Willow didn’t kick me out, though. Probably because she’s a professional. She folded her hands on her lap and pretended everything was normal. “Who are you jealous of?”
My mind flashed to Julia, to the looks of pride on Mom and Dad’s faces when she sticks a tricky vault. To the finish line at the track, which I never, ever cross first. To Ali’s body crunching up and down.
“No one. Never mind.”
* * *
During snack today, Aisha asked me if I’d been in treatment before. She asked me like it was a totally normal question, like she was asking me what my favorite TV show was.
“Um … no? Have you?”
“Oh yeah. This is my fourth time here.”
Four times? Once is enough for me. Once is too many times for me. Why does Aisha keep coming back? Does that mean treatment doesn’t work? I thought I was supposed to come in here and be cured. (I’m not sure if I want to be cured, but they should at least have truth in advertising or whatever.)
If Aisha keeps coming back, what if I have to come back, too? What if I decide I want to recover and try really hard and am honest with Willow? What if I trust the staff and gain weight and then have to come back and go through this awfulness all over again?
What if this place is like one of those fancy revolving doors in front of hotels, the ones that go around and around? What if I get stuck in that loop forever?
No. I have to get out of here now. Get out and get a little bit better. Enough so nobody notices the sick parts of me anymore. Enough so I feel better.
In our appointment, Willow told me that to get rid of my eating disorder, I have to “make the decision to get better.” I have to decide that health and happiness and not being weak and hungry all the time is better than the number on the scale.
Maybe Aisha hasn’t decided yet and that’s why she’s back.
I understand that. I can’t believe people when they say that recovery is a good thing. Because I don’t want a good thing. I want a sure thing. I want them to tell me they can cure me. That if I eat this food and follow this meal plan and am the perfect patient, then I’ll be happy.
I’d recover if I could get that guarantee. The guarantee that when I leave, no one will make fun of me. That Mom will be proud of me. That Dad will notice me. That my friends will like me no matter how much I mess up.
No one can do that, though. They can’t guarantee anything.
So I’ll stick with the sure thing, even though it hurts sometimes. Even though (late at night, when my stomach aches and I’m filled with regret instead of food) sometimes I wish I’d never started losing weight in the first place.
I did start, though. And now I’m not Roly-Poly Riley anymore. I’m Runner Riley. Skinny Riley.
I don’t have to get stuck in that revolving door. I’m stronger than Aisha. I’ll get a little better, but not too much better. I’ll fool them all.
And when I leave, I won’t come back.
* * *
Dinner. Meal four. I’m going to stop counting the times I eat here. I don’t think I can count that high.
There’s a cutout of Elsa on the wall of the dining room. LET IT GO is spelled out on top, in alternating dark blue and light blue construction-paper letters. Taped around Elsa are white snowflakes that patients wrote on. Past patients, I bet, because I didn’t recognize any of the names:
I let go of my desire to be perfect. —Carah
I let go of my routines. —Anna
I let go of the eating disorder’s insults. —Ivy
Lots of the snowflakes are filled, but there are still a bunch of empty ones. I’m not ready to fill one out yet. Thinking about letting go of my eating disorder is scary. It’s good and bad all rolled up together, like the scarves Mom makes with two different-colored balls of yarn. When she knits her stitches together so tightly, you can’t separate one color from the other.
My mind feels like that now. There’s too much going on. I don’t want to change, but I do want to turn my brain off. I want my head to be quieter. I want to be happier.
Brenna sat next to me at dinner. She started humming some song I kind of recognized, by that band Josie was obsessed with last year. Doo-doo-DOOOOO. Dum-DUM-DUM-dahhhhh.
I let Brenna distract me. All the girls distracted me. Or maybe we distracted one another. We talked about school dances and how silly they are. Ali told us how her mom chaperoned her last dance and actually walked over and fixed her hair. I’d totally die.
