Zoe Letting Go (21 page)

“How’re you feeling, Zoe?” Devon asked.

“Fine.”

Did they tell Devon about my panic attack? I hate the idea. The last thing I need is extra attentiveness from her.

I returned to my solitary perch at the table and focused on the wet raft of cornbread, alternately preparing for and avoiding the task ahead of me. After nearly three weeks, I still can’t adjust to the sensation of packing such large amounts of food down my throat. It has indelicate effects on my digestion. Worst of all, what if I get used to it? It is inconceivable that I will eat a tenth as much as I’m eating here once I return to normal life. I watched the food on my plate carefully, as though it might—if given the proper encouragement—evaporate all on its own.

Spoiler alert: It didn’t.

Out of habit and politeness, I waited for everyone to return to her seat before I began eating. Not that it mattered here. (I also cover my mouth when I yawn or sneeze, hold the door for others, put my napkin in my lap, and leave the bathroom in spotless condition. Again, not that it matters here.)

Caroline sat down next to me, followed by Jane. The smell of eggs was overpowering. For some people, food is a comforting thing—a way to soothe bad moods and feel better instantly, if temporarily. But for me, it doesn’t work this way. For me, a bite of ice cream is not just a bite of ice cream, but also a threat: the threat that I’ll want more ice cream than just that one bite, and the threat that I’ll keep wanting it and wanting it until I can think of nothing except ice cream, and about what would happen if I ate the ice cream, and about how disappointed I’d be with myself afterward.

Some people find it impossible to be unhappy while eating. I suppose I am the exact opposite.

Waiting for the others to return proved a mistake. As soon as Brooke returned to the table, a horrifying charade of consumption played itself out before me: She bent down and crammed food into her mouth, throwing back gulps of water to push it down her throat. Jane and Caroline seemed thoroughly accustomed to the performance, and they embarked upon their own strange eating rituals without a second glance at their tablemate.

I shrunk into my velvet seat, smushing my cornbread into the shape of a pancake with a spoon. I cut the pancake into eighths, then lifted a slice to eat. The voyage from my plate to my mouth seemed to take years. Between Brooke and the cornbread, there was nothing in my field of vision that didn’t act as a potential enemy.

When it arrived, the cornbread tasted like wet paper towels and undercooked eggs. I swallowed and put my fork down.

Except for Brooke, the other girls seemed to have similar opinions.

“At least the portions are getting smaller,” Jane was telling Caroline. “They’ve been getting progressively smaller every day. Have you noticed?

I looked down at the football-sized omelet. Was it smaller? It didn’t look smaller. It looked mammoth.

But Caroline concurred. “It’s hard to detect because the change is so gradual,” she said sagely.

This didn’t make sense to me. The more we ate, the more food our stomachs could handle. Why would the portions be getting smaller? I gazed longingly at the other table, where Victoria was whipping Haley’s hand with a stringy piece of caramelized onion.
Never again,
I told myself, cursing my seat. I am
never
going to be late again. Brooke furiously speared her last chunk of omelet and chewed at least thirty times. When finished, she wiped her mouth and stared straight at me through smudged glasses.

“Stop staring,” she said.

“What?”

“Stop staring at me.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You were. You’re
always
looking at me.”

“I—”

“You look at me as though
I’m
the one who’s a freak,” she went on. “You, of all people! Given
your
history, I can’t bel—”

Brooke stopped on a dime and shut her mouth tight.

“
My
history?”

“Never mind.”

“No, tell me just what you mean by
my
history!”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Brooke was the weirdo, not me.

Caroline and Jane stared at me with undisguised contempt.
They planned this
, I thought. They saved the seat specifically to torture me.

Was I imagining it?

Ignoring Brooke’s speech, I bent to face my waterlogged cornbread and gelatinous eggs, wishing I could hide beneath the table like a five-year-old at Thanksgiving. Even my coffee was cold. Somehow I’d have to coax myself into swallowing the entire heap with the eyes of my tablemates trained curiously on me.

