“I promise.” She sat on my bed and I had to hold my tongue to keep from asking her to sit somewhere else. When I buried my nose in my comforter, I could still smell the fabric softener Mom used, a smell that was already fading.
I carefully lifted the ring from its perch and held it out, the brass warm on my palm.
“Who sent you this?” Willa took it from me, put it on her finger, and then tried to slide it over her wrist. It almost fit.
“That’s the thing. There wasn’t any note.”
Maybe Charlie hadn’t sent a note on purpose. Maybe he’d wanted to make this like a game. That was totally something he would do.
Willa’s eyes darted from me to the ring, as if trying to decide if I was putting one over on her.
“Seriously? That is so awesome!” Willa spun the ring in a circle and dropped it on the comforter. The ribbon was twisted. I snatched it back and smoothed the satin with my fingers.
“It’s, like, a total mystery. Maybe it was sent by someone who secretly loves you or something.” Right then, Willa seemed very twelve.
“Sorry,” I said. “But secret admirers don’t exist. We’re at Wallingfield, not in fairyland.”
“Well, I think you’re wrong. I just know it’s from a secret admirer,” Willa said. “I bet there are a ton of guys out there in love with you.”
I only want one, I told myself, still thinking about Charlie.
Not that I’d ever admit that out loud.
That night, lying in bed with the brass ring resting on my chest, I found myself reasoning with the universe. Because I did want Charlie back. I missed him. Please, I whispered to the air. I promise, I’ll do anything. Just make it be from Charlie.
9
The next morning I woke up to find my hands clamped around the red ribbon and the ring pressed into my leg, leaving a round, red, itchy imprint on the inside of my thigh.
Charlie wants me back.
He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Not after—
Don’t get your hopes up, Elizabeth!
But I couldn’t help it. Maybe he wanted to make up and get back together.
Next to me, Lexi groaned as she pulled herself out of bed and fumbled around for her robe.
“Lexi,” I said as I wrapped myself in my pink one, “do you have a boyfriend?”
She let out a snort. “Yeah. His name is Rex.”
“Rex?”
“Yeah, as in ano-REX-ia. That’s the only boyfriend I’ve got. Last time I checked, guys weren’t exactly dying to go out with me. Why, do you?”
I didn’t see why any guy wouldn’t go out with Lexi. Aside from the fact that she looked a bit skeletal, she was still pretty, with her layered black hair, clear skin, and big dark eyes. “No,” I said. “Totally not.”
But I’d had one. The best one.
I’d gone out with Charlie for the first time nearly four months earlier, one week after school let out for summer, back when life was still relatively normal.
On that day in June, Charlie showed up at Scoops, the ice cream shop where I worked, wearing his board shorts, his hair still damp from the beach. When he asked me out, I’d thought he was kidding. Me? The Scoops girl? I didn’t even belong to the country club. He ordered a blueberry ice cream cone, crammed five dollars in my tip jar, slid a piece of paper with his number on it across the counter, and told me he’d seen me at a couple of his lacrosse games. I’d only been at them because Shay had a crush on a midfielder. I hated lacrosse. But of course I didn’t say that. I just blushed. When he asked me for my number, I wrote it on a napkin.
He texted me later that afternoon.
That night we went to Kelly’s Roast Beef, a local takeout place open late that was always crammed with rowdy kids stuffing their faces with shakes and sandwiches. I usually avoided it. Everything Kelly’s served was fried, or came from a cow, or was slathered with mayonnaise. I hadn’t eaten anything like that since before the whole Target bikini incident.
Normally, the idea of taking a bite of a roast beef sandwich or a sip of chocolate shake would send me into a massive panic. But that night, even though I’d already eaten my usual dinner—one banana, sliced in half lengthwise and cut again into twenty half slices, which I ate from a toothpick, one half moon at a time—something was different.
Here’s what I ate:
1. One-third of a Junior Beef sandwich, no mayo or cheese
2. Five fries, two dipped in ketchup
3. Two small tastes of Charlie’s coffee shake
4. Four sips of regular—not diet—Coke, because Charlie messed up when he ordered for me and I didn’t want him to feel bad.
What was amazing was that when we were finished I didn’t even feel full. In fact, I felt better than I had in months. I’d expected that I’d at least get a stomachache from all those calories, but it was magic, like my entire body was saying, This is the guy for you. And the night just kept getting better. After dinner, Charlie drove me to the beach in front of his house. He played Bob Marley, “No Woman, No Cry,” a song that Katrina and I had decided made us want to hold hands with boys. And as the song was playing, like he’d read my mind, Charlie held my hand. When we got out of the car, the moon was bright and I could see his house stretching behind a thick wall of shrubs that bordered the beach. It looked even bigger in the moonlight. Houses like that cost millions.
We’d just stepped onto the sand when he pulled me toward him and kissed me. His touch was soft and his mouth tasted like french fries. I only worried for a second about potential calorie transfers. When he pulled his salty lips away from mine, my body buzzed. When he took off his shirt and ran, whooping and hollering, into the dark, rolling ocean, I realized that I really liked him. And when he came back a minute later, shivering and dripping and with goose bumps on his skin, I realized that, amazingly, he might like me, too. He kissed me again and everything in the world was perfect: the air, the night, the beach, even me.
10
I had my first session with Mary that same morning. Mary’s office was in the therapy wing. Her cinder-block walls were painted a soothing cream color. Everything at Wallingfield was painted soothing colors. It actually said that in the brochure Mom had slipped under my door the day they announced I was coming here. Wallingfield’s soothing decor, it read, as if we were all a bunch of maniacs who might fall into hysterics if we came face-to-face with a rainbow pillow or hot-pink wall.
The brass ring hung on its satin ribbon beneath my clothes, swaying gently as I walked, a constant reminder that someone, somewhere, was thinking of me. I only wished I could be 100 percent sure it was Charlie.
Mary’s hair was twisted into a bun, and she wore a black maxiskirt and matching tights, a bulky navy-blue cardigan, a long-sleeved matching navy blouse, and scuffed brown clogs. I could hear Mom’s voice in my head: Black and blue make a bruise! Apparently Mary hadn’t gotten the memo.
“Good morning, Elizabeth.” Mary’s voice was different from the other day. It sounded the way therapists’ voices always sound on TV. Smooth, calming, and, just like the walls, soothing.