I looked at her, raised an eyebrow.
“There are much less dangerous ways to lose weight than making yourself throw up, Isabelle. How does that sound? We could do it together. Okay?”
I knew she wanted me to say okay more than anything. It didn’t even matter if the okay was a lie.
I didn’t say anything.
“Isabelle? Please. I want to help.”
“Um . . . ,” I said, like I was thinking it over. “Sure.”
“Great! I’ll do the grocery shopping tomorrow. I’ll go to Whole Foods, even.”
“Great,” I said, feeling terrible.
When she leaned over to kiss me goodnight I held my breath. Even though I’d brushed my teeth twice and rinsed with mouthwash, I didn’t want her to smell what I’d done.
In the middle of the night, I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. This happens a lot but it’s worst when I can hear Mom. Most of the time I just put my pillow over my head and hum for a while to drown her out. This time I went and stood in the hallway outside her bedroom. The light from the crack under the door made a long, skinny rectangle on the wood floor, covering the tips of my toes.
She was crying. Not loud, but loud enough. And she was saying his name, over and over again, the way she always does when she thinks we can’t hear her. Jay. Oh, Jacob. Oh, Jay.
I waited outside the door for her to stop crying. But she didn’t.
“Mom?” I whispered. “Mommy? . . . Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer, but I know she heard me. I know because the light went out right away, and everything was silent.
“Mom?”
I waited a while longer. I waited even though I knew she wouldn’t answer, no matter how long I stood there.
Finally I left. I didn’t even try to be quiet. I didn’t tip-toe, I walked like a normal person down the hall, down the stairs, across the living room to the kitchen, and across the kitchen to the refrigerator.
Bread and butter, pasta salad, string cheese, strawberry yogurt, applesauce, more bread and butter, cold leftover pizza, olives, peanut butter straight out of the jar. I ate until my cheeks hurt, until the skin of my belly was stretched tight like a drum. Then I opened a brand-new carton of orange juice and drank the entire thing, standing up. Orange juice ran down my chin and onto the front of my nightgown. It dripped onto my bare feet. Every swallow hurt, but I didn’t care. After a while, it almost feels good, the hurting.
The first time it happened was the day of Daddy’s funeral. Our house was full of strangers, all of them patting my head, talking in whispers. Every so often my mother would come over to me and April and squeeze the breath out of us with her hugs. “Don’t cry,” she kept saying. “We will none of us cry.” Finally some lady I didn’t know came up to me with a plate and said, “Here you go, honey. Try to eat a little something.” So I did. I ate cold cuts and salads and fancy cookies. I ate a whole pile of brownies. Whatever I wanted I ate. I ate until it hurt to stand up. Finally I went into the bathroom and puked three times.
The first time is hard because you don’t know what you’re doing. Now, in the middle of the night, it’s simple.
I stood over the kitchen sink with my fingers down my throat, watching everything come back up. Afterward I went over to Daddy’s old chair. I picked up the big pile of papers sitting there. I walked them into my mother’s study and dropped them on top of her desk, where they belonged.
But I didn’t cry. Not once.
4
MR. MINX’S CLASS, THURSDAY. Ashley Barnum didn’t speak to me.
It’s not that I expected she’d sit with me or anything. It’s not like I thought we’d be best buds now, just because we talked for two minutes. Still, did she or did she not say “See you in Minx’s class third period”?
Minx’s class, Friday. Not a peep.
Maybe the word see meant just that. She would see me, but not necessarily speak to me. In which case, fine, she was off the hook.
Minx’s class, Monday. Nothing.
Quite possibly, Ashley Barnum was ignoring me on purpose. And could I blame her? Get caught talking to a loser like me, and the popularity rug could be yanked out from under you like that. Poof!
Minx’s class is bad enough as it is. It is the kind of class where you scrunch down in your seat the whole time, praying you don’t get called on. What Mr. Minx loves is books. What he loves even more is the sound of his own voice. Sometimes, when he’s reading out loud, he gets so impressed with himself you can actually see tears in his eyes. On Tuesday, he was as gaga as ever.
“Vocabulary dictation,” said Minx, holding a stump of yellow chalk to his mouth and tapping his upper lip with it. “Adjectives. . . . Alienated. Disenchanted. Disillusioned.”
Another thing about Minx, he loves using big words. Those three he said, I had no idea what they meant. Minx knew it too. “I’m getting some blank looks, people. If you don’t know a word, get out your dictionary. This is Advanced English. Advanced. You are expected to take some initiative here.”
Minx squinted across the room, holding the chalk stump in the air like a dart. “Alienated . . . Disenchanted . . . Disillusioned . . .”
He gave us about ten seconds with our dictionaries before he fired a question at us. “When . . . under what circumstances . . . might one feel alienated? Hmm?”
Minx paced the aisles in his Wal-Mart sneakers, the Velcro kind. He stopped at the end of my row and pivoted, tapping Georgine’s desk with his chalk. “I’m not asking this question for my health, people.” Taptaptaptap. “I’m actually looking for an intelligent response. Ms. Miner, do you have an intelligent response?”
Georgie sank a little lower in her seat. She shook her head no.
Minx gave her desk one final tap and moved on to the next row. As soon as he was out of earshot Georgie leaned over and poked me with her pen. “Alienated, like alien?” she whispered.
I shrugged back.
Georgie is what you would call a worrier. She worries like crazy when she doesn’t know the right answer for something. You can tell she’s stressing by these two little lines between her eyes. Every so often she gets one of her “tension headaches,” as her mother calls them, and has to stay home from school for two days without any visitors. Georgie’s mother is very bugsome, to tell you the truth. If I had to live with her I’d get tension headaches too.
In Minx’s class you have to watch him every second. You never know when he’s going to pounce. It’s best to take certain precautions. Like for instance, you wouldn’t want to be reading a comic book.
“Mr. Fosse,” Minx said, leaning over Dan Fosse’s desk and snatching Spider-Man right out of his hands. “If you would be so kind as to beam the great light of your knowledge upon us.”
Dan Fosse looked up at Minx. “Huh?”
“Huh?” said Minx. “Earth to Mr. Fosse. Come in, Mr. Fosse. We are discussing adjectives, which, as you may recall, are those pesky parts of speech that describe things. Words like Inattentive. Oblivious. Negligent.”
“Sorry,” Dan