Second Place: The Beautiful-You Diet

 Breakfast:  800 calories remaining
2 hard-boiled eggs: 120 calories
Whole wheat bread (1 slice): 75 calories
Tomato (5 slices): 27 calories
Green tea or black coffee (unsweetened): free

I cut eggs into slivers over toast, spreading the pieces like they’ll somehow make the dry crumbs palatable. My dad says, whoa-my-god, it’s coming toward me—his idea of hilarious. He pinches the underside of my arm hard enough to leave a bruise as I swallow the guts of the tomato, chugging cup after cup of coffee because it’s free and diminishing the hunger is worth the anxious churn of caffeine-induced heartburn. The coffee burns my throat but doesn’t loosen my voice and I don’t tell my father to go to hell, that I hope he dies on his way to work. I chew the toast down to the last corner, dredging it through the slop on my plate, the squishy tomato seeds staring like my lab partner who says I have a puffy cunt, like the woman at the grocery store who eyed my preteen breasts and told my mom to buy me a bra. Nothing tastes as good as thin feels, my mom says when I stare sadly at my empty plate. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.

 
Lunch: 578 calories remaining
Grilled boneless, skinless chicken breast (3 oz): 126 calories
Green beans (cup): 34 calories
Butter (1/4 tsp): 25 calories
Whole wheat bread (1 slice): 75 calories

I run home for lunch, so I don’t have to watch my classmates devouring pizza. The butter doesn’t get to the corners of my bread. I can’t add more, can’t afford the extra 25 calories if I want a snack in the long expanse between lunch and dinner when classes drag and my stomach howls like an injured wolf. Mr. Saunders, my health teacher, says growing bodies need calories. But I’ve grown too much. The flesh of my thighs overhangs the side of my chair, leaving bruises on the underside of my legs. My brother sits across the table smearing peanut butter on white bread, crunching interminably on corn chips. He gets a candy bar for dessert, but his legs are long and slender. My own unloved legs are chubby, thick, dangerous. Thunder thighs, a man at the bus stop says when I stride past, head down. I’ll suffocate if you sit on my face, he says. I’m twelve. I’m not even sure I know what that means, but I now know my fatness can kill. I mash green beans onto the bread, the way I mash myself into clothes my mother buys a size too small as motivation. I imprison my burgeoning breasts into my new bra and a tank top, a t-shirt, a sweater, and I try, try, try to disappear into the layers.

Snack: 318 calories remaining
Almonds (8 grams): 46 calories
Cheese stick (1): 60 calories
Licking cheese stick wrapper: 0 calories

I’m excused from gym after a whirling spin to catch a softball drops me to the turf, waves of dizziness churning through my head. In health class, Mr. Saunders says twelve-year-old girls should eat between 1800 and 2200 calories a day, but he doesn’t live with my mother and doesn’t have to face the disappointed slant of her mouth when she has to buy me bigger clothes. I leave his class and sit in a bathroom stall, feeding almonds into my mouth like precious gems of hope, like maybe the next one will be the one to fill the aching hole. The cheese stick, I eat even slower, pulling it into tendrils so thin I can barely taste them. Tomorrow, I’ll get cottage cheese and celery—it’s almost free and I can eat myself sick without disappointing anyone. Jane loves Michael is scrawled on the wall in front of me. It blurs in front of my watering eyes. No one will ever write about loving me on any wall, ever.

 Dinner: 212 calories remaining
Baked white fish (3 oz): 91 calories
White rice (1/2 cup): 103 calories
Broccoli (1/2 cup, steamed): 19 calories

I hate fish, but I eat it anyway, flipping the pages of the diet book that will make me lovable. My brother slathers slabs of butter onto his rice and pours cheese sauce over his broccoli. Mr. Saunders said humans need fat into their diets to help absorb vitamins and make them feel full. I’ll never feel full ever again. Has she lost any weight, my dad says, though I’m in the room, still feeding rice into my mouth grain by grain. The book is called The Beautiful-You Diet, but I’ll never be beautiful because there is nothing beautiful in my thunder thighs, my death thighs, my dangerous body. Broccoli tastes like old shoes, but I shovel it into my mouth, pushing into the hidden places in me where there are no fathers, no men on the street, no puffy cunts, no hunger.

Evening snack: -1 calorie remaining
Nothing.

The family eats popcorn after dinner. Too bad you’re on a diet, my father says, shoveling handfuls into his mouth. Mr. Saunders says all things in moderation, even snacks, but people don’t stare at him in the cafeteria, measuring everything he eats. I crawl into bed early, clutching the book so I can dream about what I’ll be allowed to eat tomorrow. When you’re done with your diet, my mom says, sticking her head in the room, you can eat what you want. And maybe she’s right. Maybe this time it’s temporary and in a month or two or six, I’ll be acceptable. My thighs will be slender and safe if I can just quell the hunger, ignore the vertigo, learn to live with the pain. I listen to my family watching TV, laughing and crunching, as I think about eating and food and fatness and remind myself that soon, very soon, I’ll be more. I’ll be less.

I’ll be loved.

Lovable.

-Finnian Burnett

Finnian Burnett is a writer whose work explores the intersections of the human body, mental health, and gender identity. They are a recipient of a 2023 Canada Council for the Arts grant, a finalist in the 2023 CBC nonfiction prize, and a 2024 Pushcart nominee. Finnian’s work appears in Blank Spaces Magazine, Reflex Press, Geist, Pulp Literature, CBC books, and more. Their two novellas-in-flash, The Clothes Make the Man and The Price of Cookies, are available through Ad Hoc Fiction and Off Topic Publishing respectively. A third flash fiction collection, Red Shirts Sometimes Survive, is due out in December, 2025. Their work is represented by Stacey Kondla of the Rights Factory.Finnian lives in British Columbia and enjoys cold weather walking, Star Trek, and cat memes.