NumberEleven: Goodnight, little detective.
I set my phone down and lean back into the couch.
The apartment is quiet. Kai’s door is closed. The night outside is calm. My brain is still loud but not sharp. More like…busy. Like it’s holding something it doesn’t know where to put.
I think about Harlow for half a second—just a flicker. Her in our doorway. Her laugh. The way she flinched when Kai called her.
Don’t go there, man.
Too messy. Not happening.
Because wanting is dangerous. It makes you careless. It makes you reach for things you shouldn’t. So I don’t reach. I just stare at the ceiling until my eyes start to burn.
And when sleep finally creeps in, I let it.
7
HARLOW
The first thing I learned about living on campus is that silence is a complete and utter myth. Even at six in the morning, the dorm has a pulse. A door closing down the hall. A shower turning on. Someone’s alarm screaming through a wall like the building is personally offended by sleep.
My eyes snap open anyway, because my body has decided we’re awake, and my body is rarely interested in my opinion. I stare at the ceiling for a long moment, waiting for the heaviness to roll back in.
It doesn’t.
The quiet in my room is the wrong kind of quiet—it’s the kind that makes the loud parts of my head echo. I get up before I can talk myself out of it. Pulling on a sweater and leggings with thick socks, I shove my hair into a messy knot on the top of my head that will end up looking more like a bird’s nest than anything else later. I grab my tote and slide my skates into it from their home in my closet.
Skating is the one place my brain doesn’t argue with me.
It can’t.
You can’t spiral when you’re balancing on blades, and the slightest tilt turns into a disaster. You can’t replay every bad moment of your life when you’re counting edges and listening for the scrape of steel against ice.
In a different time, before the therapists, psychiatrists, and nonstop doctor visits, the icewasmy therapy. But that was before.
Before I stopped eating to fuel my body and instead started to starve it. I thought it was fine, but I was anything but.
Before, I could skate for a two-hour practice and barely feel fatigued. After, I couldn’t make it through warm-ups without feeling dizzy. My skating got sloppy, and I kept falling, cutting out any and all chances of advancing my passion any further.
I thought things would get better after I told my parents that I just didn’t feel like skating anymore. That my truths would stay with me, hidden, but that didn’t happen.
The day before homecoming my junior year, I passed out at school. My parents were called, and all of my dirty secrets were put on display that day in the ER. How Tyler had started to make comments about the amount of food I ate. Which turned into texts suggesting I try to lose a couple pounds so I could wear this specific dress he liked for homecoming. Then ultimately threatening to break up with me if I let myself go. And when you are fifteen, dating a star player on the high school hockey team, who everyone sees as a golden boy, you convince yourself that the things he’s saying aren’t that bad.
So, I began eating less or making trips to the bathroom whenever I thought I had eaten “too much.” I had developed a terrible relationship with food, but I disguised it well enough that no one looked too closely. Untilthatday. The doctors and my parents had me finish high school online, cutting any and all contact with Tyler. Kai tore him to shreds as soon as he foundout, which, unfortunately, I wasn’t around to witness. Ever since, I’ve sworn off dating in general.
Looking back now, I realize that the outcome could’ve been much worse, and it’s taken a long time to make the progress that I have so far. Still, my brain whispers about calorie counts with every meal. It lies to me about my clothes, saying those that fit just right are too tight, that the ones three sizes too big are the perfect fit. Whenever I pass a mirror or a glass window that shows me too much of my reflection, I often avert my gaze. Some days, I just don’t have it in me to fight my old demons.
But other days, I’ve started feeling better. I don’t have to try on five different outfits, but that may be because I know what makes me feel more comfortable and simply buy the same things in all the colors available. I tend to stick to cooler tones, nothing vibrant that will draw more attention.
I know my journey to healing is truly just beginning, even at this point where I’ve made so much progress, but it’s a path I’m thankful to be on.
The rink sits on the edge of campus, tucked behind the athletic facilities like it belongs to the sports world more than the student world. The air outside is crisp enough to make my cheeks sting, which is a relief. Cold is honest. Cold doesn’t pretend.
The building is quiet, even for a Sunday. A few cars in the lot. No music. No crowds. No lights glaring. Just the faint hum of refrigeration that keeps the ice alive.
I swipe my student ID and step inside, the cool air greeting me. My shoulders drop without me telling them to. This is the closest thing I have to a reset button.
The lights are dim, the kind of low glow that makes everything feel softer. The ice is empty, completely smooth and untouched from the last pass of the Zamboni. My favorite kind. I go to the bench area, pull my skates from my tote, and sit. Theroutine is its own kind of comfort: unlacing sneakers, tugging on skates, tightening laces in a pattern my hands know by heart.
