The Disappearing Girl (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Thanks for letting me stay here for a couple of days,” I said awkwardly to the rail-thin girl standing in front of me. When SkinnyGirl89, aka Marti, answered the door, I was taken aback for a minute. I
couldn’t
look like that. She wore a tank top and a skimpy pair of shorts. The bones of her rib cage were visible through the fabric of her shirt, and her collarbone was prominent. During our online exchanges, Marti had stated she was anorexic and proud of it for the past two years.

She was a couple of inches shorter than me, and if I had to venture a guess, she couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds. Her bleach-blond hair was assembled into a messy bun, and her overdone makeup only brought more attention to her gaunt features.

“This is going to be so fun!” Marti said happily as I followed her numbly into her apartment. “I’ve never had a roommate before. Not a lot of people would understand how I can’t keep a lot of food in the house and why I have pictures of obese women on the fridge. I was so psyched when you called!”

I had called Marti from my car an hour after the showdown with my family. She insisted her family was just as judgmental and that I should room with her until I moved back to campus. Since she lived nearby and alone, I agreed readily and made plans to leave the next morning. Lila’s pleas and my mother’s cold indifference as I packed up my things haunted me as I placed my suitcase in the center of Marti’s foyer.

The apartment was a two-bedroom unit in a large complex. She’d been using the second bedroom as storage for her huge collection of clothes and cosmetics, but she had cleared it out once I told her I’d come stay for the rest of the summer.

Marti explained she’d make me a key and I could come and go as I pleased. She had a bartending job a few miles away and she’d be gone most nights from five o’clock to three in the morning. She said she loved the job, trilling about how she got a kick out of wearing skimpy outfits and showing off her thin body. Her hope was to break into modeling one day, and she was saving money to build her portfolio.

We were polar opposites. Marti craved the limelight, while I wished to stay invisible, safely tucked away in the shadows. But despite our differences, I was drawn to her. She’d be my safety net, my assurance I would stay on track and not become fat again. Marti sympathized with my fears and told me to carry around a picture of myself at my plumpest as a reminder of how far I’d come.

As I turned in for the night, I could hear the bass from the radio playing next door. The walls were thin, and I was grateful for it. The music could block out the noise in my head. I’d turned off my phone hours ago, but now I powered it up as I lay in bed, sleepless. Unsurprisingly, I had several texts and voicemails from Cameron and Lila. They were unwavering in their resolve to never give up on me.

Lila’s messages went from being enraged over my departure to later being apologetic and promising she’d never mention the word anorexia again as long as I came home. Cameron had called me an hour earlier and tears blurred my vision when I heard the familiar deep tenor of his voice.

“Well, I know your mom said I need to give you space and stop pressuring you to get help, but not talking to you is destroying me. I was never trying to make things harder for you and I’m sorry if that’s what happened.

“Kayla, I’m not pissed about what you said about my mom and I hope it’s not the reason you’re refusing to talk to me. I get that you’re trying to tear us apart, but I’m not letting you walk out on me. Maybe you weren’t off base about some of the things you said—I do have a lot of unresolved shit I need to deal with.

“Whatever you’re going through, I want to help you through it. If I came on too strong, it’s only because I love you so damn much. You make everything better in my life and I only want to do the same for you. Just call me, Kayla. Please.”

His words swirled around me and suffocated me with unfathomable longing. I didn’t want to be in this strange bed, alone, silently reciting the rules of not eating. I wanted to be touched and loved by a man as beautiful on the inside as he was on the outside.

But I was experiencing my own personal apocalypse, and I knew I’d take him down with me. To protect him, I needed to stay away. To get past his mother’s downfall, he needed to save someone. But I didn’t want to be saved.

“What are you doing?” Marti asked, wandering into the kitchen the next afternoon. She grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge and sat next to me at the table wearing only a t-shirt and a thong. I had a feeling I’d have to grow accustomed to her lack of modesty.

“Adding a couple of new pages to my Thinspiration book. I want to drop these last few pounds and move on with my life. After I get below my goal weight, then maybe things can go back to normal.”

