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“I didn’t eat for three days so I could be lovely.” She said, like it was a completely casual thing to do. He guessed in Cassie’s world it was a completely normal thing to do. Still, when her soft voice spoke those words, he thought he might’ve actually cried for her.
He knew she had issues. He knew she didn’t eat. He felt right fucking stupid.
“Cass, I’m so sorry.” Sid said, taking a few steps in her direction, but she quickly stepped back a little bit.
“No, it’s alright Sid. Coursework is very…. Important.” She said, backing away from him.
“Cassie, let’s go to the cafeteria, get you something to eat, hey?” Said Maxxie, and Cassie quickly shook her head.
“No thank you, I’m not hungry. I’m going to have dinner with my parents later, I don't want to fill up.” She replied, a little too quickly.
“Cassie, let’s go. You haven’t eaten in three days, you have to be hungry.”
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Sometimes Sid wished he could read her fascinating, wonderful, complex mind that always seemed to be running at about one hundred kilometres per hour. He and Maxxie watched in silence as she arranged and rearranged the food on her plate with hands so slim that they could see her tired veins.
“I love chips. Chips are lovely.” Said Cassie, in her usual light and slightly nervous tone. Sid picked up a chip from her plate and ate it, in hopes she would mirror him. She was obviously immune to this trick by now, but it was worth a try.
“Would you like salt on those Cass?” Asked Maxxie, voice almost as soft as hers. Worried she might break over a grain of salt. She did not.
“No thank you Maxxie, salt is bad for your liver, haven’t you heard?”
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She did break, however, over tomato sauce. And when she did, Sid took away her plate and wiped away her tears and told her that everything was alright, even though everything was very far from being alright, because he did not know what else to do. Maxxie got a cup of ice-cold water, because Cassie did not want room temperature water, because she was scared of it.
And after she had slowly downed her cup of water and wiped all her tears on the shirt Sid was wearing, she wiped the smudges of eyeliner from her under eyes and cheeks, and gave the two boys in front of her a heartbreaking grin.
“Thank you for being nice to me Sid. And thank you for not laughing at me Maxxie.” She said, like it was normal for people to laugh at her, which it sometimes very much was. Sid thought momentarily, about all the times people have casually brushed over her suicidal tendencies and extremely chaotic thought patterns and one of the worst eating disorders Bristol had ever seen. How people conveniently shoved her in with all of the Schizophrenics and the PTSD’d war soldiers that all had a special place in the looney bin, instead of getting to see her wild, crazy brain.
From that moment, in between her sentence and Sid and Maxxie reassuring her that they loved her, and that they would never laugh at her, and that if she ever needed anything, to never, ever hesitate, Sid swore that he would make sure that she always had at least one person.