Laura told us how her boyfriend, Timothy, brought her lilacs before their first dance as boyfriend and girlfriend, but that she’s allergic to lilacs. “My eyes started watering so much that I looked like I was crying.” Laura giggled. It’s the first time I’ve seen her giggle since I’ve been here.
Brenna said one of her teachers yelled at her for wearing pants to the Christmas Dance, but that the girl she likes danced with her.
Meredith said she’d never been to a school dance, because she always has ballet practice on Friday nights. “Had practice, I mean.” She looked sad and poked at her pasta until the counselor told her to watch her “behaviors.” That’s what the staff calls practically everything we do here. If we eat too fast or too slowly, it’s an eating disorder “behavior.” If we chew too many times, it’s a behavior. If we look at our food the wrong way, it’s a behavior.
I had to turn my attention back to my food mountain then, the one I have to climb six times a day. Each step I take, it gets steeper and steeper.
Brenna must have been able to tell I was freaked, because she nudged my shoulder. “It’s hard, but you can do it,” she said. “It gets easier. Take it one bite at a time and I’ll distract you.” Brenna started talking about this awesome comic she’s reading, Ms. Marvel. I’m not really into comics, but it sounded really cool. Female superheroes! Girls who aren’t just sidekicks!
“I cosplay as Ms. Marvel, too,” Brenna said. Then she blushed. “I can’t believe I told you that. It’s so embarrassing.”
“No, it’s cool,” I said. “I’d love to pretend to be someone else for a while, too.”
I took a deep breath and told Brenna about the drawings I used to do, about the unicorns and castles and dragons. About the fancy stuff Mom wanted me to draw instead, because I have “so much talent.”
I talked instead of eating. Brenna ate while I talked.
“Slow down, Brenna,” the counselor said. “Remember to chew and enjoy the food.”
Brenna blushed. She took a sip of her milk. She avoided my eyes.
I wonder if Brenna has bulimia. Or binge-eating disorder. She is bigger than me, after all. I wonder if she’s trying to stop herself from eating as much as I’m trying to make myself start. I wonder if her blush means she’s embarrassed.
Should she be embarrassed?
Before I got in here, I probably would have said yes. I would have said that eating too much is gross. That being big is gross. But Brenna is cool. I like to talk to her. I don’t care that she’s bigger than me. I don’t care what she looks like.
Maybe people don’t care what I look like, either.
I didn’t say any of that out loud, though. I told her that I’m not drawing much anymore, and that all my stuff is at home, in sketchbooks shoved in the back of my closet. I didn’t tell her about the stuff I’ve been working on in here. No one wants to see my awful drawing of a television.
“I’d like to see them someday.” Brenna smiled. “I bet you’re way better than me.”
I bet I’m not.
At least talking to Brenna helped me get through dinner. I forgot (mostly) about the food in front of me. I forgot about the bites I took.
Then it was over. The counselor rang a little bell and we left the dining room.
Another meal conquered.
On to the next one.
* * *
Brenna may be cool and Willow may listen to me, but I hate feeling so gross after a meal. There’s a 99 percent chance my stomach is going to explode.
They’ll have to let me go home then, right?
I can’t do this for another day.
I can’t do this for the rest of my life.
The staff may say recovery’s a good thing, but they have to be lying. This treatment thing is a big scam, a way to get our insurance companies to pay them zillions of dollars.
Why did I think for one second that I maybe wanted to recover? My body is falling apart.
I’ll eat as long as I’m here, but I’m stopping the second I get home.
* * *
I called Mom tonight to tell her about my day. About the counting-while-I-pee thing. About how much I’m eating. About how Brenna’s not so bad and Willow’s kind of nice. I didn’t say anything about Ali and her crunches, though. I like the idea of keeping that secret to myself for a bit. Like how Dad always sticks a granola bar in his backpack for later.
Just in case he needs it.
