“Don’t look at me,” she suddenly growled. He shrank to a sadder size and put his head between his large paws.
This would require more sit-ups than usual. She was permitted to eat if she did the full crunches, which had risen to 400; this trouble with touching the red silky piece of cloth could mean 500. She might be able to eat then. She folded a towel into thirds the long way to protect her backbone and began the trance of motion, hands behind her head, knees bent for rapid, unrelenting crunches. When she was done, she felt worthy of logging on to her special website. This was something that no one knew about, not even Rocky.
Rocky could spoil everything for Melissa. No one had said a word to her about not eating enough until Rocky came to dinner and blew her cover. That wasn’t entirely true; her mother had begun to make everything that Melissa had ever said she loved to eat, and even took to bringing home Chicken McNuggets from the mainland.
Melissa logged onto the websites for girls with eating disorders. She knew her mother would never think to track where she had been on the Web and this gave her the freedom of a world traveler, disguised as a high school girl, an honor student, track star, but really she was a terrorist. Her camo gear included sweatpants, pristine running shoes, two layers of shirts, and sometimes two layers of pants. When she heard her mother go to sleep, the click of the bedroom light, the outer gear came off and bone girl appeared, skin stretched smooth over bone, enough toned flesh to keep her running. On to the websites. Her favorite was www.annierexia.com. The sites of resistance, the guerrilla fighters of world food. How to do without, to exist on defiance with an apple for lunch, to live on the razor’s edge between perfect brevity of body and the hospital. At all cost, said the Web-page star, do not let them put you in the hospital. As a prisoner of war, they can do anything to you, restrain you, and take away privileges. At the very worst, they will slide a feeding tube down your throat and defile you with a disgusting mixture of blended drinks that no one should have to endure.
Melissa shuddered with pleasure. Her nipples tightened at the heroic Web-page girl. She was ashamed for not being as brave, as strong, as perfectly beyond her body as Annie was. She couldn’t possibly be called Annie, could she? Melissa’s friend Krystal had been her starving partner last year, but now Krystal had a boyfriend and she had lost her edge and lost her time to be with Melissa.
As if by magic, Lissa spotted a new flag on the site that said, Going Solo. She clicked on it and the text sprang up.
“If everyone has left you, and gone back to food it’s because you have something that they don’t. You are ready to cross over. I’m not stopping. Are you?”
Her breath stopped, and then she clicked off, suddenly fearful. She had a cooked egg white waiting for her downstairs that she would have to eat by tomorrow morning, but the whole day could stay under 700 calories. She could easily move down to 600.
Was she just average, soft, not special in any way? She had to remember to put tampons on the shopping list on the fridge. She couldn’t let her mother know that her period had stopped. This was the third month and she had nearly forgotten to keep up the pretense. She padded silently down the stairs and into the kitchen.
She pushed the hardboiled egg across the plate, separating the yoke from the whites, and with deliberate strokes, cut the egg white into tiny cubes.
She stood at the kitchen table, refusing to sit. She burned more calories standing. Already, her body was chilled, her skin springing into goose flesh. She looked down at her hands and noted the strange bluish color. This was something new. Just like the lightheaded feeling when she stood up quickly. She wrote her schedule in small letters, numbering each task, listing the amount of time for each one. The cubes of egg white looked like granite blocks on her plate. She lined them up in grids, a small pile for each direction, north, south, east, and west. After she finished her calculus, she could eat the northern pile. After finishing the calc, she let one pile of cubes plunk dangerously into her belly. She waited an hour before eating the next pile and by then she was done with her chemistry and well into rewriting her history notes. She loved the way her schoolwork looked in the late hours of the night, each pile of work lined up perfectly straight. When she wrote, she used a precisely sharpened pencil, so that errors could be erased, and rubbed clean. By the time she was done with her homework, the books were lined up on the Formica counter, ready to be stuffed in her book bag early Monday morning. Two piles of egg cubes were left, and because her belly did not feel expanded, she pierced the rest with one tine of the fork, careful not to touch her teeth. This last group of creamy cubes had to wait on her tongue, pressing them to the roof of her mouth. The cubes had to compress into flat compliance, then of their own will, they dissolved, traveling the long journey over the rough backside of the tongue, down where throat muscles must squeeze and push and escort the flecks of egg to the unwelcome cavern of the stomach. She knew she had to wait, uneasy, and that she had to count to one hundred several times because she promised to eat, to let the cubes stay in her body. The dog, who labored in determination to come down the stairs to be with her, positioned his black body at her feet. His body glowed with warmth and she placed her feet under the blanket of his belly.
Chapter 9
“Dear, do you want to kill something?” asked Tess.
“No. I want to learn archery, feel the Zen of centering, pulling the bow, then the release,” said Rocky.
The dog stood up and with the barest limp, repositioned between the women and the door. Tess winced, as she always did when she saw the dog limp. She squeezed her shoulders up to her ears, then released them with a shuddering sigh and shook herself.
“There is something oddly perverse about you wanting to learn about bows and arrows after this dog was nearly killed by a fool shooting him.”
