The clinic was my first experience with a nasogastric tube, the pain of it, the stinging gag and choke. There were nine other women and girls in the program, the youngest just ten years old, and a single boy. We wandered the halls wrapped in blankets like homeless ghosts. Lining up for our pills, our weigh-ins, our carefully portioned meals. We huddled together in group therapy, talking about our families, about how we learned to starve. We sat in the TV room playing Scrabble, Uno, gin rummy, watching Ellen. I roomed with Maria, whose family still tried to bring her food, even though they weren’t allowed. She was bulimic and had scars on her knuckles from where they hit the top of her front teeth when she stuck her fingers down her throat. She taught me how to curse in Spanish. It sounded better. She taught me how to cheat at weigh-in. She taught me how to smoke, because smoking makes you thin.

I taught her to chew and spit. We did our nails, the familiar sound of the bead rattling inside the bottle. I talked about everything except Jake. But he was there, watching me. Waiting. I could feel it. I stayed longer than most. The health insurance company wanted me discharged, but Mom fought them with all the fury she could summon.

One day Amy visited and brought me a card she and my other friends had signed. She didn’t know where to rest her eyes; they kept flicking around the room. She said I looked better. She filled me in on who was taking who to the end-of-year dance, and where everyone was going to high school. She told me Jake’s dad had a new job and he was moving to Georgia at the end of the school year. I put the card down on the bed. My hand was shaking so bad the paper rustled.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you like him.’

‘Yeah. Not anymore.’

I moved home and spent the summer under flickering fluorescent lights, at summer school. I finished eighth grade just in time to enter high school. I learned to eat enough to hover on the edge of things. Enough to run track and field, not too much to slow me down. I learned to surround myself with friends—to move in a pack of them—to always have someone to sit with. There was nothing as scary as an empty seat beside me.

I studied hard. I ran fast. I had the best times. The best grades. I learned to create a force field around me, like a spinning top. I whirled across the surface of high school. You couldn’t get close to me if you tried.

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 27