“Is she okay?” Amelia asks.
“I don’t know.” The words get caught in my throat.
I don’t know if she’s still in a coma.
I don’t know if she woke up with brain damage, memory loss, blindness.
I don’t know if she remembers me.
I doubt she wants to.
43Amelia Blue
Edward looks different somehow, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s slouching, his shoulders hunched, as though perfect posture hadn’t been drilled into him since birth. I recall the story he told me our first night together about dropping cake at the queen’s feet. For a second, I can see the boy he used to be, his chin tucked into his chest, his eyes downcast and solemn. I think he’s about to tell me more about his girlfriend, some detail about her smile or the way she laughed, but he surprises me by saying, “You don’t look like you’ve put on any weight since we met.”
“Where did that come from?” I ask.
Dr. Mackenzie still won’t let me see the number on the scale, not that it matters. At home, when I can see the scale for myself, I sometimes think it’s a trick. Maybe I’m imagining the number, along with the size of my jeans, my bras, my T-shirts. Sometimes I think, despite the years I’ve spent studying my body, I have no idea what I really look like.
“I was just thinking—after last night—maybe you need to be someplace that specializes in eating disorders.”
“I told you, I need to behere.”
“But you already know what happened to your mother here. She came for rehab, she couldn’t stay sober. It happens all the time. It’s happening to us right now. You’re still bingeing and purging. I almost OD’d.”
“Don’t you think that’s strange?” I fold my legs beneath me, sitting up straight as if to make up for Edward’s slouching. “I’ve been in treatment before. They don’t usually give you the freedom to hurt yourself.”
“For what we’re paying, it’s not like they can lock us up.”
“Theydidlock you up, remember?”
“Only because that’s what Anne would’ve wanted and she’s the one footing the bill.”
“Okay, but that’s sketchy, too. It’s not in your best interests to do what your sister wants just because she’s the one paying for your treatment. It’s unethical.”
“This place must be doing something right to have the reputation it does.”
“Maybe all they’re doing right is tricking rich people.” In my head, I hear Georgia’s voice trilling,The best care money can buy,as though the expense itself was proof of efficacy. “Plus there were the people I saw in the woods—the man restraining the woman.”
“That was the light playing tricks on you.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
Maybe someone held Georgia, just like that woman in the woods, until Georgia would’ve done anything to feel free again, even if it meant sacrificing her sobriety. Maybe that’s why she left the property, searching for drugs.
“I knowIdidn’t see anything.”
“You weren’t looking!” I manage to stop myself from shouting, but I’m exasperated. Why won’t Edward at leastconsiderthat this place is sketchy? Then it hits me. “You don’t want to investigate because you’re scared of being caught and having them take whatever’s left of your pills.”
“That’s not—” Edward begins, but I keep speaking, my certainty rising with each syllable.
“You would choose your addiction over anything and anyone else. How else can you explain why you got behind the wheel with your girlfriend in the car?”
At once, I can’t bear to look at Edward’s handsome face. Another addict who let down the people he was supposed to care about.
After all, last summer, the night of the accident, Edward was with his girlfriend in a beautiful place. It was, ostensibly, a good night. Nothing was wrong, and yet everything was wrong, and so he drank.
I swallow a sigh. It doesn’t matter if this place is sketchy. Georgia didn’t need a catalyst to give up her sobriety, any more than she did all the times she’d used before. She fell off the wagon time and time again because the sun rose in the east, snow fell when it was cold, she woke up on a day with ayin it. Georgia was no different from Edward, despite the fact that theysurely have nothing else in common: Nothing was wrong, and yet everything was wrong—just as it had been every day of her life before she came here.
