He glanced over his shoulder. His dad snored softly in his chair. A tiny glow through the front window told him Mom was outside still, rocking and praying or just finding some quiet to end her day. No sound filtered down from the girls’ room upstairs. Each person had retreated to their own little sphere of existence. Not a one of them would have the answers Calvin needed even if he tried to talk to them. He doubted even Michael would have any clue.
He turned around and stared at the computer screen. All those guys with anorexic girlfriends had gone to the Internet for answers rather than their own parents or friends. And what did it get them? Did anyone have the answer for them? Calvin couldn’t tell. Because the stories were never finished. No additional posts saying, “She’s cured!” or even “She’s dead.”
Love her through it. But how?
Chapter 16
The pink tulip petals turned to yellow at their delicate edges without transitioning through orange. They felt like fine silk beneath Stacey’s fingertips. Calvin had clipped the flower from his mother’s garden and had given it to Stacey as he slid into her car, a gift-bearing Romeo chasing away the nervous tremors that had robbed her of sleep and plagued her as she drove to his house.
It wasn’t his only gift, though. He’d also brought her one of Mrs. Greenlee’s big, soft blueberry muffins. The aroma filled her car and eroded her resistance. She had to eat it, couldn’t stop at just a few nibbles. Calvin watched too closely. Now the thing sat like a giant lump in her gut. She could imagine the muffin breaking apart, the calories dancing through her bloodstream like ecstatic parasites, attaching themselves to her stomach, thighs, butt, arms, and face.
Maybe she could use the stench of simmering chemicals as an excuse to go empty her stomach. All around the lab area of the classroom, students were lighting up Bunsen burners and collecting the chemicals they would need for today’s experiment. Stacey’s partner, Kenny, had gone to fetch a beaker of hydrochloric acid and some strips of magnesium.
“What’s that?” Zoe flopped her hands down on the lab counter next to the tulip.
Stacey tilted her chin down and stared at her friend.
Zoe rolled her eyes. “Okay, I know it’s a flower. Does this mean everything is nice-nice with the farm boy again?”
“Yes, we made up. We love each other again.”
“Eww.” Zoe’s eyes narrowed to slits.
Stacey shoulder-bumped her friend. “Come on. Why can’t you be happy for me?”
Zoe sighed and looked off somewhere in the classroom. “I guess I’m just worried that you’ll end up pregnant and then married, and you’ll give up all your plans for college. Maybe you’ll have twenty-seven kids and end up on a reality show.”
“Oh, you’re just so sure I’m going to get pregnant and give everything up.”
“He’s a farm boy. Isn’t that what they do? Marry young, have a gazillion babies, inherit the farm, get excited about things like John Deere tractors and NASCAR?”
“Oh, please. Zoe, stop it. Aren’t you supposed to be at your table working with Ashley?”
“Miss Straight-As likes it when I stay out of her way. Besides, Stace, what’s old Calvin gonna do next year when we’re ready to leave for design school? Cry? ‘Oh, don’t go, baby. I l-l-love yo-oo-oou.’” Zoe deepened her voice and tugged on her hair.
Stacey turned her eyes toward the ceiling. “Zoe, it hurts me when you say bad things about him. Can’t you try to be nice?”
Zoe’s breath hissed through the air between them. “Fine. Be with the farm boy. I don’t care.” Yet she pouted, and something like real pain puckered her eyelids.
“I do care,” Stacey said. “Just tell me straight. Please?”
Zoe groaned. “Okay, I don’t hate him. He’s a nice guy. But boring. I think you can find someone better.”
Stacey brought Calvin’s flower to her nose, inhaling its sweetness. “You don’t know him the way I do.”
Zoe pushed her body away from the counter, looking down at the floor. “I’ll never let any guy tie me down. Ever. They act like they own you, take everything you’ve got to offer, then cry like a wounded puppy when you try to leave.”
Stacey studied her friend. Was she speaking from experience? She’d never mentioned a boyfriend before, and all her talk about this hot guy or that hot guy lasted only a moment.
“Zoe, did you—I mean—did some guy hurt you?”
