Reasons to Be Happy

My purple notebook might say:

77. Root beer floats

78. The smell of crayons

79. Blowing out birthday candles

80. Extra stuff after the credits at the movies

81. Those cool old-fashioned diaries with locks and keys

But my real reason to be happy was my secret remedy, my SR. My new best friend.

It was so easy.

I used my SR every day.

Mom noticed. It took about three weeks and she said, “You look so pretty.” I knew she meant you’ve lost weight. I lied and told her I’d been running. Even my dad said I looked really fit.

It took about four weeks for the kids at school to notice, but when we were at the beach again, I heard Kevin say to Max, “Hannah’s got a real body now.” Hello. I’ve always had a body. What, was it fake before? You’re not a real person until you have a certain kind of body?

That comment would’ve made the old Hannah mad. But what did I do? I floated on the compliment so much I used my SR twice that day.

When Brooke said, “Maybe you should get a swimsuit that wasn’t made for toddlers,” I invited the girls to go shopping with me—making my mom happy, going out with friends.

Turns out only Brittany could go. I was actually kind of glad. Brittany was a different person when she wasn’t around Brooke. I was sometimes tempted to ask her if she even liked Brooke, but that was too dangerous. Anyway, Brittany’s eyes got all wide when I tried on an emerald green bikini (crazy expensive for something so tiny) and opened the dressing room door to show her. “You look so totally hot in that. You have to buy it.”

When she said that I turned to look at myself in the mirror. I looked like the other girls at last—no more chubbiness, just curves where they were supposed to be, lean and taut everywhere else. The mirror made me blush.

I had fun hanging out with Brittany, but I was antsy, aware of the clock. The time for my SR approached, and I caught myself anticipating it, needing it, growing jittery and nervous until we finally left the mall.

When I got home, I tried to escape to my room, but Mom wanted to see what I’d bought first.

She had a conniption when she saw that bikini. She threatened to take it from me.

“I bought it with my own money!”

“The money is not the point,” she said. “This is too adult. It’s inappropriate.”

“All my friends wear bikinis!” I screamed.

She raised her eyebrows but not her voice. “Hannah. I wouldn’t wear a bikini this…small, even when I still had a figure.” She tried to joke, tried to deflect our argument by poking fun at her poor, pitiful cancer-ravaged body, but I felt like I was possessed. All I could think of was my overdue SR.

I stomped, slammed doors, and hid the bikini deep down in my dresser. I immediately hated myself for it. Mom was sick. Why would I waste a single second shrieking about some stupid scraps of material? I never wanted to act like such a brat, but I couldn’t stop. When those moods took over, those moods that only started once I’d begun my SR, I’d actually yearn to rant and scream. Like all this nasty poison inside of me—this rotten, festering secret—had to find a way out. As I stomped away from my mom that day, I kicked a chair and it hit the door frame where we had glued beach glass into a gorgeous mosaic. Even over my pounding footsteps, I heard the shimmery ping of several pieces falling to the floor.

“Hannah!” she called. “Would you stop? You take everything too far. You need to learn when to quit.”

What was she talking about? All I did was quit!

I’d quit everything. Running. Art. My cities. Being nice to people. Having a backbone.

The only thing I hadn’t quit was the one thing no one else knew I was doing.





It amazed me how many list items I could recite from memory. Like a whole section of cool Ohio things we don’t have in L.A.:

13. The way frosted grass crunches under your feet

14. Big wool sweaters

15. Exploring attics and basements

16. Fang-like icicles that make whole houses look like monster mouths

17. The way a knitted scarf gets crusty with ice when you breathe through it while you’re sledding

18. Making snow angels

19. That Styrofoam squeak your shoes make on really cold snow

My brain grabbed for that list like a life raft as I sat in Dr. Jabari’s office one night.

My parents and I sat there clutching hands as Dr. Jabari told us the undeniable, irreversible news: my mother was dying.

As Dr. Jabari talked to us, my brain went on overload. I couldn’t tell you anything she said about how long we had or what to expect, but I could tell you that she wore emerald earrings, that the polish on two of her nails was chipped, and that her phone hummed seven times while she talked to us, but she didn’t show one single sign of hearing it.

