MELISSA
All my life I had been a huge lumbering heifer.
Any kind of grace or agility had been out of the question.
When it came to sports at school, my only drive had been in how to
circumnavigate it. I never really took part, even if I was “taking part.” I
walked during cross-country. I stood sullenly with my arms folded during
netball. I claimed cramps as often as my idiot male PE teacher was gullible
enough to believe it.
I didn’t play outside as a child; I stayed in. I wasn’t a
popular little girl. Children didn’t call for me and I didn’t call for them. If
I had they would have laughed in my face. I didn’t do exercise of any kind.
As a result I was round and chubby. I sweated and panted
when climbing stairs. My muscles were only strong enough to carry off the
waddling gait that trundled my massive bulk from place to place.
All summer I had been in training and I was a new person
now. My fat was (on the whole) a thing of the past. My muscles were honed and
toned. They had needed to build up quickly so that I could manage to train with
all that extra weight to carry that I started out with.
But even though I had done so well; transformed myself as
surely as if I’d had a magical pendant to do the job, I was still scared to
death when I turned up at the ballet class.
It wasn’t something that was available on the resort; I had
travelled into town to do it. There was a dance academy that ran sessions for
locals and tourists. I found it online and signed up.
When I got there I didn’t want to go in. I just had so much
conditioning against this sort of thing. Everybody knew Melissa Chapman
couldn’t do something like this.
But then... I wasn’t Melissa Chapman anymore. I was Dahlia
Western.
Melissa Chapman was an obese, four-eyed cleaning woman who
twenty four hours earlier had been pathetic enough to spy on me while I chatted
up the bloke by the pool.
I could do this. I could do anything.
I showed myself in the door. A Greek lady ran the class with
a fat man pressing play and stop on the music. She was an ageing beauty; very
exuberant and welcoming. I started to feel better.
The group seemed to be a mixture of different levels of
talent. While I got ready I kept an eye on what was going on and felt a bit
better about being there. I wasn’t going to be the only duffer in the class.
I recalled Dahlia spying on me from the day before and
grinned to myself. I had been a fantasy of mine and to see it play out almost
exactly had been wonderful. That she had sunk so low that she would consider
doing that: spying on me with a man! And to think that she really thought she
was hidden, trying to hide that bloated body of hers behind plants. I laughed
out loud to think of it but the dancers noticed so I covered it up. I didn’t want
them to think I was laughing at them.
How wonderful it had been to show off my newfound confidence
and charisma, knowing she was watching and judging herself against it! I had
wondered if it had been a risk; pushing her to the point where she would call
it off; but I was almost at the point now where I honestly didn’t feel that
that would happen. Surely she had been pushed by me or herself beyond the point
where anything would stop her bizarre and self-destructive spiral into
corpulent obscurity and servile poverty.
Ah me, oh my, but I felt happy.
I finished getting ready and joined the class. It was a
little difficult getting into it at first – my body still wasn’t used to being
graceful, despite the lessons I’d been having – but it didn’t take long. I had
never felt this way in my life: that anything was within reach and possible. I
think my confidence was leaving the atmosphere and shooting up into space it
was so high.
The teacher was kind and good at explaining things and as
the lesson went on I started to realise something. I wasn’t the worst in the
class or the second worst. Of the beginners, I wasn’t close to bottom. My
modelling lessons and the strength I had built in my arms and legs actually
gave me an advantage. And that confidence. I was starting to realise that
things like this were ninety percent self-belief. It was the tense muscles and
trepidation of a defeatist attitude that made most folks stumble. Those things
weren’t a problem for me.
One wall of the room was made up of tall wall mirrors
separated by carved and varnished wooden strips. I watched myself through the
glass, smiling. I looked so fabulous; so elegant. And... beautiful. Could that
really be?
But it seemed to be so to my eye. And surely I had managed
to bed so many men now. It must have been true.
Seeing myself in such broad mirrors for so long; seeing myself
move so gracefully; it did something in my mind; clicked a switch from off to on
that ignited a flashing sign in my head, telling me that maybe I had never been
ugly. Maybe I’d just drowned under the rivers of fat. Maybe beneath all that I had
angular cheekbones and dimples like Dahlia’s and pretty eyes. With the makeup and
hair I did look like a model.
And I realised something else.
Up until now I had fantasised about really taking Dahlia’s place;
going back to world like that; really being her back in England in front of everybody.
I had never really believed it was possible.
Things were different now. Looking at myself like this I was
starting to believe. I was seeing the similarities in our facial structure and figures:
mine and the Dahlia that had been unblemished by flab. I could almost believe –
no I could actually believe – that it could really happen; that maybe I could actually
pull it off.
I preened, radiant.
I had got up this morning looking forward to another day of smug
luxury. I hadn’t realised how crucial this day would be.
I stopped dancing and just looked at myself.
It was possible. I was a beautiful woman. My body was amazing.
My features really weren’t so different from hers.
I could do this. I could become Dahlia. For real.
And now I knew that I was ready to do it.
