“The suede ones?” said Ape Face, brightening.
“The suede ones.” Noooooooo. These are my absolute favorite boots in the whole world and she knows it. I saved my allowance for three months to buy them.
Regret! Regret!
Ape Face came over to my bed and sat down, one leg crossed over the other. She held out her hand to me like she was royalty and I was supposed to kiss her ring.
I reached under the bed to get the shoe box and handed it to her.
Ape Face took her sweet time. She laced up each boot with excruciating care. She pointed her toes in the air, flexed. Pointed, flexed, assumed ballet positions. She stood and did a few pliés and arabesques. Then, even more slowly, she sat back down and unlaced. Slowly, oh so slowly, she placed my all-time favorite boots back in their tissue paper cocoon.
She handed me the box. “I don’t think so, Isabelle. They’re a little scuffed.”
She’s that good.
“Okay, April. Name it.”
“Your mountain bike.” She actually said this with a straight face.
“You’re crazy.”
“Your mountain bike,” she repeated.
“Have you been sniffing glue? Those fumes, you know, they can make you nuts.”
Ape Face walked over to the door, placed one hand on the doorknob. “This is my final offer, Belly. Take it or . . . don’t.”
I have never hated anyone so much in my entire life as I hated my sister at that moment. “Get out of my room,” I told her. “Out.”
“Have it your way,” Ape Face said. And here is what she, my own flesh and blood, did: she placed both hands on her nonhips, smiled at me, and started yelling. “Mahhhhhm! Belly’s puking her guts out!”
That’s how it happened. That’s how my ex-sister realized her lifelong dream of seeing me placed under house arrest. That’s how I ended up here, on this pee-colored couch from the disco era, sandwiched between a skeleton and a whale.
2
“GROUP” IS MY PUNISHMENT. As in “Eating Disorder and Body Image Therapy Group.” It is just how you wish you could spend every day for the rest of your life: sitting around in a circle, talking about things you don’t want to talk about, in a room with no air circulation and orange carpet that smells like Cheez-Its.
The first day of Group I wouldn’t get out of the car. My mother had us parked in a ten-minute spot, but that didn’t make me move any faster. I stared out the window at absolutely nothing. Then I fiddled with the radio. When I’m in the mood I can switch stations so fast you can’t even tell what song is playing. It is quite a talent.
Finally my mother reached over and turned it off.
“What?” I said. “I was listening.”
“Isabelle.” She put her hand on my arm. “It’s almost five. You don’t want to be late.”
I moved as far away from her hand as I could get. “Yes, I do,” I said. “I want to be very, very late. You have no idea how late I want to be.”
My mother sighed and gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
I turned the radio on again and fiddled with the buttons like crazy, which you would think would make a mother furious. Not this mother. She is the type that says, in a voice so gentle you want to scream, “Oh, honey.”
“Fine!” I turned off the radio. I unbuckled my seat belt to make her think I was planning on going somewhere. “Just answer me one thing. Why are you making me do this?”
“Because that is the deal,” my mother said.
“Some deal. It’s not like I had a choice.”
“You’re right.” My mother took off the stupid black sunglasses she always has to wear when she goes out, even when it’s raining. She turned to look at me. “About this, you don’t have a choice. You need to do this one thing.”
Now I was the one who reached over to touch her arm. “Mom. Please? It was just that one time I threw up. I won’t do it again. I promise.”
“I know you won’t,” she said.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“So I don’t have to go?”
“No,” Mom said, shaking her head slowly. “You do have to go. That’s how I know you won’t do it again.”
“Huh,” I said. I made my voice quiet and spoke directly to the windshield. The worst words possible. “Daddy would never make me go. Not in a million years.”
The silence was so big it made my stomach ache.
My mother couldn’t look at me. “I’ll pick you up at six thirty,” she said in a wobbly voice. On went the sunglasses.
When I got out of the car I slammed the door as hard as I could. I didn’t care if she cried. She could cry all day if she wanted to. Just for once, though, I’d like her to do it out in the open, not hiding behind something like sunglasses. It’s a wonder she doesn’t go blind.
I stood at the curb, watching my mother fumble with the car keys for about a hundred years until she finally turned on the ignition. I figured I might as well wait until she pulled away, so she could wave good-bye to me like everything was fine. And I could wave back like nothing had happened.
The leader of Group is Trish, who has hair like Orphan Annie and an overbite. I know what an overbite is only because I have one too. At least I used to, before I got braces. Now all I have is a mouth full of metal.
The first day, Trish bounced around handing out three-by-five cards and touching everyone on the shoulder. “Here you go. . . . Here you go. . . .” She’s the camp counselor type. If anyone can make a rope ladder out of dental floss, it’s Trish.
“Welcome to Group!” Trish said. “Why don’t we go around the room and introduce ourselves. . . . Mathilde?” Trish pounced on the girl to my left. “Would you like to start?”
When Mathilde ducked her head, you could see all five of her chins. I’m not saying this to be mean, it really happened. She spoke so softly we could barely hear her. “I’m . . . uh . . . Mathilde.”
“Great!” said Trish. “Hi, Mathilde. Let’s all say ‘Hiii, Mathilde.’”
We all said, “Hiii, Mathilde.”
You have to feel badly for Mathilde. You really do. First of all, she wears things like shorts with little strawberries on them, and T-shirts with iron-on kittens.
