The laptop was placed equally between us: half on her left leg, half on my right. The page was open to Facebook as we looked through the most recent albums, filled to the capacity with pictures from the party last weekend. Everyone there made sure to get in at least one or two. There was no point in looking good for a party or hanging out with all those girls you don't actually like, if it couldn't be documented for all your Facebook friends to see.
She clicked to a picture of a red-headed girl. "You know her right?" I was asked. After party-hopping with the same group of people all over the city, you were bound to always have a friend in common with everyone. "Yeah, she's sweet. Her name is Lizzie." Lizzie happened to be one of the friendliest, most outgoing people I'd ever met. She could make conversation with a wall if she needed to, and she would hug people she'd only known for a minute. She was one of those girls that if you didn't know her you wouldn't get it, but if you did, you wanted to be her.
"Ew, number one you can't be a pretty red-headed girl, and her dress is way too tight and short."
"Why are you hating on Lizzie? Wait, don't you have that dress?"
“Yeah, but it's not supposed to be that tight. Well, I guess not everyone can be a size two like us.”
Usually these are the kind of comments I would laugh at. The comments we throw back and forth all the time, but it was different with Lizzie. It was different because I remembered seeing her sob on the floor of a dark bathroom, sob as she told me she's slowly recovering. Told me the doctors made her this way but she hated it. That she wakes up some mornings and looks at herself in the mirror and decides she couldn't possibly go to school that day. Asks herself how anyone could wake up and face the world when their body looked like hers. "How is that an arm?" she asked, lifting up a totally normal looking arm. "How is that my arm?" She puts herself back in bed those days because it's safer for her to sleep, than to face the temptation. People say Lizzie's fat, even Lizzie says Lizzie's fat, but she's actually bulimic. And there's not really any way you can laugh at that.
In silence, I reached over to the keyboard and clicked onto the next picture.