The Art of Adapting

by Cassandra Dunn

  Abby was hoarse and out of breath and a sob came up like vomit, choking her. She cried a hard, airless cry, broken and empty and animalistic, her whole body lurching with the effort. She coughed and choked on her sobs until her breath came back, then buried her face in the pillow and cried it all out. She wept until she had no more tears, just a splitting headache and a runny nose.

  She sat up and wiped her eyes on her sweater. Jenny held out a box of tissues and Abby took them. She had the hiccups and her entire body ached. She went through a dozen tissues, blowing until her nose was raw. Jenny waited patiently. Abby glared at Jenny, hating her. Why would she want Abby to feel like this? Jenny had to be the worst therapist ever. This wasn’t helping at all.

  Abby stood up to leave and swooned. She was too dizzy to take a single step forward. Jenny reached out to catch her. Abby reeled, falling back onto the couch. She threw the box of tissues across the room. They bounced off a wall with barely a sound, leaving a small dent in one corner of the blue box. Abby lurched across the room, using the wall for balance, and stomped on the box, flattened it into a mangled mess. She stormed back to the couch and sat, arms crossed, breathing hard, glaring at Jenny.

  Jenny smiled at Abby and clapped her hands in a slow, steady rhythm. “Perfect,” she said.

  Abby started to laugh, because the whole thing was ridiculous, and her therapist was insane. She’d assaulted a pillow and a box of tissues and she was supposed to be proud of this. But as she laughed, hiccupping and snorting and coughing, she began to feel lighter. She’d dumped her sadness and anger, had made a complete fool out of herself. She was weightless. Drained clean. And she was still here.

  “Now what?” Abby asked. She pointed at another box of tissues. Unsmashed. Waiting. And she and Jenny laughed together.

  “Now we start the next phase,” Jenny said. “We’ve emptied you of the bad. Now we fill you up with good. List everything you like about yourself.”

  Abby sighed. “I’m sorry about the Kleenex box,” she said.

  “It had it coming,” Jenny said.

  Abby laughed. She wanted to skip this next part, but Jenny was waiting. “I guess I like my soccer skills. I’m pretty good on the track. I like when I get good grades.”

  Jenny wasn’t satisfied. She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes as she considered something. “Here’s an idea. Close your eyes. Picture yourself as a little girl, back when you still had favorite foods, before you noticed fashion photos, before the Caitlins of the world got to you. Now tell that little girl everything you like about her.”

  Abby closed her eyes and searched her eyelids, lit pink by the sun coming in the window. She remembered a photo of herself from a family camping trip. She was maybe six and shoeless and missing a front tooth and blissfully happy with a s’more in her hand. She imagined kneeling before that girl. “I like your sense of humor,” she said. Her voice was small and thin. “I like your silliness. Your animal impressions. Your made-up stories. Your kindness. Your adventurousness. Your tree-climbing skills. Your honesty. Your compassion. Your pretty smile. Your strong body.” She opened her eyes and Jenny was smiling.

  “Good,” Jenny said. “Can we agree that you and little-girl Abby have all of those qualities in common?”

  Abby shrugged. She supposed it was true. Some of it was buried, but most of it was still there, inside somewhere. She nodded. Jenny hugged her and the hour was up, just when it was getting good.

  Abby was a zombie afterward, completely exhausted. Jenny said a few words to Lana and they left. Abby was quiet the whole ride home, but she could feel her mom trying not to watch her, silently waiting for something. It seemed strange that they had barely even talked about her eating. Or not eating. But in a way that was the best part.

  “It was good,” she finally said. “I’ll go again.”

  Lana squeezed her hand and held on to it for the rest of the drive. Abby was overcome by sleep before they made it home. She woke up hours later in her bed. She figured her mom must’ve carried her upstairs like a baby. There was a bouquet of flowers on her nightstand and a card from Lana that read, I love you and I’m proud of you.

  Matt came by to see if Abby wanted to have dinner with him at the window. She shook her head. “I think I’m too tired.”

