“And I’ve gone out with him twice since then,” I tell Gloria about a week later, “and he’s super funny and cute and we have a great time talking and flirting and he hugged me goodbye last night. Do you think he might like me? I know I haven’t even known him for two weeks but I definitely like him. Would like to kiss him. But that’s crazy, right?”
No response.
I look behind me to make sure nobody’s nearby then say quietly, “I’m going to try on the dress tomorrow. It’s a big day anyhow, since Elle’ll be announcing who goes on to the presentation, so I might as well do all the scary stuff on one day. I could be a zero now, you know, I really could. I’ve lost nineteen pounds so far. And my hips feel way smaller and today I put on a size six skirt and it fell right off. I can only wear twos and my smallest fours, and even those are loose. But if I’m not quite there yet, I won’t give up, I promise. No matter what people say.”
Reactions to my weight loss are either “Wow, you look amazing” or “You need to eat something”. Since the first comments are coming from my coworkers and from Elle Warhol, and the second from my size-twelve mom and other not-so-skinny people, I’m inclined to believe the first ones over the second.
Losing weight hasn’t done anything for Gloria yet, whose coma score is still the depressingly low 7, but I still have hope. I’m lucky too, because not eating has become far easier than I’d expected it to be. I hardly ever feel hungry now, only when I haven’t had enough water. The cotton-wool-head feeling is constant, but I’ve grown accustomed to it, and to feeling cold most of the time. I do have to be careful when I stand up, because if I move too quickly I get lightheaded, and running for a subway is out of the question because I simply don’t have the energy, but keeping myself under such strict control feels surprisingly good.
In fact, maybe I should tighten up a bit more. I’m so tantalizingly close to size zero, why not skip the 800-calorie day? I can’t sabotage myself by overeating. Today’s a 600 day and I’ve barely eaten 400 and I’m okay. Since I’m doing fine on the lower amounts, why eat more?
I update my calorie number reminders in my phone’s calendar, removing the 800-calorie days and reorganizing everything so the other days fall in the right order. My eye lands on last Saturday’s “Mara’s wedding” appointment as I do, and I find myself wondering how it went then I delete the appointment as sharply as one can do on a phone. I don’t care about it. She told me I couldn’t handle everything and she’s wrong because I can. I am. I’m even better than I thought. And as I set the phone down and turn back to Gloria two thoughts fill my mind at once: on the lower calories I can’t fail to reach size zero, and I wouldn’t have to if…
I lean toward Gloria. “Why were you there that night?” I wait for an answer, because I can’t not, then go on. “You should have been at home. You should have had your dinner with whoever Leah is and then gone home. Where you’d be safe. Why didn’t Leah make you go home?”
“What?”
I jump to my feet, startled, and spin around toward the speaker, then fall back into the chair before I pass out. “You scared me.”
The short blonde steps in front of me. “Sorry. But were you talking about me?”
“Are you Leah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I was. I guess it’s not your fault,” I say, aware I don’t sound sincere and not caring, “but I just wish you’d made sure she got home instead of wandering off to—”
“Wish I made sure! More like you should have. I wasn’t with her, you were.”
I stare at her. “I wasn’t.”
“You were. We had made dinner plans but she cancelled them that afternoon saying she was going out… with…”
My confusion must be clear on my face because she says, “She wasn’t with you?”
I shake my head, carefully. “She said she couldn’t see me because she was seeing you.”
Leah takes the other chair at Gloria’s bedside, and a flash of annoyance hits me because that’s where Remy always sits. Knowing that’s ridiculous, and not caring, I say, “Are you telling me the truth?”
“Of course. Are you?”
“Of course!”
We sit in silence, then she says, “So Gloria lied, then. She was somewhere else. Where? And why wouldn’t she tell us?”
I have no response so I don’t bother saying anything. Eventually Leah sighs. “I guess we’ll never know where she was.”
I turn sharply toward her. Ignoring the sparkles of dizziness dancing before my eyes, I say, “Why not?”
She looks taken aback. “Well, because…” She gestures at Gloria in the bed. “It’s not like she’s coming back, is she? I mean, after all this time you have to think—”
“Shut up! Never say that,” I hiss at her. “Of course she’s going to wake up. She is. Any day now. Unless you screw everything up. If you’re going to talk like that in front of her you need to get out and never come back.”
She stares at me, shock and a rising fury in her eyes, and I know she’s considering hitting me. I almost want her to. Maybe a fight right here will wake Gloria up.
But instead she gets up and stalks out.
After informing the nurse who arrived concerned about how quickly Leah had left that Leah no longer has permission to see Gloria, I sit in silence with my sister. She will wake up. She has to. I’m doing everything I can, and obviously so are the doctors, so she will.
Both because I don’t want to lose her, and because I have to know why she’d lied and where she’d gone, why she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I can’t live with another “because bad things happen sometimes” non-answer. I won’t let that happen.