It feels like it takes her ages to reach him. She notices footprints in the sand, a long winding path.
There is a person sitting cross-legged like a child where the prints stop. The dog nudges the face, and the person falls over.
At once, the dog walker recognizes that what she’s seeing isn’t a person at all. Not anymore.
The wind picks up, making her shiver, erasing the prints on the sand. The hair on the body’s head moves in the breeze so that for a second it looks alive again, and without thinking, she moves closer, as if she could possibly help. But when the wind stops, the body stills again, and there is no denying its lifelessness. There are icicles on its eyelashes. Its lips are blue.
The body isn’t wearing a coat. What was the person who used to be in there thinking, dressing like that this time of year?
Maybe they weren’t thinking. That recovery center brings all sorts to the island, people out of their mind on god knows what. In the end, her husband was on so many painkillers he’d have gone outside in his underwear without realizing it.
Or maybe, the dog walker thinks, the person who used to be in this bodywantedto die out here. The thought makes her angry, when she thinks of how badly her husband wanted to live, how badly she wanted him to live.
Then again, she understands longing for oblivion. She won’t do anything to hurt herself while their dog is still alive—she has to take care of him—but she’s considered what she might do after he’s gone.
Her hands shake as she dials 911.
32Amelia Blue
I’m counting. Counting the hours. Counting the minutes. Counting the seconds. Numbers are supposed to be objective, hard, absolute, but then how is it that seconds can feel like minutes, minutes can feel like hours, and hours can feel like days?
If even numbers are mutable, then perhaps nothing is solid.
Dr. Mackenzie watched me eat (“eat”) dinner. She didn’t suggest I try more than yogurt and strawberries, and she didn’t insist we discuss the meal. But she didn’t leave me alone, either. She watched like I was a riveting television show, barely blinking. Now, she’s drinking tea on the couch while I sit with a book at the kitchen counter, waiting for it to be late enough to go to bed without arousing any suspicion. It feels like holding my breath underwater, like if I wait much longer, my body will simply give out.
At 10:04 (on the dot might arouse suspicion), I stand and say, “I’m heading to bed.”
Dr. Mackenzie jumps to her feet, a soldier at attention. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything—just tap the button.”
I wonder if she’s bored with me. I haven’t exactly been a forthcoming patient, going through the motions with her every day, recycling the stories I’ve told other doctors before. A few times, I even told stories that weren’t mine, overheard after years of group therapy, just to fill the space between us, but I think she could tell I was lying.
I listen to her feet pad down the stairs, then head to my room. I run a bath and slip under the water. I haven’t shaved my legs since I arrived. They must have confiscated my razor when I wasn’t looking. I recall a scene inGirl, Interrupted(I read it in high school; didn’t everyone?) when Susanna Kaysen shaves her legs in front of a nurse. I imagine Dr. Mackenzie watching me shave the way she watches me eat, her eyes on the razorblade to make sure I don’t do anything I’m not supposed to do. Perhaps if I linger in the bath too long, she’ll know somehow and rush upstairs to check on me.
I turn the water on again, so hot that it steams. I try to focus on the temperature instead of the clawing inside me, the ache in my gut that wants me to sprint to the kitchen. I wrap my legs around each other like I’m tying myself down.
When I finally get out of the tub, my skin is bright pink from the hot water. I don’t bother drying myself, just pull on leggings and a T-shirt and rush out the door.
I open up the fridge and pull out cold chicken fingers. I don’t stop to close the door before shoving meat into my mouth. The breading is so dry that I gag as I swallow, but I keep going.
I read once that for some people, anorexia is in part due to a hormonal imbalance: They simply don’t experience hunger like everyone else.
I thought that was me. Georgia, I thought, was hungry enough for the both of us—for food, for fame, for drugs, for jewelry. The day the police found me and fed me McDonald’s, I ate only because it seemed to please the officer. I can still feel the greasy wet fries between my teeth, lukewarm, smothered in ketchup so sweet it made my tongue itch.
All my life, Iknewthat uncontrollable hunger was Georgia’s department, not mine. But over the past six months, everything I knew flipped on its axis, and a monster woke up in my belly, demanding food.
My hands shake as I open a cabinet and pull out a box of Rice Krispies, scooping handful after handful into my mouth, not bothering with milk. Some lemon cookie gets lodged in my throat. I stifle my cough—Dr. Mackenzie might hear.
My eyes dart around the room. Surely, if there were hidden cameras, the doctor would see what I’m doing and rush up the stairs to stop me. Then again, she might simply observe, like an anthropologist observing animal behaviors in the wild.
I hurry back to the bathroom, still steamy. How long since I got out of the bath? How much have I shoved into my body in such a small period of time? #Promia says it’s impossible to truly purge every calorie you eat. Evenif you throw up right away, your body, desperate for nutrition, will absorbsomething.
I catch my reflection in the dingy mirror. The skin on my face is blotchy, like I’ve broken out in hives. Even through my T-shirt, my stomach looks distended, almost as if I were pregnant.
I curl over the toilet, reaching my fingers past my lips, making a mess on the pristine white porcelain that Izabela cleaned earlier.
I sit back on my heels, my chest heaving like I’ve run a marathon, then stand and turn on the tap at the sink, splashing cold water on my face. Vomit doesn’t taste likevomitwhen you throw up so soon after eating. It just tastes like what you ate all over again. (That doesn’t make it any better, though it reminds me how wasteful it is to binge and purge, my disease itself a strange sort of privilege.)
I pull on my boots and my sweater and head to the terrace, tightening my scarf around my neck. Outside, I take a drag from my cigarette, my hands trembling. I lean back, situating myself entirely in the circle of light given off by the terrace’s lamp.