Her eyes hardened. “No. I learned enough watching my mother get hurt over and over. So no guy is getting close enough to me to hold me back. I’ll get what I want, then I’m done.”
Stacey gasped as understanding dawned. “I see. So that’s why—you think Calvin is going to hold me back.”
“Not think. Know.”
Movement beyond Zoe’s shoulders slammed the conversation shut. Kenny had returned, bearing gifts in beakers and vials. Zoe snatched up Stacey’s tulip. “Can I borrow this? Thank you.” She circled behind Stacey. “Ken, darling—”
“What the—that’s mine!” Stacey whirled and grabbed Zoe’s wrist. She pried Zoe’s fingers away from the stem of the flower.
Zoe backed up, giggling, but lanky Kenny didn’t get out of her way fast enough. He lifted the glass beaker up to avoid Zoe’s body, but the liquid inside sloshed over the brim. It made a high, dribbling arch and splashed across Stacey’s arm.
Stacey’s gasp seemed trapped between her ears. The acid immediately turned the pristine ecru of her linen sleeve a pee-yellow color. She felt the heat on her arm. She stared at it, her arm petrified in the position it had been when the acid rained upon her. The tulip slipped from her trembling fingers.
“Sink! Now!” Kenny shoved the remaining chemicals onto their table and grabbed Stacey’s shoulders.
Germs! Acid! Burning, burning, eating away at her shirt and her skin! Grunting sounds blurted from Stacey’s throat with each crazed step as her lab partner pushed her to the stainless steel basin at the back of the room. Dizziness wrapped clammy tentacles around Stacey’s face and rushed down to her stomach. She tasted bile and pushed it back. Darkness danced at the edge of her vision as her brain fought the urge to purge.
Kenny turned on the water, grabbed Stacey’s arm, and shoved it under the gushing flow.
A distant part of her brain told her she wasn’t going to die. Yet that rational thought couldn’t stand against the onslaught of her phobia, and her body would have its way. Her arm still under the faucet, Stacey pitched forward and dumped blueberry muffin into the sink.
A chorus of yells and groans erupted in the classroom. Heat flooded Stacey’s face in a double portion of sickness and humiliation. Somewhere Mr. Emerson tried to take control of the situation, barking orders at the students. Kenny, the hero of the moment, tried to tell Stacey it was okay, just keep her arm under the water. She crooked her other arm on the edge of the sink and used it to pillow her forehead as sobs took the place of retching.
And that distant, rational part of her brain told her that this time, at least, she had a whole classroom full of witnesses who could provide a very good reason for her purging.
Calvin’s promise to trust her lasted barely a week. What was he thinking? First the blueberry muffin—the memory of which made Stacey’s stomach queasy all over again—and then another note. At least this one, creased and wrinkled from having been forced through the vents of her locker, was in Calvin’s own handwriting.
I love you. Please eat. I want you to be healthy.
Totally clueless. I love you, but let me boss you around and think that I know so much better than you about your own body. He’d never get it.
Stacey sat in a corner of the library, a stack of research books untouched. Starting her report for history class on nurses in Vietnam was the furthest thing from her mind.
Beside the books, Calvin’s tulip wilted, in spite of its rescue from the puddle of hydrochloric acid in the chemistry lab and the wet paper towels she’d wrapped around the stem. Wilting … like his promises.
A
tear ran down Stacey’s cheek. She didn’t care if anyone saw it. What could she do? If she ate the way Calvin wanted her to, stuffing herself on blueberry muffins and cheeseburgers and barbecue, all the weight she’d worked so hard to lose over a year would come back. Then she’d have no choice but to marry him and have babies and become a fat farmer’s wife like … like his mother. But if she didn’t do what he wanted, he might get frustrated and dump her.
She knew what Zoe’s solution would be. But she couldn’t dump Calvin first. She just couldn’t. Where would she find another boyfriend who would even put up with her?
Skinny Stacey inside her clenched her fist in defiance, while Sad Stacey on the outside lay her head down on her folded arms.
“Are you okay?” someone asked.
Go away.
The girl behind her murmured to another person, and they both went away.