A white envelope was visible through the slot. I squinted harder. Was it an envelope I’d seen before? Impossible to say. Viewed through a quarter-inch opening in a small box, all standard white envelopes look the same. I straightened up and flicked a piece of lint off the top of the red box as I waited outside for my session to begin. By now I’d learned a few things about the red box:

One, that it was easier to discern the contents if I kept one eye closed while I peeked inside.

Two, the box never contained more than one envelope at a time.

Three, the envelope was always positioned facedown, with the address hidden from sight. These facts, so far, had not been disproven.

The door swung open. I nodded to Alexandra, whose appearance every day was another invitation to play the color game. Today the game was hard, because she wore no belt, no jewelry, no hat, and no scarf. For shoes, she’d selected simple white leather sandals. As we took our respective seats in the bleach-white room, I wondered if Alexandra had—was it possible?—forgotten to add any color at all to her getup. I hoped not. If so, I’d have to revise the rules of the game. And I really hate changing the rules of a game.

“Tea? Water?” she offered.

“No, thanks,” I said. We assumed our positions on the chair and couch.

Alexandra smiled and folded her hands across one knee. The gesture revealed what I’d been searching for: Ten nails were painted electric tangerine. The color of deer-hunting caps.

We faced off in silence for a moment while I squirmed for a way to broach the subject.

“Have you ever seen a nature documentary about Africa?” I asked, still distracted by her nails.

“More than one,” she said. “Probably a hundred. I have two boys, so …”

“So you know the territory. Nature movies were the only common ground I had with my brother, as far as TV-watching went. So we watched a lot of them together. I can still tell you everything you need to know about bush elephants and cheetahs and African hunting dogs. And hyenas, too. Did you know they eat dry bones? Hyenas?”

Alexandra shook her head.

“Anyway you’ve seen those movies, so you know what happens to zebras.”

“Remind me,” Alexandra said.

“Okay. Every nature documentary about Africa has a zebra scene in it,” I said. “Or a variation of a zebra scene. It’s the one where you see a pack of nice, gentle zebras going down to the river for a drink of water. Usually they get a wide shot of the zebras so you can see how many there are.”

“I seem to remember scenes involving zebras and rivers,” Alexandra said.

“And alligators,” I said. “Don’t forget the alligators. Everything starts out fine until one poor zebra chooses the wrong spot along the riverbank for his afternoon drink. For this part, the camera zooms in close. Too close. We watch the zebra bend his long neck down to the water’s surface, thirsty after a stressful day on the open plains. His nostrils flare in the heat. Suddenly, without warning—BAM—an alligator leaps up from beneath the water and clenches its jaws around the zebra’s neck.”

I shivered.

“Predator meets prey,” Alexandra said.

“And then the alligator is literally eating the zebra in midair. Can you imagine? Being eaten in midair?”

Alexandra paused, squinted, and then shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “I just tried. I can’t imagine it.”

“Well, I can. Easily.”

“Do you identify with the zebra or the alligator?

“The zebra,” I said. “Jesus. What do you think I am, a psycho? Who identifies with the alligator?”

She ignored my question. “So you feel like a prey animal,” she said. “Vulnerable. Tell me why.”

Why
was an easy question to answer. I explained to her about the breakfast incident. About the strange things Brooke had said to me. As I did this, a flicker of unease crossed Alexandra’s face, and her jaw grew taut.

“Would you mind telling me again what Brooke said?” Alexandra asked, flipping to a fresh sheet on her legal pad. “Her exact words, if you can? Verbatim.”

Her tone was different. Like a cross-examining attorney.

“It’s hard to remember the exact words,” I said. “I wasn’t taking notes or anything. The whole thing took me by surprise. But she said, I think, that how dare I look at her as though she were crazy, given my history.”

“‘Given your history’?” Alexandra repeated.

I nodded.

Looking even more perturbed, she scribbled something down on her notepad, then emphatically crossed it out and scribbled something else. Ten neon orange nails flew above the page. She paused, pen hovering, and looked up at me.

“This isn’t the first time that you’ve had a hostile interaction with one of the girls,” she said. “The first was when Caroline asked you to justify your presence at Twin Birch. The second time was when Brooke accused you of stealing her dress. The third was when she accused you of staring at her in a way that made her uncomfortable.”

