Free Elena Vanishing by Elena Dunkle Page A

the fresh air.
    I used to think,
Wow, that’s so cool! I’d love to faint in church.
    So I worshipped Anna Anton, and I studied her day by day, trying to be just like her. And when I finally had her system down—the hot tea, the one piece of bread—she had the nerve to call up my parents.
    â€œYour daughter is dying,” she told them. “Your daughter won’t eat!”
    And I had to lie my way through a whole frantic parent- housemother meeting to convince them Anna Anton was wrong.
    â€œDid you admire this person?” the therapist asks me now.
    â€œNo. Anna Anton was a lying, backstabbing bitch.”
    â€œI see. You knew an anorexic at boarding school, but you didn’t like her.”
    â€œNot that one. But Anita was amazing.”
    The young woman’s expressionless expression slips again. “You went to school with
another
anorexic?”
    â€œIt was a gymnasium,” I explain. “The highest level of German high school. We were under a lot of stress.”
    â€œAnd was this girl Anita under stress?”
    â€œYes. Because she always got A-pluses. No matter what she did.”
    I realize as I say this that it won’t make sense. The therapist would have to understand the whole system of favoritism that went on at my school. Anita made the best grades because Anita had always made the best grades. She was the school’s favorite student. It was that simple.
    There’s no question that Anita deserved those A-pluses most of the time. She had an amazing mind. Once, she decided to learn the entire Latin textbook in two weeks, so she did. I could turn to any page and ask her the questions, and she would write down the correct answers.
    Anita didn’t like the idea that she might be earning high grades just because she was a favorite. She wanted to believe that her hard work and brilliant mind were earning those A-pluses. So, the year before I got to the school, as an experiment, Anita decided to do nothing for a class. She ignored the homework, talked back to the teacher, and deliberately mangled her exams.
    But there it was on her report card: an A-plus. And Anita knew she didn’t deserve it. That meant there was no way for Anita to measure herself against the work—no way to find out who and what she really was.
    So Anita shut down. In the middle of the busy boarding school, she stopped speaking—to everybody. She stopped eating, too, and just about melted away. By the time I got to know her, a psychiatrist was coming to the school once a week to meet with her, but she still did exactly what she wanted.
    I try to explain to the therapist how much willpower this took. Not to speak in a busy, chattery boarding school—it’s like keeping your mouth shut in the middle of a sleepover.
    Anita was absolutely extraordinary. I adored her.
    â€œWhen she came to tell you she was going to an eating disorder treatment center,” says the therapist, “what was your reaction?”
    â€œ
Wow! She’s talking to me!
It was that unusual for her to speak. And we promised to write, but I couldn’t. They wouldn’t give me her address. It upset me so much! I knew she was waiting for my letters.”
    â€œYour parents kept you from writing?”
    â€œThe housemothers. Leave my parents out of this!”
    The therapist gives me her best bland smile, but her face isn’t quite as expressionless as she wants it to be. The expression and the lack of expression—both of them make me mad.
    â€œYou know what?” I say. “I’ve had it. I’m done explaining myself. There’s nobody to blame for What Went Wrong because there’s nothing wrong with me. And that goes for Anita, too. This is who we are. This is what we choose! You just hate it that we have the strength of will to achieve it.”
    The therapist’s face sharpens a little. “To starve yourself?” she says.
    â€œTo—no, not to