Dr. Jabari talked about my mother, but my brain was only capable of grasping the details that wouldn’t leave me crumpled on the floor howling at the ceiling. My brain tuned out the doctor’s voice and instead registered the orange L.A. sunset through her window, the syrupy lilac scent of her perfume, the photos on her desk.

One photo right in front of me was of Bebe with a boy who must’ve been her brother.

Her brother clearly had Down Syndrome.

Bebe looked at this boy with what is obviously love. Love you can’t fake.

I never said anything to my parents or to Dr. Jabari about knowing her daughter.

I never said anything to Bebe about knowing of her brother.

And I certainly didn’t say a word to anyone about the fact that my mother was dying.

Saying it out loud might make it real.

Instead, I focused on my SR.

It made me feel so much better. Like a friend I could always count on.

A friend. That’s how pathetic I was. I had an imaginary friend, a friend who tried to convince me that if I were thin enough and pretty enough, Mom couldn’t die.

By early October, I used my SR at school for the first time.

By November I used my SR at least two times a day. Every day. On Mom’s really bad days, it helped me cope.

My poor sick mom, whittled thin by cancer and chemo. My mom, who even then, never complained, but kept living up to her motto, “Pretty is as pretty does,” facing each day with her skeletal smile.

I wanted her to see me pretty at long last. I wanted her to be able to see me pretty and thin while there was still time.

On Mom’s really bad days, I’d just go outside and run and run and run until I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. Twice I ran so far that when I stopped, I was completely lost. That felt good, being lost.

Running like that made me feel crippled the next day. That felt right too, like I deserved the punishment.

The first time I got lost running, I’d come back to myself right next to a little grocery market I didn’t recognize. I stood there, clutching my side, panting, and an unbearable, horrific craving came over me. Eat. Eat. Even as I felt that craving, I felt the deeper craving underneath it taking over me: use your SR.

I walked inside that frigid market and bought a pound of jellybeans, two boxes of cherry Pop-Tarts, and two orange Gatorades.

I also put four Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies into the pockets of my running shorts—two in my right pocket, two in my left.

I sat on a bench in a park I didn’t know and systematically ate everything I’d just bought and stolen. Stolen. I’d never stolen anything before. What was happening to me? I was not the kind of person who stole things! But I’d done it without a thought, as naturally as if I did it every day.

When I was finished, I threw it all up into a trash can.

If you think that’s bad, just wait. It gets worse.

• • •

In December I was caught stealing at school.

A teacher caught me stealing oatmeal cookies from the cafeteria. I thought I was truly busted then, but they didn’t get it—not my parents, not my teachers, not the principal. They thought I was on some kind of dare; they didn’t really understand why I was taking the food. Why would they? It’s not like I was poor and hungry. Almost everyone who goes to my school has parents who make a ton of money, so it had to be a joke, right?

I’d stolen the cookies (and had been stealing them for weeks before I was caught) for the same reason I’d stolen food from two other stores since that first market: it took more and more food for my SR to work.

I needed it to work.

I needed it more than I needed to be a good, honest person who’d never dream of stealing. I’d left that girl behind a long time ago.

I couldn’t stand to be in my own skin without the SR.

My parents were furious at my stealing and they agreed to the school’s punishment for me: I had to spend my lunch hours working in the cafeteria, first helping serve, then cleaning tables. I had to wear a hair net. I thought Brooke would disown me then (and I almost wished she would), but she, Brittany, and Bebe thought it was cool, like I was some kind of rebel.

You know what was so great about it…well, other than the fact that it became even easier to steal food? I didn’t have to eat lunch with those girls anymore. Not having to sit with them felt like taking off a heavy backpack after a whole day of hiking. Back in the kitchen, I didn’t have to be the Hannah they wanted.

It also meant I couldn’t eat with Kevin, though.

