What I Lost

by Alexandra Ballard

  Margot didn’t say anything at first. She just looked at me, jaw open, as if she couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of my mouth. “Holy shit,” she said. “That’s a crazy story.” Then she giggled.

  I crossed my arms. “I’m glad you find so much humor in my humiliation.”

  “I’m sorry,” Margot said. “I know I shouldn’t laugh, but—” And then she giggled again. “Come on. Picture yourself up there. Can’t you see that it’s at least a little bit funny?”

  I wanted to say no, that I could still hear Heather’s cackles in the audience. Or how Dad cried as he sat on that vinyl chair next to my hospital bed in the ER, saying over and over how much my anorexia scared him and made him think he’d lose me.

  But I didn’t tell her any of those things, because for the first time, I saw how the image of me in my harness, flailing around, might actually be sort of amusing. I smiled a little. And then I snickered, and before I knew it, we were both howling.

  “And you know what was the worst?”

  “What?” Margot said, snorting laughter.

  “My sweatpant penis!” I shrieked.

  “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s sweatpant-penis girl!” Margot yelled.

  “Shut up!” I said, cracking up all over again. “I can’t breathe!”

  “Well,” Margot said, panting, “I guess that explains the scar. I’d wondered.”

  I rubbed the pinkish crescent above my eyebrow. “Yeah,” I said, the urge to laugh suddenly gone. “Okay … your turn. I told you my secret. Why are you here?”

  “My story is pretty boring compared to yours, Elizabeth,” Margot said. “Or should I call you … Wonderpenis?”

  I threw a pillow at her, knocking off her glasses.

  “Too soon?” she said innocently, taking her glasses back. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah. Well, thanks. So tell me, what’s your story?” I tried not to act too eager, but to tell the truth I was dying to know. I barely knew anything about her. We lived less than a mile apart but existed in completely separate worlds. She’d been at a boarding school in New Hampshire since sixth grade. When she was home, she spent most of her time at the local country club, a huge, old brick mansion at the end of a long, tree-lined drive, taking tennis and golf lessons to make her parents happy.

  Margot sighed and evaluated me over the edge of her glasses, like she was praying. “I ate food.” Her words were clipped.

  “Huh?” I was confused. That was what we were supposed to be doing.

  “I started bingeing and purging about a year ago, the summer between my sophomore and junior years. I’d only do it every couple of weeks, and no one ever found out. But this past summer it got worse. I started purging every few days. I thought I’d stop when I got to school, you know, because people would be around all the time and so it would be hard to throw up. But instead it got worse. I started doing it every day. I’d steal food from the cafeteria and eat it at night after my roommate, Laurel, was asleep. Or I’d hide bagels and cookies and anything else I could fit in my backpack and wait until she was out. Then I’d stuff my face and throw up. If Laurel came back before I’d made it to the toilet—we had a private bathroom off our room—I’d just have to sit with it, which was hell.”

  I knew how she felt. Whenever I ate too much I’d go on a double-length run, minimum eight miles, and do a liquid fast the next day. Fasting was my punishment, but also a gift. The pounds just fell off when I did that.

  “The last week in September, my great-aunt died, and I came home for the funeral.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s fine. I barely knew her. Anyway, my parents freaked out because I’d gained all this weight even with my purging. They contacted the school, and the counselors talked to my roommate, Laurel. Turns out she knew what I was doing all along. She told them everything.”

  “Oh, Margot. I am so sorry. What happened after that?”

  “The school made me take a medical leave. And then my puke clogged the pipes at home and backed up the entire upstairs system. Our house is old—ancient plumbing. It started bubbling up in my parents’ shower.”

  How do you respond to something like that? I nodded.

  “They sent me here the next day. But it doesn’t matter. Nobody can help me. Everybody talks here about loving ourselves for who we are, but I can’t. I hate myself. I’m an idiot.”

  “Margot, that is the silliest thing you have ever said.”

