Authors: Meg Haston
IN bed in the dark, I ready myself for inspection.
First, the wrists. I wrap my middle finger and thumb around the opposite wrist, then slide the flesh handcuff as far as it will go without breaking. Not far enough. I can feel my body morphing cell by cell into what it used to be. As if I've pressed Rewind on my own body, sped up the process with each bite of the cinnamon roll.
I check the sinking collarbone, vanishing ribs, and lost hips. I've gotten soft, literally.
The door clicks open, and a light triangle appears on my bedspread. Then the flashlight on my pillow and Ashley's.
One, two.
The door closes. Footsteps, then the creak of another closing door. More footsteps. And our door opens again.
“We're here, okay? Both of us.” I screw my eyes shut and bury myself beneath the covers.
Low giggles in the doorway. “You know I'm going to have to chart you for . . . insubordination, don't you, Stephanie?”
Across the room, Ashley snorts.
I sit up. “What theâ”
“Shh.” Cold, bony fingers clamp over my mouth.
“Cate?” I push her away, careful not to touch the tube. Teagan stands in the doorway.
“We've got an hour,” Ashley says from the other side of the room. She slides out of bed.
Cate grins. “Let's go.”
“Tell me!” I demand once we're outside, trudging down the hill. I should be used to the desert cold by now. I lift Josh's sweatshirt over my nose and breathe him in as deep as I can. There's less of him every time. “What are you doing?”
“Ohhh, no you don't.” Cate giggles from the front of the line. Our fearless leader, in pink pj's with a permanent straw sticking out of her nose. “You're in this, too, now. You didn't actually have to come.”
“It'll be fun. Promise,” Ashley says without turning around.
I'm exhausted, but also a little excited. I've never snuck out with friends before, and it seems like this is some very important rite of passage, like the first time you lie to your parents. For a split second, I feel normal, and then I remember.
On the other side of the villa, Cate winds away from the main road. The desert floor is littered with large stones and low brush and the occasional piece of warped wood.
“There,” Ashley says, and points.
Set back from the road is a chain-link fence painted black. Hanging on the other side of the chain link is a sheet of black mesh that makes it hard to see inside, like looking through a screen door. But I can smell what's on the other side, and it makes my stomach turn.
“A pool?” The chemicals sting the inside of my nose and remind me of a million things at once: me at six, standing hunched in a department store dressing room in a two-piece that didn't quite fit while my mother made a clicking sound with her tongue. Me at eleven, wearing a one-piece to the community pool, standing with my sausage toes wriggling over the edge of the deep end, watching the sunlight stream between the other girls' thighs. Me at twelve, me at fourteen, and now, me at seventeen: It doesn't matter. The feeling is always the same.
Ashley's smile is all teeth. “They won't let you go unless you're on green. But we wanted to, so . . .”
“Come on, guys.” Cate tries the padlocked chain slung between the gate and the rest of the fence. “Locked. We'll have to climb.” She hooks her tube around her ear and shoves up the sleeves of her ratty robe. Then she claws the fence, and Teagan boosts her up and over the side. Her flip-flops hit the concrete with a slap.
“You guys go next.” I nod at Ashley and Teagan. “I'll be last.”
Teagan is breathing too hard as Ashley shoves her over, then starts to climb herself.
“Oof.” She wobbles at the top, but makes it. Then it's my turn, and it's harder than it looks. Especially with the other girls watching. My body is weak from all the sugar. The metal
presses into my skin as I climb. When I get to the top I swing one leg over the side, then the other, my ass spilling over the cold, hard bar.
“Just let go and jump,” Cate says. “It's not that bad.”
“I'm doing it.” My head knows that the jump isn't far, but my body feels like it is.
“Oh, come on.” Ashley grabs my ankle and yanks it. I scream and let go, hitting the ground.
“Shhh,” she hisses. “Quiet.”
