by Liane Shaw
“How’d you get in here?” I asked. “Wasn’t it locked?”
“Trade secret. Some things you’re better off not knowing,” she replied, sitting at the computer and booting it up. She entered the passwords and logged on to the Internet.
She stood up and gestured to the chair. I sat down and typed in the address. I looked up at her and smiled.
“Thanks. You have no idea what this means.”
“I have some idea. I never did the whole computer pal thing but I have things I miss that mean a lot. Do you want privacy?”
“No, it’s OK. I wouldn’t mind a little company.” I surprised myself with my own answer. I had kind of expected to want to be alone to do this, but once I got there I felt like I needed someone close by.
“Girls without shadows?” Marina asked, reading over my shoulder as I brought up the chat room part of the website.
“Yeah, it’s kind of like getting rid of the negative shadows of your past – you know, starting fresh with a new body and outlook and everything.”
“Interesting. I kind of like shadows. They’re like inverse reflections of sunlight. They tell you where you are and help you find where you’re going.”
I had never thought of it that way, which I was about to tell her but was distracted by the request-for-login box popping up on the screen.
I took a deep breath and typed in my login information and waited a second for the chat room to come up. I was kind of nervous. Maybe they had disbanded or found another site or met at another time.
nevertoothin says:
dt, is that you?
divinethinspiration says:
yeah, it’s me.
bodaciousbod says:
omg! where’ve u been?
divinethinspiration says:
locked away in prison.
nevertoothin says:
clinic?
divinethinspiration says:
yeah. yuck.
bodaciousbod says:
bad?
divinethinspiration says:
really hated it at first. a little better now.
bodaciousbod says:
i hated it.
divinethinspiration says:
u????
bodaciousbod says:
year ago. stayed for three weeks then got out. not for me.
nevertoothin says:
u’ll never get me in one of those places. they just make u pig out.
divinethinspiration says:
not really. other stuff here too.
bodaciousbod says:
we missed u. worried about u. thought maybe u dumped us.
nevertoothin says:
yeah, but lfl said u wouldn’t do that.
bodaciousbod says:
!!!
nevertoothin says:
sorry.
divinethinspiration says:
where is she anyway? taking a night off?
There was no response for several minutes. I thought maybe the powers that be had somehow figured out we were on and shut us down. Or maybe the computer just froze. I was about to ask Marina what she thought when nevertoothin came back on and sent me a link. I clicked on it and sat back watching as a full-screen image came up in front of me.
It was a picture of a young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen. She was smiling into the camera with big brown eyes that looked gentle but somehow older than the rest of her face. Her hair was hanging over her shoulder in two braids that had yellow ribbons woven through them. She had a soft-looking yellow sweater on as well and had been photographed only from the waist up. You couldn’t really see much of her body but it was obvious that there wasn’t much of one there. She was really thin, thinner than most of the girls floating around this place.
There were words written across the yellow sweater, a poem someone had added to the page. I leaned forward to read them better. As the words sunk in, I felt my stomach start to clench and my eyes start to burn. I found myself clamping both hands over my mouth. I don’t know why people do that when they hear bad news. Maybe they’re trying not to let it in or something. Marina must have seen my reaction, because she stood up from where she had been sitting behind me to take a closer look.
LOOKING FOR LIGHT
She always looked for the light
When others saw only shadows
She was able to feel hope
When others felt only despair
She searched for love
Never believing in hate
She gave acceptance
When others pushed her away
She tried to find perfection
In a less than perfect world
And the searching finally made her tired
And she gently slipped away
An angel flying away from the shadows
And into a ray of sun.
After another second or two, I minimized the window and the chat page came back.
nevertoothin says:
she died about two weeks ago. right after she finally posted her first pic. she was so proud of it. now it’s just her memorial pic. So sad.
bodaciousbod says:
we only found out because her sister knew about us and came on to tell us.
divinethinspiration says:
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
nevertoothin says:
they say she had heart failure. they say she had an eating disorder and it killed her.
bodaciousbod says:
i thought we vowed not to say that again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
nevertoothin says:
sorry but she deserved to know.
bodaciousbod says:
she deserves the truth. We know it isn’t true. she didn’t have any disorder. they just want everyone to think that so they’ll shut us down.
divinethinspiration says:
they really think that dieting killed her?
nevertoothin says:
not just dieting but sort of, yeah. they say she had anorexia and bulimia.
bodaciousbod says:
i’m outta here. sorry dt. can’t talk about this.
nevertoothin says:
sorry dt. it’s been hard. everyone’s confused. hopefully talk to you again.
And then they were just gone.
“I’m so sorry that you lost your friend,” Marina said softly. I said nothing as I turned off the computer.
