“Hey, Allison, um . . .” Jenny is nervous. Moving her eyes around the cafeteria, she seems suddenly and uncharacteristically serious. I look up at her with what I hope are my most innocent eyes. “So, well, it seems like maybe you have been having a hard time.” She takes an awkwardly long breath, as if she is preparing for something. “Like, I don’t know, you just don’t eat as much anymore”—she looks at the crumbled Triscuits on the table and shifts in her seat—“and, you know, you fainted yesterday.”
“I tripped! I told you! I have never fainted in my life!” I respond more quickly and loudly than I intend to.
“Right, yeah, that’s what I meant! So, yeah, you tripped. And, I don’t know, I just wanted to do something nice, so, um”—she moves her hands down to her lap—“I got you this cookie.” She slides a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie wrapped in plastic from the school cafeteria across the table at me. “I know you love these cookies! I just thought, maybe, I don’t know. I hope you like it.”
Jenny looks down at her hands while Rebecca nods a silent Good job in her direction. They clearly planned this together. Maybe even during practice yesterday. I eye the cookie sitting a few feet in front of me. Every fiber of my body is taut as the cookie glares at me through its evil chocolate chips. I can’t just eat a cookie. That’s not how cancer prevention works. Safety is about planning, precision, sacrifice.
“Oh, thank you,” I say, smiling, “but I’m fine. I have my lunch.” I lift up my crumpled brown bag. “I don’t need a cookie. You should have it!” I stretch my Miss America smile across my face and plaster it in place. A high-pitched siren is approaching from somewhere in the distance. A muscle in my right shoulder curls up into a knot. Jenny is completely unaware that I am begging her to reconsider.
“Allison, you haven’t eaten any of your lunch. Not today, not yesterday. Please eat this cookie. It will really make me feel better to see you eat something.” She reaches onto the table and pulls the cookie out of the wrapper. When she breaks it in half, melted chocolate oozes onto her fingers. “Yum, hot and fresh, just how you like.” She moves the cookie in circles under my chin, and I think I feel its warmth on my skin.
It’s true. I do love our cafeteria’s gooey chocolate chip cookies. I used to spend at least five dollars a week satiating my appetite for midday treats. But things are different now. Today I have the whole picture. I know there is a mysterious, powerful connection between food and preventing cancer. I know I can’t eat an unplanned cookie.
After a few seconds of goading, she puts the cookie back down on the table and trades a meaningful glance with Rebecca. They’re going to talk about this later. Probably with Maddie. I can see Jenny, thriving under the attentive gazes of our teammates, as she dramatically reenacts the scene during stretches before practice. For the next ten minutes she and Rebecca banter about the weekend’s upcoming homecoming activities and leave me to my cracker crumbs. Far from their chipper voices, huddled into myself, I’m starving. There is nothing I want more in this world than to grab that cookie and snarf it down in two quick bites. But it’s not worth it. I have no specific warning against it, but it’s an outsider. An unexploded bomb at my feet.
“Allison, please?” I’m jerked from my thoughts. Jenny is staring at me, wide-eyed, across the table again, begging me with her body to respond, to comply. “It’s just one cookie.” She pushes it a little closer. “You’re already skinny. You don’t have to worry about that.” She shifts it gently on top of its light plastic packaging.
It doesn’t matter that I’m skinny. It matters that I’m alive.
“For me?” she whispers, an equal mix of pleading and concern.
Under the pressure of her eyes, I loosen a bit as I’m flooded with a warm rush of friendship. She must really care about me. Buying me a cookie, confronting me like this. Jenny Jordan, you’re not so bad. But that doesn’t change the situation, and it doesn’t change the truth. I cannot eat the cookie.
“Look”—I pull myself out of my seated slump—“I already have my lunch. I’m really just not hungry. But thank you.” I nod at her with a genuine smile. “That’s really nice of you.”
Jenny’s facial expression begins to change as soon as she realizes I’m turning her down once more. As I talk, I can feel her toughening. She shakes her head at me in disappointment.