Cate fishes something small out of her pocket and secures the end of her tube with it. Then we stand in a huddle in our pajamas, next to the quiet black rectangle, staring at one another and then at the ground like nobody knows what to do next. I shiver, even though I'm not really cold.
“This is stupid,” Ashley announces, kicking off her Keds. “I'm going in.” She pulls off her pajama pants but leaves on her T-shirt. “Cannonball!” she whispers, then takes a running leapâ
slapslapslapâ
and jumps in. Water explodes over the side, soaking my pajama pants. When she surfaces, her curls are plastered to her pink cheeks.
“Me, too.” Cate turns her back to us and strips down to her bra, tank top, and underwear. Shoulders hunched, she hurries around the side and down the front steps. She doesn't go under.
“Cold!” she announces with a blue-lipped smile.
Teagan dives in with all her clothes on, and again I'm the last one.
I don't want to mess up Josh's sweatshirt, so I pull it over my head and drape it carefully over the fence. The pajama pants are my only pair, so I hang them next to the sweatshirt. The long
scar from my hip to my knee glows white-hot. I hurry to the edge of the pool, knowing the darkness is not enough to cover me, and slide into the deep end as fast as I can.
The cold water takes my breath away. My legs are covered in goose bumps and prickly hair.
Ashley's dark round outline bobs toward me. “On the website, they say it's heated, but I feel like they lied.”
“Guys!” Cate's silhouette shudders in the shallow end. “Come down here.”
Teagan and Ashley suck in heavy breaths and dive under, their shadows gliding across the bottom of the pool. I cut through the water slowly, lowering my lips to the surface. I'm almost weightless. I let myself relax into the feeling of being not quite here. I wonder how much I weigh in water.
“Thanks,” Cate says gratefully when I reach the steps. I don't know if she can't swim, or if she's just scared about the tube.
Ashley and Teagan surface together.
“Let's play a game,” Teagan says.
“Oooh! Chicken fight!” Ashley's eyes get wide.
I picture Cate and me perched like birds on Ashley's and Teagan's shoulders, but I'd be too scared to rip out Cate's tube. So then I picture it the other way, with Ashley and Teagan wrestling each other while Cate and I sputter for breath. It makes me laugh so hard I suck in a mouthful of water.
“Yeah. I guess that won't work,” Ashley admits.
“Handstand contest!” Half of Cate's face shines in the little bit of light from the moon. “You guys go. See how long you can hold your breath. I'll be the judge.”
“One! Two! Three!” Ashley dives under, and Teagan follows. Cate's practically shaking with excitement, so I follow. I plant my palms on the rough pool bottom and press my thighs together, trying hard not to think about them ballooning huge and white above the water. Instead I try to remember if I know how to do this, if I've ever done it before. I dig for a memoryâa pool party, maybe, or a day my mother took me swimmingâbut there is nothing.
When my lungs start to burn, I flip to the surface. Ashley and Teagan are already standing.
“I win,” I announce. It's stupid, but I feel kind of excited. I glance across the pool, pretending for a second that Josh or even my mother is there, crouched on the edge and smiling and proud of me for something real.
“Cheater!” Ashley shoves me before I can find my balance.
“How can I cheat under water?” I shove her back.
“You didn't go down till, like, two seconds after we did.”
“But I stayed down longer than that, right?”
We turn to Cate.
“Stevie wins,” she decrees.
“Yes.” I grin and shape my short wet ends into a Mohawk.
“Hey. So what's that, um, scar on your leg?” Teagan asks, trying to sound casual. The other girls' eyes are on me, too.
My fingers fly underwater, to the raised white line. “It'sâ” I should have left my pajama pants on. “Nothing.”
Everyone is quiet and still.
Then Ashley closes her eyes, leans back in the water, and starts to float. “I like it out here.”
The four of us, even Cate, let our feet find the surface and spread our arms and legs out like points on a star. I spin slowly around and around, a human pinwheel. With my ears underwater, the sound of my breath is the only sound. There aren't many stars out. Twisting in the cold, weightless dark, I wonder if this is what being dead would feel like. I flop upright again, fast.
