Authors: Meg Haston
“She didn't see that you were really sick.” Shrink strokes Whimsy's mane, softly.
“It wasn't her fault. I think she just didn't want me to feel messed up. I needed that.”
Shrink is silent. My skin is starting to pinkenâa slow, dry burn.
“Plus I hid it well, I think. My dad didn't say much, either. The only person who kept saying stuff about it wasâ” His name catches in my throat.
“Josh,” she says.
“Josh,” I say. We fought about it the night I killed him. I close my eyes and his words come rushing back.
You look like shit, by the way. Everybody thinks so and Dad's too scared to say it. This whole food thingâit's selfish and crazy and you look like . . . shit.
My fists curl into balls at my side.
“What do you think about that? That he was the only one who was brave enough to say something?” Shrink asks.
“Like I said, Eden was the only one who accepted all of me.” I want to turn back. It's too hot here; I want to bury my face in one of the villa's couches and go to sleep. I want to press Ashley's bunny to my cheek and smell the lavender.
“This is where we see things differently, Stevie. I don't believe your eating disorder is the real you. I think there are some things we shouldn't accept. And living sick is one of those things. It
sounds like Josh thought you deserved better. Maybe he wasn't willing to see you live sick.”
“Well, he didn't have to,” I snap. “I made sure of that, didn't I?”
I've stunned her into silence, I can see that. Maybe now she's starting to understand the
real me
. I have bad blood running through my veins. I'm not a good Green Girl. I'm not sharp like my mother or decent like my father or extraordinary like Josh. My mother knew it, and I know it: I am a monster. And when Josh looked up at me in his last moments, his vision clouded with his own blood and me just staring down at him, I think he finally knew it, too.
I imagine letters to Eden all day, only I have no idea exactly what I want to say. Shrink screwed with my brain this morning, sliding in her questions and her
maybe
s just so, and toppling everything I'd ordered so neatly in my skull. She doesn't get Eden. She doesn't get that I
needed
to feel like fucked up was okay and I wasn't the only one. I needed a break from Dad's avoidance and the way Josh tried to gauge how much weight I'd lost when he hugged me.
In the evening snack line I stand alone. The line jitters, all shuffling feet and flitting hands. Two girls ahead of me, Ashley French braids Cate's limp noodle hair while Teagan watches. I should say something about how Ashley didn't rat me out, but every time I open my mouth, one of the girls bursts out laughing and I feel stupid.
“Stephanie? Stephanie D.?” The woman standing behind the serving window hasn't learned my name yet. To be fair, I've never corrected her. She reminds me a little of the cafeteria lady at my school: crumpled skin and a smile that is crooked and a hairnet draped over her wispy dishwater hair.
I step up to the window, which looks like a dumpy concession stand. Snack foods perch on the ledge: a small bag of pretzels, an apple with an individual container of peanut butter, a baggie of trail mix, chocolate cookies, a tiny bag of jelly beans. They are clustered in groups, index cards assigning each group a point value between one and three.
“How are you, Stephanie?” She slides a tray in my direction.
“Not hungry.”
“You can do it.” She smiles and consults a clipboard. Nothing is done around here without consultation of a goddamned clipboard. “Ms. Dalton has you down for six points for evening snack.”
I scan the choices, searching for an acceptable combination, as if there is one. I reach for the package of jelly beans, then pull away before my fingers graze the cellophane. It reminds me of that game Josh and I used to play when we were kids, where you build a tower with wooden blocks and remove one block at a time until the tower falls. Once you touched a block, you're committed. You can't go back.
“Wait. Can I do the apple? But without the peanut butter.” I point but don't touch.
“No, ma'am.” She turns around and reappears with an apple, a container of peanut butter, and a plastic knife. “And what else?”
Behind me, the line of girls is shifting, rolling against me in
stronger and stronger waves. I want to whirl around, tell them all to take about five giant steps back so I can think. “I can'tâI don't know. The trail mix? Wait. No.”
“Trail mix it is.” She slides a bag across the ledge. “And I'll get your supplement.”
“No. No.” I shake my head. The apple and peanut butter and trail mix are already too much. “No supplement. Not tonight.”
She doesn't argue, just makes a note on the form.
I clutch my tray and move slowly toward the table where Ashley, Cate, and Teagan are examining their selections.
“Uh, hey. Can Iâ”
“Sit.” Ashley kicks out the chair across from her and half smiles, like she's totally forgotten what a bitch I was yesterday. “What'd you get? Ooh. I love that trail mix. Especially the dried cranberries. They're so good.”
