Falling into Place(33)

Mostly.

Thanksgiving—surely that could be an exception. So much food that she couldn’t help herself, and she couldn’t stand feeling bloated. Christmas too, and Easter. Buffet outings. But other than that, she ate, and she kept it inside her.

That was perfect too, until one day she puked and there were little streaks of blood among the undigested food.

It was macaroni and cheese, she remembered. Little chunks of it, blood like sauce.

She was so terrified that she broke down entirely, sat against the wall and sobbed for a good half an hour, because three hundred people died every day from starvation, and here she was, trying to become one of them.

When the tears dried, she looked at herself in the mirror and swore she would never puke again.

Soon, though, she would go to a beach party and stare at the sky from the top of a tower of wishes. Soon they would be buying homecoming dresses, getting their hair done, arriving at the dance, and Kennie would tell them that she was pregnant. Soon she would watch Julia double her weekly supply of ziplock bags. Soon Liz would make out with Kennie’s boyfriend, go home, and make plans.

Soon she will hate what she sees in the mirror and try to change it the only way she knows how: two fingers down her throat, her dinner in the toilet.

Five days before she crashed her car, that’s exactly what she did.

She tore the kitchen apart. She sat on the white couch with the TV blaring, eating chips. She drank almost an entire liter of orange soda. There was a pecan pie in the pantry that she covered with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream and attacked with a fork. There was a plate of ribs from the restaurant down the street and an entire bowl of leftover ravioli from the Italian place in downtown Meridian.

She ate and ate and tried to keep it down.

How much shit can I hold in?

It was not a rhetorical question.

The answer: No more.

She set aside the Styrofoam container and the pie tin and the can of whipped cream and the empty ice cream carton and the soda bottle and the bag of chips, and she got to her feet. The floor creaked as it bore her weight.

Ten minutes later, she sat on the cold tiles, her head against the bathtub, too tired to move, too tired to ever move again. She thought of that day—it seemed like so long ago, seventh grade—when she had stared at herself in the mirror and made a promise she thought she would keep.

But that was the thing. It was a different time, when she kept promises. When she thought they were meant to be kept.

She knew better now.

She dragged herself upright and walked to the mirror. She stood, she stared at the girl in the mirror with eyes that held nothing at all, and she asked, “Am I beautiful yet?”

Beautiful like Julia, who was brave enough to be different—or used to be. Beautiful like Kennie, who saw how ugly the world could be but loved it anyway. Beautiful like anyone else, beautiful like everyone else. But she wasn’t, so she wanted to be so thin that everyone could see what she was like on the inside, all failing heart and shattering pieces.

No, Liz Emerson wasn’t beautiful, but soon she would be dead, and it wouldn’t matter anymore.



CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX


“Meridian Teen Injured in Car Crash”


Liam scrolls down his phone, opened to the Meridian Daily’s website. He scans the new article about Liz and the crash, and notices that he is mentioned in passing. “A classmate of the victim saw the crash and called the police.” The article blames the crash on icy road conditions. It states that Liz was—was—the soccer team’s captain and mentions that she scored the winning goal in the state championship last year. There are quotes about how Liz is a wonderful person, beautiful and always smiling.

Liam laughs under his breath and closes the tab. Superficial article for a superficial girl, but he doesn’t really believe it. It irritates him that they whitewashed the truth and called Liz Emerson wonderful because she was beautiful. She would have hated it too.


Unfortunately, everyone else in the waiting room also seems to be reading that article, and after a few minutes, Liam begins to catch pieces of conversation.

“A classmate? Who was it?”

“Kennie or Julia, obviously.”

“No, they didn’t know until after.”

“Maybe it was . . .”

“. . . or . . .”

Liam pulls his hood over his head and turns his face away, and prays that the average intelligence of his classmates will not increase within the next few minutes.