Marti nodded knowingly. “I hear ya. If you drop to a couple pounds under your goal, you won’t be as stressed if you gain a little bit here or there. What tips are helping you the most?”

“I think about food constantly, so I’m trying to fight my cravings. One of the things that works is I count to a hundred whenever I want something to eat. By the time I get to a hundred, I’ve had enough time to think of all the reasons I shouldn’t eat. Another thing is I’ll pinch each spot on my body where I find any fat, really hard.”

Marti tapped her acrylic nails against the table while she seemed to mull over her own tips. “You know what else helps me when I want to eat? Watch people eat! It’s kind of gross, especially when you see fat people doing it. Or do something else you think is revolting. Like clean the bathroom, or change kitty litter.”

A buried part of me understood how sick it truly was. We were talking about how to starve ourselves in the same way people talk about the weather. It made me wonder if I should be listening to the sensible ones in my life and stop the insanity. I was on the brink of my own personal destruction, but I was too detached to care enough to stop it.

I turned the page in my Thinspiration book and froze.

I will not relent. They will not break me.

I had posted the words on a Pro-Ana forum page and printed it out afterward as a reminder of my resolve. I wrote the message during my first week back at my mom’s house, at the start of my summer vacation. I was paranoid after overhearing Lila and Cameron, convinced they were concocting plans to make me fat again.

Marti may not have been the best influence, but she didn’t want to undermine my goals. My object was to lose five more pounds and then return to a normal diet and a normal life. I’d stop the fasting, binging, purging, and laxative use. All the things tearing me away from the people I cared about could be in my past. I’d have it all: my dream guy, my best friends and sister back in my life, and the perfect body.

“Try and smile, Kayla, you’re scaring away my good tippers,” Marti joked two weeks later as I sat on a stool at the bar she worked at. The bar was a hole-in-the-wall place named the Idle Hour with clientele who were looking to get drunk fast. About ninety percent of the patrons were single men who tended to zero in on any girl who stumbled in. Marti joked about how she brought home the leftover scraps at the end of each night.

I watched Marti working energetically, collecting bottles of alcohol to mix drinks. When I asked her before where her endless spunk came from, she told me she popped caffeine-filled diet pills throughout the day.

I took a hesitant sip of my seltzer with lemon. My life had changed drastically since I’d come to live in Toms River with Marti. My days mostly involved hanging out with Marti before she went to work. We didn’t have much in common, but she passed no judgment and proved to be a distraction. There was a frantic desperation bubbling below the surface, and despite her Pro-Ana allegiances, I wondered about how content she truly was with her life.

At night, I buried myself in work, trying to take on as many article assignments as I could handle. I was sleepwalking through my life; things were crumbling around me, but nothing mattered.

Marti was a storm, and I was getting sucked into the vortex. She was outspoken, chastising me for not taking pride in my body. She relished her thinness and took pleasure in her appearance. She brought home strangers from the bar, men with blurred vision, drunken with lust for the outrageous bartender. Most nights, the sound of wall banging was what I drifted off to.

I hadn’t spoken to any of my friends or family since arriving at Marti’s apartment. And when I could no longer bear to listen to the pleas left on my voicemail by Cameron, Lila, and Brittany, I changed my cell number. Messages left on Facebook and in my email inbox got deleted without being read. The only communication I had was a quick one-line email to Lila letting her know I was okay—and that was only after she threatened to report me missing if I didn’t get in touch with someone immediately.

I fantasized over and over again about how things would be once I got to ninety-five pounds. I’d pack up my stuff and drive right over to Cameron’s place. I’d tell him how much I’d fallen for him and that I could finally be the girl he deserved. I’d be able to take my clothes off in front of him, shamelessly, and he’d be floored at how I had the body of his wildest fantasies.

Two measly pounds stood in my way. It was all I had left to lose, and I was determined more than ever to drop them.