“I know, but I can’t stop thinking about it,” said Rocky. “You would think I would be repulsed by the idea of archery, but I’m not. I don’t want the dog to know. I mean I won’t do it around him. I won’t even keep the stuff here. I’ll go over to the mainland. I looked up some places.”
“Why don’t you take up Tai Chi or Qi Gong. Why must you allow yourself to be pulled to something so hard and straight, and without mercy?”
Tess was helping Rocky winterize her cottage. They hung plastic on the windows in the living room and her bedroom. Rocky plugged in her hair dryer and aimed it at the plastic that was attached to the window frame with double-stick tape. All the fold marks from the packaging remained. She aimed the hair dryer slowly up and down, making a path from top to bottom following the directions on the cardboard insert.
“Oh, that noise!” said Tess, putting her hands over her ears. “It’s bright green and disagreeable. That hair dryer must be as old as I am. I’ll be outside until you finish.”
Rocky kept shrink wrapping her windows and paused for a moment wondering what it would be like to be Tess and have sharp noises be green, see the days of the week as big cubes that each hold their own niche in space. When Tess learned that Rocky was interested, she let her know more and more of her synesthete world. Tess didn’t hide it from people, but she didn’t elaborate unless she knew someone was truly interested. Tess told her that a Ford Taurus on her road hums like an air conditioner from the 1970s, with a tinge of blue. When Tess whacks her elbow or stubs her toe, that part of her body glows bright orange and sends sharp orange lines along her nerves all the way to her brain.
Rocky turned off the hair dryer. She saw the strong wave of Tess’s white hair as she walked past the deck, inspecting something along the ground. The dog sat sentinel at the door, knowing that his pack was divided, one out and one inside. His look of distress suddenly lodged in Rocky. She had seen dogs do this before, when she and Bob had taken in foster dogs. Before they knew it, the dog had become part of their pack and took a role that was either protector or protected, either the alpha or the puppy. This was now her world, a dog who could not tell her his secret and a woman who held her ears
to keep out the bright green noise of a hair dryer. And she had a palpable yearning to put her hands on a bow and pull back the string.
Despite Tess’s warning about archery, she looked in the Yellow Pages for sporting goods stores in Portland and called while Tess was outside. She phoned the very first one listed, Sporting Equipment Store, and asked if they had archery supplies. Ron Wilcox, the owner, said, “We got all the compound bows. What we ain’t go, you can order.”
When Tess returned to the little house, and the dog visibly relaxed with a sigh, Rocky explained that she had found the store that she was looking for.
“But I didn’t understand something that he told me,” Rocky said. “What’s a compound bow?”
Tess shrugged. “How should I know? I’m a retired physical therapist gone Buddhist, not a sports woman.”
Rocky drove her own car, ever doubtful of the yellow truck’s legal standing off island. Lloyd seemed well enough for a car trip, so she brought him for the ride. He was the perfect passenger.
The mainland seemed suddenly foreign to Rocky. The smell of the ocean was still present along the streets of Portland, but less dense. She had a growing sense of what living on an island meant. She was keenly aware that she was living on the tip of a mountain surrounded by ocean. But more often she felt like the entire island was a loosely anchored raft. She woke in the middle of the night and worried that the island was unsubstantially connected. What would it take for it to break free? On the mainland, the land felt suddenly still, and the 3,000-mile stretch from coast to coast bore down on her as she turned the knob on the Sports Equipment Store. A bell clattered overhead as the door jarred it.
A large-bellied man held open the pages of a magazine. He looked up from behind the desk. Behind him was an arsenal of guns, riflescopes in glass cases, pistols resting like reptiles under the glass countertops. She smelled oil and metal.
“I called yesterday about archery equipment?”
Rocky was suspect of other women who ended statements as if they were questions and now she wondered if women did this when they were afraid. This store felt like the suburban Pentagon and she was an unwelcome delegate from the UN.
“Yeah, over here,” Ron said as if he were a hunter leaving his blind. “Is this for you or someone else?”
“For me.”
“What draw weight are you looking for?”
Rocky was amazed at how quickly she could be stripped naked in places like car garages, lumberyards, or now, sporting supply stores.
“I’ve never used a bow before. I don’t know anything about it. What do you mean, how much weight?”
She followed Ron past the camouflage vests and pants, hip waders, hats with flaps over the ears, folding camp chairs, all the way to the back of the store where archery supplies were lined up.
“I’m gonna expand this section next year. We’ve got more people looking into archery. There’s more houses smack in the middle of the woods, less room to hunt with a gun. With these, you only need a good twenty yards, the closer the better. What do you plan to hunt?”
“Nothing. A target, I guess. I just want to learn how to do it.”
Rocky looked at the bows, complicated devices with pulleys that looked like a combination of technology and medieval utility. This was not what she was expecting. He explained how the pulley system on the compound bow did some of the work and that the archer did not have to exert as much power consistently.
“Are these the only kind you have?”
“These are the only kind I have in stock,” he said.
“When did bows start to look like this?”
“Back in the seventies. These compound bows are all anyone ever asks for,” he said.
Rocky remembered she had the remains of the arrow that had nearly killed Lloyd. She pulled it out of her bag.
