by Nora Price
“How are you doing for supplies?”
“Fine,” I said slowly. My mind returned back to my room, to the half-depleted white box beneath my bed. I mentally scanned its contents. “I have plenty of envelopes and enough note cards to last. Victoria keeps stealing pens to draw temporary tattoos on Haley and forgetting to return them, but I only need one pen, so.”
“Let me know if you need more.”
“I like having only one pen,” I said. “It’s the same principle with hair bands. If I only have one around my wrist, I never lose sight of it. But give me twelve hair bands and I’ll lose them all in ten seconds.”
I was biding my time before addressing the Brooke question. I didn’t want to seem overeager.
“Scarcity increases value,” Alexandra agreed. “Have you ever tried buying asparagus out of season?”
“Yeah, it costs like three thousand dollars per pound.”
“Exactly. It’s the same reason we value beauty so highly, as humans.”
“Because it’s scarce?” I asked.
“Because it’s scarce. You’re still writing letters to Elise, I see.”
My foot twitched of its own accord.
“You seem a little impatient today,” Alexandra observed neutrally. “Is everything okay?”
“I think you can probably guess why I’m impatient,” I said.
Once again, I can’t stand when adults feign ignorance. They’re always lecturing teenagers about not playing dumb—about breaking the habit of inserting “like” between every other word—and yet here was Alexandra, pretending to be dumber than a bundle of socks.
“Do I have to ask?” I said.
Silence.
“Okay. Why did Brooke get sent home today?”
Alexandra’s hand smoothed the already-smooth linen of her pants, and I wondered, for the first time, whether she might not be quite as cucumber-cool about the morning’s events as she had seemed. It had all happened so rapidly. First Brooke was there, and then she wasn’t.
“Was it drugs?” I speculated. “Did she have coke or Adderall or something?”
“As Angela mentioned this morning,” Alexandra said, “Brooke acted in a way that endangered the welfare of the other girls here. That’s all I can really say, Zoe, without infringing upon patient confidentiality.”
“But I thought we were allowed to talk about anything in here,” I protested. A new idea occurred to me: “Does it have to do with the stolen clothes?” I asked.
“Zoe.”
“No,” I persisted. “Something doesn’t feel right about this. Has it happened before at Twin Birch? That a girl gets sent home?”
“Only once.”
“What happened that time?” I asked, then reconsidered. “Never mind. I know you won’t answer that.”
“Perhaps we could talk about how Brooke’s leaving makes you feel,” Alexandra prompted. There are no dead ends with Alexandra. As soon as you hit a wall in conversation, she opens up a side door.
“It feels great,” I said curtly. “She hated me, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I don’t know that she did hate you, Zoe.”
“It hardly matters now.”
“It does,” Alexandra said, “because Brooke is still making you unhappy despite the fact that she’s gone.”
Now I looked for my own side door. “Your watch is the color of an IHOP,” I said, pointing to her wrist. It was true. Her watch was the lurid blue color of an IHOP roof.
Alexandra glanced at her wrist.
“Is IHOP really international?” I went on, overenthusiastic in my rerouting of the discussion. “I’ve never heard of an IHOP in Rome. Or Barcelona. Maybe it should be called NHOP. National House of Pancakes.”
“Let’s stay on track, Zoe.”
“I used to order cinnamon-apple pancakes with whipped cream on top,” I went on dreamily, remembering trips with Harry and Mom. I could feel the lightweight cutlery in my palm, and the heavy laminated menu with its endless combinations. The smell of fake syrup in the air. It was warm inside the restaurant. Our table was splashed with sunlight.…
“Are you happy?” Alexandra interrupted.
I drifted back into the present.
“No,” I said. “I’m not happy at all.”
She waited for more.
“I can barely stay focused,” I said. “Every molecule in my body wants to be someplace else.” I sniffed the air, hoping obscurely for a trace of the syrup smell. There was none. “If you want to know,” I added, “I find it very upsetting that someone can just disappear into thin air, even if that person is psychotic.”