The school kitchen was a whole different world. A world I loved. During the actual lunch period while my classmates were out there eating, I was hidden, wearing my plastic apron, hair net, and gloves. There was something so immediate about it, keeping the bins filled as I chopped tomatoes or onions, making sure no one had to stand there and wait too long for what they’d ordered. It gave me that same sense of satisfaction that making my cities used to: I got to see a finished product. I got to see a world functioning with everything in order and control.

That first day I reported to duty, it was the piano-playing scholarship boy who showed me what to do. By then, I knew his name was Jasper.

Jasper Jones. Is that a cool name or what?

I usually only saw him sitting down—at the piano or in class. I knew he was tall because he always looked uncomfortable folded into school furniture, but it startled me to realize I needed to look up at him. He was one of the few people who was taller than me.

From class, I already knew he was smart. Really smart. Like a brainiac. But slow. Not slow like mentally slow, but slow in processing. Slow in responding. It took him a while to answer. Brooke would always mutter, “Like maybe this year, moron.”

I had noted two things about him: One, he always did his funny head toss to clear the hair out of his eyes before he spoke. And two, he never spoke until he was certain what he was going to say. Like, Brooke, Brittany, and Bebe always did that annoying thing where they shot up their hands first in class, but when the teacher called on them, they’d do that ridiculous, “Well, you know, I, like, I know what the answer is, I just, you know, don’t know how to explain it. It’s just, like, well, you know (giggle)…um, never mind.”

How did the teachers not smack them?

Jasper’s hand never shot up. But teachers called on him anyway, especially after two or three other students had flailed around and gotten it wrong. The teacher would turn to Jasper like he was a lifeline. “Jasper? What do you think?”

He was usually right. He always had something interesting to say…it just took him a while to form his thoughts and speak them. The teachers didn’t mind waiting for him.

That quality led other kids—well, the mean kids I’d aligned myself with—to mock him as stupid, an idiot. I watched Bebe’s face once when Brooke said of Jasper, “What a retard.”

I saw the flinch. I flinched too. We made eye contact, but Bebe didn’t know I’d seen that picture of her brother. I held that picture in my heart, though, to remember there were complicated sides to everyone. Maybe even Brooke.

• • •

I wanted to shrivel up and blow away when I realized Jasper was the person assigned to train me in the kitchen.

“I’m Hannah,” I said. I remembered all those horrible times my group had left a revolting mess on the tables. I wanted to add, “I’m sorry.”

He looked at me a moment, then smiled. He had a slow smile, like my mom’s, only his started in just one corner of his mouth. “I know,” he said, with this crooked grin, as if it amused him. “I’m Jasper.”

“I know,” I said in the same tone he’d used, my old Hannah creeping back for a second.

That made him nod and say, “Well, then, let’s see what else you know.”

Not much, but I was a quick learner. I surprised myself. It was almost as if when I wasn’t around Brooke, Brittany, and Bebe, my brain returned to me. I was always in a white hazy panic when I was around them: what was I going to do wrong, what was I going to say wrong, how was I going to be humiliated, how was Brooke going to punish me for Kevin’s attention today? Away from them, I was competent again.

“Hannah kicked butt today,” Jasper said later to the kitchen staff. “She’s not what we expected.”

Had they been talking about me? I felt my face burn.

When the adult staff had all gone back to their work and weren’t paying any attention anymore, I whispered, “I’m sorry. I know what you think. But-but I’m not like that.”

He’d taken off the bandana he wore in the kitchen, so his hair hung in his eyes again. He tossed his head, then tilted it. His eyes were the color of iced tea. Up close I saw that one iris had a triangle of gold in it, like a slice of pie had been taken, revealing the yellow dish beneath. “You know what I think,” he repeated. I couldn’t read his meaning.

“What did you expect?” I asked.

He blinked. “When people have to work back here as punishment, it usually turns out to be punishment for us. But you were good.”

“Oh.” How stupid was I, thinking that anyone paid attention to me or my mean friends?

He kept gazing down at me, his face open. “You’re not like what?”

I tried to will the red to stay out of my face. “You know, like”—I tilted my head out toward the tables—“those girls I sit with at lunch. I’m-I’m not like them.”

