“Right,” Edward agrees. “Is this what American summer camps are like?” he asks as we crush dead leaves beneath our feet with each step. “At Choate, I had a couple of classmates who went on and on about sleepaway camp.”
“I wouldn’t know.” I rub my hands together. In between words, I count my steps, as though the numbers are breadcrumbs I’m leaving behind to find my way back. “The closest I came to sleepaway camp was spending July at a treatment center when I was fifteen.”
Edward laughs like I’ve made a joke. I join in as though I don’t remember how they punished patients with isolation if we didn’t drink our allotment of Ensure with each meal. When they sent me home in August, I hated the new shape of my inner thighs, my breasts that were a size larger than they’d been before. I fantasized about carving the new pounds off me like a butcher.
It’s less windy the farther we get from the water. The mystery building in the moonlight turns out to be an oversize barn made of cedar shingles, with floor-to-ceiling windows like the cottages. I can make out the silhouettes of an exercise bike and an elliptical machine, looking ghostly in the darkness. I see a swimming pool on the other side of the building, covered up for the winter.
“At least they don’t make you do your cold plunge out there.” I shiver. I read once that when people remove the covers from their pools in the spring, they find creatures that slipped beneath the water in winter: mice and birds and rabbits; even, somehow, deer.
I reach for the handle on the sliding glass door, wincing as my hand makes contact with the metal latch. I’m not surprised that it isn’t locked. I’ve spent enough time around wealthy people to know how careless theycan be. Once inside their gated communities, in their apartments guarded by doormen, they don’t bother with deadbolts, leave their jewelry strewn on countertops and hang priceless art in their bathrooms. This area—the Hamptons—is famous for waterfront mansions without alarm systems, unlocked Mercedes in grocery store parking lots, designer shoes left behind at the beach. Spend enough time in rarefied air and you start to think the air itself is protecting you.
“What are you doing?” Edward hisses.
I don’t answer before stepping inside.
24Amelia Blue
I tiptoe past the treadmills and elliptical machines. It feels, somehow, colder in this room than it does outside. There’s a light switch by the door, but I rely on the thin stream of light coming from my phone. I wonder if any patients have snuck into this building before, to work out in secret. Some clinics forbid people like me from exercising. #Proana Twitter is full of workarounds.
Two sides of the room are made of glass: the sliding door we just walked through facing the woods, the back facing the pool. I find myself thinking about the story of the three little pigs, imagining a big bad wolf huffing and puffing to blow this house down. Would this building collapse like twigs and hay or hold fast like bricks? Were the architects who designed all these glass structures confident their walls would never shatter, come hurricane or blizzard or cyclone?
One of the solid walls is covered by full-length mirrors. I catch sight of my reflection in the darkness: the body that isn’t the shape or size it should be, the wrong nose I was born with.
The opposite wall has two doors, one on each side. I take a deep breath and head toward the one to my left first.
“Amelia?” Edward asks hesitantly.
I take another step, then wrap my hands around the doorknob and twist it open. I hold my breath as I shine my phone’s light into the room on the other side.
A bathroom. Not at all what I was looking for.
I pull a piece of gum from my pocket and fill my mouth with oversweet fake watermelon, then close the door behind me and try the one on the right.
It’s locked.
I’m prepared for this. I reach into my pocket and take out my kit.
“What’s that?” Edward whispers.
Georgia used to lock herself out of the house all the time. She couldn’t be bothered with details like keys. It didn’t matter (she said) because she knew full well how to pick a lock. She taught me so that I could manage when she was too out of it.
When I hear the latch click into place, I think two words I’m not sure I’ve ever thought before:Thanks, Mom.I turn the knob, feeling like a contestant on one of those old-fashioned game shows, hoping that whatever’s on the other side of the door will fulfill their wildest dreams. A new car, a million dollars, a romantic getaway.
A room whose walls are lined with cold metal file cabinets.
I step inside.
“Amelia, seriously, what are you doing?” Edward asks.
It takes all my willpower to turn away from the cabinets to face him.
“Why are you here, really?” I ask. My hands are so cold I can barely feel my fingertips. I cross my arms, tucking my hands against my chest.
“What?”
“You said you haven’t had a drink in months.”
Edward blinks. It’s dim in here, but in the light reflected from my phone, I can see his eyes are very bright.
