Paperweight (6 page)

Wednesday, July 9, 11:11
A.M.

IN the hours since Dr. Singh stripped me of my name, I've lain curled up on the gold corduroy couch in the villa, unsealing my lips only for water and the newly prescribed antidepressant that I have stashed under my tongue. They think they fool me by adding Gatorade to the water, but I taste the salty sweetness in the back of my throat.

I lie on my side and stare at my warped reflection on the television screen. The girl on the screen is impotent. She has no control; she has allowed impulse and hunger to rule her. She deserves the label of
bulimia
. I stare into her dead eyes. Maybe if she'd been stronger that night. Maybe if she hadn't been drunk.

She disgusts me. I close my eyes, but she follows me into the depths of memory.
No
, I plead.
Please.
But she drags me back,
kicking and screaming, to the very first time. And I am living it again.

Eden was gone, and I was drunk. My arm was throbbing. I was slumped in the driver's seat of Dad's old Buick. Engine idling, headlights off. No one could witness what I was about to do.

The radio was on, but the dial was stuck between stations. The soundtrack was static, peppered with the occasional syllable from Garrison Keillor on NPR. I turned up the volume. Then the static was so loud, I could feel the vibrations at my core. They reminded me that I was alive.

My heart was beating so fast I thought my chest might explode. Beneath the white cotton bandage, my arm throbbed in rhythm with my heart. But my hands were steady and strong.

I reached for the first bag—clawed at it, really—and tore into the package. I found individually wrapped chocolate snack cakes with fluffy white filling. The icing on my fingertips felt taboo, like sugary sex. My mother never let me have these. I crammed the cakes into my mouth, one after the other after the other, until I was breathing them in, positive that without them I would suffocate. I barely took the time to chew, so deep was the need for this oxygen. Too soon, my hands grasped nothing.

Next the bag of round chocolate truffles, each encased in their familiar yellow-gold foil. I pressed the soft globes between my tongue and the ridged roof of my mouth. Their surrender was instant.

Soon fear churned in my gut. It mingled with the processed sugar and booze. I forgot to drink something; this would never
work unless I drank something. Rookie mistake. There was a gallon of tea somewhere, I know, somewhere.

Sweet tea. My fingers found the plastic handle. I gulped it down with the kind of urgency only the dying could understand. It spilled down my front, slipped its sticky fingers along my throat and between my breasts. The plastic container buckled, no match for my rabid sucking.

I kept going that way, stuffing myself with all of it—the cheese puffs like bony electric orange fingers, the packets of powdered hot chocolate I tore open with my fangs. It was not human what I was becoming.

The end came only when everything was empty and at last—
at last
—I was full. I turned off the car and stumbled outside. Fell to my knees in the dirt like the feral animal I was.

It was harder than I thought it would be. My thick tongue kept obstructing my index finger. My body prayed,
Please, girl, please. Don't.

But it didn't take long for my body to submit to my will. With deft fingers, I pulled the strings, commanding my body to empty.

It was almost satisfying, seeing it there on the grassy altar: the swirls of neon orange and frosted bits of cake floating in sugary sweet tea. I crawled a few feet away, twigs and tiny pebbles imprinting my skin with chaotic designs. I flipped onto my back, spent in a moment of peace. It felt almost holy, my body pressed against the earth that way, rising and falling to the irregular chant of my heart. I made an angel in the grass.

Stars came out. At last, my mind was still. So quiet I could hear the crickets in the grass, proclaiming Georgia summer.

“Stevie?” A woman's voice bubbles to the surface, ripping through me.

I open my eyes, every fiber of my body aching. I look around and realize that Shrink and I are alone in the villa. The other girls are outside on the lawn.

“Stevie.”

“What?” My lips and tongue are like rubber.

“I think it's important that we talk.” Shrink perches on the edge of the sofa. “Do you want to meet in here? In my office?”

“No session. I don't feel well.”

“I'm sorry to bother you. Were you sleeping? Dreaming?”

I shake my head from side to side without opening my eyes. “Remembering.”