“Me, too.” Cate combs the braid out of her hair. She reaches for the supplement, then nudges it away again. “I got the jelly beans, but I hate the licorice ones. Do you think I'll get charted for that? It's not, like, an ED thing. I just hate licorice.” She chews her lower lip.
“I'll trade you licorice for cherry.” Teagan's eyes cut across the room, scanning for nurses.
Cate shakes her head. “I should've gotten the apple.”
“Want mine?” I interlace my fingers behind my neck and peer at my tray.
She snorts. “Right.”
I knead the clear package of trail mix, studying the contents. Someone has tried to sneak chocolate covered peanuts beneath the raisins and almonds, I can tell. I shove it to the side and
contemplate the apple. It's medium sized. I lift the plastic knife and saw carefully around the core. Then I slice those chunks in half, then do it again. And again.
“Stephanie.” A heavy hand lands on my shoulder. “I need you to stop cutting up your food, please. That's enough.”
I turn and shake Hannah's hand away. Cheap turquoise liner borders her eyes and squirms when she glares.
“Fine. Okay.” I lift the first apple slice. The inside is pale and grainy. I bite it in half and chew as fast as I can. “
Mmmmmm. Food.
”
She sighs and shuffles away. Teagan catches my eye and grins.
I swallow the mealy mash, then peel back the gold foil on the peanut butter container and sink the knife into the gooey square. When I pull it out again, it stretches like caramel. I try to spread the peanut butter on an apple slice, but most of it sticks to the knife.
“Hey. Ashley. Thanks, um . . . thanks,” I say, widening my eyes at Ashley. But Cate is too busy separating out black jelly beans to care. “Or, you know?”
She nods, all serious. “If you ever need help, like, distracting or something, we could do it together.”
“You sound like you work here.” I contemplate my next bite. It doesn't look right. I try to remember a time before all this when I ate peanut butter and apple together. People do that, right? It seems like a little kid snack. Maybe at school once. I pop the apple-peanut-butter chunk into my mouth and screw my eyes shut because maybe that will make it easier. The fat coats my tongue instantly. I chew frantically.
I'm doing it for Josh
.
I can't have a tube. I'm doing it for Josh. I can't have a tube.
“Actually, I think working here would be kind of cool. I wonder what you have to do to get a therapist job.” She pops a handful of pretzelsâI don't think she even counts firstâinto her mouth and chews.
“When I get out of here, I'm never coming back.” More accurately:
When I get out of here, I'm never going anywhere else
. The thought feels good and warm. I force myself to reach for another slice. The bitter apple skin pricks my throat on the way down.
“I hope I never have to come back, either,” Cate says without looking up from her jelly bean piles.
“I don't know.” Ashley smashes the empty pretzel bag flat with her palm. “I don't really want to leave. I like it better than being home, actually.”
“Yeah,” Teagan says to her lap. “The people here are nice.”
Ashley nods. “And I like the schedule here or whatever.” Her words start to tumble fast. “It's like school: You know exactly where you're supposed to be and what you're supposed to eat, so you can't really screw it up if you just follow the rules.”
I don't disagree. We just follow different rules.
“Out there, it's way worse because it's like, there's everything and you can have anything at all, so it's easy to have too much and it's hard to stop and not safe like it is here.”
I watch her expression go hard and her pink cheeks deepen. Even Cate has stopped her organizing. Teagan lifts her eyes.
“But I think when I get out I'm gonna buy, like, a bunch of individual peanut butter containers, so I know.” She's not really looking at me anymore. “I'll stack them high.”
“When are you supposed to go home?” I ask.
“Well, my Ninety-Six is in a couple weeks, but they probably won't come to that.” She grimaces.
“Your what?”
Teagan pops a pink jelly bean into her mouth. “Her Ninety-Six. About a week before you're supposed to get out, your parents come out for four days and do, like, family therapy and stuff. Plus you can stay with them at their hotel if you want, and go off grounds during the day.”
“Ashley. Maybe you could stay with a relative when you get out,” I say carefully.
“Maybe,” she mumbles. “Who are you going home to?”
No one.
“My dad, I guess.” It's what she expects to hear. “I'm serious, though. Do you have someone else you can stay with? Someone who can look out for you?” I cover her hand with mine. It's clammy, and when I touch her, she jumps and sucks in fast. Her eyes go wide. She looks up at me like she's seeing me for the very first time.
“No. No, no, no,” she mutters. “I don't have anybody. No one like that.” Her face is pleading, desperate. Begging me to help her or save her or some other heroic feat.
