; they aren’t realistic anymore. These days even our feet are huge.” I see smoke rise out of the toaster in foggy streams and I panic. “OK, they’re done, pop them out now.”
“I reckon you could’ve probably done this yourself, BB,” she says, jumping down and dumping the clumpy warm discs in front of me.
“Dove, I nearly just died, the least you can do is make me some crumpets. Pass the butter.”
FINGERNAILS
We
are waiting to be told I’m fat. Both Mum and I. And we chew our nails in the waiting room at the doctor’s. We both know that we aren’t chewing our nails because we are nervous, because we aren’t nervous. We are chewing our nails because we both love to chew.
Mum just has more willpower than me.
I ADORE food. I was the sort of child that, if she ever got pocket money, instead of buying a toy or sweets, would go ahead and buy themselves a fully loaded jacket potato with cheese and beans.
“Don’t touch the magazines,” Mum says out of the corner of her mouth. “They’re covered in diseases.” I think about all the things I’ve already touched in the doctor’s: the door, the bell thing, the banister. All the germs that are now in my mouth, dissolving on the eensy white dots on my tongue into some deadly sickness. I don’t want to touch the magazines anyway. I HATE these types of magazines. The way they hoop those red rings around women’s bodies on the beach, individually isolating their body parts like a lineup of cream cakes being judged on a baking show. Too fat. Too thin…Too cellulite-y. Too wobbly.
Too real.
You know, I bet you any money that all the women who earn a living out of drawing those red circles around celebrities’ body parts are sitting on their own fat bums in some clammy office eating a packaged sandwich, hating themselves. What an existence. I’d much rather be the one with red hoops round my body parts than be the one drawing them.
“Did you have a good day at work, darling?”
“Ooh yes, the usual, I got to draw loads of red rings on pictures of half-naked women and then put the pictures on the front of magazines.”
“Ah, great, another productive day, then.”
“Most girls hate getting on the scales,” she comments as I jump on.
“Not BB,” Mum jokes. “I thought the other nurse might have warned you.”
I roll my eyes. No. I don’t mind getting on the scales because I’ve got nothing to hide, nothing to be embarrassed of and nothing to take me by surprise. I have a pair of eyes; I know my body.
“You need to lose weight,” the nurse says. Oh, does she have to be so matter-of-fact? It’s like her accent immediately gets more Nigerian. Well, I’ve heard it all before. Yawn. “It will help your asthma.” She is wearing a really nice gold watch. It’s thin and antique-looking; it looks beautiful against her dark skin, like it’s in a velvet box. “And your blood pressure too. You are only sixteen, but you are at serious risk here, Bluebelle, of diabetes, of high cholesterol, cancer. And more asthma attacks.”
All right, chill out. Aren’t we all at risk of cancer? A girl from school won’t eat packaged salad because of the risk of cancer. I mean, obviously she’s absolutely batcrap crazy, but still. Cancer seems to be in everything.
“Hmm. I don’t think I can lose weight.”
Mum rolls her eyes. Again.
The nurse chuckles, kisses her teeth. “Of course you can, just move more and eat less.”
Wait a minute…sorry, I think I just heard the words EAT LESS? She makes it sound so easy. In fact, I’m gonna tell her that, but with sarcasm.
“You make it sound easy.”
“It is easy. It’s three meals a day, there’s not that much room to go wrong. Eggs for breakfast, chicken salad for lunch, fish and vegetable and rice for dinner. See? Easy. Peasy.”
No pudding. Or pie.
Dry.
She writes some stuff down on a little blue card. It’s probably my weight, because it goes on for AGES. The end of her biro is chewed. See, she loves chewing too. A woman after my own heart. She raises a brow while she’s writing, like she’s writing out a cheque for someone who doesn’t really deserve it. Then, staring me right in the face, she begins to speak, the end of the chewy biro pointing at me.
“I know you girls. You think because you have such a pretty face you can get away with being very fat?”
All right: very.
