Paperweight (4 page)

After a minute passes, she tries again.

“What did he say?”

“Huh?”

“The night you found out your mother was gone. What did Josh say?”

“Oh. Nothing. He gave me a journal.” I wave her away. “I used it in this writing class I took.”

“And do you still use it?”

“Why would I? He's dead.” I press the soles of my feet together, hard. Every fiber of every muscle in my thighs is working silently.

“Okay.” She sits up straight. “So what would it mean, if you chose to write even though he's not with us anymore?” She eyes my legs.

“He was never with
us
.” I roll the hems of my jeans up, then down. Up, then down. Up, then down.

“Even though he's gone, I mean.”

Jesus, she's exhausting.

“Okay, I'll cut to the chase,” she says. “I'd like it if you'd start journaling again. Would you consider it?”

I cock my head. “Depends on what you want me to write.”

“I want you to write about what those days were like for you, after your mother left. About the things that stood out for you. Whatever you—”

“I'll think about it,” I cut in.

“Good enough for me.” She smiles. Her eyes flicker to the thin gold watch on her wrist. “We're out of time. But we'll meet again day after tomorrow?”

“I'll check my schedule.”

She laughs as she fishes for her sandals in the grass. “Our next session will be a little different. We'll meet with your treatment team: the psychiatrist, dietician, and physician. Now that you've had a little time to settle in, we'll spend the hour talking about the best course of treatment and how to move forward during your time here. Sound good?”

“No.” I stand up. We are almost the same height.

“Noted. See you then.”

As I head for the villa I realize I never finished my exercises. I assign myself triple the reps. I'll have to do them in bed tonight, after CB is asleep.

Just as I reach the double doors of the villa, Shrink's voice floats to me across the lawn.

“Don't forget to journal,” she calls.

I yank open the door and let it slam shut behind me. She thinks writing can save me. She never considers that it was writing that got me here in the first place, destroying me from the inside out.

Wednesday, July 9, 6:01
A.M.

TIME is more of a concept here than anything else. It's unreal: blocked out in perfect bold rectangles on the schedules we get every morning. Outside the sun creeps up, glowy over the lawn, then sinks like a sagging balloon losing air fast. I know that time is passing. But there are none of the usual indicators: the erratic beep of the coffee maker in the house on Broad (
Broke & Decker, that's what they should call it
, Dad said), the hollow thunk of a basketball against a backboard in the parking lot at
Le Crâpeau
before the sun slid down. The brittle chorus of crickets at night.

Here, every day feels the same. Each morning at six, we're required to report to the villa for weight and vitals. I leave Cottage Three early, to avoid the golf-cart mafia that lurch across the grounds searching for the disobedient: girls who speed
walk, girls who run, girls who make the trip between the cottages and the villa more times than necessary.

Being first to report means I can walk a little fast. Weigh in and have my blood pressure taken before the others arrive. Change from my hospital gown into my clothes without the intrusion of judging eyes.

But this morning, I'm running late. I spent too much time in bed, checking and rechecking the angles of my body beneath the sheets to confirm what I already know: I am becoming soft. It's as if the very act of being here is melting me.

After weight and vitals, I hurry to the small, dimly lit changing room adjacent to the villa's dining room. It's empty. A worn armchair in the corner and a few old desks and side tables are shoved against the dingy walls. Girls have stashed their makeup bags, hair dryers, and flatirons on various surfaces. A ritualistic girl frenzy stirs here every morning before breakfast: the buzz of electric razors (real razors are contraband), the sizzle of flatirons as girls make their hair as slight as their frames.

My fingertips are clumsy as I fumble with the thick cotton ties on my hospital gown. I slip into my jeans and Braves T-shirt just as CB, Teagan, and Cate (I have finally figured out who is who) burst into the room, huddled together and cackling like a trio of escaped mental patients.

“I'm not even kidding. I swear.” Cate, the anorectic with the feeding tube, whips her blond hair into a ponytail and gives me a nod. “So that new dude nurse gave me the stuff for constipation—that—what do you call it?”

“I know what you're talking about.” Curly Blonde shuffles over the threshold in her filthy inked Keds.

“The stuff that tastes like orange chalk.” Cate finds her way to a paisley quilted bag on the desk below the only mirror in the room. It's useless—hung high enough so you can see only your face—but she stations herself in front of it and peers at her reflection, tracing her tube with the tip of her finger. “Anyway, he makes me drink the whole thing in front of him, and when I'm finished, he takes this giant step back. Like shit's about to explode out of me any second.”

“E
wwww!
Cate!” Teagan rolls her eyes. I inch toward the doorway. The actual door, if there ever was one, has been removed.

“What? It
didn't
! I'm just saying—he acted like I was a freaking time bomb or something!” Cate's smile stretches her lips so tight they turn white.

