She climbed back into bed. “Thanks for being honest.” Her blankets muffled her voice. “It helps.”
“You’re welcome.”
And just like that, we were friends.
5
The next morning my alarm clock beeped at 6:55 for weights and vitals. I shivered and started pulling on a pair of leggings. Lexi, from under her covers, said, “Just wear your bathrobe over your pajamas. That’s what everybody does in these places.” Sure enough, when I peeked out my door, a long line of girls in brightly colored flannel and terry-cloth robes snaked down the hall.
“Told you,” she said.
In line, Lexi turned to me. “Oh, and tomorrow, set your alarm for six. That way, we can beat the line so the whole thing will take two minutes and we’ll still be sleepy enough to go back to bed after they weigh us.”
Apparently I was in charge of waking us both up. Everyone in line seemed to be trying to cling to sleep by leaning against the wall with their eyes closed, so I whispered, “Okay.”
“By the way,” Lexi whispered back, “you know that today, we’re going to have to eat everything.”
I nodded and gulped. “I don’t know how I am going to do that.”
Lexi shrugged. “Even if they force an Ensure on you, you still can say no. You just have to be okay dealing with the consequences.”
I nodded. How did she know these things? “Lexi, have you been here before?”
“No,” she said, twisting a strand of black hair between her fingers. “But I’ve been at a place just like this. And this is what I know: They’re going to try to make you eat whether you like it or not. If you refuse, they give you Ensure. If you refuse Ensure enough times, they’ll make you go around in a wheelchair or make you get a feeding tube. At least here they make you get an NG.”
“NG?”
“A nasogastric tube—the one they cram down your nose to your stomach. But an NG isn’t as bad as the stomach one I had a while back. That one really sucked. Oh, and it scars.” She undid her robe and hiked up her PJ top to reveal what looked like a second belly button above and to the left of her real one.
I cringed.
“I know. Gross, right?” She pulled her robe closed over her shirt. “You basically have two choices when you’re here. You can either refuse to do everything, and then eventually they’ll kick you out. That’s what happened to me at my last place. Or you can do what they tell you, get fat, and go home when your insurance runs out and do it all over again. It’s up to you.”
What about girls who want to get well? I almost asked, but then she might think I was one. “Thanks for the intel.”
Lexi fussed with her top. “Anytime.”
Breakfast was a nightmare. It was so bad, in fact, that I can’t even talk about it except to say just imagine someone putting ten times the amount of food you’d usually eat in front of you and then telling you to finish every bite. I cried. A lot. Lexi refused to eat again and sat with her mouth glued shut in front of the resulting Ensure. She amazed me. I wasn’t as brave as she was, so I left with a bowling ball for a stomach. Then I got nauseous and barely made it to the bathroom before it all came up, burning my throat the whole way: two scrambled eggs, two slices of buttered toast, another carton of milk, and three orange wedges. I didn’t throw up on purpose, but Kay, after handing me a paper towel for my mouth, still made me go to group therapy. “Once your stomach settles,” she said, “that will be one Ensure.”
Fantastic.
6
Group was held in the therapy wing on the far side of the building. Once again everybody queued up in the hall. I joined them after I brushed my teeth, my stomach still queasy. I was beginning to think all girls did at Wallingfield was eat, wait in lines, get weighed, talk about themselves, and wait in more lines.
A big picture window at the other end of the corridor displayed a clear view of the entrance. “Check that out,” said a girl with a blond ponytail. She sounded just bitchy enough that I wished I had the willpower not to look. A couple more girls, on their way somewhere else, stopped and looked too.
Outside, a girl hauled herself out of a black Mercedes idling in the middle of the driveway. She crossed the gravel slowly, her blue wool peacoat straining across her broad shoulders, her suitcase wheels getting stuck in the tiny rocks. Her mouse-brown hair hid her face. At one point she turned around, as if to wave goodbye to the person who’d brought her, but the Mercedes was already halfway down the driveway, brake lights winking. Shoulders slumped, she opened the front door and wrestled her suitcase and backpack through, the door closing on her the whole time. Then she was gone, and the parking lot was empty again.
A couple of girls snickered. A tiny girl with a pixie cut who looked a little like a reallive fairy called out, “Thar she blows!” and the girls nearest to her laughed nervously.
“Who is that?” I said quietly to Willa, who’d slipped in next to me.
“Her?” Willa made a disgusted face. “That’s Coral,” she murmured in my ear. “She’s evil.”
“Oh,” I said.
“She used to run this intense pro-ana site before she came here, Thinsporgasmic. Have you heard of it?”
“She ran Thinsporgasmic?” I’d gotten great tips on how to avoid eating from that site. Her most popular feature was “How Thin Am I?” where girls posted their photos and others rated them on a scale of one to five skeletons—one being “Lard Ass,” five being “Totally Dedicated.” It was pretty sick. But motivating, if you want to know the truth.
“Yeah. Her parents shut it down when she was admitted.”
That’s why it had disappeared.
“A whole posse of girls followed her around. Some were in her cohort, so they mixed up the cohorts last week to separate them. It was a big scandal. Allie, who’s in our cohort now, was one of them. Coral was pissed. But whatever.” Willa shrugged. “She deserved it.”
I snuck a glance at Coral, who was still snickering. This place was getting more like high school every minute.
We’d all settled into our seats when the girl who’d just been dropped off walked into the room. She sat hunched over like a lump next to Marcia, the twentysomething counselor in charge.
“Group therapy,” Willa told me from our spot on one of the three neutral-colored couches arranged in a triangle, “is basically the same every time, except that what we talk about and do is different.”
“Wouldn’t that make it different every day?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, but it’s the same, too.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I’m confused.”
“Just wait. You’ll see. Marcia will introduce you guys, and then she’ll do a check-in with everybody else,” she said.