Not my child. But if she was, I would tell her to hold fast to her wand, her power. Not my child, but I can still act in the service of her future. I can share a story to help make the boundaries between reality and illusion easier for her to consider and choose.

“I did it!” Isabelle yells again.

“I knew you could,” her mother says and we move on.

“I THINK I’M getting sicker,” Leah said when I got out of rehab and we started talking again. “But I can’t stop running.” We texted and FaceTimed often after that. Still do. We talked while she contemplated treatment, quit, tried again. Talked while I hocked waist trainers, hair serums, laxative tea and considered rebrands I could try. Wellness, recovery, fitness, mother-loss, motherhood, all journeys I could start fresh. Or I could throw my meager weight behind a cause, the dying oceans maybe. But stunned and scarred, I did nothing. Slowly, I stopped posting. My sponsors dropped me, some followers dropped me, though many of them remain, shackled to the ghost of a girl they thought they loved. “Classic @annawrey,” they sometimes comment on the Hippy Baby pictures, the Vegas casino shots. “So pretty before she did her lips,” they say, or talk about how the boob jobs and facial implants, the filler and fat grafting and butt injections ruined my body. I’ve tried to stop reading about what they think, what they miss, which @anna they loved. I go to work at the makeup counter in the black and white striped store, where the real women are.

“I’M SORRY I abandoned you,” I’ve said to Leah more than once.