Her pessimism infected me. I pictured myself bent over like that old lady, leaning on a metal walker, staring at brown vinyl therapeutic shoes. My breath came in bursts.
But then I got inside and the bone density test was fast and painless. I didn’t even have to take off my clothes. I lay on a big, padded platform as an X-ray machine whirred above me. The whole thing was over in less than fifteen minutes. Not so bad.
On our way back, the mood in the van was different. Relaxed, or maybe relieved. Ray turned on the radio and started singing along under his breath. At first, we refused to join in, but Ray is an infectious guy. He smiles, you smile. So, when “Thriller” came on and Ray belted it out, we couldn’t help but sing along. Ray rolled down the front windows and drove us beside the bright blue Atlantic. The sun glinted off the water and the cool air rushed by our cheeks and the van flew over the windy roads and for a second I forgot where we were headed.
“When I was in sixth grade,” Lexi shouted over the music, “I dressed up like Michael Jackson and sang this at our school talent show.”
“Seriously?” I said, snorting with laughter.
“Yes! I wore a red leather jacket like the one he used to have and a white glove and everything.”
Ray chuckled. “It’s hard for me to imagine you moonwalking, Lexi.”
She made a face. “Don’t try too hard. It wasn’t exactly my finest moment. But just so you know, the crowd loved me.”
We cruised into downtown Grantham, the town before Esterfall. “Ooh, look! Starbucks!” Lexi cried. “Can we stop? Please, Ray? Please? I brought money.” She turned to me. “I’ll treat you.”
Ray went serious. “Lexi, I’m sorry, but they’re expecting us back.”
“Please?” she begged. “We’ll be fast. I’d die for a real coffee, not that instant stuff we get.” We were allowed one packet of instant decaf a day. “I’ll even get it with milk—no, cream!—if that makes you happy. You know, extra calories?”
Ray glanced at his watch. “All right, don’t tell,” he said, putting on his blinker. “You’ve got five minutes.”
We took longer. It felt so good to be out, and free, and doing something normal people did. If I ignored Ray idling outside, I could almost trick myself into thinking I was just here with a friend. Just like I could almost trick myself into thinking that maybe everything wasn’t that bad after all. That maybe this moment was an omen. That our bone density tests would come out fine.
I felt the lightest touch on my arm.
I looked over, startled. A little girl, probably ten. “You’re from Wallingfield,” she said.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
She pointed out the window, at the van. Duh.
Her arms were long and pale. Her face was all angles. Her eyes were older than the rest of her. “I wish I looked like you,” she said.
When I looked at her, I saw myself.
Her mom appeared out of nowhere. “Come on, Lauren.” She pulled her away. Then, when she thought she was out of earshot, I heard her mom say in a worried voice, “What did that girl say to you?”
Back in the van, with Lexi up front with Ray, I sat quietly. The coffee was bitter. I didn’t want it anymore. “A fast-moving storm will drench the North Shore this afternoon,” the man on the radio said, “making for a treacherous commute.” Already, the sky was beginning to darken.
As we drove into downtown Esterfall, I worried I’d see someone I knew. I scrunched down just in case.
A few plops of rain hit the windshield. Ray turned the music down and rolled up his window.
Then, abruptly, he shouted, “What are you doing, Lexi?”
Lexi was standing, her entire upper body hanging out the front passenger window. “Can you feel the air, Ray?” she yelled, throwing her arms out. “It feels like freedom!” She turned her face to the rain, which was steady now. She didn’t smile.
Our bone density tests were going to be bad. This was the real omen. The rain. That little girl.
I wish I looked like you.
People on the sidewalk stared.
Ray cursed and slammed on the brakes. Lexi fell back into the front seat, whacking her head on the doorframe. “Jesus, Ray!” she said, rubbing her head. “You could have killed me!”
“You could have killed yourself. Never stick your head out a car window. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Oh, come on, Ray.” She climbed in back with me. “He needs to learn how to have fun.”
Ray’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
“Shh!” I whispered, glaring.
Ray muttered something under his breath and eased the van back onto the street. I’d never seen him mad before.
When we got near Wallingfield, the hedges got higher and the road narrowed and it felt like the world was closing in.
The van pulled into the driveway. Thanks to the clouds, we’d lost the benefit of a late-afternoon sun. It would be night soon, earlier than usual. The rain came down harder.
I wish I looked like you.
No, I wished I’d said. You don’t.
When we parked, Lexi thrust her empty coffee cup at Ray and flounced inside, still pissed, although I wasn’t sure whether it was at Ray or herself.
I emptied my almost full coffee in the gravel. I bet Ray regretted the Starbucks stop, the music, everything.
“Thanks, Ray,” I said, passing him my cup, too. “Today was nice.”
His face softened a little. “No problem. Just don’t tell anybody, okay?”
Nurse Jill greeted us at the door. Lexi was gone. “Elizabeth,” she said, “Mary just got off the phone with the doctor who read your scans. She has your results. She’s waiting for you in her office.”
The walk down the dark hallway took forever. Mary’s office door was open, the light like a beacon.
“Good news!” she said the minute I walked in. “You’re clear.”
“Clear?”
“Your bone density is within the normal range.”
I needed to sit. She said other things then, but I’d already tuned out.
I was lucky. My brain flashed back to the older women in the waiting room, and the sign on the wall that read: Are you a woman? Are you over 65? Then the National Osteoporosis Foundation recommends you get your bone density checked today.
I was forty-nine years ahead of schedule.
I didn’t want the bones of a sixty-five-year-old. I wanted to be sixteen. Normal sixteen. “Mary, you told me at one of our first meetings that most of the girls who diet don’t end up like me. What makes me different? What makes me want to do this to myself?”
“Plenty of scientists are trying to figure that out, Elizabeth,” she said. “One thing we now know is that there most likely is a genetic link.”
“You mean this is in my family’s DNA, like heart disease?” Shay’s grandma suffered from heart disease, and Shay’s mom, a total neurotic, was constantly checking her own pulse. These diseases get passed on, her mom would say whenever Shay told her not to stress so much.