Firstly, I didn’t think doctors and nurses were allowed to have actual subjective opinions of patients’ looks. It’s distracting. They should see all the body parts as blank facts. Arm. Head. Nostril. Liver. You can’t go around telling a patient that she’s pretty.
“No,” I laugh. “I think I have a very pretty everything, actually.”
You weren’t expecting that curveball to swing your way, now, were you? Ha!
She overreacts as if she’s swallowed a fly and laughs, all smug.
“Excuse me. Well, you can look pretty in the grave, then.”
Oh. Ouch.
Mum starts to cry.
What the actual hell? No. What’s she crying for? I thought we had this under control.
“Mum, don’t cry, Mum. Don’t. You never cry.”
“I’m not crying.”
“Well, you are, look. Mum. That’s tears. Look, all down your face.”
“I just feel, I’m sorry, I…When you were little I used to tell you what a good girl you were for eating everything on your plate….”
“Errr…yeah…’K…and…”
“And now when you’re stressed…maybe it makes you eat?” DO NOT SAY IT’S FOR ATTENTION. “For comfort,” she adds. “And maybe I did this to you? It’s my fault.”
“You? You did what to me? I know I can be a greedy little pig, Mum. I eat the roast potatoes, the cheese, the ice cream, the white bread, the everything, Mum. You don’t force-feed me. I make me fat, not you. And also…there’s nothing to be sorry for. I like food and I like how I look; that’s actually pretty rare for a girl my age. Most girls I know despise their bodies.” I shake my head; why is she crying? “Jeez, Mum, if anything, you should be proud, really. Mum?”
“See,” says the nurse, “you are selfish for being so fat. You are making your own mother cry.” Oh, shut the hell up, you. I find myself getting caught in a silent debate with her. I am sticking up for my own fat.
“But I’m healthy. I eat so well. I don’t get what the— Mum, don’t cry.”
“You cannot be eating well if you are this obese.”
WINGS
OBESE? Says the actually QUITE FAT HERSELF nurse. What does she EVEN know? She’s not even a doctor. I HATE the nurse.
“Mum, I eat well, don’t I? We’re so organic. Tell this woman, please?”
“We do eat well at home.” Mum defends us between sniffs. “But her dad and I, we split up….We…well, we are separated, for the moment; it’s not the first time….We just…It’s complicated…” She wipes her tears and looks at me. I’m looking at the slits in the blinds, the weird beads joining the material together, the filing cabinet holding the records of all the patients that have been told good and bad news on this red plastic chair. And then she throws me right under a bus. “You do comfort-eat from time to time, Bluebelle.”
“No, Mum, I don’t.”
“That might be it,” the nurse interjects. “Parents breaking up can be very stressful and upsetting for a teen.” She says the word like it’s a disease. Teen. She has her hands on her hips. “You need protein. Chicken soup and more exercise.”
I think of my little sister, Dove, running freely over roofs and buildings. She’s so light it’s almost as though she has a pair of invisible wings stitched to her back. I think of my own wings, weighing me down like an overstuffed turkey.
Mum, glassy eyes peering out at the world, mumbles, “It’s me and Dad.”
Errr. No. “This has ZERO to do with you and Dad breaking up, again,” I growl. “ZERO.” Absolutely nothing. “It’s not about you two all the time. You’re both such attention-seekers. I was fat way before you two
had problems. Can we just go home now?”
“I think the nurse has a point, Bluebelle. I think it’s time we get this sorted.”
“Mum! This is what we do, remember? This is our hobby. We come here, we get told I’m fat and then we go home….I don’t know why you’re making such a drama this time.”
“Yes, BB, but most times we come here you haven’t nearly just died from an asthma attack.”
I knew this would happen, that my parents would blame my enjoyment of food on their unenjoyment of each other. I can’t help but feel the need to cut my eyes at Mum for stabbing me in the back fat.
The nurse begins to rummage around in her cupboards.
“Take this.” She hands me an exercise book. “I want you to write down what you eat every day.”