Wintergirls

by Laurie Halse Anderson

  you left her alone.

  —shut up, I am throwing my purse on the bed. I am changing into my pajamas. I need my robe, I think I hung it up—

  I open my closet.

  you left me alone.

  Cassie is leaning against the stack of boxes. She tilts her head to one side and waves. “Have a nice time?”

  I slam the door so hard the frame cracks.

  She almost went to a doctor two years ago. The stuffing /puking/stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking didn’t make her skinny, it made her cry. Her coach bumped her down to the JV soccer squad because she couldn’t run fast enough. The drama teacher told her that she wasn’t “shining” bright enough so she didn’t get the lead in the play.

  “I can’t stop, but I can’t keep going,” she told me. “Nothing works.”

  I totally supported her. I looked up the names of docs and clinics. I e-mailed her recovery Web sites.

  And I sabotaged every step.

  I told her how strong she was and how healthy she was going to be and how proud I was of her and I dropped in how many calories I ate that day, the magic number on the scale, the number of inches around my thighs. We went to the mall and I made sure we used the same dressing room so she could see my skeleton shine in the fluorescent blue light. We went to the food court and she ordered cheese fries, chicken nuggets, and a salad. I drank black coffee and licked artificial sweetener from the palm on my hand. She asked me to guard the door while she puked lunch into the dirty mall toilet.

  We held hands when we walked down the gingerbread path into the forest, blood dripping from our fingers. We danced with witches and kissed monsters. We turned us into wintergirls, and when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.

  I stay up past midnight reading in the family room in the hopes that Cassie will get bored and go away. Just as I’m ready to head down to the basementto exercise moderately for twenty minutes so I’ll sleep better, Dad comes clumping down the stairs and into the kitchen. I hear the refrigerator open, then a long spray of whipped cream. The refrigerator closes and he heads my way.

  “Lia?” Dad is wearing a blue-and-green-checked robe that is older than me, flannel pajama pants, and a gray T-shirt that says ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT. His feet are bare. His too-long hair, more silver than black, is sticking out all over the place. He looks like a homeless guy begging for change on a corner, but instead of an empty can, he’s holding a pie plate buried under a mound of whipped cream. The last two pieces of pumpkin pie from Thanksgiving dinner, I bet.

  “What are you doing up?” he asks. “You should be asleep.”

  I hold up Neil Gaiman’s latest work of genius. “I have to see what happens at the end. What about you?”

  He carefully sits down in the recliner, pie plate in his lap, and digs in for the first bite. “I keep dreaming about my research and waking up Jennifer because I’m punching the mattress.” He frowns. “I should never have agreed to write this one.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  He takes another bite and chews.That pie is almost a week old, slick mold is growing in the crust, it’ll make him sick.

  He wipes a dab of whipped cream from his mouth. “I didn’t do enough preliminary research before I wrote the proposal. I assumed that I’d find plenty of primary sources and made too many promises. Now I’m stuck.”

  “Tell your editor,” I say. “Tell her you made a mistake and offer to write a different book.”

  “It’s not that simple.” He shovels in another enormous hunk of pie.

  Watching the food go into his mouth, his jaws working like a grinding machine and the gulping swallows, boils up a panic inside me. I run my fingertips along the edges of the cover of my book, pushing on the corners until it hurts.

  “You used to say things always look better in the morning,” I say. “Maybe you should just go back to bed.”

  “This is grown-up stuff, Lia, a little more complicated than that. But it’s nothing you have to worry about.”

  He fumbles in the pocket of his robe for his reading glasses. “Is my laptop over there?”

  I point to the bookshelf above the television.

  “Ah.” He stands up and crosses the room. “Why don’t you finish this for me?” he says as he shoves the pie (545) in my face.

  “I don’t want to.” I push it back. “It’s disgusting.”

  He frowns. “It won’t hurt you. It’s just pie.”

