I’d never told anyone that story, and I wasn’t going to start now.
“No,” I said. “I’ve never purged.”
*
Back in the common room, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. A narrow-faced girl with long, dark hair and arms that looked skinny only because a shirt hid the flabby bits stared back at me.
Leave me alone, I told her.
That girl made me sick. I hated catching glimpses of her. It didn’t matter where—whether in a mirror, or a window reflection, or on my phone screen after a group selfie.
And right now, I had no patience for her. She was the reason I was here. If she’d been able to keep it together a little bit more, maybe I’d be at school right now, trying to text my friends during pre-calc.
Then again, if you know anything about anorexia, you know a lot of things mess with your head. Like TV, and fashion magazines, and skinny jeans, and social media, and the Internet, and pro-ana websites, and Diet Coke, and People magazine’s diet issue, and peer pressure, and every tabloid with celebrity cellulite on the cover. I mean, I could even blame Caroline, the super-skinny senior at school with the kick-ass body I coveted, and on and on.
But mirrors are the worst. One reflection lifts your spirits and another crushes them. A good one can make you feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. But a bad one can make you burst into tears.
Sometimes, walking down the street, I’d catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror or window and there would be this millisecond before I realized the girl in the glass was me. I’d think how she looked as thin and graceful as a ballet dancer. But then I’d come to my senses and realize that it was just me, and I’d look down at my real-life thighs and get pissed at myself for falling for such crap. That’s why I only trusted the fat mirrors. At least they didn’t get your hopes up.
Last February, my best friend, Katrina, wanted me to go bikini shopping with her in preparation for a trip to Florida she was taking with her parents in April. I put her off for a month and convinced her to diet with me, saying how much cuter the bathing suits would look if we were 10 pounds slimmer.
I knew we’d go to Target. Target had fat mirrors. Every time I tried something on, I left wanting to sob on the handle of my red plastic cart. “How does Target expect to sell clothes if their mirrors make everybody look like Honey Boo Boo’s Mama June?” I’d joke if I was with a friend, but deep down a tiny part of me was grateful that the person staring out at me wasn’t at all distorted. At least then I knew what to work on. And if forced to choose between the truth and a lie, I’ll take the truth every time.
This time I decided to beat the fat mirrors at their own game. I cut out carbs and ate things like cauliflower mashed potatoes and noodles made from seaweed. I told Mom I was dieting and she said, “Let me know what I can do to help. I think you’d look great if you lost a few pounds.”
By March I’d lost 10. Katrina had given up after the third day and looked the same. When we got to Target, I marched into the dressing room with the teeniest bikinis I could find, convinced that this was going to be the best day of my life.
I looked like crap in every single one of them.
Katrina didn’t fare much better than me, but she wasn’t worried. “Everything looks better with a tan,” she announced as she plunked a pink-and-blue bikini down in front of the cashier.
I left mine on the dressing room floor.
People say anorexics don’t see themselves as they really are. But what if anorexics are the only ones who do? What if we are the clear-eyed ones, and everybody else out there sees some brain-altered version of themselves, a massive mind trick designed to make them feel better?
Katrina went to Florida and came back with tan lines and crushes on all the lifeguards. I went back to Target. Four times. Just to try on bikinis. But even after I lost 40 pounds, when I looked in those mirrors, I saw something shameful.
A fat cow.
4
On my first night at Wallingfield, I awoke to loud thumps and heavy, tortured breathing. I’d had trouble falling asleep—the heater was loud and I shivered under my duvet. The room was full of weird noises, and even before Lexi started doing whatever it was she was doing, I’d heard her breathing, rustling, and smacking her pillow as she twisted and turned.
The rest of the day had been overwhelming and exhausting and a big blur. We’d had some sort of therapy session where we’d written bad thoughts about ourselves on balloons with black Sharpies and popped them. I’d taken a nap. There was snack, where I ate two tiny chunks of granola, and at dinner I’d shared a table with Willa, who acted like her whole outburst at snack had never happened, and Lexi, who sat with her arms crossed, refusing to eat anything. Kay told Lexi that if she at least tried, took a bite or two, she’d avoid the supplement. Lexi didn’t move. At the end of the meal, Kay brought her an Ensure and told her that she had five minutes to drink it. “That’s the rule around here,” Willa whispered. Lexi didn’t touch it.
And now, apparently, she was having sex. Or trying to dry heave. Or doing … burpees? We used to do burpees sometimes as a warm-up at cross-country practice, and they always killed us. You had to jump in the air with your hands raised, then go down in a squat, do a plank, and then spring back to a squat, then stand, jump in the air again, and start over.
I turned on the light, but she didn’t even pause. Jump, squat, plank, up. Jump, squat, plank, up. Boom-cha-boom-thump.
I needed to stop her. We’d both get into trouble. This had to be against every Wallingfield rule.
Or maybe you should join her, you fat ass.
“Lexi?” I whispered.
She didn’t answer.
“Lexi!” I hissed louder.
Startled, she let her knees hit the carpet.
“Lexi, what are you doing? You know if you get caught you’re going to get in trouble.”
She lifted her head and went into a cat stretch, staring at me the whole time. She looked a little ridiculous in her PJs, which were light blue and covered with dogs knitting sweaters. “Are you going to tell on me?”
“What? No! Sorry, that’s not what I meant. I just don’t want you to have to drink Ensure or anything.”
“That’s my problem, okay?”
In the shadows Lexi’s eyes were just sockets. She was so tiny her pajamas looked more like a blanket.
“Okay, sorry.” I turned off the light and rolled over, face hot.
I waited for the boom-cha-boom-thump to start up again, but it didn’t.
“Elizabeth?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to get better?”
“What?”
“Do you want to get better?”
“Of course.” We all did, right?
“No, I mean, do you really?”
Maybe it was because of the dark, or maybe it was that I’d already caught Lexi doing something worse. I don’t know. But I told the truth. “If I have to gain weight, then no. I don’t. I totally don’t.”
“Me either,” she said.