I asked Mom to tell Emerson and Josie to e-mail me. I asked her to visit, to bring books and my special markers, the ones I stuffed in my bottom desk drawer when running started taking over my life. At first, I didn’t mention the markers. I was afraid Mom would start talking about my “potential” and gushing that I “shouldn’t have stopped; you were definitely going places.”
I think Mom’s scared to admit the truth: that I’m not going places.
I’m not going anywhere.
I’ll never display my silly animals or faces in Mom’s gallery.
I’ll never win an award for my art.
And now that I’m in the hospital, I’ll never be the skinniest.
I still asked for my markers, though. They’re nothing fancy, but they do have two sides, one thick tip and one super-thin one, so I can work on details. I have one hundred colors, too. (Well, ninety-eight now. I somehow lost lime green and rose pink.)
Mom agreed to bring them without a word about my “lost future as an artist.”
That’s one good thing about today.
DAY THREE: WEDNESDAY
There was a part of me that thought I’d wake up this morning different. That one full day of treatment would change me and I’d be recovered already. That I’d want to change.
I’d wake up and stretch in a beam of sunlight, then bound out of bed and eat a huge breakfast. Pancakes and syrup and bacon and eggs. I wouldn’t count calories and I wouldn’t feel my stomach for flab. I wouldn’t run my fingers up and down my sides, making sure nothing had changed. I wouldn’t want to go for a run.
I wouldn’t wake up powered by a motor I don’t know how to stop.
I believed all that until I actually did wake up. And my brain proved it’s just as broken as ever.
I wanted to bound out of bed, but not to eat breakfast. I wanted to go for a run.
I ran my fingers up and down my sides.
I felt my hips, my chest, and my cheekbones.
I cried.
I’m still here.
I’m not different.
I never will be.
* * *
I haven’t told Mom the truth. I haven’t told anyone the truth. I don’t want to. If I reveal my deepest secret, someone will grab on to it and never let go. They’ll use it as proof that I want to get better. That I want to gain weight.
Ali understands, though. We talked about it last night, after the night nurse, Nicole, had turned off our lights, when the only illumination was the glow of the nurses’ station down the hall, the only other sounds the soft whispers of the staff patrolling the halls.
“It’s scary to think about recovery,” I whispered. Ali had been quiet for a while, but I could tell she was awake. Julia and I used to share a room, so I’m an expert at stuff like that. When you’re asleep, your breathing is even and steady. There are fewer pauses and fewer sniffles. Ali wasn’t sniffling, but her sheets were rustling. They’re thin and scratchy and almost as loud as the wind outside. She rolled over to face me, so I kept talking. “It’s scary to think about trusting everyone here. They tell me that life will be better without an eating disorder, that my body won’t hurt anymore and I won’t be sad. But—”
“What if it’s not?”
I nodded, even though Ali probably couldn’t see me.
Heather said during group yesterday that once I gain weight, my brain will work better. It will be easier to stop obsessing about food and I’ll be happier. I want to believe her. I really do.
Because that’s my deepest, darkest secret: I hate being like this. It makes me sad and it makes me hungry and it makes me hurt. I say that I like being skinny, that I like not eating, but that’s not true all the time.
I want to be like Emerson, who eats two peanut butter sandwiches before track practice and a bag of M&M’s after.
I want to be like Josie, who has time to do other stuff, like computer club and Girl Scouts, because she doesn’t have to run all the time.
They go to parties and sleepovers. They have full stomachs so they can fall asleep at night.
That’s why I didn’t fight so hard when Mom told me they were sending me here. That someone else would make me eat. Because I do want to be like everyone else. Deep down inside, I want to be like them so, so badly. I want to not run every day. I want to draw again and not worry what Mom or anyone else will say. I want to eat my birthday cake. I want to be normal.
But at the same time … I don’t.
Because then I wouldn’t be skinny. Why is skinny so important to me? How can I know I want other things and then keep getting stuck on skinny? It’s like a bad song I can’t get out of my head. I want to turn the music off, but I can’t.
