Alice is always keeping up with trends. If all the girls start wearing leather combat boots and trinket-style jewelry, she races to purchase exact replicas. She flips through fashion magazines and her eyes magnetize to the flat stomachs of models.  I find her desire to fit in quite pathetic.

As little girls, our families took us to eat Chinese hot-pot on the weekend. We fidgeted impatiently as the meat and vegetables boiled, braiding each others’ hair to pass the time more quickly. She giggled at my hair, and I playfully teased her braiding skills. Alice ate so much that she fell into a food coma. Hot-pot was her favorite food.

Now she barely eats. She limits herself to a salad of wilted lettuce and cucumbers as meals. I don’t enjoy her company anymore, but I still worry. Sometimes she calls me during ungodly hours, sobbing. I never know what to say so I just listen to her cry. Alice isn’t happy, even with her trendy accessories and tiny waist. She tells me of her need for something bigger. Someone to spoon-feed her the attention she craves.

Alice calls me again tonight to blubber about the cute boys she saw at school that day. She was silent for a moment, then the almost one-way conversation takes a turn.

“I want a boyfriend so bad…”, she complains.

I cringe. I feel sorry for her. “Why? What’s the point? You have a loving family and loving friends. Don’t rush off with a boy so desperately” I plead.

“You don’t understand, I need a boyfriend”, she says.