by Meg Haston
“It’s okay,” she whispered, rocking me slowly. Her breath was even, and it felt like she was breathing for me. “It’s okay. I know.”
But she didn’t know, because her brother hadn’t died. And I didn’t know, either. Not really. Not yet. I only understood what his death meant later, in small life moments that piled up like rubble. I understood more every day.
When your brother dies, everything is different. You watch whatever you want on TV because he’s not there to hog the remote, but you could give a shit about TV, so mostly you sleep. It’s quiet all the time. No one wants to speak his name or laugh out loud—at least, not too soon. People take their Josh stories and their Josh memories and fold them gingerly, stack them high on shelf for “a more appropriate time.” You play Scrabble alone. You stare at the tiles for so long the letters become meaningless.
And when your brother dies, everything is exactly the same. Your father asks you to go to the grocery store and he’s too clueless to see the irony in it. You ask him for cash to buy your binge supplies and then you wander the aisles, wondering how people can buy frozen pizzas and read tabloids in the checkout line when your brother is dead.
We curled up in the hot sheets while the sounds of grief rose and fell outside my door. My mother’s perfume and my dead brother slowly faded away. When I woke, Eden was gone and the space next to me was cold. My room was almost dark.
“Sweetness?” my mother’s shadow said from the door. “Wake up, love. I have a flight to catch.”
day thirteen
Wednesday, July 16, 9:59 A.M.
I am puddled on the love seat next to Shrink, empty. My face is hot and stiff; my scar is throbbing.
“Feeling feels like shit,” I bleat. I press my cheek against the beaded pillow and stare at her office sideways.
“It does sometimes,” she agrees. “But you’re doing really important work. So what was the predominant feeling for you that night, after the funeral?”
“Anger.” I don’t even have to think. “Always anger.”
“Anger is pretty easy for you to access, right?”
I sit up too fast, and the room spins. “You don’t think I have a right to be pissed? My brother is dead and my mother left and Eden just wants to feel like she’s part of the whole big dramatic show, and you don’t think I have the right to be pissed?”
“Of course I do. I would never tell you not to be angry. Anger is important. Anger is part of grief. Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off’?”
I shake my head.
“You have to speak your truth before you can heal.” She gets up and settles back in her seat. Then she flicks the lighter on the side table—once, twice—and lights the candle. I focus on the flame.
“My truth,” I say. “My truth is that I killed my brother?”
“That’s not what I heard you say, Stevie. I heard you say that you and Josh were in a fight. I heard you say that there was a tragic accident. And then I heard you say that he died as a result of that accident.”
If she wants to see it that way, she can. But I have carried the weight of his death for almost a year, for so long that it is part of me, fused in my bones. I am the girl who killed her brother. I don’t know how to let it go, even if I wanted to.
“This is something that happened to you. A terrible event in your life. It is not who you are. And it does not have to define who you become. Do you hear me?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I hear you.”
“If you let this disease take you, you’re giving up all the power you actually do have. Just giving it up, without a fight.” She’s quiet, but it sounds like she’s yelling.
“I have been fighting.”
“You’re right. You’ve been fighting. You’ve been at war. Only you’ve been at war with yourself. All that anger, all that grief, you’re funneling it right back into your body. Is it working?”
“It will,” I snap.
“When? When you’re dead?”
I say nothing.
“Will it be enough, dying?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t know if it’ll be enough. But it’s all I have.”
I think she’s going to argue, but she says, “So ask him.”
“What?”
“Ask him. Josh. Ask whether your death will be enough to pay for his.” She drags her chair closer to mine, so that we’re knee to knee. “What would he say?”
I close my eyes to escape her. And I search for him, because it’s been so long and I just . . . miss him, in millions of the smallest ways. I miss how solid he was when we used to hug, and how he didn’t let go right away. I miss how when he ate cereal, he scooped the flakes out first and then drank the milk. It kept the flakes crunchy and made the milk sweet, he said.
