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She’s in trouble. Again.
Cristina Cadell’s words about Mom swirl around in my mind like a spinning top.
The burning in my chest returns. It feels like anger.
What if she’s still alive and got herself into some kind of trouble with that guy? Why should I, the child she abandoned for someone else, be the one who has to extricate her from whatever mess she got herself embroiled in? I suffered so much in the aftermath of losing her as a teenager. And for what? So she could carry on an affair?
Cristina is gone. Nobody at Better Horizons could direct me to Mom. I have no idea how to find her to warn her, if she’s still alive. Why am I the one tasked to solve this impossible riddle?
I pick up her charm bracelet off Eddie’s nightstand, staring at it, the engravings, the small scratch in the corner, trying to remind myself that I don’t know for sure if anything Cristina or Joan said is true.
I wish there were someone who could help shed light on what happened. And then it comes to me—Pearl, Mom’soldest friend in LA, who still sends me a birthday card every year. When Mom first moved here to go to UCLA for graduate school, she and Pearl were roommates. Pearl might know if Mom was seeing someone other than Dad back then.
Sarah appears by Eddie’s bedroom door, startling me.
“I had a nightmare,” she says. “I’m scared to go back to bed.”
Eddie is passed out and snoring next to me.
“Want me to go with you?” I ask her.
She nods. I get up and follow her through the hall to her room. She lies down on her lavender sheets, and I squeeze in on her twin bed.
“I’m scared I won’t know how to spell the words tomorrow,” she says.
“Try taking a deep breath through your nose and letting it out of your mouth slowly,” I say.
She takes my hand in one of hers, holding her blanket with the other, and closes her eyes.
I watch her take a deep breath in, her tiny chest going up and down, and think about how my mom used to lie next to me in bed when I was a scared little girl.
Tears begin to swell in my eyes, so I also take a deep breath. And for just a second, the butterflies disappear.
CHAPTER11
January 1998
MEALS ATBETTERHorizons took place in a large dining room at a wooden, rectangular table. All the girls had assigned seats with name cards and were sandwiched between counselors to help them get through the meal. Even Emily, who refused all food, was still required to attend.
Eating in front of others is one of the most feared rules to break for those who suffer from eating disorders. Normalizing this process through exposure therapy lessens the anxiety surrounding it. To achieve complete recovery, one needs to be comfortable eating around others.
At Better Horizons, each girl’s meals were prepared based on their particular caloric needs. Some girls needed more food than others because their bodies were in a hyper-metabolic state. This happens after someone has restricted food for an extended period, and their body becomes used to rationing energy for life-saving functions like pumping the heart to stay alive.
When that same person suddenly begins to increase their caloric intake, their metabolism speeds up in response to the flood of energy. During this period, their metabolism maygo into overdrive, and they often need far more food than they did before just to maintain their weight, let alone gain weight.
The first meal I went to after Dr. Larsen told me she had extended my stay was different from the ones before when I’d eaten every bite on my plate. ED was enraged that compliance hadn’t worked to get me out of there and gave me orders not to eat any food at all. The alternative was liquid meal supplementation. If I refused that for twenty-four hours, I’d have a feeding tube inserted, which I never wanted to go through again after my hospital stay.
“Here you go, Beatrice,” Iris, a kitchen staff member, said as she placed my dinner plate in front of me—two fish tacos, rice, beans, and a scoop of guacamole on top. She may as well have asked me to swallow a plate of daggers.
“Ensure,” I said.
“You’re not eating your dinner tonight?” Iris asked.
“No,” I said, glaring at Dr. Larsen, who was sitting directly across from me at the table. Emily, with her feeding tube, was seated at the opposite end of the table, watching the scene unfold.
Iris took my plate away and returned with two bottles of Ensure, which I had to drink, or a feeding tube awaited me. After I finished, I felt bloated and sick from all the liquid inside my stomach. But ED felt like he’d achieved a small victory against Dr. Larsen.
Later that night, Emily and I were lying in our beds in the dark, with the moonlight and stars shining through our windows providing the only light.