“It's okay,” I say stupidly. “It's gonna be okay.” I pull away, my hand sweaty with her panic, and I just want to get out of there. The villa feels too small for all of these girls and their demons, and it's insane for me to think for a second that I could help this one. We are all a collection of lost causes, stashed here so no one has to see just how wounded we are.
When I finish snack, I take my journal to my corner of the gold couch. Ashley's words play on loop in my broken brain.
Who are you going home to?
Even if I wanted to go home, there's
almost no one left.
If.
There are too many
if
s in my head to think straight:
if Josh were alive. If I'd never taken seminar. If I hadn't introduced Eden and Josh that night. If.
The night of the Pit, I got ready in a silent house, scurrying back and forth between my mother's bathroom and mine in the dark, ears pricked for the slam of the front door. When it never came, I thought maybe Josh had forgotten about the Pit this year, and part of me was relieved. I liked the idea of slipping in to see all the good shows, just Eden and me. I grabbed my keys and my cell. I thought about leaving a note for Dad, then decided it didn't matter.
I'd barely twisted the key in the front door when I heard Josh pounding up the porch steps.
“Sass. Wait. You leaving for the Pit already?”
“Oh,” I said vaguely. “Yeah. I thought you were busy or something.”
He stopped and peered at me under the unforgiving porch light.
“What is that, lipstick? Since when do you wear lipstick?” He reached for my arm, but his hand found my shoulder, and his face got tight. His eyes fell on the tattoo. He hadn't said a word since I'd come home with it. Neither had my dad.
“It's notâscrew you.” I shook him off. The air was wet, already threatening to smear the foundation and blush I'd stolen from our mother's makeup drawer. I'd curled my hair with her curling iron, but I didn't know how because that's something you have to learn, and my hair was already sticking to my neck.
“Sass! I didn'tâI'm just not used to your face like that is all. What did Dad say?”
“I don't need his permission.”
“Yeah, no, I know,” he said quietly.
We stared at each other. He looked like plain old regular Josh, in his T-shirt and jeans and sneakers, and suddenly I felt stupid and embarrassed beneath all the makeup.
Let's just forget it this year,
I wanted to say.
We can watch whatever channel you want and you can pick the snacks, too. And I won't be weird about them. Just for tonight.
“I'm meeting my friend from seminar at eight,” I said instead. “So I have to go. You probably don't have enough time toâ”
“No, I'm ready. I'm good.”
“You don't have to come if you don't want to.” I didn't like the idea of hanging with Eden and Josh at the same time. I didn't know why. Josh would judge, probably. He wouldn't understand her, just like lately he couldn't understand me. She wasn't his type. She was mine.
“Of course I'm coming.” He sounded hurt. “We do the Pit together every year.”
“Okay, then.” I sighed. “Come on.” I hurried down the front steps and past the For Rent sign Dad had stabbed in the front yard and never mentioned. I'd heard him on the phone a few times, saying
original hardwood floors
and
wraparound porch
in this fake, bright voice. I tried to walk fast enough to feel a breeze on my face, but the air was too still.
“For real. Yourâyou look good, with your hair like that.” His voice lilted up like a girl's on the word
good
. “Hey, when we get downtown do you want to grab something at Milo's? Did you have dinner yet? I didn't have dinner yet.” He tosses the words on the cement in front of us, extra casual. No big deal.
“Nah, I'm not hungry.” It was true, and I was proud. My hunger pangs had actually started to fade. I sped up a little, feeling my muscles hum.
“Sass.
Slow down
.”
“I don't want to be late, Josh. Okay?” My face burned. I wished he would just give up. A few blocks away, the music bubbled up: different songs and instruments and good-time noises layered one on top of the other.
“So your friend. Is she just hanging out, or is she playing or singing or something?” Josh huffed.
“She wrote lyrics for this band. During Ben's class.”
“Cool. Cool.” He reached over and fake patted my back, leaving his hand there long enough to evaluate how much my shoulder blades were jutting. I dropped to one knee, pretending to fuss over a shoelace that wasn't untied.
Downtown looked the way it always did this time of year. Nicer than usual but also kind of pathetic, like an ugly girl wearing sequins to prom. The same tired PeachPitPalooza banner sagged over Broad. Along the sidewalk, white Christmas lights were nestled in the trees like uneven strands of fake pearls. There was a main stage set up at the far edge of downtown, where people settled into rows of metal folding chairs. The shops and bars and restaurants were all open, tables and patrons and pitchers of beer spilling onto the sidewalk.
Every fourth storefront or so was dark, dusty windowed, and deserted. It had been that way for a couple years: Businesses snuck out in the middle of the night and never came back. The streets were clogged with people and they blurred together and I was light-headed, which felt good.