Most of all, I miss the biggest thing, the most important, enormous thing in the world: that he knew how to love me, and did. He wasn’t selective like my mother, didn’t hand out his affection in lean portions. He didn’t thrive on drama like Eden. He just loved me, quietly when he could and angrily when he had to. And suddenly I’m so sad that I didn’t understand this when he was alive. And I want to tell him how sorry I am, but my mouth can’t even form the words.
“Stevie?” Shrink prompts me. “What do you think he’d say to you, if he could speak to you now?”
“Enough.” Eyes still closed, I make strangled sound. The words flatten themselves inside my throat. “He’d say enough.”
“Enough . . .”
“Enough . . . dying and leaving. Enough of this eating disorder bullshit. But he wouldn’t say bullshit. He didn’t curse.”
“So he wouldn’t accept your death as some sort of sacrifice. A penance for his.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You’re right. The point is not whether Josh would or wouldn’t want you to die. He wouldn’t, Stevie. He wouldn’t. Do you know that?”
I swallow. “Yes.”
“The point is whether you, yourself, want to die.”
“I don’t know what else to do.” The truth comes rattling to the surface, and my eyes pop open. I don’t know anymore. I’ve been working so hard to disappear that right now, at this moment, I can’t imagine succeeding. And I can’t image deciding not to. I only know this way of being, not quite alive, not quite dead. Not quite. “There’s nothing else to do.” I need to lie down. I need to sleep.
“Wrong.”
“Don’t you know you aren’t supposed to say wrong?” I rake my hands through my cropped hair. I must look like a boy, I think. Suddenly, having Eden cut it seems like the stupidest thing.
“When something’s wrong, I’m supposed to say wrong,” she argues. “And I’m telling you that you have other choices. Like allowing yourself to grieve, and feel sadness. Like giving this whole treatment thing a real shot. Like living, Stevie.”
“You make it sound easy,” I say.
She shakes her head. “It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. But I am asking you to try, Stevie, knowing that you can always go back to your way if you want to. Would you be willing to try? If not for yourself, for Josh?”
“I—” I’m reaching for him, desperate to hear his voice. But he’s gone, and without him, I am spinning and directionless. “I don’t know if I can. I think it might be too late.”
day fourteen
Thursday, July 17, 1:57 P.M.
I walk to group alone. Moving through the desert is like trying to run through water, the heat an invisible current. I’m tired. So tired I could curl up here, in the dust, and sleep while it blows over me like a thin, earthy blanket. I’m tired of Shrink telling me how to feel. I’m tired of hating my mother. I’m tired of being an only child. And I’m tired of being this pissed all the time. Only I don’t know how not to be.
I’ve been thinking about what Shrink asked me yesterday, about trying treatment. And there’s this miniscule part of me that thinks that nothing—not even treatment—could
be harder than this: gunning full-speed toward total destruction.
I picture myself in the driver’s seat: windows down, eyes closed, accelerator pressed to the floor. My lids frantic and twitching, my knuckles whitened as the Anniversary nears. And before I can stop it, my brain thinks, I’m not sure I want to do this anymore. I could blame it on Josh, say that he wouldn’t want me to kill myself. But that would be a cop-out. I think maybe I’m scared to die.
Help, I plead silently. A prayer to my brother. Help.
I stop and wait, stupidly hoping I’ll hear him. But all I hear is the wind.
When I get to the house, everyone is already there: Shrink, Jenna, the girls from Cottage Three, and a new girl from Cottage Two with bleached-blond hair, a nose ring, and full tattoo sleeves. Tempest, or Skye. Something weather related.
“We’re going to have a group snack today.” Shrink pushes herself onto the counter in the kitchen. Her bare feet swing like a careless girl’s in summer. She’s not wearing the toe ring today. “How does that sound to everybody?”
“What’s the snack?” Teagan pinches the ends of her hair, then crosses her arms over her chest.
“Cinammon rolls,” Shrink says.