  “No, Elizabeth, you don’t understand. Compared to the rest of my family, I’m dumb. I’ve never done well in school. Everybody in my family goes to Pasker.” Pasker was in Connecticut, one of the oldest and most prestigious boarding schools on the East Coast. “We’re legacies there, but when I applied for sixth grade they wouldn’t take me. I had to go to Lewiston in New Hampshire. Have you heard of it?”

  “Yes,” I said. Lewiston was known as the school where rich kids who’d messed up went. “I didn’t know they had a middle school.”

  “Yeah. They do. Do you know how dumb you have to be to not get into a school where your family name is on a building? Pasker said my test scores were too low. The thing is, my parents have always known I can’t take tests. Even when I know the material, I can’t get it from my head to the paper. My brain just can’t do it. Reading gives me headaches. That’s why I listen to books. Teachers told my parents for years that I might have a learning difference, but Mom and Dad never listened. Dad always told them that I’d grow out of it, that he’d been a late bloomer, too. He doesn’t believe that, though. He thinks I’m stupid. I heard him tell my mom once that I was lacking in ‘intellectual capital’—he actually used those words.”

  “I’m so sorry, Margot. That’s so not true.” How could her parents not know she was smart? Then again, they’d sent her to boarding school when she was eleven. And when she was home, Margot said, they barely spoke. They probably didn’t know her at all.

  Margot shrugged. “After the whole plumbing incident, my shrink told my parents I should come here. Dad was horrified. He said he couldn’t believe I was his daughter, that a Camby doesn’t fall apart like this. It was bad enough I was seeing a therapist. But to go into residential treatment? That just isn’t done.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. “So, it must be interesting being a Camby.” The auditorium in our school was called the Camby Center for the Performing Arts. They were next to royalty in Esterfall.

  “Definitely not the word I’d choose.” She grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and blew her nose.

  “Right. Sorry,” I said, to fill the silence. “Did you know the Harvest Concert was held at the Camby Center?”

  “That figures,” she said, wiping her eyes and chuckling a little. “Of course it was.”

  I took her hand, and she didn’t pull away.

  20

  On Wednesday, clouds rolled in after lunch and the blues came right along with them. Reliving the Harvest Concert had made me remember just how much everything would suck when I eventually went back to school, and for the past two days I’d spent a lot of time trying to come up with a way to get my parents to let me homeschool. Aside from breaking a leg, I had nothing.

  I wasn’t the only one feeling down. At mail call, even Allie shrugged when she received a fluorescent-pink teddy bear with giant glitter-green eyes from Hugh. “I have the same one at home,” she sniffed, tossing it back in the box.

  “What’s up with that?” I asked Willa.

  “You didn’t hear?” she whispered. “Her boyfriend took another girl to her school’s fall formal and didn’t tell her. She found out from a friend.” I’d missed group on Monday thanks to my bone scan. “But she said she’s not going to break up with him because she wants him to keep sending her presents.”

  Allie could say that she was in it for the gifts, but my bet was that she wanted to pretend everything was fine, that her friends and boyfriend were waiting for her, that they weren’t moving on. I knew I was doing that. I s
till hadn’t heard from Priya and Shay, but if they called, I knew I’d act like we’d just talked yesterday. It was easier to pretend that everything was fine.

  I didn’t expect Nurse Jill to call my name, but she did, a shoe box–sized package covered with fireworks stamps in her hands. When I stood up, Coral said loud enough for all the other girls to hear, “Is that another one of your ‘secret admirer’ presents?” putting secret admirer in air quotes, like I was making the whole thing up. Girls turned in my direction. Allie perked up.

  How did she know? I looked at Margot and Willa. Willa turned beet red. “Sorry,” she mouthed.

  At the nurses’ station, I didn’t recognize the lady checking packages. She didn’t smile or talk to me; she just opened the package and looked inside with a frown. “We’ll allow it,” she said, like she was a judge on The People’s Court or something.