  He keeps the pie plate inches away from my face. If I smacked his hand, the pie would splatter against the entertainment unit and slide down the television screen.

  “We don’t want your mother to be right about this, do we?” he asks.

  “Right about what?” I ask.

  “About you slipping back into your old habits. The bad ones.”

  I stand up, forcing him to step backwards and give me some room. “I’m tired,” I say. “I’m going to bed.”

  My feet on the carpeted stairs do not make a sound. I open the door slowly.

  Cassie is gone. The room smells a little like a bakery at Christmas, but she’s not here. I set the computer to play country music because she hates it, and crawl into bed.

  Just as I start to doze, the music stops.

  Cassie sits at the foot of my bed, looking stronger, healthier than before, like she’s getting the hang of being a ghost. She pats the shape of my leg under the blankets and says, “Go to sleep. It’ll be okay.”

  There are no spiders in sight, no friendly critters to make her go away. I want to tell her to leave me alone, but my mouth won’t open.

  025.00

  Thursday.

  I wake up breathing dirt. I cough and spit out the pebbles in my mouth, but when I inhale again, wet clots of clay fill my lungs—

  No. It’s the sheet trapped over my face. I rip it off and get out of the bed as fast as I can. The house is dark, 5:45. This is the first time in weeks I’m awake before Emma. Down the hall, my father’s shower turns on. He probably has another committee meeting.

  I turn on all the lights and catch a glimpse of me in the mirror. My metabolism is slowing down again. Yellow bubbles of fat are bloating under my skin. I am starting to look disgusting again, weak.

  ::Stupid/ugly/stupid/bitch/stupid/fat/

  stupid/baby/stupid/loser/stupid/lost::

  They gave me rules for moments like this:

  1. Identify the feeling.

  2. Reciteaffirmations, reread Life Goals, meditate on positive thoughts.

  3. Call therapist if negative self-talk continues.

  4. Maintain required caloric intake and hydration.

  5. Avoid excessive exercise, and alcohol or drug abuse.

  6. Click heels together three times, and repeat, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” A tornado will be along momentarily to whisk you away to safety. Or a house might drop on your head.

  I lay on the floor for a couple hundred crunches, until sweat pools in my belly button.

  New rules:

  1. 800 calories a day, max. 500 preferred.

  2. A day starts at dinner. If they make me eat with them, stuff in enough to keep them off my back. Restrict during the next day to make up for it.

  3. If no breakfast, take the bus to school. 3a. Better—walk. 3b. Best—don’t go.

  4. Restart exercise program.

  5. Sleep with the lights on until they bury her.

  I smile and play pretend through the Morning Show in the kitchen. Jennifer is grilling Emma with division flash cards because she has a math test. They barely notice I’m in the room. They are ten minutes late getting out the door.

  The Physics teacher demonstrates momentum and collision with a bowling ball and a squash ball. The bowling ball wins. Instead of History we march down to the gym for a college fair. Representatives from a couple hundred schools and the military stand behind card tables loaded with glossy brochures that all promise us a bright and
shiny future.

  Five thousand acres of trees were slaughtered to make those brochures. They’ll all be in the trash by the end of the day. Do I need to pick one up? No. We know where I’m going to college. Do I want to go? No.

  What do I want?

  The answer to that question does not exist.

  I should have kept Cassie’s see-glass, or at least looked through it before I gave it back. It would have been better than a dumb brochure.

  The stage crew invites me to sit at their lunch table. I just want to nap in the nurse’s office, but they’re being sweet so I say “Sure” and follow them into the lunch line.

  I buy a small, bruised apple (70), and a low-fat, artificially sweetened yogurt (60). The girl in front of me, Sasha, buys breaded cheese fingers deep-fried in lard served with tomato sauce. And a brownie. And a bottle of water. The guy in front of her (he runs the light board and the sound) buys spaghetti and pays extra for a second serving of garlic bread. Another guy buys pizza. The girl behind me gets a bowl of lettuce and celery and a small bowl of ketchup. The rest of the girls buy taco salads.