I wanted out of this life. I didn’t want to lie awake, painfully isolated, as another faceless stranger moaned through the thin walls and Marti screamed out in ecstasy. Her lifestyle was one I couldn’t understand, and resentment snaked around me. How was she able to do it? How could she let go completely with someone she barely knew when I wasn’t able to do the same with the man who possessed my heart?

Marti interrupted my thoughts. “Hey, take off that sweatshirt. The guy in the corner has been eyeing you.”

Daring a glance back, I saw a man with short blond hair and a lean build staring at me unabashedly. I blushed at the attention and whirled back to face Marti. “I’m not getting undressed in the middle of the bar.”

When I didn’t comply, she reached over and grabbed the hood of the sweatshirt. It took a few seconds for her to wrestle me out of the shirt. Although I had a tank top underneath, I felt naked and exposed. She looked me over with approval. “Much better. We work our asses off for our bodies, why wouldn’t you want to show it off?” A second later, she shot me a bemused grin. “And look who decided to come this way.”

My anxiety level heightened as an unfamiliar arm brushed against mine. The man took the empty bar stool next to me and didn’t seem put off when I didn’t acknowledge his arrival. A hand appeared in front of me. “Hi, I’m Holden.”

I cast a sidelong glance in his direction. “Hi.”

“Hey, can I buy you a drink?”

I tilted my head to the side and held up the seltzer. “I already have one.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to hang out until you need another,” he said flirtatiously.

“Umm …”

Marti poked her head between the two of us, not trying to conceal the fact she’d been eavesdropping. “You have to forgive my friend. She’s getting over a messy breakup. Maybe you can make her forget all about her ex.”

“Marti,” I hissed.

Holden took the announcement as an invitation to place his hand on my knee and lean in close. His lips brushed against my ear as he whispered, “I’ve been watching you all night, trying to get up the nerve to talk to you. You’re so pretty, but you haven’t smiled once. I’d like to have a shot at making you smile.”

I felt nothing. Holden was attractive, but he stirred no emotion in me. He wasn’t the one I wanted. He could never be the one to fill me with a bottomless yearning that woke me up in the middle of the night, screaming out in agony.

“I gotta go,” I addressed Holden and Marti. Marti yelled out my name as I hopped off the stool, but I ignored her. I would explain things later. I didn’t want an overeager stranger to fill the void inside me. She’d understand when I told her food was the only thing I wanted to relieve the emptiness.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I was devoid of feeling by the time I finished my binge. What I had learned about purging was some foods simply refused to come back up and wound up stopping weight loss. My post-bar binge had included a box of macaroni and cheese, two cans of canned spaghetti, and a pint of ice cream—all foods that came up as easily as they went down.

I shuffled into the bathroom and turned on the shower as hot as I could stand it. I planned to allow the scalding water to wash away the filth I’d feel after throwing up in the shower. Undressing, I stepped into the water.

Piles of food poured out of me and into the pot I’d left on the ledge around the tub. I had stopped purging directly into the drain after I clogged up Marti’s shower the first week I’d been living with her. Marti hadn’t batted an eyelash and instead told me to keep containers in the bathroom to use for this purpose.

My throat was raw but I kept stabbing my finger against the back of my mouth. I didn’t stop until I saw the last of the macaroni and cheese plop into the pot. I settled the pot outside the tub and pressed my forehead against the shower wall. I felt worthless and soiled, my tears intermingling with the shower water.

Steam billowed in front of my face and I stood in a daze for a long minute. Suddenly, I felt the world tilt. My heart was racing, and my breath was coming out in frantic, short gasps. I reached for the shower faucet, but the movement left me feeling off-balance. Black spots distorted my vision and I tried to steady myself by blindly grasping for the towel bar. My fingers slipped over the plastic and my eyes closed on their own accord. I vanished into the darkness.

The memories were there, but they weren’t fully realized in my brain. I could vaguely recall shouting and cursing, a feminine and masculine voice arguing over the body they stumbled upon. There was a recollection of someone slapping my face as I tried to crawl out of my semiconscious state. Clothes were thrown on my soaking wet body, and I was dragged away by two sets of hands.