He gazed at me a minute. “The B-Squad?” he asked.

“B-Squad?” I thought he meant bee squad, which really made perfect sense. All that venom.

“Yup,” he said, and turned away from me, back to work. He was unloading a cart of stuff that had just been delivered at the back door onto the pantry shelves, even though the head woman, Pam, had told us we could go.

“Why do you call them that?” I asked.

“One guess.” He picked up the biggest can of green beans I’d ever seen and hefted it onto the shelf.

“Because we’re…bitches?”

He stopped, tossed his hair out of his eyes, and gazed at me again. Then his lopsided smile emerged and he laughed. “Ha! Sure, that works too!” He returned to the cans.

“Why, then?”

“Because their names all start with B and I can’t tell them apart. They look the same, they dress the same, they talk the same, they think the same.”

I caught myself grinning, even though technically, this criticism applied to me as well. “They don’t look the same,” I chided him, but teasing. “Bebe is…”

He stopped again, the top shelf of his cart empty. “Bebe is what?”

“You know.”

He tilted his head. “She’s what?” I caught a little edge in his voice. He was so hard to read!

“She’s black!” I said. “So you can tell her apart. I mean they don’t look the same.”

He waved his hand, as if brushing away a pesky fly. “I didn’t mean anything that surface. I can’t see past the stuff on the inside. There’s not one individual thought between them.”

Wow. “I-I thought everyone—You don’t think they’re pretty? Bebe’s the prettiest.”

He snorted. “Pretty is as pretty does.”

I gasped. “My mom says that all the time.”

He studied me. “Your mom is Annabeth Anderson?”

I nodded, then braced for it.

“Your mom is one smart woman.”

Not “beautiful” not “gorgeous” not “hot.” Not the crude things I’d overhead Max say.

Smart.

I stood there, wondering how to end this conversation and get Jasper out of the cafeteria. I couldn’t leave first because I still had a mission there in the kitchen.

He’d almost finished unloading the cart. “So why’d you say ‘we,’” he asked, “even though you said you weren’t like them?”

Before I could answer, Pam came out from the main kitchen.

“Jasper! What are you still doing back here? Go play!”

Go play? What, was he some kind of child?

He laughed and said, “I’m going! I’m going!” and pushed the now empty cart back to the door. Then he went, without another glance at me, tossing his plastic apron in the trash as he walked out the wide swinging doors. Pam didn’t notice me either; she turned around and walked back into the kitchen.

My heart pounded in my ears. Perfect. It was perfect. Could I pull it off?

• • •

Ten minutes later, I slipped out those doors and through the empty cafeteria to the bathrooms.

Piano music trailed me. That’s what Pam had meant by “Go play.”

I glanced up at the clock. I had five minutes until class started. I’d be late, but it was worth it.





51. Sleeping in on rainy mornings

52. Real whipping cream

53. Silly Putty

54. Slinkies

55. Hammocks

I sometimes had to repeat sections of my list just to get through the morning classes to lunch.

I lived for lunch and my kitchen job. Okay, I admit, mostly because I could keep stealing food, but also because it was one of the few places I felt like a real person. I could breathe, be competent, and think my own thoughts. I got good at noticing what needed to be done and taking care of it without asking. Nobody ever gave me the cold shoulder for what landed me there in the first place. They were all nice to me. To me. Not because of who my parents were.

It became important to me to prove to Jasper that I wasn’t like the rest of the B-Squad.

My status within the group had clearly changed. I didn’t belong to the Squad, but they wouldn’t truly release me to belong to anyone else either. Brooke hated me, and that meant Brittany and Bebe were required to as well, but Brooke couldn’t write me off the way she truly wanted to because of Kevin—the way Kevin sought me out, touched the back of my neck, and said, “Hannah’s cool” all forced Brooke to tolerate me. Plus, there was now the connection between Kevin and my dad, who were filming Blood Roses together, and Brooke was obsessed with my dad. She worshipped Dad in spite of me.

