• • •
I change into my uniform—what up, Mary Janes, missed you not—in the car and mess my dreads up because the last thing you want to be is too pretty when you’re a (not) lesbian at an all-girls school. I definitely need to look like I’m not trying to pick anyone up. Uglying-down is an old habit at this point, but it’s the first day back and it feels weird. Maybe because this is the first time I’m doing it by myself instead of half-naked in the backseat of Natasha’s car while we draw on messy eyeliner and change out of the disco clothes we wore only for the drive to school, just on principle. I smudge my lipstick.
Saint Em’s is very old-British-boarding-school style, except it’s not an old castle, just some thirty-year-old building trying to look like an old castle in the middle of nowhere, but the first thing you see when you walk in are those bright-green metal lockers, so, very subtle, school. Plus girls are gross and rich girls are worse so it’s kind of a vandalized mess.
If it isn’t obvious, I hate it here.
I open my locker and well, awesome, that’s interesting. There are condoms filled with what-the-hell-even-is-that hanging off the hooks inside my locker, the hooks where I used to hang my aforementionedly-stolen disco clothes. I really need to change my combination.
I wonder which of them deigned to buy condoms. They probably found some guy to do it. God forbid anyone in the world ever think they’re straight. (Or bisexual, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this? It’s a thing!)
God. It’s just that I really thought stuff was going to go back to normal.
One of the condoms is dripping onto my history textbook. Whatever. I give in and taste it. Ranch dressing. All right then.
At lunch I make sure they’re looking at me at my new loner loser table (Rachel’s not there; I overheard her bio partner saying she has strep throat), and I squeeze a condom right on top of my salad. Titania makes this big show of gagging.
“Fat dyke,” this junior bitch Liliana mumbles as she glides past my table, and I ignore her, because yeah right, pay more attention, Liliana. She slips past me, and I focus again on the Dykes.
I dip my finger into the condom and lick it clean. 148 calories and my daily value of screw you. Delicious.
3
GROUP.
We sit in a circle in flimsy desks, about exactly how these things are set up on TV, except crazy people on TV have this habit of not actually being crazy, because actual screwed-up people aren’t cuddly and relatable. We’re too busy leaning back in our seats so that our stomachs won’t touch the desk, and jiggling our knees and tapping our feet because any movement is better than nothing and body checking, fingers around wrists, thumbs on the sides of waists, our fingers knitted together, squeezing, our nails tapping against collarbones. Then there are the girls who won’t even sit down—who can’t sit down, because standing burns more calories and shuffling their feet really burns more calories, and maybe they want us to feel like they’re better than us, or maybe they don’t, or maybe they are just so, so past giving a shit what people think about them. We’re all here because it’s not fun for us anymore, but those are the girls who make you realize that this shit hasn’t been fun for a really, really long time. They’re shifting, shivering statues, and this is what you wanted to be. At some point there really was a choice. At some point you really did jump off a cliff, and we can sit here and cry about it all we want about how no, we were not expecting what would be at the bottom, and we just wanted to be skinny and we just wanted to disappear and be perfect and be noticed and to be in control and to starve and purge out everything that’s wrong with us, but at some point we decided we were going to do this and the thing is that you don’t disappear (and that’s really it, isn’t it), you linger around and wilt in the corners of community rec centers.
I’m one of the bigger girls here, but there are actually a bunch around my size. One of them’s Taylor, who’s talking right now about how frustrating this whole diagnostic process is. You have to have a BMI under a certain ridiculous number and you have to stop getting your period to be diagnosed anorexic, so that rules out me and the two boys I sometimes forget are here. The diagnoses are something we’ve talked about a billion times, and it’s something our leader still lets us talk about because it’s still goddamn frustrating.
“I just want that stupid label,” Taylor says. Taylor doesn’t curse. Taylor says “stupid.” “And it’s ridiculous because, like, the whole issue at school is stop labeling me, stop putting me in your stupid box, and then here I am dying to count as anorexic instead of ‘eating disordered not otherwise specified.’ ”
“My doctor wouldn’t even say that out loud,” I say. “Like, I’ve read the DSM entries, I know it’s EDNOS, but she just says ‘It’s not the diagnosis that’s important.’ ”
“But that is important to you,” says Angela, our leader. She’s older than we are and licensed or something.