The air is starting to smell like something, but I can't tell what. Burnt summer. It reminds me of the night before Josh died. Eden and I got wasted and made out in the lot behind the Stacks. It was desperate, chaotic. She pressed me into the ground and ran her hands everywhere and the sky twisted above us and I felt a little sick. But I didn't stop. I let her touch me and my body rose up in response. One of the many unthinkable ways it betrayed me.
The memory isn't right. I should be remembering running through the sprinklers with Josh when we were kids. I should be remembering standing over the spray, blinking with wet lashes at the millions of rainbows. That's what Eden took from me; that's what I gave away: the sacred importance of the real things. The things that mattered.
Suddenly I realize these girls are the closest things to friends I've ever had. They're closer than Eden, anyway. They don't want anything from me. They don't suck the energy out of me like air from a balloon.
After a few minutes, Ashley splashes next to me.
“What?” I jerk myself upright, shaking the water from my ears. Cate and Teagan follow.
“Shhh.” Ashley's face goes pale.
“Girls?” A nurse voice, one I don't recognize. “Who's out there?”
“Oh,
shit!
” I whisper. We scramble out of the pool, and I cram my feet into my flip-flops and grab Josh's clothes. I'm first over the fence but a sharp pain lights up my calf. I break into a sprint in the dark, the soles of my muddy feet slipping and sliding against my shoes. The brush stings my shins as I duck away from the flashlight beam.
“We're so dead,” Ashley wheezes behind me.
“Shhh!” Cate hisses behind her. “Just run!”
I run as fast as I can up the hill, sending a gravel shower behind me, then tear open the front door of the cottage and dive inside. When the others tumble in behind me, we slam the door and lock it.
“Wait. No.” Cate giggles, bending over and gasping for breath. A puddle of pool water expands around each of us, and a tiny river of blood snakes its way down my calf. “Do they leave it unlocked at night? We have to leave it like it usually is.”
“Girls? I can hear you in there.” Footsteps on the porch.
“Go!” Teagan shouts, even though we know it's useless. We're busted. But we scurry to our rooms and I slam the door behind Ashley and me. Ditch my clothes on the floor by the bed and take a running leap onto my mattress soaking wet, whip the covers over my head and bury my face beneath my pillow.
“She's coming!” Ashley's squeal is muffled.
“Shhh!” My body is shaking, laughter I didn't even know was in there leaking out through my nose and mouth.
On the other side of the room, Ashley starts laughing, too, and then she snorts, which makes me laugh harder. It's ridiculous, being soaking wet and almost naked under the covers, but I can't stop laughing and my body aches. And I think, if Josh were here, he'd be laughing, too.
“I know, okay?” I sit cross-legged on the love seat in Shrink's office, my journal in my lap. I reek of chlorine, even though I washed my hair three times this morning. She can smell it, I'm sure. “I know.”
“You know . . . what, exactly?” Shrink's tone is teasing.
I give her a look. “I know we weren't supposed to sneak out like that.”
Shrink settles into her armchair. She looks amused. “I did hear a little something about an impromptu field trip last night, come to think of it.”
“Okay,” I say. “And?”
“And . . . did you have fun?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like . . . did you enjoy the other girls' company? Did you find yourself smiling, or even laughing? Did you have a good swim? That kind of thing.”
“Are you making fun of me? I feel like you're making fun of me.”
Her eyes find my eyes. “I'm not, Stevie. If you had a good time last night, if you were able to get outside of yourself and away from your eating disorder for a little bit, then I think last night was a success. Truly.”
“Oh.”
“Of course if you do it again, we will have a problem. Understood?”
I nod.
“Good.” She leans back in her chair and waits. I've learned this: Therapy is more about waiting than anything else. I am surprised to realize that a tiny part of me wants to tell her about swimming last night. If only to prove that I'm not a total freak. Somewhere inside me there's a fragment of a normal girl who sneaks out and laughs too loud and gets caught doing things that aren't so bad.