Brittany has this picture of Dad, shirtless, hanging in her locker, this picture that was in Entertainment Weekly. Bebe said Dad was “totally hot,” which is gross to say in front of me, but not as gross as what Brooke said. Right in front of me she said, “I’d marry him.”

Eww. That’s so wrong on so many levels.

Just like the rest of my life.

My SR has stopped working. I’ve gained weight. I have this giant, swollen, moon face with bloodshot eyes all bruised purple underneath. My teeth are stained gray, no matter how many Crest Whitening Strips I use.

The school counselor pulled me out of class for a talk. My pulse hammered in my ears as I walked to her office on legs filled with ice water. This was it. I was busted. I looked at the bright orange lockers, the green-and-white tiled floor, and thought nothing will ever be the same. Everything is about to change. My life is over.

I trembled by the time I took a seat in her office. I tucked my hands under my thighs.

When she said, “Hannah, many of your teachers are concerned about you,” I wanted to throw myself to the floor, hug her legs, and beg, “Please! You can’t make me stop! I’ll die without it!”

She leaned toward me, elbows on her knees (I could see her pink lace bra), her forehead all wrinkled. “Hannah, are you using drugs?”

What? My spine stiffened. Images of my dad’s mug shot flashed through my mind. “Are-are you asking that because of my dad’s past problems?” I made my voice as snotty and offended as I could muster through my surprise.

“No, we’re asking this because of your perpetually bloodshot eyes, your frequent nosebleeds, and your calm, high appearance when you arrive late every day to your after-lunch class.”

Wow.

She thought I was “self-medicating” my grief over my mother’s cancer. I expected euphoria that they were so off base, but a crushing blanket of defeat settled on me, a blanket so heavy it felt like that awful lead thing the dentist drapes on you to take X-rays of your teeth. Part of me wanted them to know the truth and, more importantly, to make me stop it.

That surprised me, the realization that I wanted to stop it.

I denied everything. She didn’t believe me. I walked back to class, and the orange lockers and the green-and-white tile mocked me. Nothing had changed. I was trapped.

So, this conversation with the counselor only accomplished the double anxiety of knowing I was still on my own in this, but that people were paying attention to me. I didn’t want anyone paying attention to me.

• • •

Unfortunately, the attention kept coming.

In art class, we’d been assigned to do life-size portraits of people cut out of thin wood.

Most people had chosen to paint themselves.

I had chosen to paint my mother.

Kevin chose to paint me.

Okay, okay, I admit when Kevin announced me as his subject, my heart raced. My stomach somersaulted. I thought I might have an asthma attack (and I don’t have asthma). Of all the people he could’ve chosen, he chose me.

“Ooh,” Brittany whispered. “I think he likes you.”

The thought made me dizzy.

I saw the tears in Brooke’s eyes before she cut class.

After a couple days of work, though, it became obvious that Jasper was painting me too. My stomach felt like it held a brick. Why was he doing this to me? I thought we were friends!

“Well, well, well,” Brooke said, “aren’t you just Little Miss Popular?”

“Ooh,” Bebe said, loud enough for him to hear, “maybe Jasper likes you too.”

The girls and Kevin all snickered as if they’d suggested some hideous mutant liked me.

What could I say? It was an impossible situation, a minute that lasted a hundred years. The B-Squad expected me to react, to snicker also or shriek “Eww!”

I looked at Jasper, whose head was bent over his painting, his hair in his eyes. He didn’t look at us, but I knew he was listening, waiting. Why? Why did he have to go and put us both in this position? Who asked him to paint me anyway?

There was no way to win. I just made a face at the girls, hoping I could convey to them my “whatever” sentiment without Jasper seeing it. But that wasn’t enough. “Oooh,” Brooke sang, “maybe Hannah likes him back!”

Kevin looked at me, curious. Why? Why was this happening?

“You’ve got competition, Kevin.” Brooke sneered.

Were my chances to be normal, to be liked, being ruined just because some strange boy had decided to draw me? How was this my fault?

Kevin asked, “Do you like him?”

My face hurt with heat. “No!” I whispered, the word a rasp that skinned my throat.