“There are a billion things about this that are important to me and every one of them contradicts or takes away from one of the other ones. I just want this to add up in a way that makes me look more . . .”
“Sane?” Angela tries.
“Legitimate,” says a voice, tiny, in the corner. I don’t even have to look up to know who it is, because even though she doesn’t talk very much, when she does, it’s in that broken, significant voice. If this were a movie, everyone would part around her, but instead it’s just a little shifting around and a few turned heads. You still can’t see her. She stands in the back—I’ve never seen her sit down—and she is the smallest of the small. Blonder than blond but not bleached, I don’t think, too muted and wispy to be intentional. Just natural, a little dull. A lot of the skinny girls are toothpicks. Bianca is smoke.
I have this fascination with her because she’s young—fourteen—which is one of the few things she’s ever said about herself, and because I can tell by her clothes that she’s poor, and because she just looks so sick and so sad. She’s the Tiny Tim of our group, and a part of me maybe doesn’t believe she’s real. She’s just too tragic. She’s the shattered little girl at the beginning of the fairy tale, and I can’t shake this feeling that if she would just get better then we all would. But I also feel so sure that she is never, ever going to be okay. Maybe the fascination is that I’m kind of waiting for her to die. I’d feel worse about this if I didn’t know from experience that she’s waiting for it too.
Taylor talks some more, but I feel drained and done for the day. I wish I were at chorus instead, which is weird for me because I’ve never been a huge fan of chorus. I don’t even know why I do it, except that it felt weird to be such a ridiculous musical theater geek but not be in any singing group. How am I going to pretend my life is a Special Musical Episode if I never sing? How am I going to even pretend I’m qualified for a musical theater audition if I sit at home and watch Cabaret over and over and don’t at least try to sing? So I get out, I try, I sing.
The thing is that I’m not that good. I don’t know. This whole audition process just sounds like something they’d do in that episode of whatever that show was when they’re supposed to attempt something they’d fail at, and everyone fails as expected and ends up hating themselves. It feels about that likely that I’m going to get into Brentwood or even get past the first round of auditions, and do I really need to hate myself right now? I have four angry lesbians handling that job pretty well.
Well, three. I still have no proof Rachel hasn’t forgiven me. I tried calling her last night but she didn’t pick up. Babysitting, I guess. Or strep. Maybe her sisters have strep too, that would keep her busy. Probably that.
Group ends, and yeah, maybe I creepily watch Bianca a little when she’s packing up, but actually that’s because I want to leave when she’s leaving because she has this ridiculously hot older brother—I thought maybe it was her boyfriend at first, but she actually brings it up all the time, my brother’s picking me up today, all this warmth in her voice, she loves him—who comes
and gets her sometimes, and seeing him is depressingly often the highlight of my week, and it will definitely make me feel better about the fact that I’ve been sitting here studying his little sister’s non-body for an hour with some mixture of jealousy or lust and Jesus Christ Etta she is fourteen and sick, this is not sexy. And it’s not even that I think it is, or that when I close my eyes to dream about girls, I see ones who look anything like her. It’s just that I can’t ever get out of my head what it would feel to touch a body like that. And, you know. For a variety of reasons I’m never going to get there. The biggest one being that I really do mostly not want to.
I really hate group. I really do.
Bianca slips her backpack over her shoulder—she has this really deliberate way of moving, and I wonder if she does ballet, figures that she would, really, but I know most of the advanced girls in the state and it’s not like I’d forget her—so I fiddle with my coat for a while to look natural and then I leave too. Her brother drives this shabby car and never gets out, but seriously, I just want to glance at his face and walk home writing a little song to myself about how he obviously noticed me and fell in love with me and we’re going to have beautiful children and raise them to be happier than his sister, or me.
Except I am happy, most of the time. That’s the messed-up part of this.
