Page 110 of Fade into You

When I get to her house the third day it’s pretty much a repeat, except Kayla’s hair is greasier and her skin is even paler. She actuallyasksme to make her soup again. But the same thing happens. She races off to throw up. This time I follow her, figure I can at least hold her stringy hair back.

I try not to look in the toilet because that would only set me off, but when she reaches for the handle to flush, I catch sight of the blood.

“Holy shit, Kayla. You’re throwing up blood. Should I call your mom?”

“No! It’s just ’cause my throat is so sore from crying,” she tells me, and I don’t know why I pretend to believe her.

That evening when her parents come home, I tell them she’s been throwing up. Her parents exchange a look, like this news isn’t surprising. “Maybe she should go to a doctor or something?” I try.

God, why are everyone’s parents like this? They’d rather watchtheir daughter wither away than admit she might have an eating disorder. Jessa’s parents are just as bad. And mine would like me to magically forget I ever had a father.

“But what do I know?” I snap at them. “You’re the parents. I’m just a kid, right?”

When I get home that night, Liv is in our room, like she’s been waiting for me.

“Where the hell have you been?” she asks.

“Like you care?”

“I don’tcare. Just… what, are you not coming to school anymore? I mean, your mom’s gonna find out.”

“Well, I guessIdon’t care.”

“All right. I’m just going to come out and ask….”

“Ask what?”

“Did Jessa kiss you the other day at school?” I look at her, and her mouth is suspended between a grin and a grimace. “?’Cause people are saying she did.”

“Since when did you start taking an interest in my personal life?”

“Uh, since people are asking me if my sister is dating the resident weirdo lesbian of our class. It’s embarrassing.”

“What if we were dating, what would you do?”

She crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. “I’d tell you that’s disgusting and you should get your head examined.”

“Right. Well. Good to know you’d have my back, sis.” I turn to leave the room, and she calls after me.

“You better be at school tomorrow, because everyone thinksyou’re staying away because of what people are saying about you and Jessa being… whatever, being gay together.”

“Oh no, not people,”I mutter as I take a few steps down the hall.

I hear her walking up behind me. “Hey. Believe it or not, I do have your back. Just start dating someone, okay? Like literally anyone. I know you had a boyfriend at your dork camp, so just tell people that.”

I start laughing. “I guess having my back means something different to you than it does to me.”

“It’s not funny, Bird.”

“No, it’s not,” I agree, but I don’t think she’s getting any of my subtleties. “I’ll be at school tomorrow, okay?”

JESSA

Snow fell early this year, and it seemed to put a quietude on the entire month of December. The cold and white on the ground swallowed everything acoustic, leaving an absence as painful and real as the giant sucking hole in my chest. Bird hasn’t called. Dade has, but I’m trying to keep the promise I made to myself. I’ve spent afternoons sleepwalking through the aisles of Pterodactyl Records and bumping around crowds in Touchstone like a pinball. Home is a battleground I avoid, with Mack being up more often than down, and I slink in and out like a rat haunting the walls and attic. More often than not I’m too stoned to feel much as I watch the downward spiral of my family. I can’t be bothered, though, because I’m in a free fall of my own.

Natalie has sought me out a number of times, stood beside me at shows, offered me better drugs to help me through it, but I turn them down. Last week she scored a bottle of Prozac in the hopes I might try something more mainstream, but I assured her it was a phase.

Dwayne tried to broach the Bird topic, but I told him it was off-limits. I pushed us back to music. Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith, Sinéad O’Connor all speaking to my heartbreak and anger. My old friends in this dark hole of a winter.