  “The flowers are nice,” he said.

  “Do you know what kind they are?” Abby asked.

  Matt pointed them out one by one. “Mum, daisy, tulip, Stargazer lily, fern, baby’s breath. The pollen on these Stargazers will get everywhere. And if it gets on the petals it’ll turn them brown. You can cut the stamens here and throw that part away. I can do it if you want.”

  Abby nodded and watched Matt carefully trim the stamens, cupping his palm beneath them. The pollen dusted him a rusty brown.

  “You know everything about everything,” she said. “How much do you know about chemistry?”

  Matt brushed his hands off over her trash can and shrugged. “I know a lot about chemistry.”

  “I could probably use a study partner.”

  Matt smiled. “I’d make an excellent study partner. Can I borrow your book? And look at your class notes? I can make flash cards on the chapters that’ll be on your final.”

  “Perfect,” Abby said. She drifted back to sleep, and when she woke up there was a salad, milk, and half a sandwich next to the flowers. And a big stack of homemade flash cards.

  The next session with Jenny was easier. Abby was already mad when she got there, about nothing and everything. She’d spent the whole week avoiding Caitlin and Gabe, so nothing had really happened, except that she’d become some kind of mole rat at school, always scurrying into dark corners and hiding places to avoid everyone. It was her best solution and biggest problem, all in one.

  Abby yelled at the pillow for ruining her life, for making her hate school, for making her forget everything she once liked about herself. She gave the pillow a few hard punches, dropped it on the floor, and stomped it. She didn’t even need to cry out the rest. Her anger and frustration and annoyance at the world poured out of her and into the room. When Abby felt enough emptiness inside her to let in some good, she unearthed her long-forgotten love for little-girl Abby and filled up the space with that. Abby began to feel fiercely protective of that little girl.

  “I won’t let anyone hurt you,” she told her six-year-old self. “Never again. Not even me.”

  “Good,” Jenny said. She pulled out a piece of paper with a chart on it. “Now we need to talk about getting strong again, physically, to better protect that girl.”

  “By eating,” Abby said.

  “Are you ready?” Jenny asked.

  “I’m ready,” Abby told her. She was and she wasn’t.

  “That’s how it is,” Celeste Franks told her that night on the phone. “You love it and hate it. Welcome to recovery.”

  She called Celeste once or twice a week. She understood better than anyone. They laughed at the visual of Abby screaming at the pillows in Jenny’s office.

  “I wonder what the people in the waiting room think,” Abby said.

  “They play those white-noise machines so they can’t hear you out in the waiting room. I wonder if there’s a ‘screaming session in progress’ setting. Like a tornado.”

  Abby giggled. “My uncle has one of those. It even has traffic noises.”

  “Oh, that sounds perfect. Then it’d just be like an ordinary day in New York. Screaming and everything.”

  Celeste was going to college in Boston and got to go to cool places like New York just for fun. “I wish I had your life,” Abby said.

  “You don’t need my life. You’ve got a kick-ass life coming. I can’t wait to see all of the amazing things you’re going to do.”

  “I’d like to meet you in person sometime,” Abby said.

  “You will. I’m coming home for the summer. I figured we’d hang out. Won’t we? You won’t be in my dad’s class anymore, so it won’t be weird, right?”

  “Oh, no,
it won’t be weird,” Abby said, thrilled to hear Celeste wanted to hang out. Maybe it would be weird, but she didn’t care. Celeste didn’t mind that she was five years older than Abby. She didn’t have an attitude about befriending a high school freshman. Or a student of her father’s. She was awesome, just like Mr. Franks had said. She was like the big sister Abby had never had.

  Abby went to school the next day, relieved to find Caitlin was absent. People were whispering about Caitlin in the hallway. Abby eavesdropped until she had the whole story. Caitlin’s parents had bought a new house in Rancho Peñasquitos, and Caitlin didn’t want to change schools. So rather than applying for a transfer back into the district and risking getting turned down, they’d lied and used a friend’s address. Her parents were just like her, thinking they were better than everyone else, that the rules didn’t apply to them. The school board found out about the fake address. It was something they were cracking down on. They made an example of her. And just like that, Caitlin was gone.

