Chapter 28: What I Did Not Say Out Loud

I had not planned to tell anyone in this house. Amber knew pieces, and I am sure Carrie knew what Amber knew. Sue had looked at me too long over breakfast when Andrew commented on how much I ate and how thin I had gotten, and Carrie’s little shake of the head had been a gate slamming shut, which meant some part of this family already had a theory, and I had been pretending the theory would stay polite. Bulimic was a different word. Bulimic was a diagnosis I used on myself in the dark, and I had just thrown it at Andrew while he was sitting on the tile next to me, trying to help.

Now he had it. He could not unhear it. Every time he looked at me for the rest of this visit ... the ride to my house for clothes, the leftover days until Tuesday, the hallway at night ... he would have the picture under the picture. Girl in the pool. Girl with lotion on her back. Girl with his hand between her legs through a wetsuit. And underneath that: girl on her knees, head down, doing the thing she could not even describe in language when she wrote it later.