What I Lost

by Alexandra Ballard

  “Told you,” she said.

  In line, Lexi turned to me. “Oh, and tomorrow, set your alarm for six. That way, we can beat the line so the whole thing will take two minutes and we’ll still be sleepy enough to go back to bed after they weigh us.”

  Apparently I was in charge of waking us both up. Everyone in line seemed to be trying to cling to sleep by leaning against the wall with their eyes closed, so I whispered, “Okay.”

  “By the way,” Lexi whispered back, “you know that today, we’re going to have to eat everything.”

  I nodded and gulped. “I don’t know how I am going to do that.”

  Lexi shrugged. “Even if they force an Ensure on you, you still can say no. You just have to be okay dealing with the consequences.”

  I nodded. How did she know these things? “Lexi, have you been here before?”

  “No,” she said, twisting a strand of black hair between her fingers. “But I’ve been at a place just like this. And this is what I know: They’re going to try to make you eat whether you like it or not. If you refuse, they give you Ensure. If you refuse Ensure enough times, they’ll make you go around in a wheelchair or make you get a feeding tube. At least here they make you get an NG.”

  “NG?”

  “A nasogastric tube—the one they cram down your nose to your stomach. But an NG isn’t as bad as the stomach one I had a while back. That one really sucked. Oh, and it scars.” She undid her robe and hiked up her PJ top to reveal what looked like a second belly button above and to the left of her real one.

  I cringed.

  “I know. Gross, right?” She pulled her robe closed over her shirt. “You basically have two choices when you’re here. You can either refuse to do everything, and then eventually they’ll kick you out. That’s what happened to me at my last place. Or you can do what they tell you, get fat, and go home when your insurance runs out and do it all over again. It’s up to you.”

  What about girls who want to get well? I almost asked, but then she might think I was one. “Thanks for the intel.”

  Lexi fussed with her top. “Anytime.”

  Breakfast was a nightmare. It was so bad, in fact, that I can’t even talk about it except to say just imagine someone putting ten times the amount of food you’d usually eat in front of you and then telling you to finish every bite. I cried. A lot. Lexi refused to eat again and sat with her mouth glued shut in front of the resulting Ensure. She amazed me. I wasn’t as brave as she was, so I left with a bowling ball for a stomach. Then I got nauseous and barely made it to the bathroom before it all came up, burning my throat the whole way: two scrambled eggs, two slices of buttered toast, another carton of milk, and three orange wedges. I didn’t throw up on purpose, but Kay, after handing me a paper towel for my mouth, still made me go to group therapy. “Once your stomach settles,” she said, “that will be one Ensure.”

  Fantastic.

  6

  Group was held in the therapy wing on the far side of the building. Once again everybody queued up in the hall. I joined them after I brushed my teeth, my stomach still queasy. I was beginning to think all girls did at Wallingfield was eat, wait in lines, get weighed, talk about themselves, and wait in more lines.

  A big picture window at the other end of the corridor displayed a clear view of the entrance. “Check that out,” said a girl with a blond ponytail. She sounded just bitchy enough that I wished I had the willpower not to look. A couple more girls, on their way somewhere else, stopped and looked too.

  Outside, a girl hauled herself out of a black Mercedes idling in the middle of the driveway. She crossed the gravel slowly, her blue wool peacoat straining across her broad shoulders, her suitcase wheels getting stuck in the tiny rocks. Her mouse-brown hair hid her face. At one point she turned around, as if to wave goodbye to the person who’d brought her, but the Mercedes was already halfway down the driveway, brake lights winking. Shoulders slumped, she opened the front door and wrestled her suitcase and backpack through, the door closing on her the whole time. Then she was gone, and the parking lot was empty again.

  A couple of girls snickered. A tiny girl with a pixie cut who looked a little like a real-live fairy called out, “Thar she blows!” and the girls nearest to her laughed nervously.

  “Who is that?” I said quietly to Willa, who’d slipped in next to me.

  “Her?” Willa made a disgusted face. “That’s Coral,” she murmured in my ear. “She’s evil.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “She used to run this intense pro-ana site before she came here, Thinsporgasmic. Have you heard of it?”

