What Victoria was more than anything was different from the rest of them. Enough so for everyone to notice. And more than once, people had asked her parents within her hearing if she was adopted. She felt like one of those picture cards they held up at school that showed an apple, an orange, a banana, and a pair of galoshes, while the teacher asked which one was different. In her family, Victoria was always the galoshes. It was a strange feeling she’d had all her life, of being different, and not fitting in. At least if one of her parents had looked like her, she would have felt as though she belonged. But as it was, she didn’t, she was the one person out of sync, and no one had ever called her a beauty, as they did Gracie. Gracie was picture perfect and Victoria was the unattractive older sister, who didn’t match the rest of them.

And Victoria had a healthy appetite, which kept her body broader than it might have been otherwise. She ate big portions at every meal, and always cleaned her plate. She liked cakes and candy and ice cream and bread, particularly when it was fresh out of the oven. She ate a big lunch at school. She could never resist a dish of french fries, or a hot dog bun, or a hot fudge sundae. Jim liked to eat well too, but he was a big man, and never gained weight. Christine existed mostly on broiled fish, steamed vegetables, and salads, all of which Victoria hated. She preferred cheeseburgers, spaghetti and meatballs, and, even as a child, often helped herself to seconds, despite her father frowning at her, or even laughing about it and making fun of her. No one in her family ever seemed to gain weight except her. And she never skipped a meal. Feeling full gave her a sense of comfort.

“You’re going to regret that appetite one day, young lady,” her father always warned her. “You don’t want to be overweight by the time you go to college.” College seemed like a lifetime away, and the mashed potatoes were sitting right in front of her, next to the platter of fried chicken. But Christine was always careful what she fed the baby. She explained that Grace had a different frame and was built like her, although Victoria sneaked her lollipops and candy, and Grace loved it. She would scream with delight when she saw a Tootsie Roll Pop emerge for her from Victoria’s pocket. And even when Victoria only had one, she gave it to her sister.

Victoria had never been popular in school, and her parents very seldom let her have friends over, so her social life was limited. Her mother said that two children making a mess of the house was enough for her to deal with. And she never liked any of Victoria’s friends when she met them. She always found fault with them for one reason or another, so Victoria stopped asking to invite them. As a result, no one invited Victoria over after school, since she never reciprocated. And she wanted to get home to help with the baby. She had friends at school, but her friendships didn’t extend past school hours. The drama of her early school years was being the only child in fourth grade who didn’t get a valentine. She had come home in tears, and her mother told her not to be silly. Gracie had been her valentine, and the next year Victoria told herself she didn’t care, and braced herself for disappointment. She actually got one that year from a girl who was as tall as she was. All the boys were shorter. The other girl was a beanpole, and actually much taller than Victoria, who was wider.

And the next drama she faced was growing breasts when she was eleven. She did everything she could to hide them, and wore baggy sweatshirts over everything she owned, lumberjack shirts eventually, and everything two sizes larger. But they continued growing, much to Victoria’s chagrin. And by seventh grade she had the body of a woman. She thought of her great-grandmother often, with her wide hips and thick waist, large breasts and full figure. Victoria was praying she never got as big as her great-grandmother had been. The only thing different about her were the long thin legs that never seemed to stop growing longer. Victoria didn’t know it, but they were her best feature. Her parents’ friends always referred to her as a “big girl,” and she was never sure what part of her they were referring to, her long legs, big breasts, or ever-widening body. And before she could figure out which part of her they were looking at, they turned their attention to the elflike Gracie. Victoria felt like a monster beside her, or a giant. And with her height, and her womanly body, she looked much older than her years. Her art teacher in eighth grade called her Rubenesque, and she didn’t dare ask him what it meant, and didn’t want to know. She was sure it was just a more artistic way of calling her big, which was a term she had come to hate. She didn’t want to be big. She wanted to be small, like her mother and sister. She was five feet seven when she stopped growing in eighth grade, which wasn’t enormous, but it was taller than most of her female classmates, and all of the boys at that age. She felt like a freak.

She was in seventh grade when Gracie started kindergarten, and she took her to her classroom. Her mother had dropped them both off at school, and Victoria had the pleasure of taking Grace to meet her teacher and watched her walk into the room with caution and turn to blow a kiss to her big sister. She watched over her all year at recreation, and took her home after afternoon day care. And the same was true in eighth grade, when Gracie was in first grade. But in the fall Victoria would be entering high school, at a different school, in another location, and she would no longer be there for Gracie, or see her if she walked past her classroom during the day. And she was going to miss her. And so was Gracie, who relied on her older sister and loved seeing her peek into her classroom throughout the day. Both girls cried on Victoria’s last day in eighth grade, and Gracie said she didn’t want to come back to school without Victoria in the fall. But Victoria said she had to. Eighth grade was the end of an era for Victoria, and one she had cherished. It always made her happy knowing Gracie was nearby.