Maybe Ali feels the same way. Maybe she’s here because she “kind of” wants to get better. Maybe she’s doing crunches because she also “kind of” wants to stay sick.
Maybe Ali has the right idea.
Maybe I should stay sick, too.
Because if I’m not skinny, who will I be?
* * *
I was the last one to the weigh-in room this morning, because I had to go to the bathroom. I had to count again, too. I made it to fifty-two before my body relaxed enough to pee.
All the other girls were in a row when I got there. Brenna. Meredith. Ali. Laura. Aisha. Rebecca. I got behind Rebecca and stared at the floor: no dirt, no streaks, not even a scuff mark. I wonder when the janitor comes in. Maybe they make us clean the floor. We’ll have to get down there with toothbrushes and scrub until it’s spotless. Like little Cinderellas. (Except cleaning burns calories, so there’s no way that’d happen.)
One at a time, the other girls went into the room next to the nurses’ station. I imagined it to be all stainless steel and glass tables. Super high-tech, like on that doctors-as-spies show Josie’s obsessed with but I think is totally ridiculous. (Who has time to be a doctor and a spy? When would they get any sleep?) It was a normal room, though, like the pediatrician’s, except without the basket of stickers on the counter.
But all I saw was the scale.
Nicole took my vitals first. She did it while I was sitting and then while I was standing, like Squirrel Scrubs did when I got here. I guess whatever numbers she got were bad, because she made me drink a cup of orange Gatorade. The people here act like Gatorade is some sort of magical potion.
Drinking from that plastic cup made me feel like I was at a track meet. Like the one I’ll be missing this week, where everyone will be drinking Gatorade without me. Doing the pre-meet cheer without me. Burning calories without me.
Living life without me.
I miss laughing with Emerson while we wait for our heats. I miss making fun of silly action movies with Josie. I miss being normal, instead of a stuck-in-a-hospital freak.
When Nicole finally weighed me, she made me step onto the scale backward again. Apparently that’s the way everyone does it here. I don’t get to know my weight.
Which is so not fair. It’s my weight, not Nicole’s. But when I tried to argue with her, she pointed to the scale
in that “I know best and you don’t because you’re a kid” way. I hate when grown-ups do that.
The scale was different from Mom’s at home. Mom’s is a bright pink Weight Watchers scale she bought at Walmart. This one is top-of-the-line. It’s silver and sleek and see-through.
I don’t trust it. Just like I shouldn’t have trusted Nurse Shaw. What if Nicole tells everyone my weight like Nurse Shaw did? What if everyone laughs at how huge I am?
When Nicole wrote in my file, I tried to see how her hand was moving. Was that a two? A five? I couldn’t tell.
“Can you please tell me?” I begged. “It’s my first week.” I forced a waver into my voice. That’s how I get Grandma and Grandpa Logan to let me watch extra TV when we visit them.
Nicole didn’t say a word. Ali told me she was strict.
I want to sneak into the locked office and read my file. The number is in there: on a piece of paper, in a folder, in a drawer, in a file cabinet somewhere. It’s out in the world, judging me.
How am I supposed to know what to do if I don’t know what I weigh?
* * *
In group this morning, Heather said that people with eating disorders are our own worst critics. That means we obsess over our flaws and make them a bigger deal than they really are.
So it’s not like how Julia gets stressed out when she takes the teensiest step forward on her uneven bars landing.
How Emerson hates the mole on her cheek.
How Josie is self-conscious because her big toes are super short.
For us, it’s worse.
“The difference is that you guys can focus on those flaws too much,” Heather says. “They transform into something so big that they start to define you.”
“Like the Incredible Hulk!” Brenna shouted out. “First he’s this calm scientist guy, Bruce Banner, but when he gets all anxious, he turns into a huge green muscly dude.” She pounded her fists on her hoodie.
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