“I don't think I like the new girl,” I say, because I don't know what else to say.
“Who? Rain?”
I nod. “She's kind of a bitch.”
Shrink's expression stays neutral. What did I expect, for her to lean in and whisper,
Seriously, I know. Did you see the way sheâ
?
“To you? Kind of a bitch to you?”
“I don't know. Sort of. Mostly, I think she's just pissed about being here, which I guess I get.”
“And how are you feeling about being here?”
I position myself in the corner of the love seat and survey her bookshelves. I've never really looked at the pictures she's arranged in various junky frames. There's a full-body shot that reeks of self-discovery and weed: Shrink on some mountaintop, squinty-eyed and proud. Then there's a faraway shot of Shrink and some other lady with their arms slung around each other on a beach. The sister, maybe.
“Stevie?”
“I don't know.”
“Don't know . . .”
“How I feel about being here.” I want to ask her which
here
she's talking about: here, as in treatment? Or
here
, as in alive? “Actually, I've been thinking about what you said. About trying treatment or whatever.”
“And what do you think?” Shrink leans forward and rests her chin in her hands. Everything about her is soft: her eyes, the wispy red-blonde resting against her cheekbones. Her mouth. Even her words are soft: doughy and floured.
She would make a really good mother
, I think.
“Maybe I could try,” I say. “For Josh. Just to see.”
“I'm glad to hear that. You've been thinking about him a lot? Josh?”
When she asks, my body gets tight, as if she's tugging the end of a string that binds up my throat and heart.
“Just . . . how I miss him,” I whisper.
“I know, Stevie.”
Then she's quiet, which is the best thing and the worst thing. She doesn't try to fill the space up with words or prayer and she doesn't try to pretend. She's the first one to do that, really. We sit together in silence, just Shrink and me and Josh's death so
heavy it's crushing. And it hurts so bad I can't imagine it ever not hurting.
“I don't know what to do,” I say.
“You're doing it. You're grieving his loss, and that will look different every minute of every day. But I think a really important part of your process will be learning to honor him.”
“I'm trying, though.”
“I mean learning to honor him in a way that's healthy for you. I just believe, really strongly, that he would want that for you.”
I let myself nod. “Yeah. Okay.”
“I wonder what that could look like. For you to honor him in a healthy way.”
“I don't
know
, okay? I don't know.” Just thinking about living past the Anniversary fills me up with fear. I wouldn't know how to do it: how to wake up and sit across from Dad, sipping shitty coffee and knowing that Josh was still gone and he would be tomorrow, too. How to go to school another year, wandering the halls alone and pretending I don't notice the pity whispers. Going home to face Eden.
“He was just a really good friend to me.” My voice is too loud.
“How?” she asks.
“Like, he was just there to talk if I needed to, or whatever. And he supported me. Whatever was best for me.”
“Do you think he'd be supportive of your being here?”
It's a leading question, but I allow it. “I guess so. Yeah.”
“You've made some friends during your time here, it seems. Ashley, in particular.”
“Yeah. She's . . . it's weird. I wasn't all that nice to her when I first got here, but she was nice anyway.”
“So her friendship isn't conditional. On your being in a good mood, or even your being kind.”
I shake my head.
She sits back a little, and her eyes flit to the ceiling. “How do you think your relationship with Ashley is different from your relationship with Eden?”
“I can't evenâthey're nothing alike.” I slide down the love seat. I remember my first hours here at the center, the way Ashley seemed to breathe me in, desperate for a smile, a story. Approval. Or maybe it wasn't approval. Maybe it was connection. Maybe she was just a little girl trying on her mother's lipstick after her brother died. Maybe she was just like me that way.
When Eden breathed me in, it was different. Eden never wanted to connect with me. She wanted to eclipse me. And I let her.