  The rumors about Abby and Mr. Franks slowed without Caitlin there to keep them going. Plus there was new gossip to distract everyone: Jeff Meeks got busted for smoking pot during lunch, Paulette Rollins was pregnant and keeping the baby, and Sean Billings was sleeping with Milly Mercer while still dating Shelby, his girlfriend of three years.

  Abby asked Byron how he’d done it, and he just shrugged and smiled.

  “Told you I’d take care of it. I just couldn’t let her get the better of you for one more day.”

  “Thanks,” Abby said. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed hard. He hugged back and nearly crushed her. “Ouch. You’re one big muscle now,” she said. “What happened?” She playfully poked his shoulder, his bicep, his chest. His whole body felt hard as a rock. “Are you on steroids or something?”

  Byron laughed and ducked, grabbing Abby around her hips. In one swift motion he swung her around in a full circle, feet over her head and then back on the ground like a human pinwheel. “And you’re the tallest toothpick on the planet.”

  Abby nodded, her playful mood gone, a sullen one looming. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Aw, I didn’t mean anything by it, Abs,” Byron said. He tousled her hair, first gently, then using both hands, until her entire head was a static-ridden rat’s nest. “You’re awesome. Annoyingly perfect just as you are.”

  “Whatever,” Abby said, shaking her head free. “I’m far from perfect, but thank you.”

  “Are you kidding? Why do you think an annoying cow like Caitlin is so insanely jealous of you? You’re smarter, more athletic, prettier, and you’re okay with who you are, so you don’t have that desperate need for attention those girls have. I bet it drives her crazy that she can’t be more like you.”

  “Wow. Thanks,” Abby said. It was the closest she had felt to him in a long time. Maybe ever.

  She was still feeling chummy with him when Graham picked them up for dinner. It was the second time they’d seen him that week for dinner, and they were going to spend the night on Friday. Byron talked about the art classes he wanted to take, and Graham didn’t say anything bad about the idea. He didn’t say much of anything at all. Graham clenched his jaw and stared into space, so Abby and Byron mostly chatted without him. Graham seemed to be on good behavior after the fight with Lana. Abby and Byron took turns toying with his new silence.

  “I think I want to circumnavigate the world in a plane,” Byron said.

  “Sure, take the easy way,” Abby mocked. “Try a sailboat instead. That’s a real challenge. Me, I’d like to give the Iditarod a try, after I go backpacking through Europe for a year before college.”

  Graham flexed his jaws and ground his teeth but said nothing. Testing his resolve got boring fairly quickly, though.

  “You know, Dad, you can bring Ivy next time,” Abby said.

  “Are you sure? I don’t want her to take away from my time with you.”

  “We’d like to get to know her better,” Abby said, which was half true. The other half of the truth was that Ivy would be more fun to talk to than Graham. Byron wanted to hear more about her painting. Abby wanted to ask about her writing. Abby was back to writing poetry, at Jenny’s suggestion. Her new poems were different. They weren’t just about body parts she hated. She wrote about all of the scared girls at school. She could see it clearly, now that she wasn’t so focused on Gabe, Caitlin, and food. That same look of bewilderment all around her. She’d thought she was the only lost one, but suddenly she could see that they were all lost, in one way or another.

  Abby was eating, three small meals a day and a little snack, as promised to so many people. She had more energy and was sleeping better. But it was still hard. She was gaining weight. She’d hidden the scale and the mirrors so it wouldn’t be so obvious, but she could tell that her shirts were more snug around her waist, that her jeans didn’t slide below her hips. Sometimes eating made her feel back in control, but sometimes it made her feel out of control. Just like Jenny and Celeste said it would.