What if she showed Calvin the pictures in the family photo albums? All the snapshots of Mommy’s roly-poly sweetheart. The class pictures where she was the fat kid sitting at the very end of the row wearing a stupid fake smile, hurting inside from all the taunts on the playground. The image of a sad fourteen-year-old whose boobs were already too big, whose parents thought her pout was only some kind of emo phase that would soon pass.
Did Calvin really want her to go back to that? She’d die if she did. Forget it; if Calvin truly loved her, he’d accept her choices and embrace the model-slim Stacey she wanted to be.
Banging, shuffling, and voices surrounded her. Did the period bell ring?
Stacey lifted her head. Black eye makeup had stained her rolled-up sleeve. Her face burned, and that meant there’d be ugly red blotches. She couldn’t go to art class looking like a mess. And the thought of food, of chicken nuggets and greasy burgers and dried-up salad after that—Ugh! Stacey put her head down again and sucked in air from the tiny space between her face and the table.
“Stacey? What’s wrong?”
Go away.
This time it didn’t work. “Stacey, why are you crying?”
“Go away. Whoever you are.”
“Hey …” The chair scraped the floor as someone brazenly took a seat. Definitely not going away. The person nudged Stacey’s elbow to make sure she was paying attention.
Really?
Stacey lifted her head and sniffed. Her eyelids fluttered and her vision focused.
Flannery.
Stacey’s heart skittered. She snagged and crumpled Calvin’s note before Flannery could see it. “Oh, uh, I’m not feeling well.”
Flannery blinked her huge green eyes. Almost no makeup. She didn’t need it. “You and Calvin okay? I know y’all had a fight. Stace, I’d like to help, if I can.”
Oh yeah, like she was so going to talk to Flannery Moore about Calvin. Might as well give the girl written permission to ruin her life.
“No—I mean, we did, but it’s okay now. See?” She lifted the tulip. Its head drooped pathetically, like her lie. “It’s just, I’m having a really bad day and I’m … hurting. My period.” Stacey put on a trembling smile. “I get cramps really bad sometimes.”
“Gotcha. Can I get you a cold drink? I have a package of crackers in my locker if you wan—”
Stacey jumped off her stool. “Are you trying to stuff me with food too? I eat! Okay? I eat all the time. Did Calvin send you to—” What am I doing? “Forget it. I’ll eat during lunch. Thanks for checking on me, though. I’m fine. I have to go to class now.” She grabbed her things. “This happens every month. It’ll pass.”
She hurried out of the library and found a bathroom mirror where she could make herself look acceptable again.
Flannery would tell Calvin.
Heat flooded Stacey’s skin again.
Cramps. That was her excuse after her face-plant on the floor. Same excuse today. Calvin would put those pieces together real quick. Fifteen days wasn’t enough time to repeat the lie. A hundred and six days had passed since the excuse could have been true. What would Calvin say if he got wind of that fact?
Scared Stacey in the mirror lifted an eyeliner pencil and drew a wobbly black line beneath her eye.
Chapter 17
“Man, I can’t wait. I so need to ride.” Calvin squatted beside his Yamaha and applied a wrench to the nut connecting his old throttle cable to the carburetor. His fuel tank and seat lay off to the side.
Flannery stood beside him in the workshop, running her fingers along the length of the new cable. “I hear you. I’d go crazy without my bike for so long.”
Sure, Flannery heard his words, but she didn’t hear his heart screaming for relief from the juggling act his life had become in the last week. Seemed the more attention he gave Stacey, the more she needed. Until Flannery showed up at the front door with the new throttle cable in her hands, Calvin rarely had a moment when he thought about something other than how to make sure Stacey felt beautiful and loved. It left him exhausted each night.
Calvin tugged the wrench and grunted. The nut didn’t budge. “Rusted solid.”
“Need some WD-40?” Flannery asked.
“Or a stick of dynamite.”
Flannery chuckled. “Where’s the spray?”
Calvin tried again, and the wrench bit into the flesh of his palm. “Cabinet next to the tool chest. Thanks.” He laid one hand on the motorcycle frame for balance and tried his weight against the wrench.
Flannery rattled bottles and cans around in the cluttered metal cabinet. “Um, I wanted to ask you a question.”
