Pretend She's Here(64)

“I didn’t have breakfast. Because of my stomach. And I was so nervous …”

She checked the drip going into my veins. The bag was pretty much empty. She wrote some notations on a chart. “Your temp is normal,” she said. “And your other vital signs are fine. I’d like to keep you overnight.”

I nearly moaned. “I’m fine,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. “I just want to go home.”

She stared at me as if she knew I was lying. Had she seen the news with my story featured? Were there bulletins and alerts, did people at the hospital keep up with missing children? Was she recognizing me even at this moment?

But she didn’t, or she wouldn’t have smiled. Seeing her capitulate, give up her suspicions and decide to believe me, made me feel that Emily really died. And she was never coming back.

“I’m going to release you, Lizzie. But I’m worried. I want you to see a therapist. That’s the price of my letting you go home now. I’ll give your mother some names. And you’re going to come to my office in a few days for a checkup.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And don’t skip breakfast anymore.”

“It’s the most important meal of the day,” I said.

Mrs. Porter was waiting outside the exam room for me. While Dr. Dean signed my discharge papers, Mrs. Porter removed Carole’s CD necklace from my neck. I felt her cool fingers undo the clasp, then replace it with the anchor chain she’d obviously taken back from Carole. She supported me, arm around my shoulders, just like a loving mother, as we walked past my friends. Without a word, she handed Carole her necklace.

Casey reached out, to brush my fingers with his, but I kept my hand in my pocket. I was shaking so hard, I couldn’t let myself look at him. I would have flown into his arms if I had.

I stared straight ahead as I walked out the hospital door, through the parking lot, into the minivan, into what felt like the end of my life.





It was easy for them to keep me home from school. Mrs. Morton and the entire administration thought Lizzie was obviously sick, and she needed to rest and recuperate.

Mrs. Porter locked me in my room. She didn’t come downstairs once. They didn’t feed me for an entire day. The steeple clock’s chimes reminded me.

At first I wasn’t hungry. Even if I had been, I wouldn’t have given them the satisfaction of eating. I did feel a certain agony, though. I worried that I’d pushed Mrs. Porter over the edge. She’d drive to Black Hall to stab my mother and leave me to rot in this cinder block dungeon.

Soon my stomach began to growl. It grumbled and gnawed, and the harder I tried not to think about it, the more I did. A few hours without food isn’t that long, I told myself. Explorers, people lost on mountains or in the woods, went much longer than that. I’d seen the movie Into the Wild with Mick and Anne, and I thought of how Chris McCandless had stayed in his bus in the Alaska bush for months, not eating.

Then again, he wound up dying of starvation.

My namesake, St. Emily de Vialar, deprived herself of food because the poor didn’t have enough to eat. Monks went on long fasts. In church, we said “offer it up.” Meaning: Offer up any suffering to the greater good—like world peace or finding a missing girl. I offered up my hunger to my mother’s safety. And to my family finding me. Was that selfish? I was too hungry to care.

If I thought I had been weak and wobbly onstage, it was nothing compared with this. I started to hallucinate. I became convinced that my mom was dead, and that I was going to die here alone. I’d never see another person, never see my family. Casey must have thought my disappearance negated our pact. He wouldn’t come for me.

By the time the door finally clicked open, I was lying under the covers, whimpering.

“Em.”

I rolled over, saw Chloe standing there with a bowl of soup. She walked slowly toward the bed, being careful not to spill it. She sat down beside me and waited for me to sit up.

“Here,” she said, handing me the bowl. “It’s tomato, your favorite.”

And it was—Emily’s. Lizzie’s favorite had been chicken and rice.

My hand trembled as I tried to hold the spoon. When I touched the metal to my mouth, my teeth chattered so much the hot liquid spilled down the front of my nightgown. Chloe grabbed a wad of tissue and dabbed it off me.

“Eat fast,” she said. “You need your strength.”

I put the spoon down and used both hands to drink from the bowl. It should have tasted delicious, but it made me retch. I had to wait, let my stomach settle, before trying again. Then I thought: arsenic.

“Is this supposed to kill me?” I asked.

“No,” Chloe said. “I made the soup myself. Well, I opened the can. My parents just left—they had to go to a meeting at the school, to talk about you. But I don’t know how long they’ll be gone.”

“What about me?” I asked.

“About what happened in the auditorium. You know, everyone’s asking, ‘What’s wrong with Lizzie?’”

“How are your parents going to answer that?”

She seemed agitated; she checked her iPhone. “They’ve got it all figured out. The same old thing about how traveling wore you down, and you got that virus, and you’re so drained and ‘emotionally exhausted’; that’s what they’re going to say. And they’ll say you have to get treatment, that ‘Uncle Jim’ the doctor is arranging for you to go to a hospital. They’re not sending you back to school.”