What I Lost

by Alexandra Ballard

  “Hello, Willa.” Kay smiled. “And are you Elizabeth?”

  I nodded.

  “Welcome! Come on in.”

  I followed them through the doors into a room the same size as the classrooms at school. Big windows overlooking a stone patio lined the wall opposite the entrance. Off to the left, a door led to a kitchen, where girls entered in a long, slow line. Willa grabbed a tray. “So, the rules in here are simple: Eat. No matter what.” Then she whispered, “And don’t even try to stick the food down your pants. They’ll see it, I promise.” I had a feeling she was speaking from experience.

  Kay appeared holding a sheet of paper. Her reddish hair looked frizzy, like she’d had an unfortunate run-in with a curling iron. “Your menu plan is a basic one today. Here’s your list—one muffin, one apple, and one milk. Not too bad. You go through the kitchen line for snacks here, but for your meals, the kitchen prepares your tray before you arrive. When you finish, raise your hand and I’ll check you off. Got it?”

  “I, um, I’m sorry, but I don’t like milk,” I said.

  She didn’t even blink before responding. “Well, once you can design your own menu, you can discuss that with your nutritionist. But until then, I think you’re stuck.”

  I couldn’t drink milk. I’d throw up. With a pang I wondered what my parents were doing, if they’d stopped for coffee on the way home or if they’d driven straight to their offices. I stared at the floor, blinking to keep back the tears.

  Kay noticed and touched my shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  I doubted it. Being here was like a permanent stain. No matter what I did in the future, I could never erase the fact that, once upon a time, I’d been locked up like a crazy person. The eating disorder unit was separate from the rest of Wallingfield, but it was still a part of a mental institution.

  Five tins of muffins, straight from the oven, filled the counter. The cinnamon crumble on top of each one made my stomach growl and my mouth water. I hadn’t eaten that morning, and I ached for one. That was what anorexia was. A constant battle with the ache.

  At home I wouldn’t have gone near them, but here I didn’t have a choice. Gingerly I picked out the tiniest muffin I could find, the grease from it making my fingertips shiny. I shuddered and wiped them on my pants.

  My brain spun, calculating. I’d never been good at math, but when it came to calories I could add like Stephen Hawking. Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cake muffins had 590 calories. That’s right. Five hundred and ninety calories. Oh, and 24 grams of fat. I knew because I’d looked it up once. These were smaller, but still. Three hundred and fifty calories at least. I’d put the grams of fat at 16. Maybe more. My stomach rumbled. No. I was not hungry. No way. Not allowed. Not for a muffin, anyway.

  I felt a nudge from behind.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled to the girl behind me.

  “It gets easier,” she said sympathetically.

  I nodded. I doubt it, I thought.

  I took an apple from a basket. I saw other girls reaching into a refrigerator and grabbing low-fat yogurts and cheese sticks. Others helped themselves to little containers of premeasured granola stacked like a pyramid on the counter. Granola was a calorie bomb—up to 280 calories for half a cup. Would I have to eat that someday, too?

  Milk was next. The carton was wet and made my hand smell sour. I wished I had some Purell to get rid of the smell. Willa came up behind me. “All set?” she said.

  I nodded, numb, and wiped my hands one at a time on my pants.

  “Great. Come on.” She led me to a table next to the toaster in the corner. Her tray looked like mine, except she had a cheese stick, too. “Let’s sit.”

  I sat.

  “So.” She peeled the paper liner off her muffin. “Don’t get Kay mad at you. She’ll force Ensure down your throat faster than you can say ‘anorexic.’” She placed her muffin carefully on her tray and cut it in half. Then she halved it again. And again. She continued until the muffin was nothing but a pile of crumbs.

  “Are you going to eat that?” I asked. Willa gave me a sly grin. “Of course.” She popped a crumb in her mouth. Then she did it again, except this time, she let a second one fall on the floor. Then she smashed it with the bottom of her fake black UGG. It stuck to her sole and disappeared. For her next bite, she let the extra crumb fall not on the floor but behind her, into the hood of her sweatshirt. It was remarkable, really, that she managed to aim right every single time. She proceeded this way, alternating between floor and hoodie, until she’d destroyed over half her muffin and hidden most of the crumbs in her sweatshirt or under her shoe on the floor.

