What was that supposed to mean? With a sigh I headed out to the foyer. I couldn’t think of why he’d want to see me after yesterday. Or for that matter, why I’d want to see him.
Tristan stood up from the bench when I walked in. His brown hair had fallen in front of his eyes and looked a little greasy. He smelled like cigarette smoke. Clearly, quitting wasn’t working.
I didn’t say anything.
He took a small paper bag out of his pocket and thrust it at me. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he mumbled. “Here.”
I didn’t reach for it. It had grease spots. “What is that?”
“A peace offering.” His green eyes caught mine. I looked away.
And then I smelled it. Cinnamon sweetness. A hint of apple. He’d brought me a cider doughnut. Shit.
“Go on, take it. It’s for you.” He shook the bag a little and put it down on the bench.
I didn’t budge.
He frowned and pulled a second bag out of his pocket. “I got one for me, too.”
There was no way I could eat that doughnut, even though it smelled amazing. Like, stomach-rumbling good. I tried to do what I always had in the past—turn on the part of my brain that made saying no easy, that would never even entertain the idea of putting something as fattening as a doughnut into my mouth.
“Elizabeth? Are you okay?” He looked at me like I might spontaneously combust or something.
And then Simone spoke up behind me. I hadn’t heard her come back. “Tristan, Elizabeth is here for anorexia. She doesn’t want a doughnut.”
He stiffened. “Yesterday she said she did, okay?”
“What did you think, that you’d feed her a doughnut and everything would be great?”
“No. I—”
She didn’t let him finish. “You have to stop doing this, Tristan. You aren’t her doctor, okay?” Simone said, her voice sharp. Then she turned on her heel and left, muttering words we couldn’t quite hear as she stormed away down the hall. Tristan’s shoulders slumped and he glanced at me, his eyes pleading with me to take the doughnut.
But I couldn’t do it. I left the bag on the bench. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry.” And then I ran off too, leaving Tristan alone in the foyer.
Back in my room I cursed myself and felt twisty inside because all I could think about was that stupid doughnut. I could practically taste the warm golden crust and the tender, hot insides the same color as vanilla cake. And I wanted it bad. I had half a mind to go back out there and see if the greasy bag was still on the bench.
One bite. That’s all I’d take.
No. No effing way.
Fifteen minutes and my mind wouldn’t budge. I told myself that Ray had probably found it and tossed it already.
Five more minutes of pacing and I told myself I’d just go check to make sure.
Tristan was gone, but the doughnut was still there.
I almost turned away, but the smell stopped me. It brought back memories—good ones—of when I was little: of the piles of fall leaves I liked to kick through on our front lawn, of how the crisp air felt on my cheeks, of having the freedom to run and skip and yell and not feel like an idiot doing it. It reminded me of everything I’d been before I even knew what a calorie was, like when I was ten and at Russell Orchards with Dad, eating hot doughnuts fresh out of the fryer without guilt or worry, and for a second I missed my old life so much that I ached.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t register the bag in my hand until I was back in my room. When I did, I threw it on my duvet like it was poison ivy and wiped my hands on my pants.
Then I opened it.
It looked like all the cider doughnuts I’d eaten as a kid. In other words, perfect.
I stood up and paced. I sat back down on the bed, plastic mattress pad crackling, and jiggled my foot. I jumped up again. I wanted it so, so bad. I wondered if this was what a heroin addict felt like right before he got his fix.
I pinched off a tiny piece of the crust with my thumb and pointer finger. Barely a taste. I put it on my tongue, swallowed, and then waited for something terrible to happen. I didn’t know what that would be, but I knew it would come. I’d convinced myself that my body couldn’t handle food like that anymore. I waited for my throat to close, my stomach to heave, or cramps to start. Anything.
But nothing happened. The bite was small, but the flavor was pure and delicious. I took another pinch, this time from the inside of the doughnut, and it, too, was as I remembered. And you know what? I was glad for that taste, that memory. But I was sad, too, because that time in my life was gone. I was ruined.
But … but what if I wasn’t? There were people who’d survived anorexia all over the Internet. The day before I’d come here I’d seen a girl’s blog where the title was one big run-on sentence: “I had anorexia and now I don’t anymore and I love ice cream and I love who I am so suck it Ana!” Maybe I could be like that girl.
I’d love to eat ice cream again.
And then, just like I predicted, that bag was like a magnet and all I wanted was to vacuum up every single crumb with my big, fat mouth. Except that I didn’t. I took another tiny taste, let it dissolve on my tongue, and then quietly, almost calmly, took the bag out into the hall and shoved it in the trash can.
I made it back to my room before I started shaking.
I sat on the bed and pulled my knees into my chest and yearned for the cookbooks I kept under my bed at home. They always distracted me. I don’t know why looking at photos of food made me feel better, but it did. Mostly I just flipped through the pages, but once, the week before I came to Wallingfield, I’d baked something: a coconut cake with raspberry filling and cream-cheese frosting. My mouth watered just thinking about it.
I don’t know why I’d entered cake-making mode that afternoon. I’d lost 5 pounds in eight days. I was a little delirious. My vision often spun, and sometimes I saw double. I’d been staying home sick a lot; I was just too tired to do anything. But then, on that day, I took out my favorite cookbook, Cakes for All Occasions, and it was like one minute I was reading a recipe and the next I was wrestling my old bike out of the garage and riding to the store to buy cake flour, cream cheese, coconut, and butter.
Three hours later, I’d baked a four-layer cake. My first. And I’d made it all without ingesting a single calorie. Not a lick of a mixing spoon or a finger-swipe of frosting. Nothing. I was so proud. I put it on a cut-glass cake stand I’d bought Mom at a vintage store a few years before for her birthday, back when I still thought that maybe she’d use it and bake something for me, back when I would have welcomed it.
When Mom walked in the door an hour later and dropped her keys on the table, she froze, her nose in the air like a dog sniffing for birds.
“What’s that smell?” she said, almost dreamily.
I’d just finished cleaning the kitchen. “I baked.”
She whipped around to face me. “Sorry, what?”
“I baked a cake.”
“You baked a cake.” She repeated the words back to me like I was a toddler.
“Yes. It’s in the dining room.”