“She’s also your housekeeper.”
They must pay well here, to make a registered nurse clean up after me. Well, good for Sascha.
“And the chef doubles as your bodyguard?”
Andrew answers before Evelyn can. “Please, Florence. There’s no need for things to get messy.”
He’s standing so close that I can feel his breath when he speaks, but hedoesn’t touch me. His face hovers over mine. In another context, I’d think he was about to kiss me.
I shake my head like this was all so ridiculous.
“Fine.” I sit back on the deep couch. “But I’m not answering any more questions.”
Andrew moves so I can see Evelyn’s expressionless face once more.
“We can sit in silence if you’d like, though I don’t think it would be the most productive use of our time together.”
I roll my eyes, determined to keep quiet for as long as it takes. I wait for Evelyn to ask some other question, or to get hungry or thirsty or tired. But she just sits there, holding my gaze with her never-blinking stare like she’s trying to hypnotize me.
After a few minutes—feels like hours—my leg begins to itch. And then I sneeze, and then I have to blow my nose. Then I have to pee. Then I start pacing, careful to keep my distance from Evelyn so she won’t threaten to sedate me again. What kind of rehab tries to drug you? Then I turn on some music, because the silence is deafening.
“Would you like to stop for the day?” Evelyn asks. She has to shout to be heard.
“Yeah,” I say. Her eyes are the kind of ice blue you can almost see your reflection in. “Let’s stop.”
15Amelia Blue
“Let’s start with this question.” Dr. Mackenzie clasps her hands over her knee. “Why do you think you restrict?”
“If photographs of your most awkward moments were splashed across trashy magazines by the time you were in elementary school, you might be worried about how you looked, too.”
Not only was I born with the wrong nose but (apparently) I grew the wrong hair, too. When I was twelve, Georgia took me to get highlights, complaining to the stylist that my dark hair clashed with my pale skin. I spent all of seventh grade waiting for the terrible stripes on my head to grow out. The next year, it was a chemical straightening treatment.
Eventually, I was no longer famous enough (rather, my parents were no longer famous enough) to qualify for even the Star Tracks section ofPeoplemagazine, but there were still plenty of blogs and fan sites that tracked the lives of celebrity children almost exclusively, showing off, with wicked glee, the chubby little girl who didn’t know better than to smile for the camera and, later, the pimply preteen whose bad posture added ten pounds to her frame. In the comments, people expressed their condolences, as though not inheriting my parents’ good looks and speedy metabolisms were the real tragedies of my life. Unlike the rest of my generation, I never understood aboutgood anglesandfinding my light.
“That must have been difficult,” Dr. Mackenzie says, but I know she doesn’t mean it. She’s the kind of beautiful that doesn’t have a bad angle, the sort of person who can consider makeup and diets superficial even as she turns heads every time she walks down the street.
Half the time when someone befriended me, it was only to get a photo they could sell later. When I got to grad school and people talked about thefriends they’d had since kindergarten, I nodded along as though I’d built lasting relationships, too.
Dr. Mackenzie adds, “I imagine it’s not uncommon among children of celebrities. Your parents spend their lives—their careers—seeking out the spotlight, but you’re born into it, never given a choice in the matter.”
There are, of course, endless videos and pictures of my parents on the internet. My father, the sort of skinny that would be gawky on anyone else, looking strung out and dangerous. His every move was serpentine, his fingers flying over the bass, his hair buzzed short and dyed orange for a music video.
Somehow, in every photograph Georgia looks the same, and not only because she never stopped dressing like it was 1992. As she aged her stomach grew less taut, the skin on her upper arms turned crepey, but her actualweightremained the same. And unlike me, she walked with her shoulders thrown back, like she was proud of every step she took.
I shift my gaze from Dr. Mackenzie to the wall of windows behind her, retracing the spins I took down the rabbit hole last night. Normally, I spend my time online creeping around the #proana and #promia corners of the internet. I’ve certainly never made contact with a Georgia fan. Over the years, they’ve attempted to contact me, sometimes quite literally: When I was little, there were fans who showed up at school drop-off and hugged me tight, like they couldn’t believe they were in the presence of my DNA.
It’s snowing lightly outside, not enough to stick but pretty as a postcard nonetheless, the front of which would haveWish You Were Herescrawled across it. There’s a fire burning in the fireplace, but the wall of windows creates the illusion of being outdoors so that when I exhale I almost expect to see my breath.
“Is that why you feel safer restricting?” Dr. Mackenzie prompts. “For more flattering pictures on the internet?”
I try to imagine how Georgia would react to a reductive question like that (Is that why you do drugs, so you can always be the life of the party?).
I clutch my coffee mug like a stuffed animal. Dr. Mackenzie leans back in her seat, making herself larger like they say you should when confronted with a bear or mountain lion on the hiking trails back home. I always thought I would get eaten immediately.
“I restrict because of patriarchy, classism, fatphobia, sizeism, sexism, misogyny.” I rattle off the words like I’m reading from a manual. “We live in a fucked-up world.” I slouch and my stomach curls inward, a C shape. Hollow. Empty.
“Yes, we do,” Dr. Mackenzie agrees.