“Brooke,” Alexandra said. “What upsets you about her leaving?”
“She’s gone, and we were given no warning. None. I’m not sure whether she left this morning or last night—or Jesus, in the middle of the night. And to drive it all home, you won’t even tell us what she did.”
“Is it important for you to know?”
“Yes, it’s important,” I said, writhing with exasperation. “It’s important that I know because otherwise the exact same thing could happen to me.”
There it was. That was the truth.
Alexandra wrote it—or something—down on her notepad. A woozy feeling rushed into my stomach, mingling with the huge tofu sandwich I’d eaten for lunch.
“Can I lie down?” I asked abruptly, hoisting myself onto the couch without waiting for an answer. In my peripheral vision I saw Alexandra sit up in her chair, rigid with concern. “I’m not having another panic attack,” I said. “I just feel sick.”
I closed my eyes. Alexandra instructed me through a series of breathing exercises, which I attempted half-heartedly. Breathing exercises never made any sense to me, as a calming mechanism. There’s a reason why breathing is automatic: It’s so boring that everyone would forget to do it otherwise. Still, I obediently manipulated my lungs in the prescribed manner. The sickness didn’t make sense. Shouldn’t I feel fine now that Brooke is gone? There was nothing for me to worry about anymore—no mean comments, no accusations, no moon-faced girls skulking about and throwing looks in my direction.
Best of all, there were less than two weeks left before I could go home. And yet—something was the matter. I opened my eyes to the pale white ceiling. “It’s upsetting,” I finally said, “when someone just disappears.”
[Day Twenty-Six]
Getting bad news when you least expect it is like drinking a beer on an empty stomach. Or at least, the one time I’ve made that mistake.
I’ve gotten bad news before, but this time was different. My head was elsewhere. My body was exhausted. Sleep has been impossible over the past few days, and even when I can snatch a few hours, my dreams are exhausting and unstoppable. I wake up feeling groggier than if I hadn’t slept at all.
There are five girls left at Twin Birch. The table scraps of information that Alexandra offered about Brooke during our session added up to nothing, but I promised myself that I would find out what happened. The issue has been at the center of my thoughts, causing disruptions in every activity I attempt to complete. The hours tumble forth in a blur of errors and fumbles. I’m sure it’s the reason I can’t sleep. I was late to breakfast today and took a long time to choke down my oatmeal, which tasted of sawdust. Even Victoria became impatient with me, but I couldn’t help it: My throat had closed up, and every swallow brought me close to wretching. In cooking class, we measured out ingredients for lavender shortbread cookies. The recipe was simple; there were only six ingredients to mix together. Nonetheless, I forgot to add flour to my batch, which resulted in a tray of cookies that were flatter than communion wafers and smelled like dish soap. I scraped them into the trash and asked permission to go upstairs to my room for a nap. Devon denied the request, and I plodded to lunch in a fog.
After therapy I finally had some free time, and I went upstairs to my room for forty-five minutes of sleep. Another doomed plan, it turned out: Caroline had the same idea, and when I got to the room she was already th
ere, asleep, curled on her side and sucking her thumb. I almost screamed at the sight of her—I’d wanted so badly to be alone. To Caroline’s credit, the thumb-sucking had diminished slightly since the beginning of the summer, no doubt thanks to Alexandra’s work, but I still woke up on odd nights to the faint, telltale sound of skin meeting saliva. In most moods it didn’t distract me from the more substantial challenge of sleep. Today, however, I almost imploded. Slipping under the covers, I put a pillow over my head like a surly teenager in a sitcom. Then I tried to fall asleep.
No sooner had I shut my eyes than I felt a pressure on my shoulder. No, I thought desperately, mentally willing the intruder to go away. The pressure returned—two fingers digging into soft flesh above my collar bone. I continued to feign sleep. Then the pillow shielding my head began to move—someone was physically pulling it away—and I found myself staring into the eyes of Jane, who levitated above me, holding a finger to her lips.
“Caroline’s asleep,” she whispered.