“
Hostile interaction
makes it sound mutual,” I said. “It wasn’t mutual.
They
were the aggressors.”

“Do you see a pattern?”

“Between what?”

“Between these interactions. A commonality.”

I did not see a commonality.

“Each time you’ve had a conflict with Brooke or Caroline,” Alexandra said, “it’s because one of them appears to feel bothered by your presence, or is suspicious of you. And each time, from your perspective, the conflict seems completely unmotivated and random.”

“Are you saying that I’ve been threatening them?”

“No, no. I’m saying that, for whatever reason, you strike them as a threatening presence.”

“I don’t see how this is my fault,” I said. “They’re both hypersensitive.”

“Be that as it may,” Alexandra said, “can you think of any reason why Brooke or Caroline would see you as a threat?”

A fiery pit was developing in my stomach. A distress signal.

“No.”

“Let’s go at this from a different angle. Let’s revisit that first conflict, when Caroline asked you why you were at Twin Birch. Do you think she was genuinely curious about the reasons why you might be here?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“And are you?”

“Am I what?” I said.

“Curious,” Alexandra replied. “Have you asked yourself why you’re at Twin Birch?”

All the goddamn time, you moron
, I wanted to scream. I controlled myself.

“It wasn’t my decision to come here,” I said quietly.

“That might be another reason to think about the question. A very good reason, maybe.”

Her tone had the air of conveying a lot of information in a coded manner. Too much information for me to absorb. Information that I was not equipped to understand.

Alexandra continued, “This might be harder for you than you think, but I think it’s also going to be easier. For example, your letters to Elise—”

“What does Elise have to do with Brooke?” I interrupted.

“Quite a lot.”

“No,” I said. “There is no connection between those two things.”

“You seem upset that I’ve suggested a link,” Alexandra said.

She leaned forward, hands clasped in the prayer position. “Zoe,” she said, her voice alarmingly gentle. “You’re here at Twin Birch for a reason.”

Nothingness
.

“Have you talked to my mother?” I asked.

“Many times.”

“And she said—”

“You’re here for a reason, Zoe. I need you to try and understand that.”

Her lipstick was freshly applied. In the white office, it looked like a spot of blood on snow. Alexandra got up and fetched a
blanket from the cabinet—I guess I was shivering. I hate her ability to notice every little thing. I hate being watched like a lab rat. She put the blanket next to me on the sofa. I did not touch it.

“This is something we can work on together,” she went on. “Understanding why you are here.”

There’s nothing the matter with me. Why can’t anyone see that?

A knock at the door alerted us to the arrival of another patient.

“That’s Jane, and she’s early,” Alexandra said. “Please, Zoe, sit down. We have a few more minutes.”

“No,” I said, already throwing my full weight against the door. “We don’t.”

I opened my eyes
to a sky the color of concrete. A dismal day for a dismal girl.

My legs have changed shape. A few weeks ago, I could stand upright, feet together, and feel a gap between my thighs as broad as a cell phone. Now, I’d be lucky to fit a quarter into the same area. My stomach has acquired a soft bulge which makes me look as though I’m three months pregnant. That’s not a figure of speech. When you gain weight quickly, it all goes straight to your stomach and redistributes over time. I’ve stopped looking in the mirror when I brush my teeth or wash my face at night. What’s the point? I know what I look like. There is physical matter where there used to be air.

I see it in other girls, too. Caroline’s elbows are no longer sharp enough to cut butter. The brittleness has vanished from Haley’s face.

Other changes have occurred. There are fewer chattering teeth. When did it peter out? I don’t know; my own teeth never chattered. I was never thin enough for that. But the rest of the patients were, and it occurred to me as we warmed up this morning that the sound had diminished to barely anything. Instead of crustaceans scrabbling across a rocky beach, there was quiet. Not even the sound of a lost hermit crab or two.

I’ve developed a writing callus on my right middle finger. Composing long letters to Elise has created a bump big enough to alter the silhouette of my hand. I’m expanding in every physical dimension. Inch by inch, day by day.