strip and hide it.
Rochelle sighs. “You two aren’t food-disorder girls, right? You’re not gonna throw up if I leave for a minute?”
We nod, almost in unison.
“OK,” she says. “I’m trusting you. No funny business.”
We nod.
Rochelle leaves. Amanda is next to me all of a sudden. I slide my foot back and the metal strip is lying there on the floor between us.
“Where’d you get it?” she says.
“The dining room table. It broke off.”
“Gutsy,” she says. “Real gutsy.”
She seems so delighted at the sight of the strip, I think maybe she’s going to take it. I picture myself grabbing it and just dropping it in the trash can right in front of her. Instead I pick it up, close my fingers around it, and head for the shower before Rochelle comes back. The hairs on my neck tingle, as if Amanda might grab me at any minute and pry the metal strip out of my hand. But she doesn’t.
I turn the water on high and listen while Amanda thanks Rochelle for the tampon. A toilet stall door opens, closes, then opens again, and I hear Amanda call out good night in a sing-song voice. Slowly I take off my towel, wrap the metal strip in it, and get in the shower. When it’s time to go back to my room, I put the piece of metal back in my pants, folding them carefully so it doesn’t fall out. I’ll figure out what to do with it later.
I feel suddenly shy when I sit down across from you in your office today. Something happened between us yesterday and I don’t quite know how to come back from it. You smile and a good warm feeling comes over me. I settle into the cushions of the couch, deciding that I’ll work hard today, try to come up with the right answers to your questions.
“How are you?” you say.
“Fine.” This is true, but it sounds inadequate. I give you a practice smile. You smile back.
“Callie,” you say, folding your hands around your knees. “What you did yesterday—speaking out in Group— that was a big step.”
“It was?” I want to hear more.
“It took a lot of courage.”
My cheeks get warm, an uncomfortable and at the same time not uncomfortable feeling.
“How did it feel to speak in front of the other girls?”
“OK.” I try to come up with a better answer. “A little scary, I guess.”
“What were you afraid of?”
“That people would get mad at me.”
“Hmmm.” You nod. “Who did you think would be angry?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Everybody?”
“Everybody?”
I shrug. The foggy feeling settles over me. I want to give you a right answer, but I don’t have one.
“Let me ask you this: do people get angry with you a lot?”
“Not really.”
You wait.
“My mom cries a lot but she doesn’t yell or anything,” I say.
“And your father…”
I chew on a hangnail. “He doesn’t get too worked up,” I say finally.
A car tire spins on the ice outside.
“I’ve noticed that you don’t talk about your father much.”
My leg muscles tighten, I feel ready to run. I cross and recross my legs, trying hard to just stay in my seat. “So?” I say.
“What can you tell me about him?”you say.
“Don’t you have stuff in your file?” I say after a while.
“I don’t really know much about him. I met with your mother on visiting day, but your dad wasn’t here.”
“He has to work.” I remember scanning the parking lot for him, watching somebody’s dad come up the sidewalk, banging on the window, and realizing it wasn’t him.
You tap your file. “He’s a computer salesman, is that right?”
Your file makes it sound like he works at RadioShack; for some reason, this makes me mad. “He sells computers to companies. He takes people out to dinner and stuff to get them to buy whole, big computer systems.”
You don’t seem to understand.
“He has to travel.”
You still don’t say anything.
“Well, he used to. Travel, I mean. Since Sam got sick, he changed jobs. Now he just sells to companies nearby.” I don’t tell you about how it seems like all the companies nearby already have computers, that for a while he took people out hoping they’d become customers and that now he mostly just goes out. “He has to work a lot.”
“Is that why he wasn’t here for visiting day?”
A muscle in my leg is twitching, my heart is hammering against my ribs. All I want to do is jump off the couch and run. I cross my legs again, winding one around the other to keep them still. “I don’t feel like talking about this anymore.”
I draw my mouth into a straight line and bite my lip. Somehow some of the good warm feeling from yesterday is gone.
“Callie?”
I chew on my lip, a little harder now.
“Callie, you’re biting your lip.”
I meet your eyes for a second, then look out the window at the bare branch of the tree.
“Do you know the expression ‘bite your lip’?”
“I guess so.”
“Tell me what you think it means.”
“Y’know,” I say my eyes locked on the branch. “To shut up. To not say something.”
“To not say something.” You recite my words.
I go back to biting my lip.
Your dead-cow chair groans as you lean forward. “Callie, I feel like there’s something you’re not saying.”
Now everything good from yesterday is gone.
We’re in the middle of Group and Tiffany is telling us about some guy she had sex with behind the dumpster at her school. She’s saying something about how it’s his fault she’s at Sick Minds, because he told his friends, who told some of her friends, who told the health teacher, who Tiffany then had to beat up.
The door opens. We all turn to see who it is. It’s Becca Becca being pushed in a wheelchair by an actual nurse, someone in a white uniform.
Tiffany stops in mid-sentence.
Claire nods. “Welcome back, Becca,” she says.
Becca wiggles her fingers hello. “Hi, everybody,” she says.
No one says anything.
“Becca’s going to continue working with our group,” Claire says carefully. “And eventually we hope she’ll be back with us full time, but for the time being she’s staying on another ward.”
We all know what this means: Humdinger
Becca giggles; everyone else squirms. The nurse wheels Becca’s chair into a space next to Amanda Amanda nudges her chair aside a little, then folds her arms across her chest and looks sideways at Becca. The nurse locks the brakes on the wheelchair and leaves.
Dead quiet.
“You look good,” someone says finally. It’s Sydney. Her voice is shaky, her eyes dart nervously around the