  “You better start eating,” Willa said, reaching down to scratch her foot. She dropped a hunk of cinnamon topping into her jeans’ cuff.

  “Oh, right,” I said. I broke off a tiny piece of muffin and held it in my hand. It was still warm.

  “Where are you from?” Willa asked. “I’m from Worcester. That’s about an hour and a half from here.”

  “Right. I’m from, um, Esterfall.” This girl was so chatty. How could she be so chatty?

  She brightened. “Here? You’re from here? That is so cool!”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed. “I guess,” I said. “How long have you been here?”

  Willa shrugged. “Three weeks.”

  “How long do you think you’ll stay?”

  Willa shook her head. “I don’t know. They keep saying my insurance is going to run out, but Mary—she’s your therapist too, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Anyway, Mary said that I’d probably be able to get a scholarship and stay longer.”

  “A scholarship?”

  “Yeah, isn’t it funny they call it that?” Willa secreted a muffin chunk in her hood. “It’s like, I’m so good at my eating disorder they are going to give me a scholarship to get rid of it. Funny, right?”

  I didn’t get a chance to respond because Kay stopped at our table. “Elizabeth,” she said, “please get started.” I brought the chunk I was holding to my mouth, but my throat closed and my taste buds shut down. It tasted like rubber. Kay stood by, watching.

  Willa slid her napkin over the remaining crumbs on her plate. “Sometimes water helps,” she said, and poured me a glass. Kay marked something on my sheet. Why would she do that? Water doesn’t have calories. Why did it matter if I drank it?

  Snack was supposed to be twenty minutes, but it felt like forty. By the time girls started to clear their trays and leave, I’d only eaten about a fifth of my muffin and taken one sip of lukewarm milk, which tasted like the carton.

  When snack ended, Kay said, “Because it’s your first day, I’m not going to make you drink an Ensure, but starting tomorrow, you will be expected to eat your full portions.”

  Willa picked up her tray. “She’s got it. Let’s go, Elizabeth,” she said. “Later, Kay.”

  Kay stopped her. “Not so fast.” She picked up Willa’s napkin. Crumbs stuck to it and fell to the floor. “Willa, lift up your shoe.”

  “No.”

  Kay said it again, her voice steady. “Willa, lift up your shoe, please.”

  “No!” A couple of girls turned around.

  “Willa,” she said, her voice still calm but also with an edge. “Please lift up your shoe. Now.”

  “Fine!” The entire bottom was coated with muffin.

  Kay sighed. “Willa, we’ve talked about this. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to have a supplement.”

  Willa’s impish, little-girl face contorted. She stared at Kay for a few seconds and turned bright red. Then she lost it. “I don’t want an Ensure! I hate you, Kay!” she said, kicking at the crumbs on the floor. “I hate everything!” And then she pushed out of the room, past the other girls waiting patiently to get checked. I just stood there, mouth open bigger than my muffin, wondering how the hell I ever got myself into this mess. And, more importantly, how the hell I was ever going to get out.

  3

  An hour l
ater it was time for my medical intake. In a small room off the main hall, a stone-faced woman made me take off all my clothes except for my underpants. I put on a hospital gown and stood on the scale, the rubber surface cold on my bare feet. She shielded the paper with her hand when she wrote down the number. I tried to tell what it was based on her scribbling, but I couldn’t. Then she took my pulse lying down and standing up. I peed in a cup. She measured my height. She checked my blood pressure. And then she asked me questions about my weight that I didn’t want to answer.

  “Lowest weight?”

  I paused. “This morning. Ninety pounds.”

  “Highest weight?”

  Shameful, I wanted to say. That’s what my highest weight was. “A hundred thirty,” I muttered.

  “When was this?”

  “Eight months ago. Last February.”

  “Do you purge?”

  “Purge?” I stalled.

  “Make yourself throw up after eating?”

