Deadly Diet

Marissa ran into the restroom. 'Kaylie, are you okay?' she asked. She could hear her friend throwing up in the last stall. She waited by the sinks until Kaylie came out. 'What's wrong?' she asked again.    'Nothing. I'm on a, umm, diet, I guess you'd call it,' Kaylie answered.    'Did you have a bad reaction to the pills or something?' Marissa inquired.     'No, I did that on purpose!' Kaylie retorted, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. 'It's great! I can eat whatever I want and I still look great. You should try it.'     It was true, Kaylie looked fabulous. 'How does it work?' Marissa asked.     'All you do is eat what you want, and then when you're done you go into the restroom and throw it up. It hurts at first, but you get used to it pretty quick,' Kaylie answered.    'If I'll look like that,' Marissa said, 'then I might have to try it!' Hey, what harm could it do?    Everyday from then on, Kaylie and Marissa went to the restroom after lunch. If teachers asked what they were doing, they replied that the cafeteria food didn't agree with them. And it didn't, in a way. Every sandwich, every cupcake was their enemy. They started getting thinner, and at first they got tons of compliments. Soon, though, people started noticing that their ribs stuck out. Before long Kaylie and Marissa were getting constant dizzy spells and light-headedness. But they didn't care. All they saw was the layer of fat on their arms that didn't really exist. When people said they looked like skeletons, they'd take an extra trip to the bathroom. To them, even skeletons were too fat.    Everything changed one day as they were heading to a party. Kaylie was driving and they were talking about what they were going to do when they got there. Suddenly, Kaylie blacked out and ran off the road. Marissa was helpless-her 'diet' had left her too weak to move Kaylie's unconscious body out of the way and regain control of the steering wheel. They crashed into a tree and all went black.     The medics tried to save her, but her body was too weak-anything they did could kill her. They knew she didn't have long. She slipped into a coma on the way to the hospital.    Finally, a week later, she woke up. Her parents were there, crying over her bed. She asked, 'What happened to Kaylie?'    'She died on impact, sweetheart,' they answered. 'She blacked out because she didn't have enough nutrients in her body. Her heart became too weak to pump blood up to her brain...' That's all they could say before they burst into tears again. 'We don't want to lose you, honey,' her mom choked out.     As she slipped into a coma again, she whispered to her parents, 'I'm sorry. I love you.'    She never woke up.1