I nodded, numb, and wiped my hands one at a time on my pants.
“Great. Come on.” She led me to a table next to the toaster in the corner. Her tray looked like mine, except she had a cheese stick, too. “Let’s sit.”
I sat.
“So.” She peeled the paper liner off her muffin. “Don’t get Kay mad at you. She’ll force Ensure down your throat faster than you can say ‘anorexic.’” She placed her muffin carefully on her tray and cut it in half. Then she halved it again. And again. She continued until the muffin was nothing but a pile of crumbs.
“Are you going to eat that?” I asked. Willa gave me a sly grin. “Of course.” She popped a crumb in her mouth. Then she did it again, except this time, she let a second one fall on the floor. Then she smashed it with the bottom of her fake black UGG. It stuck to her sole and disappeared. For her next bite, she let the extra crumb fall not on the floor but behind her, into the hood of her sweatshirt. It was remarkable, really, that she managed to aim right every single time. She proceeded this way, alternating between floor and hoodie, until she’d destroyed over half her muffin and hidden most of the crumbs in her sweatshirt or under her shoe on the floor.
“You better start eating,” Willa said, reaching down to scratch her foot. She dropped a hunk of cinnamon topping into her jeans’ cuff.
“Oh, right,” I said. I broke off a tiny piece of muffin and held it in my hand. It was still warm.
“Where are you from?” Willa asked. “I’m from Worcester. That’s about an hour and a half from here.”
“Right. I’m from, um, Esterfall.” This girl was so chatty. How could she be so chatty?
She brightened. “Here? You’re from here? That is so cool!”
I wasn’t sure I agreed. “I guess,” I said. “How long have you been here?”
Willa shrugged. “Three weeks.”
“How long do you think you’ll stay?”
Willa shook her head. “I don’t know. They keep saying my insurance is going to run out, but Mary—she’s your therapist too, right?”
I nodded.
“Anyway, Mary said that I’d probably be able to get a scholarship and stay longer.”
“A scholarship?”
“Yeah, isn’t it funny they call it that?” Willa secreted a muffin chunk in her hood. “It’s like, I’m so good at my eating disorder they are going to give me a scholarship to get rid of it. Funny, right?”
I didn’t get a chance to respond because Kay stopped at our table. “Elizabeth,” she said, “please get started.” I brought the chunk I was holding to my mouth, but my throat closed and my taste buds shut down. It tasted like rubber. Kay stood by, watching.
Willa slid her napkin over the remaining crumbs on her plate. “Sometimes water helps,” she said, and poured me a glass. Kay marked something on my sheet. Why would she do that? Water doesn’t have calories. Why did it matter if I drank it?
Snack was supposed to be twenty minutes, but it felt like forty. By the time girls started to clear their trays and leave, I’d only eaten about a fifth of my muffin and taken one sip of lukewarm milk, which tasted like the carton.
When snack ended, Kay said, “Because it’s your first day, I’m not going to make you drink an Ensure, but starting tomorrow, you will be expected to eat your full portions.”
Willa picked up her tray. “She’s got it. Let’s go, Elizabeth,” she said. “Later, Kay.”
Kay stopped her. “Not so fast.” She picked up Willa’s napkin. Crumbs stuck to it and fell to the floor. “Willa, lift up your shoe.”
“No.”
Kay said it again, her voice steady. “Willa, lift up your shoe, please.”
“No!” A couple of girls turned around.
“Willa,” she said, her voice still calm but also with an edge. “Please lift up your shoe. Now.”
“Fine!” The entire bottom was coated with muffin.
Kay sighed. “Willa, we’ve talked about this. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to have a supplement.”
Willa’s impish, little-girl face contorted. She stared at Kay for a few seconds and turned bright red. Then she lost it. “I don’t want an Ensure! I hate you, Kay!” she said, kicking at the crumbs on the floor. “I hate everything!” And then she pushed out of the room, past the other girls waiting patiently to get checked. I just stood there, mouth open bigger than my muffin, wondering how the hell I ever got myself into this mess. And, more importantly, how the hell I was ever going to get out.
3
An hour later it was time for my medical intake. In a small room off the main hall, a stone-faced woman made me take off all my clothes except for my underpants. I put on a hospital gown and stood on the scale, the rubber surface cold on my bare feet. She shielded the paper with her hand when she wrote down the number. I tried to tell what it was based on her scribbling, but I couldn’t. Then she took my pulse lying down and standing up. I peed in a cup. She measured my height. She checked my blood pressure. And then she asked me questions about my weight that I didn’t want to answer.
“Lowest weight?”
I paused. “This morning. Ninety pounds.”
“Highest weight?”
Shameful, I wanted to say. That’s what my highest weight was. “A hundred thirty,” I muttered.
“When was this?”
“Eight months ago. Last February.”
“Do you purge?”
“Purge?” I stalled.
“Make yourself throw up after eating?”
I knew what she meant. I’d done that a few times to correct mistakes, like when I’d let myself have a spoonful of Dad’s ice cream in August. The worst time had been in June. Nobody else was home. I let down my guard for a minute and my brain shut off, and I stole a chocolate from the box of See’s Candies Dad had gotten for his birthday. They were my favorites—fat circles of marshmallow perched on caramel disks, the whole thing covered with dark chocolate.
I didn’t stop there. I ate the whole box—nine chocolates—wolfing them down so fast that after the third or fourth I didn’t even taste them. Afterward, my stomach bloated, and I looked up the candies online to see just how much damage I’d done. Each one had 80 calories and 4.5 grams of fat. That meant I’d just stuffed 720 calories and 40.5 grams of fat into my face. I was horrified. I ran to the bathroom in a total panic, stuck my finger down my throat, and puked into the toilet until my eyes watered and my mouth was sore. But I knew I hadn’t gotten rid of all of it. A hard ball of chocolate and caramel and marshmallow remained and was slowly dissolving in my stomach and turning into fat on my thighs.
Afterward I called my boyfriend Charlie and told him I needed to get a present for my mother and would he please come pick me up. He drove me to the mall and I marched right into Lord & Taylor and up to the candy counter. When the saleslady asked if I wanted a free sample, I said, “No. Thank you. Definitely not.”
Charlie perked up. “I’ll have hers,” he said, and ate two.
Once home, I replaced the empty box and no one was ever the wiser. From that point on, I made sure I didn’t go near food I really liked. Too dangerous.