Fortunately, Jasper walked away to wash out his brushes in the sink. His back was to us and the water made a good masking noise.

The girls collapsed in giggles. Bebe mimed puking.

Kevin winked at me. “You’re my Mona Lisa,” he said. I floated for a moment, until Brooke’s wounded, hateful eyes burst my bubble, and Jasper’s back—spending far too long at the sink—made my throat ache.

• • •

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable yesterday in art,” Jasper said the next day while we shredded lettuce in the cafeteria kitchen.

I shrugged, hating and loving that he’d brought it up. I’d felt clumsy and pained, bumping around the incident without speaking of it. I couldn’t believe he was apologizing to me.

“That was awkward,” Jasper said.

I nodded. “I just—I wish you’d told me,” I said.

He paused, his gloved hands on the lettuce.

“I would’ve told you not to pick me,” I said. “They’re just going to be mean to you about it.”

He put his lettuce down and turned to face me. He tossed his hair out of his eyes and looked at my face like I’d written something there. He took his time to form his thoughts, like usual. While he did, it struck me that the golden triangle in the iris of his eye would be a pretty cool detail to capture in a painting.

“I wanted to paint you. They don’t have the power to stop me from doing what I want.”

The simplicity of those words filled me with awe. And sorrow.

And shame.

“So, do you like Kevin?” he asked. His face was hard to read, but I thought I saw genuine curiosity and maybe a little bewilderment.

“I just—I don’t know. He—he’s okay.” I sounded like a moron, but knew my hot, blazing face gave Jasper his answer.

He nodded once, as if checking in with himself that he’d said what he needed, then he returned to the lettuce.

• • •

Three Bad Things happened, almost in a row, after the New Year.

First, Brooke invited me to her pool party.

I was relieved and terrified to get the invitation. I might’ve made up some excuse not to go, but one day when my mom felt good enough to pick me up from school, Brooke had yelled, “See you at the party, Hannah Anne Carlisle!”

“What party?” my mom had asked, glowing with joy like she’d been invited. It struck me: Mom worried that I was a dork and had no friends. I told her I didn’t really want to go, but she was so into it. I wanted so much to make her happy. I was trying so hard to lose weight so she could see me beautiful just once. So I could be “pretty is as pretty does.” I knew I was neither, but I wanted to be at least one for her. She wanted me to go to the party. So I went.

I pulled that green bikini out of the drawer where I’d stuffed it the day I bought it.

The thing was, Mom was right about the bikini. I wore it, but then felt so uncomfortable, like I was on display. I thought I wanted the boys to look at me like they looked at Brooke, but when they did, I hated it.

From the moment I arrived, I only wanted to be home.

Bebe made fun of me for going off the diving board and actually swimming. Hello, wasn’t this a pool party? I longed to honestly swim, just like I longed to run. I’d started having dreams about running. In the dreams, I was tiny and ran in one of my own miniature cities where everything was tidy and perfect. Mom had asked about my cities recently, and in an attempt to do something she could admire, I’d started making a new one. I was halfway finished. I wished I was home doing that, instead of in Brooke’s swimming pool.

At least in the water I was sort of hidden, instead of posing around the edges trying to suck in my belly and keep my arms crossed over my chest. In the deeper end, where it was dark and out of the lights, Kevin swam over to me and said, “Who’s that beautiful mermaid I see?” He was so cute he made my brain go to mush. The word beautiful turned me into an idiot. I grinned at him, so grateful. I held on to the side of the pool under the diving board, and he swam up right beside me. Our bare shoulders touched, sending a shudder all through me.

But then, I could hardly believe what happened next. I know, I know, what a cliché, right? But I mean it. I literally could not believe it was happening. Under the water, where no one else could see, Kevin grabbed my butt! When I shoved his hand away, he laughed and tried to put his hand on my chest.

I froze, the white noise in my head so loud. For a split second I actually thought Is this what I’m supposed to do? Am I supposed to let him?

I saw Max squinting through the dark at us. I pushed Kevin hard. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

“What do you think I’m doing, you moron?”