“Remembering . . . what, exactly?” I can feel her weight on the couch next to me. I pull my knees to my chest.

“‘Memory believes before knowing remembers,'” I say, because these are the words that come to mind and I'm not about to talk to her about the first time. Not now, not ever.

“Sorry?”

“Nothing.” Just
Faulkner
.

“Outside or in?” she asks quietly.

“I told you, I don't feel well.” My voice is louder than I expected. Sweat collects behind my knees, in the ashy cradle of my elbow. I feel sick, shaky, like it's early morning and I'm trying to sleep off a night of drinking with Eden.

“You're angry.”

“Because you're not listening to me.” I sit up, scramble away to the other end of the couch. With my back pressed against the bony sofa arm, I occupy only one cushion, although technically—
technically
—I occupy only half. Less if I pull my knees tight to my chest and scrunch my toes.

“Okay, so you're frustrated with me for pushing. And angry about the treatment team meeting.”

“Whatever. I don't care.”

“No? Because if I were you, I'd be pissed. I'd be really, really pissed if I finally found an identity that seemed to fit, and then my treatment team took it away.”

“Shut up.” I spit the words at her.

“Tell me about your reaction,” she says in a voice so soft it makes my body spark like a frayed live wire.

“Jesus, it's not a reaction! I'm done talking, okay? That's all.”

“Stevie, it's okay to be angry.”

I slap one of the throw pillows so hard my hand stings. “Oh. Is it? Is it okay?
Thank you
for your permission to be pissed at your fucking diagnosis.”

She doesn't flinch. “
Your
fucking diagnosis.”

“It's not mine. It's wrong.” I can't bear to look at her.

“You wanted an anorexia diagnosis.”

I would puke, if there was anything left inside me. Why is she doing this to me?

“Tell me what it means, Stevie. What does it mean about you, the bulimia diagnosis?”

The words come instantly, rushing past one another on my tongue. “That I'm fat. That I'm lazy. No self-control. Disgusting. Weak. The lowest of the low.” For a second, the feeling rushes back into my body. Salty and cold, taking me under like a crashing wave.

“Those are really terrible things to think about yourself.”

“They're true.”

“I know you believe they are. But I absolutely don't believe those things.”

She can believe what she wants. But there is only one absolute truth.

“What did the diagnosis of anorexia mean for you?”

Anorexia.
The word sounds intimate and sad. As if we knew each other, once, but are strangers now.

“Stevie? What did it mean?”

“It meant . . . strength. Power. It meant I was better . . . than.”

“Mmm. Better than who?”

“Everyone. Myself. Who I used to be.” She won't understand. And I don't know how to describe the transformation. It's as if all your life, you've been hiding in a self that wasn't yours. Buried beneath the surface was someone more potent. Someone special. And then one day, it happens. Maybe you're sitting alone in your room, doing your exercises. Maybe you're taking the long way to school, or dissecting the grilled chicken flesh on your plate with a blade. And you hear the word. Your calling.

Anorexic.

And it fits. You have shed the scaly flesh of the imposter. Emerged raw, fresh, and new. You have come into your real self. For the first time, you are alive.

Shrink puts her hand on mine. “You are not your illness,” she says. Which proves what I already know: She has no clue.

I tug the ugly afghan from the back of the sofa and cocoon myself in it. Then I look at her. A reddish welt rises just above her right cheekbone.
Did I
. . . Of course I did. I hurt everyone I touch.

She catches me looking at her. I think she will make a joke, maybe something about how since my career as a hunger artist isn't exactly taking off, I could always look into professional boxing. But she says, “It's okay, Stevie.”

I open my mouth to say something—
whatever, this is bullshit, leave me alone—
and then close it again. The space behind my eyes stings. I clutch my forearms and squeeze until the pain passes.

“It will be time for lunch soon. If you can make a little more effort over the next few days, I can ask Ms. Dalton to let you pick your own meals, and—” She stops. “Stevie? Stevie. Stop.” There is urgency in her voice. She reaches beneath the afghan and lifts my forearm.