  I knew what she meant. I’d done that a few times to correct mistakes, like when I’d let myself have a spoonful of Dad’s ice cream in August. The worst time had been in June. Nobody else was home. I let down my guard for a minute and my brain shut off, and I stole a chocolate from the box of See’s Candies Dad had gotten for his birthday. They were my favorites—fat circles of marshmallow perched on caramel disks, the whole thing covered with dark chocolate.

  I didn’t stop there. I ate the whole box—nine chocolates—wolfing them down so fast that after the third or fourth I didn’t even taste them. Afterward, my stomach bloated, and I looked up the candies online to see just how much damage I’d done. Each one had 80 calories and 4.5 grams of fat. That meant I’d just stuffed 720 calories and 40.5 grams of fat into my face. I was horrified. I ran to the bathroom in a total panic, stuck my finger down my throat, and puked into the toilet until my eyes watered and my mouth was sore. But I knew I hadn’t gotten rid of all of it. A hard ball of chocolate and caramel and marshmallow remained and was slowly dissolving in my stomach and turning into fat on my thighs.

  Afterward I called my boyfriend Charlie and told him I needed to get a present for my mother and would he please come pick me up. He drove me to the mall and I marched right into Lord & Taylor and up to the candy counter. When the saleslady asked if I wanted a free sample, I said, “No. Thank you. Definitely not.”

  Charlie perked up. “I’ll have hers,” he said, and ate two.

  Once home, I replaced the empty box and no one was ever the wiser. From that point on, I made sure I didn’t go near food I really liked. Too dangerous.

  I’d never told anyone that story, and I wasn’t going to start now.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve never purged.”

  * * *

  Back in the common room, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. A narrow-faced girl with long, dark hair and arms that looked skinny only because a shirt hid the flabby bits stared back at me.

  Leave me alone, I told her.

  That girl made me sick. I hated catching glimpses of her. It didn’t matter where—whether in a mirror, or a window reflection, or on my phone screen after a group selfie.

  And right now, I had no patience for her. She was the reason I was here. If she’d been able to keep it together a little bit more, maybe I’d be at school right now, trying to text my friends during pre-calc.

  Then again, if you know anything about anorexia, you know a lot of things mess with your head. Like TV, and fashion magazines, and skinny jeans, and social media, and the Internet, and pro-ana websites, and Diet Coke, and People magazine’s diet issue, and peer pressure, and every tabloid with celebrity cellulite on the cover. I mean, I could even blame Caroline, the super-skinny senior at school with the kick-ass body I coveted, and on and on.

  But mirrors are the worst. One reflection lifts your spirits and another crushes them. A good one can make you feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. But a bad one can make you burst into tears.

  Sometimes, walking down the street, I’d catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror or window and there would be this millisecond before I realized the girl in the glass was me. I’d think how she looked as thin and graceful as a ballet dancer. But then I’d come to my senses and realize that it was just me, and I’d look down at my real-life thighs and get pissed at myself for falling for such crap. That’s why I only trusted the fat mirrors. At least they didn’t get your hopes up.

  Last February, my best friend, Katrina, wanted me to go bikini shopping with her in preparation for a trip to Florida she was taking with her parents in April. I put her off for a month and convinced her to diet with me, saying how much cuter the bathing suits would look if we were 10 pounds slimmer.

  I knew we’d go to Target. Target had fat mirrors. Every time I tried something on, I left wanting to sob on the handle of my red plastic cart. “How does Target expect to sell clothes if their mirrors make everybody look like Honey Boo Boo’s Mama June?” I’d joke if I was with a friend, but deep down a tiny part of me was grateful that the person staring out at me wasn’t at all distorted. At least then I knew what to work on. And if forced to choose between the truth and a lie, I’ll take the truth every time.

  This time I decided to beat the fat mirrors at their own game. I cut out carbs and ate things like cauliflower mashed potatoes and noodles made from seaweed. I told Mom I was dieting and she said, “Let me know what I can do to help. I think you’d look great if you lost a few pounds.”