  We sit in the middle of the cafeteria, a fish bowl crowded with minnows, guppies, tetras, mollies, and angelfish. Sharks circle their prey. Lesser spiny eels bump their noses against the glass, looking for the exit. Bits of fish flakes and strings of poop dangle in the air. Lime-green algae slicks the floor.

  The crew talks about who cried at the wake and who didn’t cry and who was crying because they got dumped, not because Cassie’s body was laid out in the padded box. When they ask me questions I recite the lines written for me in advance. Yes, it was so tragic. No, I had no idea. Yes, I think the undertaker did a crappy job. No, I don’t think she would have liked that dress. Yeah, it was weird. . . .

  Their mouths open, close, open-close, gills flaring out and flapping behind their ears. Cheesefinger grease floats to the surface of the water. The janitors will clean it up with sawdust. The pizzafish guy drops sauce on his shirt. A tacosalad girl has an infected nose piercing. She was in my ballet class in seventh grade. Lettuce&ketchup keeps giving me dirty looks, because no matter what she does, she can’t lose those last ten pounds.

  I cut the mushy bruise out of my apple, slice what’s left into eight pieces, dip one into the yogurt and lay it on my tongue, swimmy yummy and soft. It bumps its way down my throat and splashes.

  “I’ve never been to a funeral before,” says the blonde tacosalad.

  “I’ve been to tons,” says the spaghetti. “My dad’s side of the family keeps dying. The funerals are all the same.”

  “Do we have to shovel the dirt in?” asks the tacosalad with the nose piercing.

  “The cemetery does that.” Spaghetti crunches into his garlic bread. “They use a small pay loader, like at a construction site.”

  “We should all go together.” Sasha cheesefingers sips her water. “Just like at the wake. It’ll mean a lot to her parents.”

  Cassie swims through the double doors, shoeless, the blue dress rippling against her body. Her hair streams behind her, tangled and braided with seaweed ribbons. Tiny snails are suckered onto her neck and fingers.

  She drifts over the first table, scanning the room. I stare deep into my yogurt.

  “Do you want to meet us at my house, Lia?” asks the blonde tacosalad. She has salsa on her shirt but she doesn’t see it. “I can get my mom’s van, we’ll all fit.”

  Cassie swims faster, circling around the bowl, looking for me. I wonder if the see-glass is still in her belly. She’ll have to puke it up if she wants to see her future. But maybe that works different when you’re dead.

  “Lia?”

  “I don’t think I’m going,” I say as Cassie disappears into the kitchen.

  “What?”

  “My parents don’t want me to.”

  “You have to go,” whines lettuce&ketchup. “We all have to go, to show our support.”

  “What support?” I ask.

  “Support for Cassie,” she snaps back. “Not that you would know what that is.”

  “Hey”—I point the plastic knife at her—“I was her friend a lot longer than you were.”

  “Oh, really?” She pulls her face into the mask of outrage: eyes wide, head jutted forward, mouth hanging open in pretend shock. “Is that why she never talked to you? I know how you messed her up. A real friend would never do that. I’d never do that.”

  The tables around us listen in. Stage crew is supposed to be mellow and depressed. They never fight in public.

  I should just swim away, but my gills flap and angry bubbles come out of my mouth. “If you were her friend, where were you when she was scared and alone?” I ask. “Did you pick up the phone? No. You didn’t. You suck.”

  “What are you talking about? She didn’t call me.”

  Sasha puts her hand on my arm. “Calm down, Lia.”

  “Calm? How can I be calm? She’s dead!”

  I am standing. I am screaming. I think I threw my yogurt at lettuce&ketchup.

  A fat security guard fish swims over to protect the peace.

  026.00

  As I walk in (stayed late for detention, thank you, no sir, it won’t happen again, yes, this is hard on all of us), Jennifer heads out.

