About four days into that first week of horror, someone actually spoke to me.
“You don't eat much, do you?” she asked, looking at my plate. It was hamburger night and the table was covered with plates of burgers and fries. I had some lettuce and tomato slices on my plate and one hamburger patty without the bun. I wasn't sure about the hamburger's calorie content so I was only eating half. I was so startled to be noticed that at first I didn't say anything.
“You can talk, can't you?” Someone else was talking to me. That was more conversation than I had had all week. I wasn't sure if I could remember how to talk.
“Of course I can talk!” I said, brilliantly.
“So, what's with the rabbit food?” someone else asked. I looked up to find six pairs of perfectly made-up eyes on me and my plate. I didn't know what to say. They already thought I was a total loser. Maybe I should tell them I had an ulcer or something. Right. That would make me popular. Tell everyone I have a middle-aged man's disease.
Would I make matters any worse by telling the truth? Could matters be any worse?
“I'm, well, just, um, trying to, you know, cut down.” I nodded at my own wisdom, looking at my plate as if it held the answers to all of the great questions of life. Wilted lettuce and faded tomato slices stared back at me silently. No answers there.
“Cool. I'm Keisha by the way.” I looked up, stunned. She actually sounded sincere. She smiled at me. I smiled back.
“Maddie,” I said.
“So, are you on a diet?” Keisha asked. The other girls looked interested. I thought about her question for a second before answering. I hadn't really thought about it in that exact way before. Was I on a diet? Did that make me sound cooler or more like a loser? I thought of all of the magazines and how excited they seemed to be when someone famous went on a diet.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I answered, my powers of conversation obviously fascinating all of them.
“Good for you,” one of the other girls sighed. (I later learned her name was Savannah.) “I keep on trying to start one but it's just so hard.” She patted her completely flat stomach and sighed again.
“Oh, I know. It's, like, you want to lose weight but you just can't give up the food. One day, I'm going to look like my mother and then I'll just want to die!” Keisha put her hand to her chest dramatically. Everyone laughed, including me, even though I thought it was a little rude talking about your mother that way.
And that was it. For the rest of camp, I kind of belonged. I didn't really have much in common with them, but we talked about food a lot and they all read my calorie-counter book with me. A couple of them even tried keeping track for a couple of days. They showed me how to do my makeup and Savannah managed to straighten my hair and keep it that way for more than three minutes. Annie wouldn't have recognized me with my blue eye shadow and flowing locks! Devon would have split a gut laughing, but Alyssa would have totally approved. I would have fit right in with the beautiful people in Europe.
I found it easier and easier to keep track of the calories. Everyone seemed so impressed with me, that I was determined to do an even better job of the whole diet thing for the rest of camp. It was kind of hungry going at first, but I got used to it. By the middle of camp, I was down to less than nine hundred calories a day. Not bad at all.
Parents' Day was always about halfway through the session. Not everyone had parents show up, but mine always did. Even though I was at the relatively grown-up age of almost
fifteen, they arrived on cue that year as well. They always sprang me from camp for the afternoon and took me to a nearby motel where we ate real restaurant food and swam in the chlorinated pool.
“So, what will it be first, food or chlorine?” my dad asked when I climbed into the car.
“Oh, we already had lunch, so I'm not hungry. I'd like a swim, though.” I looked out the window as I answered. We hadn't really had lunch and I was actually hungry, but I couldn't face the whole lunch-at-a-restaurant routine. My dad always figured that the camp starved us and he insisted on ordering chocolate milkshakes and cheeseburgers. There was no way I was going to risk eating that much food all at once. The milk-shake alone would blow the calorie count for the day.
I changed quickly into my black “slimming” suit when we got to our room. Like all hotel rooms, this one seemed to have a mirror on every wall and I stopped for a minute to look at myself when I came out of the bathroom. The suit definitely looked different. The straps kept coming down off my shoulders and there was a saggy look to the material that I hadn't noticed before. I stood at the mirror looking at myself from all angles. I put my hand on my belly to see if it was getting smaller. I looked a little closer. Well, maybe it looked a little smaller, but not much. That suit really wasn't all that slimming after all. I still looked pretty chubby. Maybe I should try for eight hundred calories a day.
