Teaser

An awards ceremony for the Olympic trials for gymnastics. Three tiny young girls are standing on the podium accepting their medals. As the announcer announces the gold medal winner’s name, Leslie Nixon, and the officials hang the medal around her neck, Leslie begins to tremble and lose her balance, collapsing onto the podium. As medical attendants swarm to her aid, we smash cut to

CREDITS

Act 1

A hospital. Amanda is there, talking to a young doctor, who is giving her a briefing on Leslie’s health condition. He explains that Leslie is 16. Amanda gasps and notes that she looks much younger. The doctor nods and explains that Leslie is underdeveloped for her age. Amanda asks if there’s any explanation for the underdevelopment. The doctor says that it’s hard to say what the cause of the underdevelopment is—it could be genetic, it could be the manifestation of an eating disorder, or it could be something else entirely—there’s no way to be sure.

Amanda visits Leslie’s home and meets with her parents to talk about the situation. They say that Leslie’s dream, since she was a little girl, has been to be on the Olympic gymnastics team and that she’s been practicing under a strict coach for years. Amanda asks to see Leslie’s room. The parents lead her up to the room, which is a standard teenage girl’s room. Amanda, on a lark, turns on the computer and opens up the web browser to see what Leslie has been looking at lately. Amanda opens up the web browser history, and the first thing that pops up is a site called “Pro-Ana central! Your link for thin-spiration!” We see pictures on the screen of already thin starlets artificially enhanced to make them even thinner. As Amanda gazes with horror into the screen, we cut to commercial.

Act 2

Amanda drops into Alice’s office to explain the situation faced by Leslie. Amanda explains that she feels she needs a little distance from this matter, and asks Alice to talk with Leslie and her parents to see what is going on with Leslie’s health condition. Alice is skeptical, but agrees to take over caseworker work on the case as well because of Amanda’s concerns.

Alice meets with Leslie’s coach, a solidly built older man with an Eastern European accent. He explains that despite what Leslie’s parents have always said about this being Leslie’s dream, it seemed to him that the parents were actually the ones making the push for Leslie to compete. Leslie certainly got into the idea of competing, but it always seems to him that the idea of being an Olympic gymnast was her parents’ goal and not hers. He does admit that he pushes his gymnasts to stay below a certain weight, but did not draw up any sort of dietary requirements and certainly did not introduce her to the sort of websites discovered on her computer.

Alice meets with Leslie in her hospital room. Leslie claims that her coach was the one who put her on the diet—telling her to eat as little as possible before the competition. Leslie claims that her coach was concerned that if she gained weight, she’d lose her balance—and as she’d put on weight, her routines had been less and less smooth. The conversation continues as we fade to commercial.

Act 3

Case conference in Jack’s office. Alice explains the situation and what her interviews have told her.

JACK

So parents blame the kid, kid blames the coach, and coach blames the parents? Lot of fun there.

ALICE

Think about it, though—who’s the one person who doesn’t have much to lose?—that’s the person who’s telling the truth.

AMANDA

So you’re saying you think the coach is right and the parents are to blame? That’s..

TERRENCE

Sick? Twisted? If it’s true, it’s also a pretty blatant violation of the laws we’re supposed to be enforcing around here.

JACK

Think you can prove it?

TERRENCE

It’s an uphill fight, but I think we can win it.

Cut to a courtroom, where the court calls the custody termination matter. Terrence calls his first witness—the coach. The coach takes the stand and tells his story, claiming that Leslie’s parents were the ones who pushed her into her athletic endeavors and that Leslie has always been somewhat reluctant. He denies giving her a diet program, but admits that he’s always made clear to his gymnasts and their parents that smaller girls tend to do better, so there might be pressure on competitors to stay thing and small.

Terrence rests his case after calling only the one witness. The parents’ attorney makes a motion to dismiss for failure to prove a cause of action. The judge says that he’s inclined to dismiss, but he has to draw all inferences in favor of the state at this point, so he has no choice but to deny the motion—if he credits the coach’s testimony, there would be grounds for terminating custody. With that, we fade to commercial.

Act 4

The parents’ attorney calls Leslie’s mother to the stand as Amanda slips in to the back of the courtroom. On direct examination, she denies ever having shown Leslie the pictures from the website or limiting her to diet. In fact, she asserts that, if anything, Leslie overate and she tried to keep her daughter from gaining too much weight. On cross examination, Terrence seizes on this fact and points out how desperately and severely underweight Leslie is and notes the contradiction between this and her mother’s claim. Slowly, he dismantles the mother’s façade and gets her to directly admit that she was the one who showed her daughter the pro-anorexia website. The mother breaks down in tears as her attorney objects. The judge then says that based on this, he has no choice but to enter a judgment forfeiting custody to the state.

Amanda drops by Alice’s office.

AMANDA

We won.

ALICE

Custody terminated?

AMANDA

Yep. And she’s going to be checked into a facility for treatment.

A beat.

ALICE

Are you OK?

AMANDA

It’s just that watching this…watching her…it brought it all back.

ALICE

You had a problem?

AMANDA

You have no idea what it’s like—to wake up every single morning and looks in the mirror and have the first thought you think be “I am so fat and so ugly. Nobody will ever love me.” And that was always the first thought. Every morning. It was bad enough that I did that to myself. I just can’t imagine what kind of people would do that to SOMEONE ELSE. It sickens me.

ALICE

You saved yourself. And you helped save that girl.

AMANDA

Who says I saved myself. That’s still the first thought in my head many mornings. But I’ve learned to fight it.

ALICE

I’d say you’re doing pretty well, if you can fight for Leslie.

Fade to credits.