Nice. You moron? Yeah, like that was really going to convince me to let him!

He swam back to me again with his hands out, chuckling, so I splashed him in the face then climbed out of the pool.

Oh my God! He’d never even kissed me! I couldn’t believe he did that right there in the pool with everyone about twenty yards away from us. I wrapped myself in my towel and stood near the other girls, but Brooke sneered, “Have fun in there?”

By this point the boys were gathered in a circle in the pool whispering and snickering. I hated them all. I just wanted to leave. All of a sudden, it hit me: the idea that I could use my SR right there to feel better. If only I could feel good and relaxed, then I’d be able to sit there like the other girls and have fun.

Here’s the thing: once I thought about my SR, it took hold of me. There was no turning back. I was going to do it.

There wasn’t much to eat out by the pool, just some chips and pretzels. I took my gym bag into the house and took everything I could find in the cupboards. I found good pasta salad in the fridge. Brooke’s mom almost caught me, but I put the Tupperware container into my bag just in time. She was all paranoid about why I was in the house. I think she thought I was going to steal something, since everybody knew I got caught stealing at school. It struck me that she was right. I’d turned into a thief and a liar. Everything felt so out of control. I told her I had to use the bathroom, dashed in there, and turned the fan on high. I didn’t think I could do it—with her knocking on the door, I couldn’t eat very much. I only had a few handfuls of the pasta salad. The SR felt totally different. It was harder, and I saw lots of white sparkling lights and my fingers swelled up.

Brooke’s mom wouldn’t stop knocking on the door being all nosy. When I opened the door and told her I felt sick to my stomach, she gave me 7-UP and some lip gloss. Lip gloss?

I thought Jasper would like that detail—giving lip gloss to someone who was nauseated. But then, I’d have to tell him the whole story. Starting with a party he wasn’t invited to.

When I went back outside, I caught a glimpse of Brooke and Kevin making out under the diving board!

As I waited for my heart to unclutch, Bebe sidled up next to me and said, “Well. Finally. Maybe he’ll get over his obsession with you and they can get back together.”

I swallowed. Back together?

I went home and cut my green bikini into tiny pieces with a pair of scissors.

• • •

I wrote in my journal, The SR isn’t working. My throat hurts all the time. I’m still fat. It isn’t fair. I can’t stop, though. I can’t sleep without it. I need something good. My life sucks.

• • •

Aunt Izzy came to visit from Ohio, to spend time with my mom. She would’ve been here lots earlier, but she’d been in Ghana, in West Africa, working on her newest documentary about African orphans.

Aunt Izzy walked into baggage claim and narrowed her eyes at me. She put her hands on my face and rubbed her thumbs over my chubby cheeks, then under my eyes, where broken blood vessels mottled purple. She took both my hands in hers, turning mine palm down as if searching for something, then stopped, with her thumbs on the middle knuckles of my right hand.

Standing right there at baggage claim, before she’d even really said hi to any of us, she turned to my mom and said, “Why didn’t you tell me Hannah was bulimic?”

I about fainted.

The thing was, my mom hadn’t told her because my parents didn’t know.

Dad was talking to some fans and missed that little blurt.

Aunt Izzy used to be anorexic. Like really, truly anorexic. She had to be in the hospital for six months when she was in high school. My mom said Izzy had nearly died.

So, Aunt Izzy knew a little bit about eating disorders and she was on to me like that.

That night, while Dad was on set, Aunt Izzy had a long talk with Mom about it. I know because I eavesdropped on them, terrified. Aunt Izzy convinced Mom to take me to a counselor.

I hardly slept that night.

The next morning, though, Mom was really sick and the appointment never got scheduled.

• • •

By Sunday evening, Mom had to go back to the hospital, and my SR got shoved deep down in the trash can, like all the wrappers from my binges.

I felt so guilty. I pleaded with the universe, I pleaded with God—I’ll go to a therapist every single day if you just let her live!

• • •

Monday at school, as I worked in the cafeteria, Jasper asked, “So, how was that pool party?”

My stupid face scalded red again. How did he even know about it?