“What are you doing?” my mother asked. I jumped at the sound of her voice. I hadn't heard her come in through the adjoining door.
“I'm just getting ready to go swimming,” I answered, turning away from the mirror and trying to smile cheerfully. I wanted to look at myself again, to see if the rest of me still looked as chubby as my stomach, but I had the feeling my mom wouldn't like that.
“Why were you holding your stomach like that? Are you sick?” Mom moved in, with the “I'm getting a thermometer” look that she always gets when one of us so much as sneezes. She reached out and felt my forehead. I shook my head, knocking her hand off.
“I'm fine. I was just looking at my suit. I think I need a new one.”
My mother stood and looked at me, presumably considering the wisdom of buying a new suit. I felt uncomfortable under her gaze. She was staring at me like she had never seen me before.
“You look very thin,” she said, taking me by the shoulders and turning me around like some kind of inanimate object.
“I am not thin. I'm just ⦠changing. You know, adolescence and all that. It's normal.” I tried not to put too much sarcasm into the last word as I gently took her hands off me so as not to tick her off and went out to the pool. I had the feeling she wasn't convinced but I didn't really care. Mothers always thought something was wrong with you when there wasn't. How could she think I looked thin when I was obviously still overweight? Besides, she was the one who sent me to the doctor in the first place.
The visit wasn't quite as much fun as when I was younger. Part of growing up, I guess.
The rest of camp passed by pretty fast. I worked on keeping up with the other girls while knowing that I would never really measure up. I kept working on my calorie studies and was an expert by the end of the session. I was definitely down to eight hundred and the girls were all totally amazed at my willpower.
We said goodbye at the end of the summer with all sorts of promises to write and talk and chat online and see each other again.
That was the last time I saw any of them. It wasn't any great loss. I mean, they turned out to be pretty nice and everything, but I knew deep down that I didn't really belong with girls like them. They were the kind of girls who were always standing in the bright lights so that everyone could look at them. I was more the kind of girl who sat back in the shadows a bit so that no one would really notice her.
April 6
“So, I saw you eyeing the Wolfman. You interested?”
I looked up, startled that someone was talking to me. There was a girl leaning against my open door. She was standing with her arms folded, looking quite comfortable and like she had been here for a while. She was wearing all black, sweat pants and a T-shirt that had a red patterned bird of some kind on it, I think an eagle. Her hair was as black as her clothes, cut super short, with sort of spiky bangs. It was straight and shiny, the kind of hair I've always wanted. Her eyes, which were looking at me like I was a nutcase, were almost navy blue. She was not typically pretty like the perfect
girls in high school but there was something about her that made you wish you looked exactly like her.
“Hello. Anyone in there?” she asked.
“Hi,” I said lamely, showing off my usual top-notch social skills.
“So, are you interested?” she asked.
I had no idea what she was talking about, so I shrugged and said, “Interested in what?”
“The Wolfman. I saw you looking at him earlier and he's been kind of skulking past your room. Just wondering what's up with that.” She came in without an invitation and sat on my bed. I turned in my chair to look at her.
I had worked pretty hard to avoid everyone since I came here and I thought I had made it pretty clear that I wasn't in the market for new buddies. I tried to look unfriendly, which wasn't very hard, but she didn't seem to care. She just sat there looking interested until I felt like I had to say something.
“The Wolfman?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew who she meant. That gorgeous guy was called the Wolfman? I knew this place was some kind of an evil cult. This girl was probably a vampire.
“Well, that's what I call him. He calls himself Wolf, which shouldn't really be his name, 'cause when I first heard that there was some guy here named Wolf I thought he might be someone kind of exciting but when I checked him out I discovered, well, not so much.”
“What?” I asked, which didn't really make sense but nothing she said made sense to me either.