“What're you—” I look down.

Without realizing it, I have dug my thumbnail into my forearm so forcefully that my mother's lifeless cherry smile balloons with a single drop of blood.

Wednesday, July 9, 9:06
P.M.

BACK in Cottage Three, I reach for the pullout drawer built into the platform bed frame. There are two pills, a white and a yellow, stashed in the left cup of my bra. One is the antidepressant I saved this morning, and the other is the pill they gave me after dinner when I told the nurse I was feeling “very anxious.”

“Oh, hey.”

I try to slam the drawer shut, but it jams with only an inch to go. CB is standing in the doorway to our room.

“Hey.” I nod, eyeing the way her sunburned ankles stick out over her Keds. I reach down and wrap my fingers around my own ankles. Coarse hair has sprouted in prickly tufts from my ankles to my thighs. My armpits, too. I don't have an electric razor and I won't ask any of the girls to borrow theirs.

“I looked for you at the villa so we could walk back together.”

“Why?” After the way I talked to her this morning in the changing room, she shouldn't want anything to do with me.

But it's like she's completely forgotten. “I just wanted to see if you were okay. I know you had your treatment team meeting today.” She kicks off her Keds and nudges them into her side of the closet. It is stuffed with knit dresses, frilly skirts, and scoop-neck tees.

“Oh.”

“Those meetings suck, don't they?” She sighs and heaves her body onto the bed, making the wooden frame shudder. “Must have been rough.” She settles onto her stomach, with her head at the end of the foot of the bed so we're only a few feet apart.

I shrug. Next, she'll want to braid each other's hair.

“Yeah.” She nods and rests her chin in her hands. It's an irritating habit of hers, this answering as though we're having an actual conversation.

I close my eyes, hoping she'll take the hint and turn off the light.

“I'm glad Anna was there for you, though.”

“Anna?”

“Your . . . therapist?”

Right. Shrink.
I give up and turn onto my side, facing her. I realize, as I take her in, I've never really seen her before. She is a pudgy child: round, pink cheeks with freckles like tiny grains of sand across the bridge of her small, perfect nose. Her eyes are a liquid, hopeful brown. There is a spark there, flickering but present. Rage suddenly washes over me. It's unthinkable that we should have the same diagnosis. We are not alike.

“She seems so great, Anna. I wish she was my therapist.”

“Were.”

“Huh?” The skin above her sunburned nose ripples in confusion.
Worthless cow.

“I wish she
were
my therapist.
Were
.” I say it
slow-ly.
To ensure that she
under-staaaaands.
“It's subjunctive.”

“Okay.” She blinks. I have hurt her, that much I can see. A fresh wave of anger ignites. I hate her, I hate her, this girl who is still able to feel. “Anyway, she seems really good.” She sits up and starts to pick at the pink glitter nail polish on her short stubby toes. “So, when you're quiet for a long time, are you, like, having flashbacks or something?”

“I don't have flashbacks.” My voice is thin. “I'm just . . . remembering things.”

“That happens to me sometimes, too.” The rest of the words rush out of her mouth all at once, like she is unable to restrain herself. “Like, I remember things, things I don't want to remember, actually? Over and over. Sometimes I can't sleep because of it, or can't concentrate or whatever. It's like I can't shut it off, you know? It's like the one thing I want to do, but I can't.”

I swallow, keeping my eyes on the polish chips she's now violently flicking from her toes.

“Do you ever feel like that?”

I allow my head to dip in a nod. I do. I hate that I do. I hate that we do.

“Sometimes I wish I could just go to sleep, like, forever, and not dream.”

I sit up and face her. “I, uh, have some meds—a pill if you're upset or—if you can't . . . if you need something.”

“Really?” She smiles, looking suddenly shy. “Thanks. I mean . . . I'm okay for now. But thanks.”

“It's not a big deal.” Nearly all of me has no idea why I offered, especially when she could tell on me and get my stash confiscated. But a minuscule part of me knows what it's like to be suspended, half-conscious, in a memory you can't escape. Always remembering. Nobody deserves that. Nobody but me, anyway. “Just don't say anything.”