“So was I,” I whispered back, making no effort to conceal my irritation. “You’re breaking the rules. I didn’t say that you could come in here.”
Jane’s face was impenetrable. “I need to talk to you,” she said. “About Brooke.”
I sat up. “Why?”
Brooke and Jane had been roommates. Now that Brooke was gone, Jane slept alone in their bedroom. When I passed their partly open door, I saw that half the room had been wiped clean of any human trace.
Jane gestured toward Caroline and motioned impatiently for me to follow her out the door. Her steps were loud and careless, and I realized that she didn’t care whether or not she woke Caroline up—only about whether Caroline heard what she said. I got out of bed and followed her into the hallway.
“I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to tell you,” Jane began, tucking a lank strand of hair behind one ear.
“Tell me what?” I said.
“I’m getting there,” she said. “I know why Brooke left.”
“How?” I whispered.
“Does it matter?”
She held up her palm, signaling once more for me to shut up. You’re the one who lured me into the hallway, I wanted to remind her. But never mind. She was a spy bearing foreign intelligence, and it behooved me to listen.
“You’re the reason she went home,” Jane said.
I narrowed my eyes. “If this is a mind game you’re playing—”
“It’s not a mind game; I’m only telling you what I know. Brooke got into Alexandra’s office and read your file. She might have read other files too; I’m not sure. She might have read mine for all I know, though there’s nothing in there that she didn’t already know.”
The fear came from a point deep within my body—almost at the exact center of it.
“When did she—?” I asked.
“A week ago,” Jane said. “Alexandra figured it out—I don’t know how, but she did. She got Brooke to admit it during therapy a couple of days ago. And that was that. They didn’t even wait for Brooke’s parents to make the drive down from Maine—she was picked up by some relative who lives in Boston.”
Caroline’s fuzzy blond head poked out from the doorframe of our bedroom. “What’re you guys doing?” she asked warily, her voice sandpapered with sleep.
“Nothing,” Jane said. The intrusion of a third party signaled the end of the conversation to Jane, who looked me in the eye with an unspoken warning—Don’t tell anyone—before she left.
Caroline’s eyes darted back and forth between me and Jane’s retreating form as I squeezed past my roommate into our bedroom. She wanted to talk, I could tell. But I had nothing whatsoever to tell her.
Dear Elise,
The way I see it, it’s a chicken-and-egg matter: Did we start paying attention to food because we wanted to lose weight, or vice versa? At what point does interest morph into obsession? We started out life as kids, with normal kid-attitudes toward food. Meals were an annoying interruption of playtime, and they were to be dispatched as quickly as possible so we could go back outside. Eating was a tiresome necessity, like brushing our teeth or going to pee. I have zero memories of childhood meals. Food didn’t interest me until my appetite became a problem.
Victoria says that an eating disorder is like a virus that won’t leave your system, even when the symptoms subside. “I’ll never eat a bite of food without regretting it,” she said this morning, running her finger over the waxy rind of a tangerine.
“Isn’t that the point of recovery?” Haley said. “I can’t bear the thought that I’ll be this way forever. That every calorie I ingest will signify a failure.”
“You’ve bitten the poison apple,” I said. “Or the poison tangerine.”
“I can’t even look at an apple without thinking, ninety calories,” Victoria said.
“I think the point of recovery isn’t to erase these thoughts,” Haley said slowly, “but to be able to recognize them as false. Or harmful.”
“Maybe,” Victoria said. “But you’ll always have the debate with yourself. You have to resign yourself to the fact that your brain will always judge you for what you put into your mouth.” She started to peel her tangerine. “Take it from someone who’s been dealing with this a long, long time.”
I listened silently to these discussions, wondering where I fit into the whole picture.
“I think Devon puts sugar in our orange juice for extra calories,” Haley said.
“You’re a conspiracy theorist.” I watched Victoria struggle with the tangerine for a minute before thumping it emphatically against the table. “Goddammit. I trimmed my nails too short, and now I can’t peel this thing. My fingers are stubs. I’m like a bear pawing at a jar of honey.”