“Well, I thought he might be all cool and dangerous, like
he earned the name from his dark reputation or something. But, unfortunately, it's really just a name he got by accident. I think he's, like, part German or something. His grandfather or uncle or aunt or great-uncle twice removed was named Wolfgang so he got it as a middle name. I guess he liked it better than his first name so he grabbed it. But he seems more like a pussy cat to me than a Wolf, all soft and fluffy.”
“What's his first name?” At least the question made sense this time.
“I think it's Pieter or something like that. He never really uses it around here though. I call him Wolfman just to bug him. Otherwise it's Wolf.”
“Oh.”
“So, you're Madison,” she stated matter of factly. I wasn't sure why she knew my name when I had no idea who she was but I didn't ask. I already looked stupid enough.
“Yeah, but mostly people call me Maddie.”
“Cool. I'm Marina. My dad picked it out for me but my mom never liked it because she thinks it sounds like a place where you buy boats, which of course it does, but it's still an OK name. She let my dad have first pick because they thought I was only kid number one but they got divorced so I ended up being the only kid period. Sucks for them. Anyway, my mom calls me Marie, which is not my name but I answer anyway so as not to piss her off. You can call me Marina.”
“Oh,” I said because I couldn't think of anything else to say.
“It's actually a Latin word that means âof the sea.' I like that. I love the ocean. I'm kind of hoping to be a marine biologist
some day. We lived right on the ocean when I was little, but I don't really remember back then all that well. Weird, isn't it? I mean, do you think I fell in love with the sea because of my name, or did my dad somehow know I was going to love it when he picked it, or do I love it because I lived near it even though I don't remember it?”
“Um, I don't know.”
“I don't expect you to. I was being rhetorical. At least my question was. Where'd you get your name?”
“It's a street in New York. Not sure why my parents named me after a street in New York. Maybe I'll end up studying streets some day.” I hoped she caught my sarcasm and decided I wasn't worth talking to. She either didn't catch it or didn't care because she didn't leave.
“So, you want me to introduce you two?” she asked. This time I knew what she was talking about.
“No thanks. I'm not really into getting to know too many people.” Which was a lie, because the truth was that I actually wanted to get to know the only guy I'd seen here. At least I thought I did. Marina just kind of laughed.
“You trying to tell me something?” she asked, sounding totally unoffended.
“No,” I lied again. What was wrong with me?
“Good, 'cause I need someone fresh to talk to. I'm sick of all these babes with nothing interesting to say. Trust me to come up with a girl's disease. All I have is the Wolfman and I'm pretty sure he's afraid of me.”
“Why?”
“Why is he afraid of me or why do I think he is?”
“Either one.”
“Well, every time I talk to him he finds somewhere more interesting to be. He doesn't seem afraid of you, though. I think he's kind of interested. Which won't make you very popular because he's the only guy on our floor and the girls who are still interested in guys have all made their play for him.”
“I don't think he's interested in me and I am definitely not interested in guys at the moment. I have enough to worry about.” Although I had to admit, at least to myself, that I didn't mind the idea that I could be unpopular because the sole dose of testosterone in this estrogen festival was actually looking at me.
“Yeah, this place can suck big time when you first get here. Well, actually it sucks the whole time you're here but you get used to it after a while.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Not long enough to get used to it,” she said with a grin. She stood up and stretched a bit in that way people do who are dancers, all graceful and elegant. She looked at me and kind of nodded like I had passed some test.
“I'll see you around, Maddie. Let me know if you change your mind about the Wolfman.”
“OK. Bye.”
I watched her walk out. She walked like a dancer, sort of on the balls of her feet with a little bounce in every step. I wondered about that name thing. How could her father have known she would want to be a marine biologist? It was more likely that she decided to go that way because of her name. I
heard of some professor who studied birds and his last name was Sparrow. Speaking of names, Wolf sure was an interesting one. I never would have guessed that was his name in a million years. I mean, it wasn't really his name but he used it so I guess it was his name. Kind of funky, actually. Wolf. Not that I was interested. I wasn't. I didn't have time for guys. Or for girls. I wasn't here to make friends. I had friends. Real friends who cared about me and were probably worried sick about me. Friends I was banned from talking to in this hellhole.