The summer before Victoria entered high school she went on her first diet. She had seen an ad for an herbal tea in the back of a magazine, and sent away for it with her allowance. The ad said that it was guaranteed to make her lose ten pounds, and she wanted to enter high school looking thinner and more sophisticated than she had in middle school. With puberty and a richer figure, she had put on roughly ten pounds over what she was supposed to weigh, according to their doctor. The herbal tea worked better than expected and made her desperately ill for several weeks. Grace said she was green and looked really sick, and asked why she was drinking tea that smelled so bad. Her parents had no idea what was wrong with her, since she didn’t tell them what she’d done. The evil brew had given her severe dysentery, and she didn’t leave the house for several weeks, and said she had the flu. Her mother told her father that it was typical pre-high school nerves. But in the end, just by making her so ill, the herbal tea caused her to lose eight pounds, and Victoria liked the way she looked as a result.

The Dawsons lived on the border of Beverly Hills in a nice residential neighborhood. They had the house they’d lived in since before Victoria was born, and Jim was the head of the ad agency by then. He had a satisfying career, and Christine kept busy with her two girls. It seemed like the perfect family to them, and they didn’t want more children. They were forty-two years old, had been married for twenty years, and had a manageable life. They were happy they hadn’t had more kids, and were pleased with the two they had. Jim liked to say that Grace was their beauty, and Victoria had the brains. There was room for both in the world. He wanted Victoria to go to a good college and have a meaningful career. “You’ll need to rely on your brains,” he assured her, as though she had nothing else to offer the world.

“You’ll need more than that,” Christine had said. It worried her sometimes that Victoria was so smart. “Men don’t always like smart girls,” she said, looking worried. “You have to look attractive too.” She had been nagging her about her weight in the past year, and was pleased about the eight pounds she’d lost, with no idea of what Victoria had done to herself for the past month to shed the weight. She wanted Victoria to be thin too, not just smart. They were much less worried about Gracie, who with her charm and beauty, even at seven, looked as though she could conquer the world. Jim was her willing slave.

The family went to Santa Barbara for two weeks at the end of summer, before Victoria started high school, and they all had a good time. Jim had rented a house in Montecito, as he had before, and they went to the beach every day. He commented on Victoria’s figure, and after that she wore a shirt over her bathing suit and refused to take it off. He had observed how big her bust was, and had then mitigated it by saying she had killer legs. He referred far more often to her body than he did to her excellent grades. He expected that of her, but always made it clear that he was disappointed by her looks, as though she had failed somehow, and it was a reflection on him. She had heard it all before, many times. He and her mother went for long walks on the beach every day, while she helped Gracie build sand castles with flowers and rocks and Popsicle sticks on them. Gracie loved doing it with her, which made Victoria happy. Her father’s comments about her looks always made her sad. And her mother pretended not to hear, never reassured her, and never came to her defense. Victoria knew instinctively that her mother was disappointed by her looks too.

There was a boy Victoria liked in Montecito that summer, in a house across the street. Jake was the same age she was, and he was going to Cait in southern California in the fall. He asked if he could write to her from boarding school, and she said he could, and gave him her address in L.A. They talked late into the night about how nervous they were about high school. Victoria admitted to him in the darkness, as they shared a stolen bottle of beer, from his parents’ bar, and a cigarette, that she had never been popular before. He couldn’t see why. He thought she was a really smart, fun girl. He liked talking to her and thought she was a nice person. She’d never had beer before, nor smoked, and she threw up when she went home. But no one noticed. Her parents were in bed, and Gracie was fast asleep in the next room. And Jake left the next day. They were going to visit his grandparents in Lake Tahoe before he started school. Victoria had no grandparents anymore, which she thought was a blessing sometimes, since she only had her parents to comment on her looks. Her mother thought she should cut her hair and start an exercise program in the fall. She wanted her to do gymnastics or ballet, without realizing how uncomfortable Victoria was about appearing in front of other girls in a leotard. Victoria would have died first. She’d rather keep the figure she had than lose it that way. It had been easier just making herself sick with the nasty herbal tea.