  “She ran Thinsporgasmic?” I’d gotten great tips on how to avoid eating from that site. Her most popular feature was “How Thin Am I?” where girls posted their photos and others rated them on a scale of one to five skeletons—one being “Lard Ass,” five being “Totally Dedicated.” It was pretty sick. But motivating, if you want to know the truth.

  “Yeah. Her parents shut it down when she was admitted.”

  That’s why it had disappeared.

  “A whole posse of girls followed her around. Some were in her cohort, so they mixed up the cohorts last week to separate them. It was a big scandal. Allie, who’s in our cohort now, was one of them. Coral was pissed. But whatever.” Willa shrugged. “She deserved it.”

  I snuck a glance at Coral, who was still snickering. This place was getting more like high school every minute.

  We’d all settled into our seats when the girl who’d just been dropped off walked into the room. She sat hunched over like a lump next to Marcia, the twentysomething counselor in charge.

  “Group therapy,” Willa told me from our spot on one of the three neutral-colored couches arranged in a triangle, “is basically the same every time, except that what we talk about and do is different.”

  “Wouldn’t that make it different every day?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah, but it’s the same, too.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I’m confused.”

  “Just wait. You’ll see. Marcia will introduce you guys, and then she’ll do a check-in with everybody else,” she said.

  Sure enough, the first thing Marcia, who was pretty, skinny, and wearing the brown leather Frye boots I’d coveted for months, did was smile at me and the lump on the chair next to her. “Everybody, please say hello to Margot, Elizabeth, and Lexi.”

  I smiled and tried to look like someone the other girls would want to be friends with. The lump/Margot didn’t respond. I felt guilty thinking about her that way, but I couldn’t even see her face. She really needed to sit up, at least a little.

  “Let’s do a quick check-in,” Marcia said.

  “See?” Willa mouthed. As we went around the circle, girls said things like “fine,” or “cold,” or “anxious,” or “sad.” One girl, Beth, said, “Excited! I got my feeding tube out yesterday.”

  I said “nervous.” Margot said nothing.

  The baseboard heaters creaked and groaned, but I was freezing. I should have worn another layer. I had goose bumps practically all the time, which made my lanugo stand on end. I sat with my knees curled up to my chest to stay warm. Most of the other girls did too, except for Margot, who sat with her arms across her chest, head down, legs splayed out in front of her. I’d never sit like that. It made my thighs look fat.

  “A couple of days ago,” Willa whispered next to me, “we sat behind cardboard walls made from boxes and talked about what parts of ourselves we wanted to hide. That was the worst. I hope we aren’t doing that again.”

  We didn’t. Instead, we filled out a worksheet to help us identify any emotions that might be hiding when we felt mad. Then everybody talked about it. It wasn’t so bad.

  About forty-five minutes into the hour-long session, Marcia asked if Margot had anything to say. She looked up for a second, and our eyes met. My stomach dropped. Oh my God. I knew her. Her name was Margot Camby. She lived in Esterfall and went to boarding school. We’d taken ballet together when w
e were six. In the performance, we’d both been shooting stars, twirling each other in our light-blue tutus and silver ballet slippers as our parents took pictures.

  Her eyes were desperate, trapped. Do something, they seemed to say. Help me.

  What did she want me to do? I didn’t want to talk. At home I always went with the smile-and-nod approach, which I’d developed in my old support group. I’d joined after Dr. Brach, our family doctor, told Mom during my annual physical that I’d lost too much weight over the summer. He was the one who told her to sign me up. It met once a week in a plain room in the one office building in town. He’d also told Mom I needed to quit cross-country, at least until my weight stabilized. Even though Mom told him she thought I was fine, she obeyed him because, as I overheard her say to Dad later that day, “I didn’t want him to think I was a bad mother.”

  Smile-and-nod was the best way to show you cared without having to contribute. The smile was key. It had to be upbeat, but not too yay-everything-is-awesome cheery, because the person talking might feel laughed at. It had to be sympathetic, but not wow-that’s-totally-how-I-feel, because group leaders lived for that stuff and would definitely call on you to “share your thoughts.” And you definitely couldn’t zone out, because that was rude and you’d get a reputation for either being self-absorbed and bitchy, or on too high a dose of antidepressants.

