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Malibu, CA 90265
CHAPTER13
January 1998
“IMISS YOU,” I told Dad over a yellow landline phone while standing in the nurses’ station at Better Horizons.
The truth was I didn’t miss him at all. I was furious with him for forcing me to be there. But ED was busy scheming how to get me out, and since eating my way out of the place hadn’t worked, he told me to try to manipulate my father instead.
“I miss you too, Beans,” Dad told me.
“Then come and get me,” I said.
“That isn’t possible.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because you’re not ready.”
“You don’t understand what they’re doing to me here.”
Dad got quiet.
“They’re abusing me,” I said, forgetting that I’d falsely accused him of the same thing.
At first, he didn’t respond. I thought I had him. ED was a hell of a manipulator. Grade A.
“I don’t believe you,” he finally said. “It’s the eating disorder talking.”
Dad was now sounding like Dr. Larsen, and ED wasn’t having it.
“If you don’t come and pick me up right now, I’ll kill myself,” I threatened.
He got quiet again. I imagined him wincing on the other end. “If you feel like you might kill yourself, you’re safer there than at home,” he said, anguished.
“Just get me out of here!” I screamed. “I’ll eat anything you want me to. I promise.”
“I don’t believe that either … yet.”
“Fuck you,” I said and hung up.
The nurse raised her eyebrows as I stormed out of the station.
I returned to the living room, where all the girls wrote in their journals while Dr. Larsen walked around overseeing them. As I sat on the ground next to the fireplace, she handed me my journal, smiling.
I drilled her a look and wrote about how much I hated, literally despised, Dad and his cult leader, Dr. Larsen. They didn’t understand a damn thing about me. They were the reasons why my life had gone to hell.
Later, in the middle of the night, I was lying silently in my bed in the dark, biding my time. After a staff member came by to do the hourly night check-in, I got out of bed and put on my gym shoes, the only shoes I’d brought to Better Horizons.
“Where are you going?” Emily asked me. I’d thought she was asleep.
“I need to get out of here, and my dad refuses to pick me up. They always talk to us about personal responsibility,” I said. “So I’m taking matters into my own hands.”
I tiptoed out of the room. The front door was at the bottom of the staircase, so it would be an easy escape as long as no staff member was guarding it.
When I got downstairs, it was clear, so I quietly unlocked the front door and made a run for it. I ran as fast as possible toward the Santa Monica mountains in the distance.
If I had actually thought about the fact that I had no money, nowhere to go, and no one to run to, I might not have left. But there was no reasoning with ED. He was in complete control, telling me that I needed to continue running as far away from Better Horizons as I could to swear my allegiance to him.
