down as she worked her abs, her arms crossed in front of her chest in an X, counting her progress in an angry, loud voice. “One, two, three, four,” she would huff. When she got to “twenty-five,” she’d stop for a few seconds, lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, and then she’d start all over again.
“She’s like a soldier,” Laura whispered one morning. It was an accurate description and it made Cleo nervous.
This seemed to come out of nowhere. Monica was anything but fat, and while both of the girls drank Diet Coke and frequently looked in the mirror and said, “I’m a cow,” or “Look at my giant ass,” it didn’t mean anything. It was just what girls did. Cleo hadn’t seen any behavior that would have led her to believe that Monica was going to be one of them: an Eating Disorder Girl. At Cleo’s high school, there was one in every group of friends—a thin, chilled girl with bags under her eyes who was eventually taken out of school to go to a rehab clinic and returned eating measured foods and seeing the school counselor once a week. She couldn’t understand how she’d missed this in her best friend.
Monica kept a notebook to write down every piece of food that she ate. Once, Cleo looked over her shoulder as she wrote down, “Baby carrots, lettuce (NO dressing!), gum, water.”
“It doesn’t seem like you’re eating enough,” Cleo offered.
Monica slammed the notebook shut. “I’m being healthy,” she said. “Not like the rest of you, eating candy and french fries all day.”
She stomped off to her room, where she spent most of her time with the door closed listening to music. She was always tired and cold, sometimes coming out to nap on the couch in the common room, because the sun came through the windows, and she could curl up there like a cat trying to warm itself.
When the rest of them ate, Monica watched them closely. “Is that a waffle?” she’d ask, sniffing the air. She’d sit and stare as Cleo put syrup on her Eggo, suggesting that she add butter, or maybe more syrup. Then she’d fill a glass of water and drink it while she watched Cleo eat, with an almost erotic look on her face. It was really freaky.
Cleo noticed one day that Monica’s arms were covered with peach fuzz, and she knew she had to call her parents. They came right away and took Monica out of school for the last month of sophomore year, keeping her home all summer and the first semester of junior year. They left everything in her room, paid her rent, and told the girls she could return when she was better. Sometimes Cleo would open the door and look in Monica’s room, which was just as she’d left it—the bed was made, there were books stacked on the desk, a box of Kleenex on her nightstand—except there was a fine layer of dust over everything, so that it made Cleo feel like time had stopped. She would stand there and stare at it, until it made her feel too lonely, and then she’d shut the door and go to her own room.
Once Monica was gone, Cleo wished she wasn’t staying in Lewisburg for the summer. The house felt empty, and even though Monica had been in her own calorie-counting world for most of the year, Cleo missed her greatly. But the arrangements were made, and it was too late to back out of the summer job working in the Visitors Center. And so she stayed.
The second thing that happened that year was that Laura and Mary turned into complete and total bitches. The house had always been a little divided, like they were on two teams—Monica and Cleo on one and Laura and Mary on the other—but they still all got along pretty well. And then once Monica got sick and left, the other girls seemed to blame Cleo in some way. They were annoyed at her all the time, made passive-aggressive comments about her jacket’s being left on the couch, or the amount of noise that she made. Post-it notes were left on milk cartons and said things like, This is Mary’s Milk. Unless you’re Mary, then hands OFF.
Cleo had used Mary’s milk on her cereal exactly once, and then she found the note there the next day. She honestly couldn’t figure out how Mary could have known, until she looked at the side