  When I got to my room, I opened the box and found a jar inside, a regular jelly one with a screw top, full of sand and seashells. On the lid was a label in the same handwriting as the address—CHORUS BEACH. I thought I might cry. This was the sweetest, most romantic gift ever. Chorus Beach was our beach. It was where Charlie’s house was, where we went to be alone when his parents were home, and where we had bonfires at night. It was also where I ran, back when I could run. It was where my mind felt most clear. I’d told Charlie that once.

  It had to be him. But I still didn’t get why. It made no sense. He was with Heather. And that’s when it hit me. The one person who probably had all the answers was due to show up at four o’clock sharp, Simone in tow. Curmudgeon or not, I vowed to get Tristan to tell me what Charlie was thinking.

  * * *

  Tristan was right on time. At exactly four o’clock his Jeep rumbled up the gravel drive. I stepped into the foyer just as Tristan stopped in front of the white columns marking the entrance. He turned off the engine. From where I stood, I could hear that Simone and Tristan were arguing.

  It was rude to eavesdrop, but I did it anyway. Simone was pissed. “You were, weren’t you? You were listening to me in there. Who does that?”

  Tristan’s voice wasn’t any cheerier. “Who does that? I’ll tell you who. Someone with a sister who has bulimia, that’s who. Besides, I wasn’t spying. I was checking to see if the bathroom was free.”

  A long silence followed. Had they heard me?

  “Tristan,” Simone finally said, “don’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “You can’t fix me, you know.” Simone didn’t sound angry anymore. She sounded sad.

  “Who said anything about fixing you? I just wanted to brush my teeth.”

  “Seriously. You need to lay off.”

  “Lay off brushing my teeth?”

  “Don’t make this into a joke.”

  “I’m not. You need to get over yourself.”

  Their voices were getting louder.

  “I’ll be fine. Just leave me alone, okay?”

  “You aren’t fine.”

  “Whatever.”

  I heard footsteps then. Before I could get out of sight, Simone hustled past me, barely noticing I was there. Then Tristan stormed inside, almost smashing into me.

  “Ah, excuse me,” I said, turning bright red. Busted.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and stormed off down the hall.

  When I passed by the breezeway, there he was, sitting in a rocking chair. “Hey, are you okay?” I asked.

  He glanced away and shrugged, and when he did that, he looked like a little boy.

  I didn’t speak. I’d learned from Mary that if you want people to talk, say nothing.

  “She just pisses me off so much.” His voice was angry, but sad, too.

  I lowered myself into a rocking chair.

  “She knows what she needs to do to get better, but she won’t do it. And she won’t let me help her.” He put his head in his hands.

  “I don’t know if it works like that,” I said. “Simone could want more than anything to get better, but maybe she isn’t ready yet.” I didn’t know if I was talking about Simone or myself.

  “Bullshit! She could get better if she tried, but she’s not even trying.”

  “It’s really hard, Tristan.”

  “Whatever. She should have figured it out the first time.”

  “She’s been here more than once?” I knew it. That’s how Ray had known her the day she’d arrived.

  “Yeah. Last year. First she was in Philadelphia for her bulimia. Mom and Dad claimed that they chose the place there because it was good, but I think they sent her that far so they could be sure no one from Esterfall would see her. You know, the whole Yankee keep-it-in-the-family thing. But then, when she flunked out of that one, they didn’t care as much anymore. They wanted her close by, so they sent her here. But apparently it didn’t work, so here we are for round three.”

  I wanted to correct him, to say that you didn’t really flunk out of a place like this. Usually, failure meant that you came back, that you flunked in.

  The chairs made quiet creaking sounds as we rocked and looked out the windows. The view was beautiful, all trees, but I wished that when I looked out, I could see people walking by, or stores, or any sign of civilization. The woods were starting to feel like walls keeping us in. Like prison.

  Apparently Tristan felt the same. Or something. “Can we get out of here?”

  “Um, I’m not exactly allowed to leave.”