  Abby thought about what her mom had said about her grandma Gloria’s bulimia. They had a family trip planned to Florida to visit her grandparents in a month, and Abby wondered if she could talk to Gloria about it. About how it had felt at the time: like she was in control, or like it was controlling her. And whether she still did it.

  Abby dug through her mother’s photo albums until she found the picture from the camping trip that she used in her mind in therapy. She put it on her dresser. Every morning Abby stared at the photo for a few minutes, heaping praise on little-girl Abby until her sense of hope felt stronger than her anxiety. Some days the feeling lasted longer than others. She wanted that feeling all the time, but something kept getting in the way.

  She asked Gabe to meet her before school, in the upper parking lot where none of his friends would see, and with only enough time for a brief conversation before the bell rang. Short and sweet. She handed him a plastic grocery bag with his sweatshirt inside. She had a whole speech prepared, about letting go of him and Caitlin and everything that had been so hard about her freshman year, so that she could have a worry-free summer, come back stronger than ever her sophomore year. But standing there, inches from Gabe, the most beautiful boy in the world, she couldn’t remember a word of it. She figured she’d always be in love with him. Jenny said your first real, hard crush was sometimes like that. Everlasting.

  “I wanted you to keep this,” Gabe said, peeking into the bag.

  “I can’t,” Abby said. “I mean, I really, really want to. But that’s all the more reason why I can’t.” She cringed, because it was a horribly embarrassing admission, and then she started laughing, because telling the truth did that to her now. Made her feel light and airy and giddy. Free. Gabe watched her giggle with a strange smirk on his face.

  The first bell rang, and Abby gestured toward the building, suggesting they head in together. Gabe nodded but didn’t move. He sighed and held the bag out to Abby.

  “I want you to have it,” he said.

  “It doesn’t fit me.”

  “I don’t want you to forget me.”

  “How could I forget you?” she asked. Her whole year had revolved around him. They had two minutes to get to class. Abby turned to walk down the slope without him. Gabe, always faster, managed to get in front of her in a flash.

  “Please,” he said, still holding the bag out to her.

  Abby sighed: confused, frustrated, on the verge of being late to English. “Why?”

  Gabe leaned in and kissed her. No warning, no warm-up, no chance for her to react at all. He just pressed his lips to hers, briefly, then pulled back and stared at her. Her first kiss. From Gabe, the only boy she’d ever loved. She wasn’t sure what to do. She’d written about this moment a hundred times in her journal. But what happened next? She’d never thought that far ahead. She backed up a step.

  “Are you still with Caitlin?”

  “No,” Gabe said. “After what she did to you I’ll never speak to her again.
”

  “Aren’t you afraid to be seen with me?” she asked.

  “Of course not. You’re the prettiest, smartest, most athletic, most drama-free girl in the whole school. Maybe the whole world.”

  He smiled at her, his perfect teeth shining in the morning light, the one crooked tooth that she loved best on full display. He took her hand, wrapped it around the handle of the bag, then held both the bag and her hand as he pulled her down the walkway toward the building. She stopped just outside the doors, switched the bag to her other hand, and took Gabe’s hand again. Properly.

  As they headed into the building several kids turned and looked at them. The popular boy, the star athlete, Caitlin’s toy, holding hands with the fainting girl, the rumor-ruined girl, the anorexic. And the strangest thing happened. Those other kids? They looked right at her. And smiled.

  28

  * * *

  Byron

  Byron pulled into the DMV lot and parked. He was closer to the car next to him than he meant to be, but it was too late to do anything about it now. He turned off the engine, wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans. The balding DMV test guy with the clipboard made a few marks on his sheet of paper. Then he smiled at Byron.

  “Congratulations.”

  “I passed?” Byron asked. He didn’t want to sound surprised, but he was. He’d been so nervous during the test that he’d forgotten everything Matt had taught him, but maybe all of those practice hours actually counted for something. Maybe, even without being able to remember the specifics, his body still knew what to do.

  “You sure did,” the guy said. Byron followed him inside. They had him pose for his picture and handed him the piece of paper for his temporary license. Just like that. He was a driver.