  “Margot?” Marcia’s voice was a little more demanding this time.

  “I hate this hair,” I blurted out, plucking at the thin layer of lanugo on my arm. I blushed. Of all the things to say, I chose that? I looked toward Margot, expecting a thank-you, but she’d gone back to looking at the floor.

  Everybody waited for me to continue. I cleared my throat. “It doesn’t seem fair, you know, that you work so hard and you get this,” I said, holding out my arm as evidence. “I would have shaved it off, but the only thing weirder than too much arm hair is none at all. And now, here, I don’t even have the option.” Razors were sharp, and sharps weren’t allowed at Wallingfield.

  You owe me, Margot.

  A couple of girls in the room nodded, and I was relieved that they didn’t think I was crazy.

  Beth raised her skeletal arm. You could still see the tape residue on her cheek from her feeding tube.

  She smiled in my direction. “I totally agree, Elizabeth. This fuzz sucks.”

  Willa leaned over and in my ear said, “Beth never smiles. She must be in a good mood because she got to walk to group. Up until now, she’s been pushed around in a wheelchair so she’d burn fewer calories and gain more weight.”

  With her white-blond hair, Beth looked like a cross between an angel and a ghost. Her skin was so pale I could see the blue veins on her wrists.

  Lexi spoke then. “Kids called me Amy Winehouse.” Ouch. Amy Winehouse was a rock star who died from alcohol poisoning. She’d been anorexic, too, with an unfortunate whorl of black hair right below each ear, like Lexi.

  “I wore so many layers people called me a bag lady.” This came from a girl named Jean, who smiled at me as she spoke.

  Willa leaned in. “She’s twenty-two. She’s from Canada.” Willa said this like it was a miracle or something. “She’s been here for eleven weeks. Everybody calls her a lifer because she’s been here for so long.”

  Jean was tall and awkward, like a female Abraham Lincoln.

  “She’s really nice, though. Maybe the nicest,” Willa said.

  Then, without missing a beat, Willa turned to the group and held out her arms, which were covered with downy hair and parallel scars. I looked away. “I didn’t know…” She stopped herself midsentence. “I tried to shave mine off,” she said.

  Everybody nodded. Suddenly the grubby, white-painted cinder-block walls, folding chairs, fluorescent lighting—even the whiteboard, which someone had ruined by writing YOLO on it with a Sharpie—felt warmer. For the first time, I felt understood. These girls got me. And yet … a part of me wanted to cry. This wasn’t normal. I wanted to be home, listening to Spotify with Katrina, studying for my SATs, reading Hamlet, and training for states with my cross-country team.

  Marcia looked around. “Does anybody know why people with low body weight see more hair on their bodies?”

  Practically every hand went up except mine. “Jean?”

  “We grow lanugo because our bodies are trying to keep us warm.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Marcia said. Then she glanced at her watch. “Oh, darn it. I hate to do this, but unfortunately, our time is up. Please put your chairs away as you leave. Lunch in five minutes. Thank you, and I’ll see you all on Thursday.”

  I sighed with relief. So far, the minutes passed slowly at Wallingfield. It felt like nothing moved fast, including us. When you moved fast you burned calories, and the goal around here was to expand, not contract. Willa had told me that if you moved too much or, God forbid, ran somewhere, the nurses made you drink an Ensure.

  As I walked to the door, Willa slipped in next to me. “Hey,” she said under her breath, her voice so soft I could barely hear it. “I thought the hair was part of, you know, puberty…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yeah, well,” I said as nicely as I could, “it’s not.”

  She leaned into me a little bit.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “everybody here has hair like that.” Margot pushed past us and disappeared down the hall. “Well, almost everybody.”

  “Okay,” she said, and right then she seemed young—too young to be in a place like this. She looked like Becky, a nine-year-old I sometimes babysat.

  “Willa,” I asked, “how old are you?”

  “Twelve. Why?”

  “No reason.” I blanched, but only for a second. Twelve. A baby. Figures my first friend would be the only middle schooler here. But twelve was better than nine. I hooked my arm through hers and smiled. “Come on. It’s time for lunch,” I said.