Even with all of this, I’m just a happy damn person. I lie around watching scary movies with my sister and knitting with my mom and I tap dance and I ace math tests and I am happy.
It could just be a lot easier to be happier right now, is the thing.
Bianca doesn’t head outside, which means no hope of seeing Hot Brother today. Poor me. She’s heading somewhere else inside the building, so I give up and look at this flyer to find the audition group, and the flyer has little drawings of musical notes on it and I get so stupidly excited. I headbang to some imaginary music and hop up the stairs.
I will pass by the third floor without looking in. I will pass by the third floor without looking in. Damn it, this is why I am not supposed to stick around the community center after group. Go straight home, go cry into a bowl of fruit, don’t think.
I keep winding up another set of stairs and then down a hallway, and it gets harder and harder to ignore that Bianca’s headed in the same direction. I start to feel really awkward about it and duck into the bathroom for a minute. It gives me some time to tug and tug on this shirt I’m wearing, this old, pre-Dyke T-shirt I found balled up on the floor of my closet because I obviously wasn’t going to wear my uniform to group, but my seventies clothes don’t fit well and to be honest I was a little happy about that because I really, really did not want to wear them. Not anymore.
It’s not like I ever looked good in hot pants anyway.
Because seriously, no one looks good in hot pants.
I get to the audition room and don’t see Bianca, so maybe she was headed to something different after all. Or maybe she’s itsy-bitsy and standing behind a normal-size person. Honestly I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, because my headbanging and all my thoughts are swallowed up by this tiny room overflowing with actual music. There’s a piano, but no one’s really playing it. People are every once in a while just wandering over to play a few notes, check pitch, and I can’t hear it anyway over the twenty people singing on top of each other. It’s not pretty. Everyone’s singing and reciting monologues, alone or in small groups. Two people are singing “On My Own,” and only one is on key. Everyone has their fingers pressed into the insides of their ears so they can hear the sound reverberating off their jawbone. Trick of the trade, and it makes the loud room bearable.
Makes it kind of amazing.
Chorus is fine, but it’s a lot of nineteenth-century chamber music, and I am not nineteenth-century chamber music. I’m “Out Tonight” and “No Good Deed” and “Let’s Hear It for the Boy,” the last of which I’m hearing right now from somewhere in the corner, ringing out through everything. It’s one of those voices I’ve always been jealous of, one that’s so clear and clean and sounds so effortless, like whoever it is is just opening their mouth and the words are falling out, like she doesn’t even need to breathe.
So I look and . . . well.
It’s Bianca.
And that guy sitting next to her, coaching her gently? That’d be Hot Brother.
So, you know, that’s a thing. I’m going to be sticking around, I think. (What the hell else am I going to do, go home and wait for Rachel to not call?)
• • •
I sing and talk to people and tell them they’re awesome and they tell me I’m awesome back, and I mean it for a few of them and maybe a few of them even mean it for me, and eventually people start clearing out. The first round of auditions aren’t until next week, so I guess I don’t know how this works. No one made any announcements. Mostly I just sang and didn’t think, and it was surprisingly . . . nice. It was just nice.
But maybe Bianca can tell me what we’re really doing here, so I give her this little smile across the room, and when most people are gone I go to her and say, “You are really, really good.”
Bianca jumps like I touched her, or like I hit her, even.
“Shit, sorry. I’m Etta,” I say. “I’m in group with you.”
“I know,” she says, but she doesn’t say it mean. She says it like she’s ashamed that I approached her first, like she thinks she’s let me down, and maybe that’s a lot for me to get from two words, or maybe it’s just hitting a little too close to home. (What self-starved girl isn’t letting everyone down? Seriously.)
Because, really, I don’t think anyone who’s ever been within two miles of Bianca would expect her to be the type to make the first move.
Here I am thinking like I know her. I get like this with girls. I just do. (Rachel said it was one of her favorite things about me. Rachel said, You care so much, Etta, you care so much about getting your ass laid, that’s what this really is, huh, go get ’em tigress.)
