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Charlotte looked at her reflection in the wall-sized mirror. She didn't like what she saw - because all she saw was a fat blob. She stared, disgusted, "Why me?" She sighed to herself.
Her long, straggily chestnut hair hung loosely over her shoulders - limp and unwashed - and her brown eyes glistened with sadness in their hollow, shadowed sockets. She closed her eyes and took a deep but heavy breath.
The word "insecure" was writtten in a bold, underlined and colourful font on her forehead. Everyone saw it but her. She gazed at the clock on the wall, almost fixated as it ticked in a repeatative echo. Tick, tock...tick, tock...tick, tock... It seemed to her that time was running out.
She pulled on the dress her mum had bought her for her 14th birthday two previous years ago. She'd tried it on every year since then but it had never fitted her propperly. Maybe this year it would?
As she slowly but carefully slided the zip up her painfully thin back, she smiled, showing her yellowing teeth.
"At last, it fits!" She weakly screamed, as the dress hung lifelessly from her stick-thin body. Her lips were blue and she shivered and shook violently as the dress slid down without her noticing. Her shoulder blades stuck out like razors. Her face was covered in bleeding, sore acne and each spot seemed to read, "I'm not meant to be here". Her friends were definitely right when they revealed she had gone too far this time - way too far. They were right to suggest to go out for a meal with her, but she had refused. She wouldn't let an ounce of nutrition pass her lips ever again.
Sometimes it's normal to be skinny. 'Everyone else is like it' Charlotte thought to herself every day of her life. 'Everyone but me'. Everyone except me. I have to be perfect".
But nobody's perfect - even if they seem to be. The people on covers of magazines aren't even perfect. They're missing one thing. Natural beauty. Reality.
Charlotte thought that thin meant beautiful. But how wrong she was. If only she'd known. She truly had gone too far this time.
Far into the ground. Food can't help her now. Being thin didn't make her perfect: it killed her.

If only she'd known.
But she had her last smile.