This is small talk in this bizarre little universe: Girls prattle endlessly about how their hair is falling out, their skin is dry, they can't take a shit. They complain, but deep down, they wear these things like badges of honor.

“Have they made you take that stuff yet, Stevie?” Cate says to the mirror. “The chalky orange stuff?”

I shake my head. “They can't make me take anything.”

“She hasn't met with her treatment team yet,” CB explains.

“Ohhh,” Cate and Teagan murmur in unison. In perfect sync, they reach for their clothes, scurry to separate corners, strip, and re-dress with furtive movements. I steal a glance at the curve of Cate's spine, at her perfect, spindly knees, and the lines of her rib cage that rise up triumphantly from under her skin. I pinch the fat around my midsection until tears come.

“Hey.” CB's sudden enthusiasm startles me. “Before breakfast,
we're gonna go down to the ring and see the horses. The nurses are too busy with vitals to care, anyway.”

“I used to ride,” Cate says. The hollows of her cheeks cast a grayish shadow over the rest of her face. She flicks the red plastic bracelet around her wrist. “When you get on yellow, they'll let you ride the horses here. I already picked out my horse. Ernie.” She turns on her curling iron. Then she lets her hair down and winds a chunk of it around the barrel.

“You'll get there,” Teagan says almost forcefully. She pulls her green bracelet tight, until the puffy flesh around her wrist goes white.

“Morning, girls.” The thick-ankled redhead from the lawn stalks past me, twirling the cotton tie on her gown.

“Hey, Jenna. Have you met Stevie? She's in with us now,” Cate says.

No, I'm not.

“Cool.” Jenna gives me a nod and hunches over her makeup bag. “Anyone need anything?”

“Ooh! Me.” Cate finishes curling her hair, flips her head over, and gives it a shake.

“Fine, but make sure they're all hidden, okay?” Jenna clutches something in her grip. I want to know what it is and I don't, all at once. “And if you get busted—”

“I won't tell! Come
on
, Jenna.”

Jenna eyes me. “Is she cool?”

“Jesus Christ. I don't
care
,” I say.

“Fine. Here.” She releases the forbidden item into Cate's outstretched palm, then groans as she tugs on a pair of jeans beneath her gown.

“Ashley? Can you do a topknot?” Cate asks. She hands over the contraband, and I get a glimpse. Bobby pins.

Teagan's watching me. “It's because if you take the little plastic caps off the ends, you could use them to self-harm.”

Like I asked. Besides, using hair accessories to self-harm is just . . . uninspired. I don't need tools. My body is both weapon and wound, predator and prey. I will self-destruct without any help.

“So? Wanna come? To see the horses, I mean?” CB bites down on a bobby pin and twists Cate's hair into a feeble knot.

I shake my head. “Nah. No.”

“C'mon. I know the first week's been hard for you, but—”

“It's not.”

“Huh?” Curly Blonde's brows arch.

“It's not hard.” Slowly, I let my eyes trace every indulgent inch of her body. “Not if you have the slightest bit of willpower.”

Once I'm outside on the patio, I can breathe again. I hold a notebook in my lap, an empty black-and-white composition book Shrink left on my pillow along with a thin black marker and a pink metallic paper crane. Complimentary chocolates must be out of the question.

The marker is heavy in my hand. It's the first time I've written anything since seminar. I'm not journaling for Shrink. I'm not. I'm writing because I can't stand to be inside the villa with the girls and the noise and glittery clouds of hair spray.

I turn to the first page. Shrink's handwriting is unrestrained.

Write about what changed for you
.
How you experienced life after the loss of your mother.

The memory of the first few hours and days after she disappeared is hazy, smeared like pencil marks that have been partially erased. I remember the sounds, mostly: the laughter downstairs as Dad hosted his Tuesday night writing group. The creak of Josh's footsteps outside my door as he debated whether to come in.

On the sixth day he finally did. “Get up, Sass. You have class.”

I'd begged him not to make me go. I wasn't ready.

“I'm grieving,” I told him from beneath the sheets. “Fuck off.”

But he'd said I had to, said Dad needed me to be okay and normal and other things I wasn't. Pushed me until I was dressed and out the door, walking to the Stacks, a bar/coffeehouse in a Victorian-style house just a few blocks from our place. The first floor was a nameless used-book shop where Dad went to read old Hemingway and avoid deadlines. Where my mother bought teetering stacks of classics (
no Hemingway
, she'd told me when I begged.
Hemingway was a misogynist! A drunk!
) to keep me occupied as a child. But the second floor was a bar where Ben taught seminar on Wednesday afternoons in summer.

