Wife 22

Enter Fat 5

Enter Carbohydrates 30

Enter Protein 0

Calculating PointsPlus Values NOW! 33

Now I remember why I stopped Weight Watchers. Counting every morsel of food made me feel incredibly hopeful for the first half of the day, then when one tablespoon of Fluff turned into five an hour before dinner, utterly guilty. Hey, whatever happened to my idea for a Guilt Diet? The same template would work beautifully, with just a few little tweaks.

Guiltdiet.com

Plan Manager for Alice Buckle

GuiltPlus Values: 29

Daily Used 102

Daily Remaining 0

Penance Earned 0

Favorites (recently added)

Used last piece of toilet paper and did not replace roll Guilt Value 1.5

Said I read Anna Karenina Guilt Value 3

Denied I read The Unauthorized Biography of Katy Perry Guilt Value 7

I am not bilingual. Guilt Value 8

I am American. Guilt Value 10

I do not know the difference between Shias and Sunnis. Guilt Value 11

I secretly believe in the Law of Attraction. Guilt Value 20

I didn’t call back my best friend after she called four times and left scary messages in her divorce lawyer voice saying, “Alice Buckle, call me back immediately, there’s something we have to talk about.” Guilt Value 8

Don’t know Guilt Value?

Enter Guilt Excessive flirting and nearly constant fantasizing about a man who is not my husband

How many people were hurt? None yet.

How many people could be hurt? 3 to 10

Cost to make it up??

Time to make it up???

Unmakeupable? I’m afraid so.

CALCULATE GuiltPlus Value NOW: 8942

WARNING: This exceeds (by 44.04 weeks) weekly allotment of GuiltPlus points.

RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVE: Pee on the seat in a public toilet instead (Guilt Value 5).

I am a very bad person. Helen of Troy is a very put-together person. Even though I stole her boyfriend, she went on to have a fine life. A better life, perhaps, than mine.

I slide off the bed and walk to the top of the stairs.

“William!” I shout. I feel a pressing need to talk to him. I don’t know about what. I just want to hear his voice.

No answer.

“William?”

Jampo comes tearing up the stairs.

“Your name is not William,” I say, and he cocks his head forlornly.

I think about the way William reached out for my hand when we were in the woods, right after Peter saw the deer. I think about Peter’s accident and how that unlikely event-its marshmallow roasting sticks and pus and ER confessions of sexual identity-have bonded us all together. I think about Zoe looking at me with kindness and worrying I might be getting sick and I know what I have to do. The past twenty-four hours have just solidified it. I log on to Lucy’s Facebook page before I lose my nerve and send a message to Researcher 101.

This has gone too far. I’m sorry, but I have to quit the study.

As soon as I press Send, I feel a rush of sweet relief, not unlike the relief I used to feel on a Monday when I entered “eggs” on my Weight Watchers Plan Manager.

The next day I decide to unplug. I’m scared to see Researcher 101’s reply (or worse, his silence) and I don’t want to spend the day obsessively checking my Facebook messages, so I shut off my phone and computer and leave them in my office. It’s not easy. My fingers involuntarily tap and circle all day as if browsing an invisible page. And even though I don’t have my phone, I react as if I do. I’m in a state of hypervigilance-waiting to be summoned by a bell that will not be ringing.

I try and embed myself in the day. I run with Caroline; Peter and I bake blueberry muffins; I take Zoe to Goodwill; but even though my body is there, my brain is not. I’m no better than Helen. I, too, treat my life as something to be mined and then packaged up for public consumption. Every post, every upload, every Like, every Interest, every Comment is a performance. But what happens to the performer when she’s playing to an empty stage? And when did the real world become so empty? When everybody abandoned it for the Internet?

My digital diet lasts until after dinner, when I can’t bear it any longer and I break my fast. By the time I log on to Lucy Pevensie’s Facebook page, I’m breathless.

John Yossarian invited you to the event “Coffee”

Tea & Circumstances, July 28, 7 p.m.

You can’t quit yet. There are things I need to tell you now that can only be said in person.

RSVP Yes No Maybe

Relief floods through me again, but there’s nothing sweet about it this time. It’s relief of the desperate, addictive, I-may-never-have-an-opportunity-like-this-again sort, and it hits me like I’ve mainlined a drug. Before I can stop myself, God help me, I click Yes.

77

From C REATIVE P LAYMAKING

Exercise: Write a breakup scene where the characters speak almost entirely in cliches.

“I’m coming over there right now,” says Nedra.

“I’m in the middle of coloring my hair-you can’t,” I say, looking into the bathroom mirror with dismay. “Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker.”

I place the phone on the counter and start scrubbing my forehead with a dry washcloth. “I’ve got dye all over my face and it’s not coming off!” I cry.

“Are you using soap and water?”

“Of course I am,” I say, squirting the washcloth with three pumps of liquid soap and then running it under the tap.