  “No, I mean, can we go outside or something? I need a cigarette.”

  “Um, yeah. Sure. If you want. We can go to the patio.”

  “Great.” He stood up a little fast, sending his chair rocking wildly.

  When we got to the patio, he knocked a cigarette out of the pack, brought it to his lips, and lit it. The smoke made me feel ill.

  If he’d been anybody else, I’d have given him grief. But Tristan already thought I was a Goody Two-Shoes, so I kept my mouth shut. He could worry about his own lungs.

  We sat down on two hard outdoor chairs. “I was the one who caught her this time.” He spoke softly. “Things had been better. And then I heard her puking again. And I was so angry. She didn’t even try to deny it. She just begged me not to tell, but I didn’t have a choice. Do you know what it’s like to make your dad cry? Do you know how awful that is?”

  Yeah, I thought. I do. “I’m sure Simone didn’t want that to happen.”

  “Simone doesn’t care about anything but herself.”

  “You know, this whole thing sucks for her, too.”

  “Yeah? Well, why does she keep choosing it, then?”

  Was he saying all this because he wanted to talk to somebody and I happened to be there? Or did he want to talk to me? “Well, I don’t know if she’s choosing it. At least, not now.”

  “Oh, she’s choosing it.”

  “It’s not like that.” Did he think that about me, too? That I’d just “decided” one day to get all anorexic?

  What he didn’t understand was that we weren’t choosing this. Not anymore, anyway. The first time Simone threw up, she made that choice. And no one else made me go on my bikini diet. But after a while our eating disorders messed with our brains. They became something we didn’t have control over. Something we couldn’t stop by ourselves even if we wanted to.

  He scoffed at me. “But all you have to do is eat something. All she has to do is not puke. It’s not like you guys have cancer.”

  The blood rushed to my cheeks. “I wish it were that easy, Tristan.”

  Tristan took a drag of his cigarette. “So were you happy to come here?”

  “No! I didn’t speak to my parents for three days before I came. I feel sort of bad about that now.” I’d locked myself in my bedroom. Dad had knocked on my door over and over, begging me to come out and talk. Mom had texted me every couple of hours. I’d ignored them both.

  Tristan looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go. I have soccer practice.”

  “Okay,” I said, relieved.

&nbs
p; Tristan smiled then. “I feel a little better.” That made one of us. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to ask about Charlie.

  He fished in his pocket for his keys.

  I was gone before he found them.

  21

  I kept walking until I’d reached the hallway with the phone. I leaned against the wall and tried to calm myself by taking deep breaths. I knew some people felt the way he did about eating disorders, that they were a choice, but no one had ever said it to my face before. Anorexia wasn’t something I ever wanted. It was something that happened to me. Right?

  The phone rang, and I ignored it. No one liked answering the phone. If it wasn’t for you (and it never was), everyone expected you to find a pen that worked, and some paper, and take a good message, and find some tape to fasten the message to the bulletin board. If the person on the other end of the line said the message was private, then you had to actually find the person and deliver the message yourself, which was a huge pain in the ass, especially if they were in a different cohort.

  I relaxed when the ringing stopped. But then it started again. This time I sighed and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. May I please speak to Elizabeth Barnes?”

  “Katrina?” I couldn’t believe the phone was actually for me. That never happened. I felt guilty for not picking up the first time. “Hi! It is so good to hear your voice! What’s going on? How are you?” Hearing her voice was like taking a happy pill. I smiled like an idiot in the empty hallway.

  “Good! Guess what?” She sounded excited, too.

  “What?”

  “Are you free right now?”

  “For about fifteen minutes. Why?”

  “Perfect! That’s all I’ve got too. You need to go outside to the driveway. Like, right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because somebody, and by somebody I mean me, is here … standing in front of … HER NEW CAR! Come outside so I can show it to you!”

  I squealed so loudly it could’ve matched Allie’s mail squeals, but I didn’t care. “Oh my God! K, that’s amazing! I’ll be right out.”