The bar was dark, with mahogany-paneled walls and dim Tiffany lamps. I stood at the top of the staircase blinking like a moron, waiting for my pupils to adjust. I'd never been in a bar before. Never had a drink. I blamed Josh: Everybody else in my grade already had a fake ID and spent Saturday nights parked behind the soccer field with their friends, chugging a fifth of nobody-cared-what. Not that I had any friends to underage drink with. But still, Josh didn't understand. He was one of those rare breeds who could stay completely straight and everybody
loved him anyway. He didn't understand that most of the world wasn't like him—most of us needed a little something extra to be okay.

At the back of the bar, a few community college students were drinking coffee at a long, farmhouse-style table. Students were easy to spot. The rips in their jeans were intentional. They didn't wear the same kind of tired the townies did. My stomach seized. I didn't belong here.

With my every step toward the table came a new awareness: the goose bumps puckering my skin, the way my thighs slapped together as I walked. The girth of my hips, my protruding stomach and back fat spilling over my cutoffs. All of me stitched together and straining at the seams.

There were mostly guys at the table, with only one girl close to my age and a woman with a ropy, gray French braid and a tiny diamond nose stud. The woman smiled at me. I took the chair across from her. I watched the girl out of the corner of my eye. She was thinner than me. Her thick, straight hair was so black it was almost iridescent blue. She had large green eyes winged with creamy layers of chartreuse and electric aqua that came to a point at her temples. A silver shooting star tattoo arced over her right cheekbone. The air around her smelled too sweet.

“You guys read Ashe's latest book?” The popped collar two seats down cut his eyes in my direction. His sunglasses rested on the back of his neck. He wasn't the typical two-year student. Too entitled. A local, probably, with money and a DUI from prom night that had inconveniently sidetracked his Ivy plan.

“I thought he played it a little safe, honestly,” the older woman spoke up.

“What do you mean?” I blurted. “I liked it.” My dad had spent our final family vacation editing the book.

“I like his early work better,” the woman said. “He was hungrier then.”

The boy ignored her. “What's your name?” he asked me, balancing his chair on its back legs.

“Stevie.” My whisper was dusty. I searched the bar for Ben's familiar outline. He was nowhere.

“Stevie. Nice.” The boy reached for his coffee mug and took a too-long sip. Licked the milky foam from his upper lip, slow. “Haven't seen you in any of my classes so far.”

“Back it down, Drew.” The girl's voice was low and thick. She rolled her eyes at me. “Hey. Eden.”

“Stevie,” I said again. My cheeks, my whole body, were burning. I reached into my backpack and found the journal Josh had bought me. I scratched at the shadowy sweat stains on the grass cloth cover.

“Just being friendly,” Drew murmured. “Buy you a drink, Stevie?”

“Now?” Electricity shot through me.

“Not now. Not on my watch.” Ben deposited a stack of composition books at the head of the table. He was about ten years younger than Dad, and Josh's height but thicker, with a shaved head and diamonds in his ears. The sleeves on his white dress shirt were rolled up, almost glowing against the blackness of his skin. He smiled at me, all pity around the eyes and mouth, and my fists curled in my lap. A lump formed in my throat as I nodded back.

“Let's get started.” Ben took a folded slip of paper from his
shirt pocket and started taking roll. When he got to my name, he called it just like any other, and I relaxed a little.

“God, he's delicious,” Eden said under her breath. She straightened up a little and tossed her hair back, and everyone looked except Ben.

I squirmed in my seat and pretended not to hear.

I spent the next three hours not hearing Ben, either, penning four different letters to my mother while the others freewrote on a childhood memory. I wondered if Ben was going to shake his head at my father over a beer.

“I don't feel like going back to my apartment. My roommate's kind of a slut,” Eden said after seminar was over and the rest of the class had dispersed. “Want to stick around?”

“Who, me?” I slammed the cover of my journal shut.

“Yeah, you.” Eden laughed a little. “Grab that table. I'll be back.”

“Okay.” I didn't feel like staying, but I didn't feel like going home, either. I tucked myself in the corner booth. A few minutes later, she slid across from me and deposited two short glasses on the table.

“Oh. I don't actually—” I touched the glass with awkward, virgin fingers. “I mean, thanks.”

It burned. That's how people always describe the first drink, isn't it?
It burned going down.
But that was exactly it: fire fingers reaching down my throat into my empty gut. I'd been fasting for six days and it felt like some huge transformation was happening inside me.

“Damn, girl.” Eden leaned back, impressed as I sputtered. “Take it slow!”

I expected the second sip to go down easier. It didn't. “When did you get that tattoo?” I choked, pointing at the shooting star.

“Couple years ago. Ever thought about getting one?” Her lips curved upward.

“There's nothing to get. Nothing I want on my body forever like that.”