My heart bats in my chest. So many questions—the kind in the tube? I only know the numbers for the kind in the tube! Do we have to spread the icing on top? All the icing on top? I don’t remember the numbers for the icing—and I try to slow my breathing, like Shrink taught me. Practice the—what did she call them?—grounding exercises.
My name is Stevie Deslisle. It is Thursday, and I am in a treatment center in New Mexico because I have an eating disorder. I smell: the sharp, dry smell of desert dust settled in the cracks of the kitchen floor. Ashley’s sugary-sweet body spray and Teagan’s hairspray. I hear: the whirring of the ceiling fan above me, the other girls swapping cinnamon roll horror stories. I feel: the solid floor below me, holding me up. The sweaty canvas bottoms of my sneakers. I taste: the grainy icing coating my tongue. Wait. Not yet. I taste: my own sticky breath. I see: Shrink’s small pink smile. Three tubes on the counter. Three.
Shrink says, “I’ll preheat the oven, and, Ashley, if you’d grab the baking sheets? We can take some time to process before we eat. Stevie, why don’t you pair up with Rain?”
Rain. Right. Rain from Los Angeles. Thin but bulimic, like me. “Uh, sure,” I say, wishing I could be with Ashley or one of the other girls instead. None of them has mentioned my midnight dash the other night, but Ashley is dying to talk about it. Last night before sleep, she tossed and turned for almost an hour, clearly bursting with questions. Shrink probably told her not to bring it up to me until I was ready.
Ashley shoots me a that sucks look on her way to the oven. I cut my eyes at the new girl, who is squinting at my tattoo. I slap my palm over my mother’s face.
“I’m not eating a bun,” she says loudly.
The fizzy chatter in the kitchen goes flat.
“Whatever,” I say. My face is getting hot. “You don’t have to eat it all. We just have to make them and then you eat what you can.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Do you have any idea how much fat is in those things? How many calories?”
“Rain, no numbers talk, please,” Shrink said sharply. She whips her hair into a too-tight bun and cages it with a rubber band. “I’d encourage you to talk about your feelings about the challenge, but not about the numbers.”
Rain shoves back her chair and mumbles something that sounds like give a fuck. I catch Ashley’s eye, and she grins and rolls her eyes. When Shrink isn’t looking, I roll mine back.
“So what’s up her ass?” Rain mutters under her breath. She stuffs her hands in her pockets before we get our tube of cinnamon rolls, which means I am the one to unwind the wrapper from the tube—slowly, slowly—and the one to press my thumbs just so against the perforated cardboard until pop! The dough oozes from its prison.
“Up whose ass?” My name is Stevie Deslisle. It is Thursday. I take in Rain’s shoulders, her elbows. She has the perfect sharpness of the still sick. I can feel my belly hanging over the waistband of my jeans. I suck in, hard.
“Her. The therapist.” Rain nods at Shrink, who is murmuring something to Cate in low tones on the other side of the kitchen.
“Nothing. She’s fine.” I am in a treatment center in New Mexico. I twist the canister open and slide out the doughy discs. They hit the slick, greased cookie sheet with a sickening thunk. Help me, Josh. Help. I wonder if Rain will even try to eat. Of course she won’t. If I try, I may be the only one in my group to do so. Because I have an eating disorder.
“She seems like a bitch.”
“She’s not,” I snap. “Put these in the oven?” I slide the cookie sheet in her direction.
The smell starts slowly at first, then overcomes the room in one big whoosh, like a fire spreading. Maybe it smells like Sunday mornings to some people, but to me it smells like the kitchen of Le Crâpeau in the dark. Josh and Dad are out somewhere, but I don’t have much time so I yank the cookie sheet from the oven before the timer’s gone off. Swallow them almost whole, sucking from a jug of milk in between. I almost want them to come home early and catch me, fat lips glazed with sugar and fear. It would make it easier. It would end this faster.
“Stevie?” Shrink ushers me to the table, where a frosted cinnamon roll sits on a plate. The other girls are already seated. Rain glares down at her plate with her eyes and mouth pinched. I know that look.
