She leaned into me a little bit.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “everybody here has hair like that.” Margot pushed past us and disappeared down the hall. “Well, almost everybody.”
“Okay,” she said, and right then she seemed young—too young to be in a place like this. She looked like Becky, a nine-year-old I sometimes babysat.
“Willa,” I asked, “how old are you?”
“Twelve. Why?”
“No reason.” I blanched, but only for a second. Twelve. A baby. Figures my first friend would be the only middle schooler here. But twelve was better than nine. I hooked my arm through hers and smiled. “Come on. It’s time for lunch,” I said.
7
To get to the dining room, we had to traipse back through the depressing, white cinder-block therapy wing and down a little breezeway lined with arched windows and white rocking chairs. As soon as we passed the first rocking chair, everybody sped up like we were in a race or something. Willa turned to me. “Come on! This is the only place you can walk fast. The nurses can’t see your speed here.” I didn’t ask questions. I just booked it with the rest of them.
At first, my lunch didn’t look so bad. A veggie burger patty, one round pita, an apple, a tub of peach yogurt, a carton of milk, and a curiously plain bowl of lettuce waited for me on my tray. I didn’t notice the little plastic cup of ranch salad dressing until I sat down.
When I did, I panicked. There was no way I could put that in my body. It was like eating straight butter. Unhealthy. Disgusting. My throat closed just thinking about it.
But if I didn’t, I’d have to drink an Ensure.
I pushed the salad dressing as far away from me as I could. Then I shoved my veggie burger into my pita, picked up my knife and cut the sandwich into strips. Next I cut each strip into eight tiny pieces, which was hard since it was a sandwich and the top layer of pita kept falling off the little squares. But I managed somehow. After that, I cut my apple in half, then into quarters, then eighths, and then cut each one of those eighths in half again, making sixteen thin slices.
Kay walked by. When she saw what I was doing, she stopped. “Elizabeth, no ritualistic behavior is allowed in the dining room.”
I looked at her blankly. What?
“No cutting up food into tiny pieces. That’s an eating disorder behavior.”
Oh. But I cut my food up like this all the time. How was I going to eat without doing it? Cutting up my food stretched out meals, and eating the resulting tiny pieces made me feel like I’d eaten more. At home, I could often convince myself I was full after six half slices of banana. Throw in a few glasses of water and I could cut my intake from six bites to four.
I’d managed to choke down the pita, the burger, and the yogurt, and was on bite six of my apple when I heard Kay’s voice behind me. “Elizabeth?” she said gently. “You have six minutes left. Don’t forget your salad.”
I stared at the white nastiness in its tiny plastic tub. I hadn’t touched anything like it in over eight months. Little black specks of pepper floated in the creamy white fat. I gagged at the smell of it. My throat clamped shut and my body froze, just like the time Katrina dared me to stick my fingers in a candle flame when we were eight. Instinct stopped me then and it stopped me now. “I can’t eat it. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
Kay walked to the little fridge near the entrance and picked out a bottle of vanilla Ensure. “If you don’t eat your salad, you’ll have to have one of these,” she said, not unkindly. “So try. Trust me, vanilla isn’t good. The first time reintroducing a food in your diet is always the hardest. You can do this, Elizabeth. I know you can.”
“But I ate everything else,” I said, begging.
Kay nodded. “I know,” she said, “and I’m sorry. But you have to eat the dressing, too.”
Willa put her fork down and took my hand under the table. “You don’t want an Ensure,” she said. “That’s more calories than the dressing. Come on, I know you can do it.”
I heard a quiet voice in my ear. “Take one bite, and then wash it down with a big gulp of water. Then a few more, and you are done.” I turned around. Jean. She smiled a little. “It’s just dressing. The faster you eat it, the faster it will be over.”
By this time I’d attracted quite the crowd. Willa, Beth, Jean—even Allie came over. Then Lexi, who’d watched this all in silence, said, “If I take a bite, will you?”
No was the response I wanted to give. But I barely knew these girls. I didn’t want to disappoint them.
So I dipped my fork into the dressing and stabbed a piece of romaine lettuce with it. Opening my mouth, I choked it down. Lexi cut off a tiny corner of her veggie burger and did the same. I’d liked ranch dressing once, but now I gagged on the nasty, oily, putrid-smelling white foulness that coated my gums. I swallowed, a slick of grease remaining on my lips and a sour, peppery aftertaste permeating my mouth. I sucked down water, hoping to get rid of the taste. No luck. I promised myself that when I was in charge of my own eating, I’d never, ever eat ranch dressing again.
Lexi and I looked at each other. I swear we were thinking the same thing. This is torture.
Kay patted me on the back. “I know this is hard, but someday you’ll look back on this meal as the first step toward victory,” she said.
For a second I imagined myself shooting a glass bottle of ranch dressing into a million pieces, and that made me smile a little until I thought about the aftermath—how the dressing would explode everywhere and I’d likely be covered with the greasy stuff.
I leaned over to Lexi. “What do you think our victory medals will look like?” I whispered.
“Fat and round, that’s for sure,” Lexi replied.
“No body talk, girls,” Kay said.
Lexi smirked and took another bite. I couldn’t let her suffer alone, so I took one, too.
8
After lunch I followed the herd of girls to the common room for mail call. A frowning, gray-haired woman in a nurse’s uniform stood in front of an old marble fireplace, a bunch of letters in her hand. She’d stacked a pile of packages next to her on the thick, dark-green wall-to-wall carpet.
“That’s Nurse Jill,” Willa said as we sat down. “She’s the head nurse. I call her Nurse Pill because she always seems so annoyed.”
The girls pressed in close, eager to read the names on the packages. Nurse Jill picked up the first one, which was shoe box–sized. She said my name twice before I realized she was calling me. And then, as if one wasn’t enough, she stooped down and picked up another. “Elizabeth again?”
I stood up and Willa grabbed me. “Wow! You haven’t even been here for two days. That’s amazing! After Ray opens them, show us what you got, okay?”