Brandy Colbert - Pointe

She gives me a long look in the mirror as the door closes behind me. I wait for her to speak, but she never turns around, and then finally, she looks away. I keep an eye on her as I move toward the farthest stall, and still she doesn’t say a word. Just stares straight ahead at her reflection as she rims the lids of her blue eyes with layers and layers of black liner.

I step into the stall with every intention of staying in here until she leaves. Even if it makes me late to my next class. I’ve closed the door, am just getting ready to slide the lock into place when her voice echoes out across the room.

“Got any more smokes?”

I freeze. There’s no pretending I didn’t hear her. We’re the only ones in here. I crack the stall door to look at her. “What?”

Lark drops the tube of eyeliner in her purse, then turns around and flutters a hand in the general direction of my chest. “Cloves. Got any more?”

Shit.

How could I forget? Hosea gave me one before we left the lab. “To remember me by,” he’d said, pecking my lips as he tucked it into the triangular pocket of my button-down.

And now it’s just sitting there, poking out of my shirt like I’m marking my territory.

I ignore the bad feeling that blooms in my chest as I shrug. “Sorry, it’s my last one.”

I start to close myself into the stall again as Lark makes her way to the door, but she pauses in front of me. Puts her hand on the edge of the stall door before I can fully shut it. Shit.

“Since when do you smoke cloves?” Her raccoon eyes are scary up close as they assess me.

“I’ve always smoked cloves,” I say, forcing myself to not look away from her. “When they’re around.”

“Well, the only person I know who smokes cloves around here is Hosea.” Lark squints at me and her breath smells faintly of old coffee and I wish more than anything that someone would walk in and save me.

“Maybe you should know more people,” I respond with another shrug. Calm and cool. Totally relaxed, like my palms aren’t sweating.

Her mouth falls open, but she recovers quickly. “Bitch,” she says in a loud, clear voice before she slinks out of the bathroom.

I snap the clove in half, watch the two ends swirl down the toilet bowl as I flush away the evidence.

THE RAINBOW DIET IS WHAT DID ME IN.

I’d been gradually cutting back on everything. It started with processed foods, then baked goods, then pasta and rice and bread. I never went to the trouble of pretending to be a vegetarian—even my parents couldn’t argue that cutting out red meat and pork was a bad thing.

But the rainbow diet was another beast. I found it on a pro-ana site. It was easy enough to follow, in theory. Mom already bought most of the fruits and vegetables on the list, and neither she nor Dad would be suspicious if they saw me eating more produce.

It was hard when I had to eat dinner with them every night, so I started staying at the studio late, or saying I’d eaten at Phil’s or Sara-Kate’s, or that I didn’t feel well and it would be better if I went to bed without supper.

I managed to keep it up for almost two straight weeks. The days were separated into colors: red produce on one day, white on another, and green and orange and yellow and purple. No more than 300 calories a day if I planned it just right. Wednesdays were the hardest. That’s when I fasted completely, when I could have nothing more than water. I danced on those nights, too, and I was so proud of myself when I finished, when no one had figured out that I hadn’t eaten since the evening before.

The second Wednesday was the one that gave me away. It was late June but already the days were so hot and humid that you wanted to take a shower as soon as you stepped out the front door. Phil and I had begged his mother to drop us off at the mall instead of the pool with her and his younger brother, Glenn. She protested at first; all of us were getting used to Donovan’s absence and parents were still nervous about leaving their kids unsupervised. He’d only been gone for a couple of months. Almost as long as it had been since I’d last seen Chris.

But we begged until Mrs. Muñoz called Mom to make sure it was okay with her. It was. She was just as nervous as Phil’s mother but I’d heard her and Dad talking once when they thought I was upstairs. She’d said they couldn’t let the fear control us, that we had to keep living our lives and not give anyone that power. So as much as it pained her, she let me go to the mall that day with Phil.

Mrs. Muñoz stared both of us down as she dropped us off in front of the movie theater/food court wing. “You keep your cell phones on and pick up if you see me calling, no exceptions. And do not talk to anyone you don’t know. Also no exceptions.”

“Ma, we’ll be right here at four o’clock,” Phil said before he kissed her on the cheek. “Three fifty-nine, even.”

I was pretty sure she had tears in her eyes as she drove away.

I knew for a fact that Phil had only gotten out of bed at eleven, a half hour before they picked me up, but his first stop was still the food court. I had mixed feelings about the food court. One part of me wanted to stand in the middle and revel in the decadent smells—fried chicken strips and enormous slices of greasy pepperoni pizza and creamy frozen yogurt and thick-cut waffle fries. It wasn’t what I needed to smell on a Wednesday, my fasting day.

But the other part of me was frozen with fear, because everything about the food court reminded me of Chris: the fast-food wrappers balled up in the corners of his car, the fountain sodas that took up residence in the sticky cup holders of the console. Even the stacks of thin paper napkins on the tables made me think of him. He always kept a bunch in his glove compartment; he used them to wipe himself off after we’d finished having sex.

“I’m getting a gyro to start out.” Phil took a step toward the Greek place, but his eyes were all over the food court. “Maybe a corn dog before my mom picks us up. Or tacos. And fries. A shitload of fries. What are you having?”

I didn’t answer. My stomach was growling so loudly, I could barely hear myself think. I pinched. Directly under my ribs on my right side. For one, two, three, then four beats. It was a little after noon, so I only had a few more hours until I could eat again. Seventeen more hours, to be precise. But I’d be sleeping for seven of those, so really just ten more hours.

“Theo?”

Phil’s voice sounded tinny. I wasn’t looking at him, anyway. I was staring at the meat behind the counter of the gyro restaurant. A vertical cylinder of meat turning on a spit. How could anything that looked and sounded so questionable smell so wonderful? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d touched beef or even chicken. Or lamb. Was it lamb? I’d always thought lamb was disgusting but if that’s what they were shaving off and stuffing into the grilled pita bread, it wasn’t disgusting that day.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had anything besides fruits and vegetables. Maybe I could switch out that day for the next one on the diet. Thursday could be my fasting day and maybe a gyro wouldn’t count because Chris and I never ate at a food court. Only in his car or on the swings of the abandoned park or at the picnic table behind the convenience store.

“Theo?”

I pinched myself again when Phil said my name. Harder, to make sure I wasn’t cheating myself. But everything started to get fuzzy. The sounds from the food court grew louder, like they were living inside me, and Phil’s voice got smaller. I was dizzy and warm. My whole body, then the warmth rushed to the tips of my ears. My ears were on fire. I think Phil touched my arm then, kind of shook me to make sure I was okay, but I was too far gone.