My name is Stevie Deslisle. I sit down at my place. I pick up my fork. I take a bite. And I swallow.
day fourteen
Thursday, July 17, 10:55 P.M.
IN bed in the dark, I ready myself for inspection.
First, the wrists. I wrap my middle finger and thumb around the opposite wrist, then slide the flesh handcuff as far as it will go without breaking. Not far enough. I can feel my body morphing cell by cell into what it used to be. As if I’ve pressed Rewind on my own body, sped up the process with each bite of the cinnamon roll.
I check the sinking collarbone, vanishing ribs, and lost hips. I’ve gotten soft, literally.
The door clicks open, and a light triangle appears on my bedspread. Then the flashlight on my pillow and Ashley’s. One, two. The door closes. Footsteps, then the creak of another closing door. More footsteps. And our door opens again.
“We’re here, okay? Both of us.” I screw my eyes shut and bury myself beneath the covers.
Low giggles in the doorway. “You know I’m going to have to chart you for . . . insubordination, don’t you, Stephanie?”
Across the room, Ashley snorts.
I sit up. “What the—”
“Shh.” Cold, bony fingers clamp over my mouth.
“Cate?” I push her away, careful not to touch the tube. Teagan stands in the doorway.
“We’ve got an hour,” Ashley says from the other side of the room. She slides out of bed.
Cate grins. “Let’s go.”
“Tell me!” I demand once we’re outside, trudging down the hill. I should be used to the desert cold by now. I lift Josh’s sweatshirt over my nose and breathe him in as deep as I can. There’s less of him every time. “What are you doing?”
“Ohhh, no you don’t.” Cate giggles from the front of the line. Our fearless leader, in pink pj’s with a permanent straw sticking out of her nose. “You’re in this, too, now. You didn’t actually have to come.”
“It’ll be fun. Promise,” Ashley says without turning around.
I’m exhausted, but also a little excited. I’ve never snuck out with friends before, and it seems like this is some very important rite of passage, like the first time you lie to your parents. For a split second, I feel normal, and then I remember.
On the other side of the villa, Cate winds away from the main road. The desert floor is littered with large stones and low brush and the occasional piece of warped wood.
“There,” Ashley says, and points.
Set back from
the road is a chain-link fence painted black. Hanging on the other side of the chain link is a sheet of black mesh that makes it hard to see inside, like looking through a screen door. But I can smell what’s on the other side, and it makes my stomach turn.
“A pool?” The chemicals sting the inside of my nose and remind me of a million things at once: me at six, standing hunched in a department store dressing room in a two-piece that didn’t quite fit while my mother made a clicking sound with her tongue. Me at eleven, wearing a one-piece to the community pool, standing with my sausage toes wriggling over the edge of the deep end, watching the sunlight stream between the other girls’ thighs. Me at twelve, me at fourteen, and now, me at seventeen: It doesn’t matter. The feeling is always the same.
Ashley’s smile is all teeth. “They won’t let you go unless you’re on green. But we wanted to, so . . .”
“Come on, guys.” Cate tries the padlocked chain slung between the gate and the rest of the fence. “Locked. We’ll have to climb.” She hooks her tube around her ear and shoves up the sleeves of her ratty robe. Then she claws the fence, and Teagan boosts her up and over the side. Her flip-flops hit the concrete with a slap.
“You guys go next.” I nod at Ashley and Teagan. “I’ll be last.”
Teagan is breathing too hard as Ashley shoves her over, then starts to climb herself.
“Oof.” She wobbles at the top, but makes it. Then it’s my turn, and it’s harder than it looks. Especially with the other girls watching. My body is weak from all the sugar. The metal presses into my skin as I climb. When I get to the top I swing one leg over the side, then the other, my ass spilling over the cold, hard bar.
“Just let go and jump,” Cate says. “It’s not that bad.”
“I’m doing it.” My head knows that the jump isn’t far, but my body feels like it is.
“Oh, come on.” Ashley grabs my ankle and yanks it. I scream and let go, hitting the ground.
“Shhh,” she hisses. “Quiet.”