“Dude. I just spent a dollar on that for you.” She gestures with frustration down at the table, her voice distinctly different from just seconds before. “Eat the freaking cookie.” She forcefully slides it toward me so it stops directly beside my lunch bag. “I’m serious.” She’s jabbing her finger at it. “Eat!”
Jenny is the youngest of five daughters. She grew up out near the lake in a beautiful but crowded house filled with photo albums and various midsized pets. At home in decade-old hand-me-downs, she is loud, boisterous, some might say bossy. There is no beating around the bush with her. She is not going to let me off the hook without a fight.
“I’m not going to eat the cookie,” I say in a flat voice, staring down at my picked-over nails.
“Why not?” I’m not looking at her, but I know her chin is jutted out and her arms are crossed against her enormous chest.
“I just don’t want to. I have my own food, my own lunch.”
“Yeah, well, you haven’t eaten any of it. Not for days. Eat. The. Cookie.” I stare at the dull glow of the lights filtering through the plastic covering of the soda machines. In the weeks we have spent sitting here, I’ve never noticed their quiet hum. Against the buzz of the giant machine, Jenny’s incessant prodding screeches against my ears. “It’s getting scary, honestly.” I look up at Rebecca, who seems to be alarmed at the direction of the conversation. She is listening intently, obviously, but is pretending to be absorbed in her glowing cell-phone screen. “And don’t expect me for one second to believe you actually tripped. . . . I know you haven’t been eating, I know that you . . .”
Something inside me breaks, and an unexpectedly powerful wave of anger rushes forth. She has no idea what she is saying. Just eat the cookie, just walk normal, just act like you don’t know we’re all killing ourselves. I slam my palms in tandem on the table.
“I didn’t ask you to buy me a cookie, did I, Jenny?” I’m surprised at the way my voice rolls forward like thunder, unfurling across the table. “Just like I didn’t ask for your opinion on how I eat or whether I’m—how is it you put it?—‘having a hard time.’ ” I mimic these last words in her high-pitched voice. Standing now, feet primed in tiptoed readiness, I growl, “Stop bothering me, Jenny Jordan. I didn’t ask for your help!” I’m halfway through the sentence before I realize that I am screaming. It feels good. To yell, to release. “Leave me alone!” Slamming my books together, I quickly pack up, fighting the hot tears building in my eyes. I wipe loose snot on my hand and it spreads across my face. People are looking, gaping. I stand for a few moments, out of breath, taking in my audience. As I turn to go, I hear Jenny:
“It was only a cookie. . . .” And then, more gently: “I’m just worried about you.”
Sobbing now, I tiptoe as quickly as possible out of the cafeteria and, once I reach the safer hallway, break into a run. I lurch past lines of lockers, past the wide door leading into the band room, and the hallway opens up to a small lobby. I push my way through the double doors at the back entrance of the building into the forceful sunshine. With most students either in lunch or in class, the breezeway is almost deserted.
I check my cell phone and there’s a text:
Sara:
Is everything all right with you? Jenny told me you fainted at practice . . . and that you just yelled at her . . .
With a sigh, I shove the phone in my pocket. There are still twenty minutes left in lunch. In my rush to escape Jenny and Rebecca and, to some extent, school in general, I haven’t had a chance to come up with the next step in my plan. Surrounded by cracks, dejected, and still crying, I can’t (won’t!) go back to the lunchroom. But, almost as imp
ortant, I can’t let anyone see my tearstained face. Nothing gets people talking like crying, especially when they can tell you’re trying to hide it. With nowhere else to go, I walk behind the cafeteria building: the home to industrial-sized trash cans, delivery bays, and mysterious puddles of sludge. Although there are no cracks, I tiptoe gingerly across the pavement, avoiding broken bottles and indiscernible globs of trash.
The air seeping from the trash cans is sour, but at least I am alone. And hidden. I stand behind a brick partition, lean against its warmth, hoping that the cool breeze will help with the red swelling around my eyes. A line of enormous, archaic air-conditioning units clang loudly behind me. In my heart, I feel Jenny and Rebecca sitting at our cafeteria table, talking about me. What in the world was that all about? Rebecca asks, wide-eyed, finally looking up from her phone. Jenny is shaking her head, arms crossed.
