“Ten.” Willa caressed her arm for a moment before pulling down her sleeves.
What are you supposed to say to something like that? If there was a correct response, I didn’t know it. So instead of saying anything, I squeezed her hand. She squeezed back and put her head on my shoulder. Margot patted both of us a couple of times, and then it was time for snack.
31
Wednesday was Halloween, which meant that I’d been at Wallingfield for an entire month. Not that you’d know it. The only thing that made October 31 different from all the other days was the rumor flying around that we’d all have mini candy bars on our lunch trays. And of course there was the joke Margot made at lunch. “Funny how so many girls decided to dress up as skeletons this year,” she’d said, totally straight-faced.
By now, the sting from Saturday had mostly worn off. When Mom’s tirade came to mind, I no longer felt an immediate stab of mortification. It had mellowed to a dull throb. Mom and Dad had called, but I’d made Jean take a message, and I’d never called back.
And then, after lunch, Nurse Jill found me, a white padded envelope in her hand. “This came for you yesterday, but we missed it somehow. I am very sorry.”
I wasn’t. For once I wouldn’t have the entire Wallingfield population staring at me. “Thanks,” I said, ripping open the top flap and handing it to her to check. Again, there was no return address and a lot of American flag stamps. Another mystery. She looked inside, nodded curtly, and handed it back. Reaching in, I pulled out a spiral-bound journal with a picture of the sinking Titanic on the front. What the hell? Was I supposed to be like a sinking ship? A disaster? Or was it that I was titanic, as in massive? If this was supposed to be a joke, I wasn’t laughing.
“Can I see?” Margot grabbed the book. She opened it and snort-laughed. Willa, right behind her, peeked over Margot’s shoulder, her face like a little heart.
Inside, printed at the bottom of each page, was a quote in cursive:
Seize the moment; remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.
—Erma Bombeck
I frowned. “Who’s Erma Bombeck?”
Of course Margot knew. “She’s a writer. My mom likes her. She’s actually pretty funny, which is shocking, because usually Mom has terrible taste.”
“Oh,” I said. How her parents didn’t recognize her intelligence was beyond me. Sometimes when I was with her, I felt small, but not like size 0 small. Stupid small.
She looked thoughtful. “That quote is sort of inspiring, in a twisted way.”
I didn’t find it inspiring at all. If I started to think of all the things I’d missed out on because of my stupid eating disorder—all the times that, Erma Bombeck would say, I’d skipped “dessert”—I was going to wish I had been on the Titanic.
But still. I flipped it over. Someone had highlighted the description on the back that read, 250 college-ruled pages. Weird, the highlighting. Why highlight that? A picture of me stammering like an idiot on the day Simone arrived flashed through my head. Besides Simone, there was only one person who knew I’d needed a new journal. And that I hated wide-ruled.
Tristan.
32
Why?
Why would Tristan, if it even was Tristan, send me anything? Charlie would hate him for it. He was big on loyalty—bro code, he called it. And number one was that friends’ girlfriends—and ex-girlfriends—were off-limits. When Charlie told me that one night while hanging out in his basement, the feminist in me said, “I get the girlfriend part. But exes, too? Girls aren’t property.”
“It’s not about the girl,” he’d replied. “It’s about friendship.”
Carefully, I spread what he’d sent me out on the bed. Every single present screamed Charlie. What was Tristan thinking? It was creepy. Stalker-esque even. Wrong on so many levels.
If Lexi were here, she’d help me figure this whole thing out. Instead, all I had was another postcard. It had come yesterday, in the mail. This one had a picture of a golden retriever with three tennis balls in its mouth.
Hi, ladies! Things are still good. I miss you all, though. Visiting Smith this weekend! Hoping they let me come back and finish the semester!! Fingers crossed! Miss you guys. xoxo Lexi I tucked the postcard into the back of the journal, parked myself on a couch in the common room, and used the first page to try to figure out my feelings. So far all I’d written was, WTF?????????
Nurse Jill tapped me on the shoulder. “Elizabeth?”
I turned around.
“Your mom is here to see you.”
A couple of girls looked up. They all remembered my mom. Who could forget her?
At first I didn’t move. But I knew she wouldn’t go away, not without a face-to-face. “Thanks.” I sighed and walked into the foyer, smoothing my hair and already regretting not changing into something a little nicer.
Mom was sitting on a bench, beige trench coat still on, looking tired and smaller than I remembered. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. With a jolt I realized her jeans were an old pair of mine she usually wore for painting or other messy chores. I looked at her fingernails. No manicure. No perfect hair. Something was wrong.
“Hi.” Her voice was soft.
Had something happened to Dad? To Grandma? “What’s wrong?” I said, voice shaking.
She read my face in a heartbeat. “Oh, no, honey. Everybody is fine. I just wanted to talk. Is that okay?”
If this were a phone call, I could have said I had group or something. But now she was sitting here, looking like she might burst into tears, and it wasn’t so easy to put her off. It scared me, seeing her like that. But I couldn’t say no. “I guess so.”
She surveyed my black pants covered in lint, my long-sleeved purple T-shirt, and my messy ponytail. I waited for the frown of disapproval. It never came. She just looked sad.
“I hated how we left things the other day. I came here to say I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” Sorry wasn’t enough.
She walked to the window, arms crossed over her chest. “I understand why you’re angry. I don’t blame you.”
I didn’t look at her.
“You know, when you came here, I was convinced that they’d keep you a few days and then send you home a few days later.”
So was I.
Out the window the tree branches, newly bare, scraped against one another in the wind. “But then they said you needed to stay longer, and even though I argued with them, a part of me knew they were right.”