Most nights after Josh died I spent at her place, lounging drunk on her couch and wanting to kiss her but knowing we could never do that again, and listening to records on the brand-new old record player her parents had bought her. We'd stay that way until she got a text from some guy she wanted to hook up with, and then she'd head for the Stacks and I'd drive home. I'd grit my teeth, angry and silent. Even then, I knew what she was doing: owning me. Taking me out when she was lonely and putting me back when she didn't need me anymore.
The thing was, I needed to be owned. I needed someone to say,
This girl is mine
. That's what family is for, but mine was almost gone. There was no one to claim me but Eden and my sickness. So I gave myself to both.
“Well?” I say, when Shrink is too quiet.
“Well, what?” she asks.
“Well, aren't you going to say something like
sounds like you were engaging in some pretty self-destructive behaviors, Stevie
?” I squirm on the love seat, irritated. Her office feels too small. The air stinks of chlorine, and that stupid candle.
Shrink presses her hands together like she's going to pray.
“I mean, I know I was. Obviously. The thing was, Eden was the most destructive part of the whole thing. She was, like, this . . . virus.”
“A virus.”
I nod, because it fits. She is a virus, and I have been fevered with her since the first day of seminar. I thought she was the cure. I thought she could fix me. But instead she's kept me sick, and needing her, because that's what she needed.
“How's your letter going? You were writing her, correct?”
“Yeah.” I open my journal and flip to the letter. I read it to her, out loud.
Eden,
I got your letter. Obviously. Maybe sometime we could talk on the phone or something. I don't really use the phone here, but I could, if I wanted to. After dinner, which is going-out time at home, I guess.
I've been thinking about you. A lot, actually. About what happened to Josh, and why it happened. I think it started that night at the Pit. I keep replaying the night again and again in my head and every time I want to know: Why did you do it? Just for fun? To prove you could?
Here's the really shitty thing about it all, Eden: I was going
to apologize to him. Can you believe it? For being a bitch to him that night and storming off. I'd thought about it, thought maybe he was just trying to be a good big brother, and I was going to skip time with you to apologize to him. God, I was so stupid.
“Huh. It seems like you're holding back a little,” Shrink says. “What do you really want to say to her? After all the processing you've done around your relationship, what do you want to say?”
I try to organize the words, but they won't stay in line. There's this sudden, weird surge of energy in me and I ask, “Could I write it?”
“Write out what you want to say to Eden?”
“Sometimes writing is . . . I don't know. Easier.” It's the first time I've wanted to writeâreally, truly wanted to writeâin more than a year. I can feel the words welling up in the tips of my fingers, pooling there like ink.
“Of course. Take your time.” She gets up and meanders over to her bookshelf. I know she doesn't have anything to do there, really, but I'm grateful that she's giving me some space. I slide down to the tile floor, the love seat at my back. Rip the letter I've started from my journal and crush it, leaving it at my hip. I turn to a fresh page.
The words run out on the page, instantly.
Eden,
You didn't ask, but I am learning some things, here at the treatment center where I am being treated for the eating disorder you have never asked about, not in over a year. I am learning
some things about me, and some things about us. I am learning
that
I needed someone to cling to when my mother left and you needed to be clung to. So we fit, and it felt good.
You needed to be the eye of the hurricane, the center around
which chairs and roofs and whole families spin. And I let you,
and that's my fault.
You never loved me; you loved the sickness in me.
You never loved Josh; you loved how it felt to be wanted by Josh.
You stuck around after he died because I was wounded.
I kept you around after he died because I was wounded.
I'm tired of hurting and being hurt by you.
I'm tired of being angry and letting you stroke my hair.
I don't know what comes after this, but whatever comes I do it alone.
Without you.
Never call me, never text me, never write me.
You and Iâwhatever we wereâare through. Even though you didn't ask.
Stevie
I read it through, once. And I fold it and ask Shrink for an envelope, which I address. I press a stamp Shrink gives me in the cornerâit says
love
. And on my way out of session, I drop it in the mail bin by the front door.