  “Your father promised to do the grocery shopping today,” she says as I hang up my jacket in the front hall closet.

  “Let me guess: he’s still at the library and he’s not answering his phone.”

  “He left it on the dresser. This damn book is killing him.” She looks like she wants to say more but doesn’t. “I’m on my way to the store.”

  “You need me to do anything?”

  “Would you mind vacuuming? The cleaning lady didn’t show up again and the rugs are filthy.”

  The police officer arrives while I’m chasing Emma around the living room with the vacuum cleaner, pretending it’s a dragon. I hand over the deadly creature to her and answer the door.

  The cop introduces herself, “Detective Margaret Greenfield,” and asks if she can come in.

  I didn’t kill Cassie.

  Somehow we wind up in the kitchen, the cop in Dad’s chair, me in mine, and Emma on my lap, crushing me.

  Ididn’tkillherIdidn’tkillher.

  “Just a few questions,” the detective says. “Nothing to worry about, we’re just tying up the loose ends.” She flips open a notebook with a huge yawn. “Sorry about that. Shift change always messes up my sleep. The phone records indicate that she called your phone the night she died.”

  I answer in a trance. “No, I had no idea that Cassie had called me Saturday night.I haven’t seen my phone since Friday afternoon. Third one I’ve lost in two years. My dad will be furious.”

  “He really yelled the last time,” Emma adds. She shifts her weight on my lap, driving my hip bones into the wooden seat. “Lia’s really going to be in trouble now. He’s going to ground her for a hundred years.”

  “If we can get back to Miss Parrish,” the detective says.

  I put my finger on Emma’s lips. “Shh.”

  “No, I don’t know why Cassie would call me. I hadn’t talked to her for months. We weren’t friends anymore. No particular reason, just one of those things that happens when you’re a senior.”

  The cop nods as she closes her notebook. “I remember those days,” she says. “Thank God they’re over.”

  “Can you tell me what happened to her?” I ask.

  “No, I’m sorry. If you think of anything, here’s my number.” She hands me a card. “Tell your parents to call me if they want. Like I said, this is nothing to worry about. We just want to close the book on this one.”

  After Emma makes a big stinking deal to Dad and Jennifer about the police visit . . . after I spend a hour calming them down, answering the same questions over and over and over again . . . after Dad calls the detective because he doesn’t believe me . . . after Jennifer burns the steak, sets off the smoke alarm, and orders Chinese food . . . after I read Emma a chap
ter of Harry Potter . . . after Jennifer claims the tub for a bubble bath . . . after Dad falls asleep grading papers comparing the election of 1789 to the election of 1792 . . . the house sleeps.

  The cell phone crawls out of its hiding place under my laundry and sneaks into my hand. As I play her messages over and over, I turn on my computer and visit a country I haven’t been to in months, a whispersecretblog for girls like me. . . .

  Gained . 5 lbs between breakfast and after school.

  Only water for the rest of the day, and then ill begin

  fasting again tomorrow. Love you all, girls!

  I blacked out and fell down a flight of stairs so

  I ate two bowls of cereal and now I feel so gross.

  How long do I have to run to get rid of it?

  Wow, I am such a FAT ASS .

  You know its true.

  I want to cut it all off.

  I have 2 weeks and 6 days to loose 10 pounds. Help!

  staystrongloveloveBperfekt

  Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of strange little girls screaming through their fingers. My patient sisters, always waiting for me. I scroll through our confessions and rants and prayers, desperation eating us one slow bloody bite at a time.

  Two flies crash into my lampshade, buzzbuzz, random leftovers from summer with a few hours left to live. I turn off the lights and they swarm to the computer screen, dancing across uploads of sknnygrrl ribs and hips and collarbones, bones pulled out of their skin and laid on top so they can dry in the sun. Beautiful when seen through the paper wings of out-of-season flies.