“I won't. Swear.”

“Good.”

“So, um . . .” CB sits up. Her stomach ripples under her dress, making her look like a girl Buddha statue.
Curly Blonde Buddha.
I almost laugh. “What are yours about?”

“My what?”

“Your flashba—memories.”

“You're not serious.” I would never tell her about the memory of the first time, or about Josh or Eden or seminar or my mother.

“You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. It's just that sometimes it helps me to say things out loud. And you haven't really said much since you got here.”

I lie down again and close my eyes against the buzzing fluorescent light and her voice.

On the other side of the room, the bed creaks. “You're lucky. It's like nothing gets to you. I have all this stuff trapped inside, and some days I think if I don't get it out as fast I can . . .” She heaves a sigh. “It's like a parasite or something. I don't know.”

I do. And I feel the same way. Like my own memories could devour me.

“And the thing is, since my family looks so perfect from the outside, people just assume . . .” Her voice wavers.

I yawn and crack my neck. I need to focus on a new plan, a way to lose weight without alarming Shrink or the rest of my team. No distractions.

“Sorry. Never mind. You're trying to get to sleep.” The bed creaks again, and I hear her pad across the carpet. With the click of the light switch, the room plunges into twilight. I keep on the small clip lamp attached to the built-in shelves. Here the dark is too dark. I flip onto my side and face the painted cinder block wall.

“Oh,” she whispers. “Before you go to sleep, do you think you could get my zipper? This one always gets stuck.”

I roll my eyes at the ceiling. “Fine.”

She perches on the edge of my bed, back to me. I cringe at the fleshy curves beneath the thin cotton.

“Here.” She scoops the mass of thick blond curls off her back and whips them into a twist so I can reach the zipper. I pinch the cold metal between my fingers and drag it down. The gasp escapes my throat before I can stop it.

Trailing from her hairline to the space between her shoulder blades is a shower of small, perfectly circular scars. Some are purple, some red, and some raised, thick, and white. It looks like someone has taken a hole punch to her, like she's nothing more than a cheap paper doll. Horrified, I reach out to touch one. It's callous beneath my finger.

“Oh. God.” She jerks away, reaching for the zipper as she escapes to her side of the room. “Sorry. I didn't think—”

“No! It's okay! I . . . what happened to you?” I dig my nails into the mattress, suddenly feeling like I might puke. What am I supposed to do? Go over there? Leave her alone? Call somebody? Shrink, maybe. There's a phone in the hall, I remember.

“Nothing,” she says quickly. Her eyes are wide with concern, like she's more worried about me than the meteor shower of scar tissue tumbling down her spine. “Nothing new, anyway. I've had these.” And then, as if she's read my mind, “Staff knows already. Don't worry about it.”

“Don't
worry
about it?” I rub my face with my hands. My entire body is tensed. “But—”

“Seriously, Stevie.” She lets out a hard-edged laugh. “Would you just lie down? You're freaking me out.”

I force a laugh, too, but it feels wrong, like I'm the one who put those scars there. Even though I didn't. And she didn't, either. There's no way she could have reached those places on her body.

“Turn the light out? I can't sleep with that thing on.” She climbs into bed, still clothed, and buries herself beneath the covers.

I have the sudden urge to climb in with her, to stroke her hair the way Josh used to do for me when I had a nightmare. But that would be weird. So I reach up and turn off the lamp, even though my mind is reeling with questions, and there's this scream churning inside of me like wind, gathering speed.

“It's not, you know,” I say into the dark, “normal.” I don't say it to make her feel bad. I just say it so she knows it's not okay.

“Yeah.” Her voice is a whimper, but she seems to understand. “I know.”

“You can tell me if you want,” I say to the ceiling, after several
minutes have passed. My own marred flesh is aching, and I knead the scar with my fingertips. It does nothing to ease the throbbing.

Across the room, she says nothing. There is only the easy, rhythmic breathing of her sleep. In and out, in and out, like cool water lapping against a rocky shore.