I sat still, looking at the screen as the last shreds of light disappeared into darkness. What were they talking about? Maybe I misunderstood. Did they say she died? That a little girl with yellow ribbons in her hair had a heart attack and died? A little girl who had been my friend, when not too many other people wanted to be, was gone because she didn’t eat enough?
“I’m so sorry, Maddie.” Wolf had come into the room and I guess Marina had told him.
“She was just a kid,” I said, letting my hands drop helplessly into my lap, my voice breaking into pieces of tears. “You saw her. Just a kid. You should have talked to her. I should have talked to her. I never even talked to her. I never even heard her voice. She seemed so smart and together and figuring her life out. She was always so positive, you know? Even when the other girls, and me, were all stupid and putting ourselves down, she was positive. She really believed in us, the GWS.” I started to cry. Marina put her arm around me, but I pushed her away.
“She was my friend when I thought I didn’t have any friends. She got me, you know? She was the most together one of all of us. She just wanted to look good. You know? Get rid of her stupid shadows!” I knew my voice was getting louder and that I should try to calm down but I had to make them understand.
“Madison,” Marina said, very quietly and very gently. It reminded me of that voice my mom used when I was a kid and she wanted to make me listen to her but didn’t want to yell. She would always use my full name and for some reason it always worked
. It worked when Marina did it, too, and I stopped talking and looked at her. I was waiting for her to talk and say something wise and magnificent that would make sense. I wanted her to tell me how a little girl could be dead. Gone. Never coming back. I never even met her and now I never would. I could feel my breathing getting all heavy and my heart seemed to be beating too fast. I put my hand on my chest to try to slow it down but it didn’t work. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to slow everything down. Maybe I could slow time down and make it go backwards and all of the words on the computer screen would never have been there at all.
“Madison, can you look at me?” Marina put her hand back on my shoulder and this time I let it sit there. I opened my eyes and looked at her. Her eyes were full of tears and she was kind of biting her lip as if she didn’t want to let any more words out. She seemed to take a deep breath and then started to speak. I had wanted her to say something, but now I didn’t want to listen to her. I didn’t want to listen to anything but I couldn’t stop myself. I just stood there staring at her while the world inside my head blew up.
“This eating disorder thing sucks. Sometimes it kills kids if they don’t get help.”
“Kids don’t have heart attacks.”
“Not usually, but it’s like my doctor warned me,” Wolf said in the same kind of gentle voice that Marina was using, like he was afraid I would shatter if he spoke too loudly. “He said my heart had already been affected and that I was lucky. That lots of kids don’t figure it out until it’s too late.”
“But she wasn’t sick.” I ignored the little nagging voice of doubt that was starting at the back of my brain.
“Maybe she was. Maybe she didn’t want to be or want to admit it. I don’t know. I didn’t know her.”
“Well, I did. At least I thought I did. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything. I don’t know how to feel. I have to go. I have to think or sleep or something.” I ran from the room, tears streaming down my face for a friend whom I had never met. A friend whose name I didn’t even know.
May 22
I closeted myself in my room and stayed up most of the night trying to understand. I felt like my whole world had fallen apart. I couldn’t even begin to get my head around it and I couldn’t stop crying long enough to think. My feelings were raging around in a dark, swirling fog, confusing my mind and making my head ache and my chest feel tight.
Why did I feel this way? This was someone who was no more than words and a picture on a computer screen. Someone who didn’t know my name any more than I knew hers. I didn’t know anything about her really. I didn’t know where she lived or who she lived with or what school she went to or anything.
But I did know that she was sweet and positive about life and wanted the best for everyone she knew. I knew that she was kind and considerate and cared about other people. I knew that she was hurt by the ugliness in the world around her and that she hated the fighting at home. I knew that she liked me and tried to help me. Maybe knowing all that was more important than knowing her name. Do you have to see someone standing in front of you to call her your friend? Or do you just have to understand her and trust her and know that she understands you and trusts you, too?
I also knew that she hadn’t seemed all that different from me in some ways. I mean, I wasn’t as sweet or positive or nice as she was. I had a lot to learn from her on that score. But in other ways we were the same. She just wanted to have a little control over her life, her body. She just wanted to figure out how to feel good in a confusing mess of a world that seems to get messier the older you get.
She wasn’t trying to hurt herself. She didn’t have some sort of death wish. She just wanted to feel pretty and good about herself. She wasn’t hurting herself, was she? She wasn’t doing anything wrong, was she? Maybe this didn’t have anything to do with eating or not eating. Maybe there was something else going on that no one knows about. Some people are born with heart conditions and stuff. Maybe she had been sick and just didn’t want to tell us.
I had read all of that medical stuff about the things that eating problems could do to you. Heart attacks had been on the list. But I didn’t believe it could actually happen in the real world to a real person. How could dieting make your heart decide to die? It just didn’t make sense to me. Heart attacks come from diseases or smoking or being old and eating too much. Not from being young and eating too little.