“I mean this sort of arrow, a bow for this.”
She held up the broken arrow.
“Oh, now that’s a different thing altogether. You’re looking for someone who’s into traditional archery. I don’t do that here.” He folded his arms across his chest to close the conversation.
“Who does?” asked Rocky, crossing her arms over her chest.
She followed him back to the counter. The wall behind the counter was covered with business cards. He pulled the tack out of one of them and handed a card to Rocky. “This guy hunts with traditional bows. Hill Johnson. He used to give lessons. I don’t know if he still does. He’s up in Brunswick. You can’t have the card; it’s the only one I got. You need a pencil to write down his number?”
She thanked him and left. While she drove, Lloyd sat in the passenger seat. Rocky had cracked the passenger window several inches to clear the car of dog breath. As they drove, Lloyd turned his snout to a tendril of scent going by a restaurant. And then he leaned his upper body toward the window and tilted his nose skyward as he savored the breeze filled with smells unnoticed by humans. Lloyd closed his eyes and his soft lips fell into a Lab smile.
She pulled into a Dairy Mart to a get a Coke, full sugar variety. She hoped that the man who taught lessons and who used traditional bows was not a weird survivalist. She imagined he would be older, a lot like the man who ran the sporting goods store.
As she got out of the car, Lloyd assumed a more proprietary posture and looked like a regal walrus, staring casually ahead. Even though it was early December, she opened her window a crack also and opened the roof vent. She looked back with encouragement at the dog.
“I’ll be right back.”
A green-and-black SUV pulled in right next to her, too close, and she said under her breath, “Big asshole.” She would have to get in on Lloyd’s side of the car.
She went to the front door and with studied sarcasm, held the door open for the tight-jawed man who leapt from the vehicle. Rocky wanted him to say something, she wanted to let loose with a tirade about guzzling eighty percent of the world’s resources so that he could drive his Behemoth to the Dairy Mart. But both of them stopped dead as the black Lab went off like a bomb in the car. The hair on Lloyd’s back stood up straight and the car rocked as he thrashed his body.
“Jesus, Lloyd. Cut it out. What’s gotten into you?” The man did a double take when he saw Lloyd and then looked hard at Rocky.
“Is that your dog?” he said.
“Yeah, I don’t think he likes you,” said Rocky.
He offered her a contemptuous look, but since Lloyd did not let up his show of force, the look was brief. Rocky noticed that his brown hair was short, but just long enough to be meticulously combed to one side. He stumbled backward to his vehicle and seemed to forget whatever he had needed at the store. He made a tire squealing exit.
Rocky went back to her car. The dog stopped as quickly as he had begun, yet the fur on his back was still raised in ominous warning. Rocky ran her hand over his head to settle him and she imagined the danger button in his body switching back to the off position. “So you’re not mister nice guy all the time,” she said.
The entire encounter took about one minute and Rocky wondered if she should have paid more attention. She wondered if Lloyd knew that guy and if he did, why did Lloyd want to rip off his head? Bob had said that some people give dogs the creeps and there was no explanation.
Later that evening she called Hill Johnson to set up an initial lesson in two days. Rocky stumbled when she told him that she wanted to learn archery and he let her. That was the first thing she noticed about him. He listened and she imagined him watching her over the phone.
“Are you still there?” she asked him.
“I’m here. I was waiting for you to finish. The best thing to do is to come out and try it once, then decide if you want lessons,” he said.
Later that week, they stood in Hill’s backyard in Brunswick.
Rocky asked him about his name. “Hill? You mean Hillary? That must have been a tough one in junior high.”
“Nothing tough about it. It’s a family name and Hill is what I’ve
always been called. Only my grandmother called me Hillary and she’s no longer with us,” he said.
His archery shop took up half of his garage, right on the apex of a cul-de-sac street. Hill looked younger than she was by more than a few years and taller than she had expected. She was startled by his features, the combination of dark, rich eyebrows highlighting his face in contrast to an adolescent rosiness in his cheeks. And his eyes did not exactly match; one eye was blue-green and the other was green-blue. An unexpected nudge from her lungs forced her to take in more air and her torso shifted forward toward Hill’s slightly oversized chest men can get, offering a preview of future expansion. She pulled back instantly.
If Rocky had seen him in Stop n Shop, she was pretty sure he’d be cruising the meat department, followed by the bread aisle. They hadn’t gone into his house, instead they had skirted around his garage to his backyard.
Rocky assumed the lessons would begin immediately. His backyard extended at least an acre and bumped up against a railroad track. Two paper targets were tacked to hay bails. He handed Rocky a bow. “My wife started on this one,” he said. “This is a good size for you.”
She was relieved there was a wife. Now they could be all business without an undercurrent of sexual tension. She hefted the bow in her hands and attempted to look knowledgeable but quickly decided to drop the pretense. “I don’t even know where to start and I’m not sure what I’ll do with this.”
Anyone who had watched her miniature performance, the relief when he said wife, the defensive posture when he handed her the bow, the decision to drop her defenses, and the admission of her novice standing, would have thought that she was a complicated woman. Hill chose to attend to archery.
Lost & Found With Bonus Excerpt Page 8