“Sucked.” I hoped he wouldn’t see my face. No such luck.

He tilted his head. “You okay?”

I nodded, then reached up to pat my flaming cheeks. I saw his eyes follow my hands.

“What’s that mark on your fingers?” he asked.

I froze. He took my right hand, and it gave me a shudder—but a much better shudder than when my bare shoulder had touched Kevin’s. He held my hand in both of his, gently—like my hand was a baby bird—and turned it palm down. He rubbed his thumbs over the red mark across my middle knuckles, just like Aunt Izzy had. “What is that?” he asked, his voice full of concern that confused me.

I became acutely aware of the laughter from out in the cafeteria, the thumping of my own heart, the musky-under-the-clean-soapy-smell of Jasper’s body.

I pulled my hand away, my heart zipping like I was afraid. Afraid of what? “I don’t know,” I said. “A blister I guess.”

He tilted his head, that golden wedge in his eye flashing at me. “Who gets blisters on their knuckles?” he asked in a serious tone, like he was trying to solve a mystery.

I shrugged again. I think the mark was from my teeth. But I couldn’t tell him that.

He nodded and returned to the lettuce.

I remembered that day in art class and wished I could replay the scene. I longed for another take. If I could have it, I’d play it totally differently.

• • •

The second Bad Thing happened the week after the pool party when it was time to hang up the life-size portraits.

Kevin’s reaction to me after the party confused me. I thought he’d be mean to me, but he was overly friendly, winking at me, calling out “Hey, Hannah” whenever he saw me. This always prompted the boys with him to snicker. Then, he’d turn and make out with Brooke!

I also thought the B-Squad would be done with me. But it was like they kept me around to be the permanent whipping boy or insulting girl or whatever you wanted to call me. They were openly disdainful; at least, Brooke and Bebe were, saying things like, “Don’t you know not to hook up with a boy on the first date?”

“I didn’t!”

They snorted. Brooke pursed her lips and raised her waxed eyebrows. “Not what I heard.”

Great. I hadn’t let Kevin grope me, but he’d told everyone we’d done it? And how pathetic was that, Brooke throwing herself all over a boy who said he’d been after someone else?

I prayed word of his daughter’s “hooking up” wouldn’t somehow reach my dad on the set. I hated when Kevin was at school with his creepy winks and pats on my shoulder, but I hated it equally when he was absent because I knew he was with my dad. I made myself sick imagining worst-case scenarios of what he might say about me.

I was terrified Kevin was going to do something hideous to his portrait of me, like give me zits or make me really fat, but he didn’t. His portrait was way more beautiful than the real me. I couldn’t look at it without blushing.

Jasper’s, though, looked like me. It freaked me out a little; it was so accurate it was like a photo. He even got details like the fact that one of my eyebrows was higher than the other. That my cheeks were all chubby.

He even included that mark on my knuckles.

I volunteered to help the art teacher hang the portraits because I wanted to be sure to hide the portraits of me. Mr. G. and I lined the front entry hall and the two side halls with them. They looked like real people at first glance. I hung up Kevin’s portrait of me on a patch of wall behind the counselor’s room; during the day, when her door was open, no one would see the portrait.

As Mr. G. and I worked our way into the front hall, I heard Kevin’s voice around the corner back by the counselor’s office. He was talking to Brooke and Bebe and Max. I heard Brooke say my name.

“That’s pretty damn good, Kevin,” Max said.

“Too good, if you know what I mean,” Brooke said.

“Yeah, you did cheat a little!” Bebe’s laugh echoed down the hall. Panic built inside me, making it hard to breathe.

Kevin laughed and said, “Well, I couldn’t exactly put her fat butt on my final project.”

They all laughed. I heard Brooke’s distinctive laugh; she sounded like a hyena.

“I thought you liked her butt,” Brooke jeered.

“Please,” Kevin said, “what was I supposed to do? She threw that butt at me.”

I dropped my hammer and fled. I couldn’t let them know I’d heard them.

• • •

Those first two Bad Things kind of seem like nothing compared to the third.

The third Bad Thing was my mom died.