  By March I’d lost 10. Katrina had given up after the third day and looked the same. When we got to Target, I marched into the dressing room with the teeniest bikinis I could find, convinced that this was going to be the best day of my life.

  I looked like crap in every single one of them.

  Katrina didn’t fare much better than me, but she wasn’t worried. “Everything looks better with a tan,” she announced as she plunked a pink-and-blue bikini down in front of the cashier.

  I left mine on the dressing room floor.

  People say anorexics don’t see themselves as they really are. But what if anorexics are the only ones who do? What if we are the clear-eyed ones, and everybody else out there sees some brain-altered version of themselves, a massive mind trick designed to make them feel better?

  Katrina went to Florida and came back with tan lines and crushes on all the lifeguards. I went back to Target. Four times. Just to try on bikinis. But even after I lost 40 pounds, when I looked in those mirrors, I saw something shameful.

  A fat cow.

  4

  On my first night at Wallingfield, I awoke to loud thumps and heavy, tortured breathing. I’d had trouble falling asleep—the heater was loud and I shivered under my duvet. The room was full of weird noises, and even before Lexi started doing whatever it was she was doing, I’d heard her breathing, rustling, and smacking her pillow as she twisted and turned.

  The rest of the day had been overwhelming and exhausting and a big blur. We’d had some sort of therapy session where we’d written bad thoughts about ourselves on balloons with black Sharpies and popped them. I’d taken a nap. There was snack, where I ate two tiny chunks of granola, and at dinner I’d shared a table with Willa, who acted like her whole outburst at snack had never happened, and Lexi, who sat with her arms crossed, refusing to eat anything. Kay told Lexi that if she at least tried, took a bite or two, she’d avoid the supplement. Lexi didn’t move. At the end of the meal, Kay brought her an Ensure and told her that she had five minutes to drink it. “That’s the rule around here,” Willa whispered. Lexi didn’t touch it.

  And now, apparently, she was having sex. Or trying to dry heave. Or doing … burpees? We used to do burpees sometimes as a warm-up at cross-country practice, and they always killed us. You had to jump in the air with your hands raised, then go down in a squat, do a plank, and then spring back to a squat, then stand, jump in the air again, and start over.

  I turned on the light, but she didn’t even pa
use. Jump, squat, plank, up. Jump, squat, plank, up. Boom-cha-boom-thump.

  I needed to stop her. We’d both get into trouble. This had to be against every Wallingfield rule.

  Or maybe you should join her, you fat ass.

  “Lexi?” I whispered.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Lexi!” I hissed louder.

  Startled, she let her knees hit the carpet.

  “Lexi, what are you doing? You know if you get caught you’re going to get in trouble.”

  She lifted her head and went into a cat stretch, staring at me the whole time. She looked a little ridiculous in her PJs, which were light blue and covered with dogs knitting sweaters. “Are you going to tell on me?”

  “What? No! Sorry, that’s not what I meant. I just don’t want you to have to drink Ensure or anything.”

  “That’s my problem, okay?”

  In the shadows Lexi’s eyes were just sockets. She was so tiny her pajamas looked more like a blanket.

  “Okay, sorry.” I turned off the light and rolled over, face hot.

  I waited for the boom-cha-boom-thump to start up again, but it didn’t.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want to get better?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to get better?”

  “Of course.” We all did, right?

  “No, I mean, do you really?”

  Maybe it was because of the dark, or maybe it was that I’d already caught Lexi doing something worse. I don’t know. But I told the truth. “If I have to gain weight, then no. I don’t. I totally don’t.”

  “Me either,” she said.

  She climbed back into bed. “Thanks for being honest.” Her blankets muffled her voice. “It helps.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  And just like that, we were friends.

  5

  The next morning my alarm clock beeped at 6:55 for weights and vitals. I shivered and started pulling on a pair of leggings. Lexi, from under her covers, said, “Just wear your bathrobe over your pajamas. That’s what everybody does in these places.” Sure enough, when I peeked out my door, a long line of girls in brightly colored flannel and terry-cloth robes snaked down the hall.