I don’t know if I’m embarrassed or angry. Am I crying because I’m ruining my relationships with my closest friends? Because my counting and tiptoeing are knocking down years of Sara’s hard work for my reputation? Or am I angry? Angry that no one can mind their own business, angry that I’m the only one shouldered with this knowledge?
Yes. All of the above.
But at the same time that I’m feeling everything, I am also slipping hopelessly into nothingness. I don’t pay attention in class. I’m not a good friend or teammate. All of a sudden, I am counting. And stepping. And trading food. And not much else.
The bell rings for class, and it seems both way too early and much too late. I straighten my back and take three deep breaths, girding myself for the afternoon ahead.
What’s more important, your life or your reputation? I ask myself.
I don’t respond as I pick at the loose edges of the brick wall.
What’s more important, your life or your reputation?
“My liiiife,” I groan out loud in frustration. With a heavy exhale, I know I’m doing the right thing. I adjust my book bag on my back and, dry-eyed, step out from hiding onto the main path.
• • •
It’s a week after I yelled at Jenny and I’m sitting at the dinner table. Our kitchen, usually airy and spacious, is suddenly suffocating. I hum quietly to fill the air, to fill the void. We’re a small family of three, so our dinners are typically short, quiet affairs, but tonight the silence is different. The room is tense. My parents’ concern is palpable. I wince every time my mom cuts her eyes at my full plate. There is a self-conscious pang inside me with each of their loaded exchanged glances. The past week they have watched me warily from across the table, but tonight something in the air is different. So I sing. I hum. I tap my fingers on the tabletop to the beat of my own internal jam session. Never stop moving. You can’t let them see you down. Since the dream, I have been spewing a forced, relentless wave of happiness on my parents. So far it has been a fairly effective disguise.
I am pushing my food around with my fork, hiding individual bites of meat within my mashed potatoes. Tonight I am only allowed to eat one item from my dinner, and I chose broccoli covered in cheese. Since last week, I’ve faced this same situation every night. The round wooden table, the steaming bowls of food, an earnest attempt at moving the servings around to make my plate look empty. Yesterday I was allowed corn on the cob, Tuesday was crescent rolls. Last Friday, it was milk. I know it is impossible that my parents haven’t noticed my new appetite. I know that it’s the source of the dark cloud hanging silently above the kitchen table. But there is nothing I can do. There is no way to hide my food under their attentive gaze, and there is no way I can eat it under the specter of disease.
“I ran into Coach Millings at the store today, Allison,” my mom says, eyeing me across the dinner table. She sits up straight, looks pointedly at my dad and back at me. “She asked why you haven’t been at practice this week. Said she hasn’t heard from you in a few days.” She shifts her weight in the seat. “She wants to know if it has anything to do with you fainting last week?”
Her words hit me like a truck. Now I know why they were being so weird. They planned for this conversation. It’s an ambush.
“Why haven’t you been at practice this week?”
“You fainted?”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
For a few seconds, the only sound is the ticking clock on the wall. My mind is whizzing, frantically searching for an excuse.
“I’ve been at math tutoring.” The words leak out before I can stop them, before I even know they are coming. “I . . . I didn’t want to tell you.” I emphasize a look of embarrassment. “I’ve been struggling in precalculus. I really need tutoring before the midterm, so I’ve been working with Ms. Tisman after school every day this week. I just . . . I wanted to . . . I’ve never needed tutoring before, and I didn’t want anyone to know.” I look down at my hands and feel a swell of genuine tears. I’ve even convinced myself.
I pause for a few moments for effect, to illustrate how embarrassed I am that they have found out my secret precalculus deficiency. I’m both surprised by and proud of my performance. That was a really good lie out of thin air. I’m feeling confident.
“And I don’t know why everyone keeps saying I fainted! I fell. Tripped over a root, or a stick or something. Everyone saw it. I even have a bruise to prove it!” I gesture vaguely at my knee and shake my head. “I’ll make sure to talk to her about it tomorrow. I should have cleared it with her first anyway.” I let out a sigh and clear my throat. “Mom, this broccoli and cheese is so good tonight. Better than usual. Did you do something different this time?”