  7

  To get to the dining room, we had to traipse back through the depressing, white cinder-block therapy wing and down a little breezeway lined with arched windows and white rocking chairs. As soon as we passed the first rocking chair, everybody sped up like we were in a race or something. Willa turned to me. “Come on! This is the only place you can walk fast. The nurses can’t see your speed here.” I didn’t ask questions. I just booked it with the rest of them.

  At first, my lunch didn’t look so bad. A veggie burger patty, one round pita, an apple, a tub of peach yogurt, a carton of milk, and a curiously plain bowl of lettuce waited for me on my tray. I didn’t notice the little plastic cup of ranch salad dressing until I sat down.

  When I did, I panicked. There was no way I could put that in my body. It was like eating straight butter. Unhealthy. Disgusting. My throat closed just thinking about it.

  But if I didn’t, I’d have to drink an Ensure.

  I pushed the salad dressing as far away from me as I could. Then I shoved my veggie burger into my pita, picked up my knife and cut the sandwich into strips. Next I cut each strip into eight tiny pieces, which was hard since it was a sandwich and the top layer of pita kept falling off the little squares. But I managed somehow. After that, I cut my apple in half, then into quarters, then eighths, and then cut each one of those eighths in half again, making sixteen thin slices.

  Kay walked by. When she saw what I was doing, she stopped. “Elizabeth, no ritualistic behavior is allowed in the dining room.”

  I looked at her blankly. What?

  “No cutting up food into tiny pieces. That’s an eating disorder behavior.”

  Oh. But I cut my food up like this all the time. How was I going to eat without doing it? Cutting up my food stretched out meals, and eating the resulting tiny pieces made me feel like I’d eaten more. At home, I could often convince myself I was full after six half slices of banana. Throw in a few glasses of water and I could cut my intake from six bites to four.

  I’d managed to choke down the pita, the burger, and the yogurt, and was on bite six of my apple when I h
eard Kay’s voice behind me. “Elizabeth?” she said gently. “You have six minutes left. Don’t forget your salad.”

  I stared at the white nastiness in its tiny plastic tub. I hadn’t touched anything like it in over eight months. Little black specks of pepper floated in the creamy white fat. I gagged at the smell of it. My throat clamped shut and my body froze, just like the time Katrina dared me to stick my fingers in a candle flame when we were eight. Instinct stopped me then and it stopped me now. “I can’t eat it. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  Kay walked to the little fridge near the entrance and picked out a bottle of vanilla Ensure. “If you don’t eat your salad, you’ll have to have one of these,” she said, not unkindly. “So try. Trust me, vanilla isn’t good. The first time reintroducing a food in your diet is always the hardest. You can do this, Elizabeth. I know you can.”

  “But I ate everything else,” I said, begging.

  Kay nodded. “I know,” she said, “and I’m sorry. But you have to eat the dressing, too.”

  Willa put her fork down and took my hand under the table. “You don’t want an Ensure,” she said. “That’s more calories than the dressing. Come on, I know you can do it.”

  I heard a quiet voice in my ear. “Take one bite, and then wash it down with a big gulp of water. Then a few more, and you are done.” I turned around. Jean. She smiled a little. “It’s just dressing. The faster you eat it, the faster it will be over.”

  By this time I’d attracted quite the crowd. Willa, Beth, Jean—even Allie came over. Then Lexi, who’d watched this all in silence, said, “If I take a bite, will you?”

  No was the response I wanted to give. But I barely knew these girls. I didn’t want to disappoint them.

  So I dipped my fork into the dressing and stabbed a piece of romaine lettuce with it. Opening my mouth, I choked it down. Lexi cut off a tiny corner of her veggie burger and did the same. I’d liked ranch dressing once, but now I gagged on the nasty, oily, putrid-smelling white foulness that coated my gums. I swallowed, a slick of grease remaining on my lips and a sour, peppery aftertaste permeating my mouth. I sucked down water, hoping to get rid of the taste. No luck. I promised myself that when I was in charge of my own eating, I’d never, ever eat ranch dressing again.