But then there was the stuff that Wolf said about his doctor. He was only seventeen, like me, and his doctor told him his heart was already affected. Could LFL really have died from not eating enough? Did she have an eating disorder after all? None of the GWS thought they had disorders, including me. I always knew that some people had eating disorders – after all, this place was full of them. But they weren’t me or my friends.
Except for Marina. And Wolf. And all the girls I met in group. I closed my eyes at the inevitable next thought so I could block it out. My head was spinning around and around and I felt like I was going nuts.
I guess I spun myself into exhaustion because I finally drifted off to sleep. I know I was asleep because all of a sudden I woke up. I sat up in bed, totally weirded out and with no idea where I was. I felt like I used to when I had a nightmare as a little kid and I had a sudden urge to see my mom. I blinked a couple of times and tried to focus. I was still half stuck in a dream.
I had been sitting in the cafeteria at school, which should have felt strange but it didn’t. I was at a table with my friends, drinking a bottle of water and just kind of chilling. Ruth was there, and Devon and Alyssa. I asked them where Annie was and they all just laughed. Devon pointed to the table next to me and made a face as if she thought I was nuts. Alyssa looked at her and laughed again and then they both started eating a great big chocolate cake. They didn’t offer me any and I didn’t want it anyway because I had just started a diet and was trying to lose weight. It looked good, though.
I looked over to see what Annie was doing. She was sitting at a table with two other girls. She looked different somehow. I couldn’t figure it out at first but then I realized she had finally managed to dye her hair red. It was all braided and the braids were hanging down over her shoulders. I think I laughed because I knew she would be so pleased with herself for finally managing it.
She waved at me and gestured for me to come over. I stood up and walked away from the chocolate cake pig-fest and headed over to the other table.
As I got closer, I realized that it wasn’t Annie at all. The girl with the braids had the face I had just seen on the computer screen. The other girls at the table were the living, breathing versions of the pictures I had seen of nevertoothin and bodaciousbod. They were dressed in the same clothes as in the first photographs I had seen of them on the website, which I guess made some sort of weird sense. All three of them were smiling at me as if they were used to seeing me every day.
“I thought you were dead!” I said to LFL. She looked at me in surprise.
“That’s a strange thing to think. If I was dead, would I be sitting here in the cafeteria? I’m just fine. Do you like my hair? Don’t I look wonderful?” She stood up and started twirling around and around and around. Her yellow ribbons fluttered around her, swirling around like she was doing a bizarre rhythmic gymnastics routine.
“Where’s Annie?” I asked, but no one answered. Everyone in the room got up in some sort of ghoulish choreographed movement and started twirling around and around until the whole room was a spinning mass of color and confusion.
“Where’s Annie?” I shouted, but no one could hear me. “Where’s Annie?”
I shouted it again and threw myself into the mass of bodies, trying to find her and calling her name. I could feel myself getting caught up in the movement and chaos, my mind spinning along with the bodies, and I just gave up and closed my eyes, sinking into oblivion, lost and scared and alone.
When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting up in bed, in a room that wasn’t mine, my head still spinning. For
the first time in what seemed like forever, I found myself wanting my mother and wondering where my best friend was.
I stayed in my room all day. Marina checked in on me a couple of times and so did Wolf. It was nice of them and everything, but I couldn’t find anything to say to either of them.
I had run out of words.
May 25
Once my words ran dry, I mostly just sat and thought, which didn’t help much because it created more questions than answers. I got so turned inside out and backwards that I was afraid I would have to spend the rest of my life alone in a room, staring at the walls, trying to figure out if I had anything to say that would make any sense.
I had individual counseling appointments scheduled every day. I didn’t always have the same counselor. You could request that, but I think they tried you out on a variety pack first so you could see if you gelled with one of them or something like that. I had never really talked in one of my sessions. I treated the counselors kind of like the doctor – the less said by me the better. I never asked questions and seldom provided answers. I had made a conscious decision not to try to figure out my subconscious or whatever it was that I was supposed to be trying to do. I had made a decision not to try at all, I guess.
After a few days of literally wondering if my mind, conscious or unconscious, was starting to actually leave my body, I began to think that maybe I should start trying to see if someone could help me make sense of things. I was having bizarre dreams that wouldn’t have been so bad if they had stuck to happening when I was asleep. But even when I was awake, strange and frightening images kept coming into my head no matter how hard I tried to make them stop. I couldn’t make sense of lookingforlight’s death any more than I could make sense out of my own life. I couldn’t get my head around it, my words around it, or my feelings around it. I didn’t even know how to start talking about it. I knew on some level that Marina and Wolf would have done anything I needed to help me, but I just felt like this was too big and too messed up to try to figure out with other people who were still trying to figure themselves out too. Without my GWS to fall back on, I felt like I really had nothing.