(This isn’t that. This is let me see your scars, let me show you mine too.)
(This is maybe a little how the hell did you get this thin.)
So instead I say, “You do a damn good job with a song meant for a big black girl.”
“Those are the best songs.”
“I’m gonna tell my mom that. She thinks all girls should be Kristin Chenoweth.”
“Did you know that her real name is Kristi?”
I say, “It is?”
Bianca and I are the same height, I realize. That doesn’t happen much. “Chenoweth,” she says. “Her real name is Kristi. She added the n to look more serious.”
“No way.”
Jesus, gently, Etta. She looks like she’s worried I’m going to shove her at a polygraph. “Um, yes,” she says. “Sorry. I should go.” I’m watching her gather up her stuff, watching those skinny damn arms—Jesus Christ—when I see a hand come down onto her shoulder. Well hey there, Hot Brother.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m Etta.”
“James. Hey.”
“My sister’s name is Kristina,” I say to Bianca. “I’ll tell her to chop the a off. She wants to be a librarian, so serious is probably better.”
Bianca smiles a little and looks up at James. “Etta’s my friend from . . .” She looks at me like she thinks I might not want it said. Aw, sweetie.
But then for some reason I can’t say it. He picks her up every week, she’s about to break in half, seriously, this is not a secret. And I don’t mind people knowing, not now that I’m getting better. It kind of helps to talk about it, to hear people say their stupid little things about how they’re proud of me, because yeah, you know what, I started therapy because I felt like it and not because I got forced into it like practically every other girl in my group. I’m proud of me too, y’know?
So screw it. “We’re in that eating-disorder group together,” I say.
He says, “Hey, see, Bee? I knew there were cool girls in there.” He smiles at me. “She tries to tell
me none of the girls in there have any interests other than . . .”
“Sticking their fingers down their throats?” I say.
“Oh, yes, we like her,” James says. “Etta can stay.”
“I’m a big proponent of no-fingers-down-throat,” I say. “I should have a shirt made up.”
“Etta’s good,” Bianca says, quietly. “Etta’s always saying brave things. Inspiring.”
“Damn, girl. Thank you.” I can’t think of any inspiring thing I’ve said, but I guess I do say stuff that’s a lot lighter than some of the girls, and that when it gets too heavy I’m always inclined to be like hey so how about this puppy I saw this weekend!! and pass my phone around. It’s a defense mechanism, whatever, but so’s half the shit people do, and at least being kind of irreverent makes me happy, and here’s this girl calling it brave and inspiring, so that’s pretty badass. Really it’s hard to be in that group and not feel like I just think differently from these girls, that everything’s a little sparklier for me than it is for them. Sometimes this shit just isn’t so bad. I mean yeah, recovery sucks, my friends dumped me, I’ve just been way outshined by a room full of singers, but it could be all that and also raining, you know?
James says, “We’re actually going out to get some food now. There’s a local co-op place she likes. Do you want to come? No stress.”
I look at her. “Would that be okay?”
She nods.
“Yeah, I’d like that a lot.” Human interaction!
“Awesome,” James says. “Mason’s coming too. Mason!”
A guy across the room lifts his head from his backpack and looks up. Hoookay, he’s no Hot Brother, but he definitely does not cause me any eye strain if you know what I mean.
Yes. Human interaction. Human interaction can stay.
4
I GET THIS PUMPKIN RAVIOLI because Bianca’s just getting a salad, and I know it’s important that I eat more than she does. I’ve done that who can eat less? game with reluctant (or unaware) participant Disco Dykes, and I don’t want her feeling like she has to compete with me. For all their (now obviously apparent) faults, the Dykes were really good with the eating disorder thing, always telling me I looked beautiful and trying to be these role models of eating and accepting their bodies, when of course they were all better-looking than me (Rachel especially, tall, Japanese, perfect—it figures we live in the white capital of Whiteland and my best friend is not only ten times more beautiful than me but also nonwhite to boot) so it wasn’t really hard for them, but whatever. I’m really trying not to hate people for being pretty.