“I’ll do it,” I said, taking the fruit from her. When I was finished peeling, I passed the little orb back to Victoria. “I don’t want to gain any more weight,” I said.
“Don’t think of it that way.”
“Yeah,” Haley added. “Don’t.”
“You have to force yourself to be passive and follow every direction they give you; otherwise, you’ll just have to do it again in a different, worse place. And then again after that.”
This is Victoria’s fifth time in treatment.
“It’s sad,” Haley said quietly, “that we can’t eat and be happy at the same time.”
“It’s the saddest thing in the world.”
No, I thought to myself. Missing my best friend is the saddest thing in the world.
I cried about it at breakfast and lunch, and I almost started crying all over again as we cleared our plates. Why now? I don’t know. Your silence scares me to my core. What did I do? Are you mad at me?
If I don’t scale back, I’m going to die of tear-induced dehydration.
Perhaps I should stop writing.
Sometimes I cry out of guilt. For the rest of these girls, guilt is a foreign feeling. I mean, what do sixteen-year-olds have to feel guilty about? Nothing. Usually. At Twin Birch, I can’t escape the feeling that I’m a criminal. The idea creeps into my consciousness from a dozen angles, making it impossible to pinpoint the source. The eyes in the photos on Caroline’s dresser follow me accusingly. It may just be the fact of being here, at an institution, that does it. If I’m a prisoner, I must have committed a crime—right?
Day number twenty-nine. I feel like a pile of bricks. Heavy, unthinking, immobile.
I know that you won’t write me back, but it doesn’t mean I stop hoping to find a letter in the mailbox with your handwriting on the envelope.
Intimacy is a double-edged sword. You get close to someone, or closer—Victoria and Haley, for example—and your entire social landscape is suddenly rosier. You have an ally! A partner in crime! You share conspiratorial glances. The chorus from “All You Need Is Love” drifts through your mind. The “new friend” feeling is even more delightful than the “new crush” feeling—because, after all, a new friendship is reciprocal.
But there’s another si
de of intimacy, and that’s weakness. Vulnerability. The price you pay for being close to someone is that they can whip around, no warning, and knife you in the back. It happens to everyone.
Therapists offer a fake version of intimacy. Fake because it’s one-sided. Have you ever asked therapists any personal questions? Don’t even try it. They won’t answer. The patient-therapist relationship is fake because one party is paying for it, and the intimacy that develops in therapy should never be mistaken for the genuine article.
You and I, by contrast, have the genuine article. No amount of absence can take that away from us. Even if you never respond to a single letter I write, I trust in my gut that you read them. I do. I can see you holding these pages; I can picture you in your bedroom, the glasses you won’t let anyone else see you wear slipping down your nose, unsealing the envelope with a red-painted fingernail and retrieving the folded pages from within. I hope my handwriting is legible.
When the sound of your voice grows dim in my head, I return to memories that I’ve stored up in my mind—some good, others not so good.
Today I am thinking about our cold-weather shower ritual. When was the last time we performed it? It must have been in late March this year because the night was not only icy but unseasonably so. The drugstores, I remember, were already stocking Easter candy, but there was still snow on the cars. Friday evening arrived, and our only plans were to watch TV and stir packets of sugar-free cocoa powder into china mugs. As a rule I preferred your rambling townhouse to my family’s cramped apartment. But the antique radiators distributed sparsely among your rooms were no match for a Brooklyn winter, and we had to bury ourselves in down comforters just to keep from shivering. Your parents were out to dinner. When I skittered into the bathroom to take a pre-bedtime shower, the floor was a frozen pond beneath my feet.
When I finished, it was your turn. “Ready?” I called out from the shower. We had a choreography in place that was designed to minimize our exposure to the cold air. We’d perfected it at every sleepover. Now was the time to put it in motion.
“One sec!” you yelped, leaping from the bed, shedding the down comforter, and tugging off your clothes.