Tuck yanked on something, and I spun around with so much centrifugal force it made me dizzy. I faced the audience now and immediately noticed a small group of senior boys, maybe on the lacrosse team, cheering and laughing at me. This isn’t happening, I thought. This can’t be happening.
In the crowd I saw Heather next to Charlie, gleefully clapping and yelling something I couldn’t make out. At least Charlie wasn’t cheering. He just stared at the stage like he was watching a car crash on YouTube.
And then Charlie’s face and the rest of the audience started to pixelate. I gripped the ropes, but I felt the strength seeping out of my fingers. I tried to focus, but I could barely make out Ms. Parker nodding at me once, twice, and then continuously, frantically, while still trying desperately to conduct. Everybody was laughing now. The choir stopped singing and turned around to watch me. I fumbled with the moon, which had turned off-kilter, and accidentally detached the tape. The moon hit the floor with a THWAP!
And then I flipped over, my bubble butt waggling in the air. The audience gasped.
And that was the last thing I remembered.
“… So I woke up in the hospital with a concussion and a gash over my eye. I guess Tuck screwed up and I fell. I heard later that he’d managed to slow me down with the ropes, so I didn’t hit the ground super hard, but since I’d already passed out I didn’t do anything to break my fall, so my head hit first.
“Later, at the ER, one of the doctors told my parents that my heart was way too slow, and that my weight was dangerously low for my height. Based on those two things, he thought I might need to go into residential treatment. So the next day, they brought me to Dr. Brach, the family doctor, who agreed. Two days after that, they brought me here.”
Margot didn’t say anything at first. She just looked at me, jaw open, as if she couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of my mouth. “Holy shit,” she said. “That’s a crazy story.” Then she giggled.
I crossed my arms. “I’m glad you find so much humor in my humiliation.”
“I’m sorry,” Margot said. “I know I shouldn’t laugh, but—” And then she giggled again. “Come on. Picture yourself up there. Can’t you see that it’s at least a little bit funny?”
I wanted to say no, that I could still hear Heather’s cackles in the audience. Or how Dad cried as he sat on that vinyl chair next to my hospital bed in the ER, saying over and over how much my anorexia scared him and made him think he’d lose me.
But I didn’t tell her any of those things, because for the first time, I saw how the image of me in my harness, flailing around, might actually be sort of amusing. I smiled a little. And then I snickered, and before I knew it, we were both howling.
“And you know what was the worst?”
“What?” Margot said, snorting laughter.
“My sweatpant penis!” I shrieked.
“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s sweatpant-penis girl!” Margot yelled.
“Shut up!” I said, cracking up all over again. “I can’t breathe!”
“Well,” Margot said, panting, “I guess that explains the scar. I’d wondered.”
I rubbed the pinkish crescent above my eyebrow. “Yeah,” I said, the urge to laugh suddenly gone. “Okay … your turn. I told you my secret. Why are you here?”
“My story is pretty boring compared to yours, Elizabeth,” Margot said. “Or should I call you … Wonderpenis?”
I threw a pillow at her, knocking off her glasses.
“Too soon?” she said innocently, taking her glasses back. “Sorry.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks. So tell me, what’s your story?” I tried not to act too eager, but to tell the truth I was dying to know. I barely knew anything about her. We lived less than a mile apart but existed in completely separate worlds. She’d been at a boarding school in New Hampshire since sixth grade. When she was home, she spent most of her time at the local country club, a huge, old brick mansion at the end of a long, tree-lined drive, taking tennis and golf lessons to make her parents happy.
Margot sighed and evaluated me over the edge of her glasses, like she was praying. “I ate food.” Her words were clipped.
“Huh?” I was confused. That was what we were supposed to be doing.
“I started bingeing and purging about a year ago, the summer between my sophomore and junior years. I’d only do it every couple of weeks, and no one ever found out. But this past summer it got worse. I started purging every few days. I thought I’d stop when I got to school, you know, because people would be around all the time and so it would be hard to throw up. But instead it got worse. I started doing it every day. I’d steal food from the cafeteria and eat it at night after my roommate, Laurel, was asleep. Or I’d hide bagels and cookies and anything else I could fit in my backpack and wait until she was out. Then I’d stuff my face and throw up. If Laurel came back before I’d made it to the toilet—we had a private bathroom off our room—I’d just have to sit with it, which was hell.”
I knew how she felt. Whenever I ate too much I’d go on a double-length run, minimum eight miles, and do a liquid fast the next day. Fasting was my punishment, but also a gift. The pounds just fell off when I did that.
“The last week in September, my great-aunt died, and I came home for the funeral.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s fine. I barely knew her. Anyway, my parents freaked out because I’d gained all this weight even with my purging. They contacted the school, and the counselors talked to my roommate, Laurel. Turns out she knew what I was doing all along. She told them everything.”
“Oh, Margot. I am so sorry. What happened after that?”
“The school made me take a medical leave. And then my puke clogged the pipes at home and backed up the entire upstairs system. Our house is old—ancient plumbing. It started bubbling up in my parents’ shower.”
How do you respond to something like that? I nodded.
“They sent me here the next day. But it doesn’t matter. Nobody can help me. Everybody talks here about loving ourselves for who we are, but I can’t. I hate myself. I’m an idiot.”
“Margot, that is the silliest thing you have ever said.”
“No, Elizabeth, you don’t understand. Compared to the rest of my family, I’m dumb. I’ve never done well in school. Everybody in my family goes to Pasker.” Pasker was in Connecticut, one of the oldest and most prestigious boarding schools on the East Coast. “We’re legacies there, but when I applied for sixth grade they wouldn’t take me. I had to go to Lewiston in New Hampshire. Have you heard of it?”