ch.2

College is probably the easiest place to have a Problem. You pass or fail with no emotionally-damaging effects to your teacher-either way he or she still gets a paycheck. You have dope heads all around, so it’s easy to get drugs if it’s your thing and, if you’re an alcoholic and underage, who cares? The parties on campus-full of underage Alcoholics In Training-still keep rolling. There is no designated lunch period, so the old excuse of “but I did already eat-you just weren’t here to see we eat” can fly no problem. Besides that, being in college means that you’re old enough to buy cigarettes (a great appetite suppressant, by the way; Never mind that you could get cancer and your skin could get all dry and gross and you end up looking like Ronald Regan!) and drink coffee (also an amazing suppressant) but you can  legitimately say you’re stressed/tired/over worked/etc. and if your parents are really nosey about your habits, you can just stay out of the house all day.

Argument No 2249: Why won’t Lill eat. Again.

McDonald’s is full, even at nine o’clock in the morning. Yawning cows and piggies stuffed so tight in their business suits and ties, looking like they might pop out with one more bite of their McFatty breakfast combo, sit all around us; underachievers who never finished high school, failure oozing out of their pores like pimplegrease, man the cash registers and deep fryers.

Lee’s mouth is full of his food (ohitsmellssogooditsmellssogood) and I sit across from him, picking at my yogurt and slowly sipping my water. Miranda is raving in my head, cursing and stomping around: after yesterday I shouldn’t be eating anything, not if I want to stay thin, to never turn into one of those fat cows who are sitting all around us.

“Baby, don’t you want some?” Lee pushes his Styrofoam tray across to me. The syrup drips through the paper thin pancakes and pools on the plate under the fake sausage patty and the plastic slab of hash brown. I stare at the plate, wanting it, wanting it so bad that I feel the ache in my heart telling me how much I want it. But I take a deep breath, feeling the rolls of my stomach pushing against my waistband.

“No, sweetie. You go ahead. I’ll eat something at school.”

            Lee rolls his eyes, trying to push the food closer to me, and I push it away, grimacing. “Lee, I don’t want it. I’m fine.”

            “Lil, you’re not fine, baby. Remember when we were in eighth grade and you left for three months? Remember that day that you came back? Remember who you told? Baby girl, I’ve been here for the entire thing, and I’m not letting you go back to that.”

            I can feel the anger boiling up inside of me, making me mad, and making my blood boil. Miranda is about to come out, like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Everybody watch out for the pea soup. Shutupmirandashutupmirandashutupmirandadon’tmakemedothisdon’tmakemedothis. Getting up, I focus on walking. One foot in front of the other. One step. Two steps. Three steps. Four. Running away. Yet again. Like I always seem to. Running away from anyone and everyone that has every cared about me and ever will. It seems sometimes, I think as I’m walking along the street, wondering why in the world I went along when Lee insisted that we both take one car, that I am always running: I run toward the destruction of myself, of my life, I run away from the pain and the screaming that sometimes comes from my throat, the chokedanimalsdyinginpaindyingintrapssosomeonecanhaveanicefurcoatforChristmas screams that leave me huddled in the back of my closet, stuffing the sleeves of my wintercoats into my mouth and wondering when this is all going to stop, if I’m going to have to die. That will be the ultimate act of running: The Last Race.

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            There were so many things, so many things avenues that seemed to be closed to me now. There were TV shows that I couldn’t watch, movies that I couldn’t see, things that I couldn’t talk about, places that I couldn’t go, even books I couldn’t read and music that I couldn’t listen to. It was as if I was living in a Ray Bradbury novel, but some government agency wasn’t the one that was editing what I could and couldn’t do: I was.

            Many people don’t understand the cutting. One day, when I went to the hospital and had the doctor (a man, probably not that good of an idea, people) give me an exam, he saw the neat, nice little rows of cuts that ran like the lines on a tree trunk up and down my leg. He raised an eyebrow. “What are those from?”

            “Self inflicted.”

            His eyebrows shot up so high they almost disappeared into the bushy thicket of his hair, “Ahh. Are you doing that anymore?”

            It was the same question that I got all the time. I got that question from my psychiatrist, sitting on her puke-yellow chair and staring at the cat figurine that sat right beside the door, perched on its haunches licking its paws. It was the question that I got from Lee when he took me out to the most expensive steak place in town and stared at I dissected my salad and roll. It was the question that all of my highschoolfriends greeted me with when they came home for the National Festival of Eating to the Point of Being Physically Ill, also known as Thanksgiving (the nation’s more “normal” people’s experiments with an eating disorder, in my opinion). It was what my father asked me when I bothered to answer the phone. It was what I read in my mother and grandparent’s eyes when I piled salad and the smallest possible piece of whatever they had fixed onto my plate. It was The Unasked Question: the question that made me remember that I was Broken, that I Had a Problem, in fact, Many Problems. It was the one thing, beside the black bands that I wore and the weighing that I endured, and the therapy sessions where I alternated between talkingtalkingtalking like a chatterbox and sitting and staring sulkily at the wall. Sometimes I just wanted to sit in my room and stare at the wall. Sometimes all I wanted to do was wrap up in a huge fuzzy blanket and sit and stare at the TV.

            “Hey, Lillie.” The voice is right beside my ear.

            I slip a little, the chain of the swings creaking, the ice slipping under my Converse. Grabbing onto the chains, I hiss and swing around, but my breath catches: Lee.

            “Your….uh…your mom said that you’d be here.” He runs his hands through his thick brown hair and smiles shyly up at me. I smile at him, speechless. “Do you, uh, want to go hang out? Get a, uh…milkshake or somethin’?” he stops for a second, and you can almost see the lightbulb go off in his head. He smacks himself. “Shit. I’m sorry, Lillie. I…”

            I raise my head and smile at him slowly, “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you cuss.”

            “You’ve only known me for…”he stops; you can tell that he doesn’t know how long it’s been.

            “Seven years.” I answer. “Since we were in kindergarten. Ms. Hopes’ class. You always ate the paste.” His eyebrows rise up and I grin. “Thought that I didn’t notice?”

            He looks confused. “No…I don’t know.”

            I stand up, “Yeah, Lee. I’d love to go get a milkshake.”

            I’m lying on the mattress staring at the ceiling when the doorbell rings. I groan, “Mom!” No answer. “Mom!!” Still no answer. “Damnit.” I haul myself up and, wrapping a blanket around myself, walk slowly outside and down the steps, taking one step at a time. “Who are you and what do you want?” I half-yell half-groan at the door.

            “Hey, Lilli.” Lee’s smile makes my knees weak. My vision goes black and I grab the doorframe, then through the blackness feel Lee’s arms wrap around me.

            “Lilli? Are you ok, baby?” his breath is hothotburningmyneckmakingmesweatmakingmewanthimmakingmyskinhot. I look up and smile, nod like a good girl.

            “Yeah, I’m ok, babe.”