“Whh-at?” Calvin said through another grunt.
“Does Tyler ever talk about me?”
“Sure he does.” He settled back on his heels and looked over his shoulder. “Find it?”
She handed him the narrow canister. “Really? He does?”
“Yeah—Oh. Wait. You mean like—”
“Like he might like me. More than just friends.”
Calvin didn’t want to have this conversation. Did she make the special trip with his throttle cable just so she could quiz him about Tyler? The only truthful answer he could give—that Tyler had never talked about the possibility of dating Flannery—would hurt her.
Again, he had to hold back his real thoughts to avoid hurting someone’s precious feelings. Calvin held his breath while he doused the throttle nut with WD-40.
“I know I’m asking you to, like, betray some best-friend code,” Flannery said. “I just don’t know what to do or say to him. Maybe if I knew whether it’s even worth my time …”
Calvin set the canister on the concrete floor a little harder than he’d intended. He stood, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Have to let that soak in a bit.”
“I shouldn’t ask. I’m just frustrated.”
“If Tyler wants to ask you out, he will when he’s ready.”
“He sees me as just a friend. I know he does.”
Calvin blew out his breath. He took the new cable from Flannery and examined the carburetor end.
“I don’t know how to act around him anymore.” Flannery’s voice sounded soft, not like her at all.
Calvin’s chest tightened. He wanted to turn away, fix his bike, fly through the woods, and leave everything behind. He could smell the exhaust, taste the fresh air, hear his bike’s two-stroke song ringing in his ears.
“I’m sorry,” Flannery said. “I shouldn’t be burdening you with this right now. You’ve got enough on your mind with Stacey.”
“The thing is I don’t really know what to say.” Calvin knelt down beside his bike, set the new cable on the floor, and picked up the wrench again. “Do you want me to ask him?”
“Yes—no. Yes. I don’t know.”
Calvin grinned. Kinda funny that Flannery was just now trying to figure out how to be a girl. He applied the wrench to the nut again. This time it moved, but the wrench couldn’t grip the slick metal, and Calvin’s hand slammed down against the cylinder block. He cussed, dropped the wrench, and stuck his knuckles into his mouth.
�
��Ooh!” Flannery bent over the seat of the bike to look. “Are you okay?”
Calvin whirled away from her and paced to the back of the workshop, shaking his stinging hand at his side. “Why can’t anything be easy?”
Flannery followed him. “Are you hurt? Let me see.”
“Just scraped the snot outta my knuckles.” He held his hand out, palm down, for her to inspect. Blood collected in a bunch of tiny scratches. Soon the knuckles of his index and middle fingers would be covered in a deep purple bruise.
“Knuckles don’t have snot,” Flannery said, holding his hand in both of hers. “And these aren’t even bleeding much. Can you flex your fingers?”
He did it for her. The pain was on the surface, not deep. Shake it off. Come on.
She smiled at him. “I think you’ll live.”
Her humor didn’t make a dent. Calvin tugged his hair with his other hand. His eyes stung. Forget this. Forget everything. Just walk away.
“Calvin?”
“I’m fine.”
“Cal …”
He raised his eyes to meet hers and lost it. The tears flooded out. “I can’t—My bike’s a wreck, my life is a wreck. I don’t know what else I can do.”
Though the glow of the fluorescent shop light was behind her, Flannery’s eyes glistened. “Maybe we should stop right now and pray.”
Pray. Okay. Yeah. He sometimes forgot Flannery’s family was so religious. Calvin swallowed against the knot in his throat and nodded.
Flannery inched closer and put one hand on his shoulder as she closed her eyes and lowered her head. “Lord, please help Calvin. He’s hurting, and I know he’s really worried about Stacey. At least make it easier for him to fix his bike so he can get a break and go for a ride. And help him with Stacey. I don’t understand what she’s doing to herself or why. Maybe Calvin can’t even help her, but she’s got to find a way to get some help from somebody.”
Calvin sniffed and squeezed his eyes shut hard. Maybe God would hear Flannery’s prayer—he sure didn’t seem to be listening to Calvin’s lately.
Running Lean Page 15