Snapthat

I didn’t understand my mother. She sometimes wore her shirts unbuttoned enough to see that line between her boobs, but she never let me wear tops that showed my belly button. I didn’t have that line. Not unless I leaned forward and squished together the two peach halves that had appeared in the last year.

My mother spent any spare minute she had scrolling through her child-free friends’ Facebook pages. She had burnt our dinner, like a million times, because she was looking at fitspo on Instagram. But she wouldn’t let me have Snapchat or Instagram or Facebook, not that I care about Facebook because that’s for old people. She said they affected your body image and caused bullying. My mother had been on a permanent diet my entire life. Recently she had tried the appetite suppressant lollipops that Kim Kardashian advertised, despite everything in the news. I didn’t tell my mother about what Talia and her friends did to me at school. I never told her about the time they stood in front of the girls’ toilet’s door and wouldn’t let me come out until the end of lunch. When they sat behind me in Maths class and cut pieces of my hair. The worst was in English when I got up to go to the toilet and Talia said at the top of her voice “Ewwwww! Your period STINKS!”. I didn’t even have my period.

My mother would check my phone everyday to make sure I hadn’t downloaded any of the forbidden social media apps. But she never checked inside my faded green pencil case, where I kept my second phone that I had bought with Grandma’s Christmas money.

Talia found me on Snapchat the day after I signed up. The message popped up at 10:06pm. Kill yourself no one will care. I blocked her and all her friends, but I didn’t get to sleep until four in the morning.

I was surprised when I saw the message appear in my Snapchat. Hey cool shoes today! Chat? He would never have talked to me at school, let alone looked at me. Hi! Thanks, what you doing? My hands started to sweat as I waited for the reply. Xbox. Typical boy I guess. Cool what game? I held the phone tighter. Ur hot send nudes? I stared at the message. I put the phone down on my bedside table. My hands shook and I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans. I looked at myself in my full length mirror. I cautiously peeled off my t-shirt, then I took my jeans and undies off in one swift movement. I attempted to angle the camera so that I looked womanly, but no matter how much I tried, I was still just me. I found a photo that I sort of liked, my thumb hovered above the send button.   

photo by tofroscom