Easily distracted, my mom straightens up, shoulders back, and smiles: “Look at you—very good, sweetheart!” She swells with pride at my palate. “It’s Gouda. I usually use Gruyère.”
“I knew it! Where did you get it from? Whole Foods?”
“No, actually, you know I got it at that little place down near . . .”
And just like that, the conversation sails off in another direction. The issues, the questions, the doubts are swept quickly under the rug, out of sight, and I joke and laugh my way through the rest of dinner with a full plate. I think it’s the outcome that we were all hoping for.
CHAPTER 6
The first few minutes of the morning, in that warm purgatory between sleep and wakefulness, I forget that I am at war. My face is pulled against the cotton pillowcase, and my mind is at peace, gently floating along with the rhythm of my still-slow breaths. It’s been more than two weeks since the nightmare, and in that time I have been hopping, counting, bartering. Explaining away my behaviors with veils of smiles and quick lies. I know others are catching on. Skeptical glances bounce off me as I count my way down the hallway. My friendships are ripping at their seams. My parents eye me cautiously, silently. The looks on their faces say enough.
But in these few minutes of half-conscious snoozing, all that weight is lifted. The tightness in my chest and the lump in my throat, holding back tears, are gone. Sometimes, if I move slowly enough, if my body doesn’t find out I’m awake, I can extend this peace from my bed into the morning. I ride the wave of perfect equilibrium for as long as possible until I’m jarred into reality by the events of the day.
This morning I’ve got a strong hold on this rare mental peace. The planets are aligned, and as I walk down the hall, as I step into the shower, as I bathe away a night of sleep, my brain hums along in blessed silence. I keep my eyes closed against the light of the bathroom, the individual streams of water from the showerhead. I hope my brain will, like a caged bird, stay silent as long as it’s in the dark. Running my fingers through my hair to rinse out the shampoo, I am hesitantly optimistic. The shower is so warm, my mind is so quiet. Maybe today will be different. I could eat lunch! I could sit at our table and talk with my friends over plastic bags of safety. I feel the crunch of the Cheez-Its, imagine the satisfying snap of a baby carrot. It’s been so long. If I could somehow be really careful all day, maybe I would have extra food left over at dinner
. My heart surges as I imagine my mom’s face as she sees me clear my plate, possibly reach for seconds. Something about today feels right.
I pull open the shower curtain to a rush of humid air and reach for the hot pink towel hanging on the wall. My bathroom is an ode to my love for bright colors and my parents’ unyielding tolerance for “letting Allison be Allison.” Perhaps as a result of their own strict military upbringings, my parents have a strong dedication to letting me follow my every passing passion. Art supplies, encyclopedias, science kits, instruments—our house is a monument to information, to exploring your interests.
One day a few months ago, during summer vacation, I stumbled upon a brilliant idea: My bathroom walls could be a collage. Instead of their drab blue wallpaper with petite, tasteful flowers, the walls could host my very own art installation. I became consumed with my project, carefully curating a perfect balance of magazine cutouts, newspaper clippings, meaningful quotes, photographs of friends. After almost a week of single-minded focus, I revealed the piece to my parents. They eyed my handiwork with poorly concealed surprise. My mother looked like she might be sick, and my father told me it was beautiful.
It is this jubilant, enthusiastic display of color that greets me as I towel off. The edges of the cutouts and photos are peeling up at the edges after months of steam from the shower. In the center of the wall is a picture of me, Maddie, Jenny, Sara, and Rebecca, crowded together, falling on top of one another in giggles.
I smile to myself when I think about how Jenny and Rebecca will look at me as I tiptoe toward the lunch table later today. Rebecca will wave and Jenny will continue with whatever dramatic story she is in the middle of. Later in the afternoon, they will tell Maddie and Sara how I ate an entire turkey sandwich and a bag of chips. How I chatted with them just like the normal Allison. I let out a deep breath of relief. Still slightly damp, I crouch down in front of my bathroom sink to retrieve my hair dryer. It is the first step in an almost robotic morning ritual that I have performed every school day for most of my life. As my fingers grasp the plastic handle, I feel a twinge deep in my skull.
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