Free Elena Vanishing by Elena Dunkle Page B

starve ourselves! To not be fat slobs! You go down to the high school, and you go counsel all those porkers who are already hanging over the tops of their jeans. They’re the ones who’ll die early, not me!”
    She regards me with a superior, sphinxlike stare.
    â€œAnorexia nervosa shortens the lives of twenty percent of its victims,” she says. “It kills young women at twelve times the rate of all the other causes of death combined.”
    â€œWell, that’s not what I’ve got, then. Okay? That’s not what I’ve got! Because I’m not a victim—of
anything!
”
    I come out of the office still seething and refuse to eat my supper. The nurses lose their tempers and threaten me.
    So what? What are they going to do? Lock me up? Oh, wait—they already did that!
    The nurse in charge scolds me, but this time, I don’t even blink.
    She hates you because she’s fat
, says the voice in my head.
She hates you because you’re in control. She’d break down that control if she could.
    So the nurse calls up the psychologist on call. That’s the pretty woman from group therapy this morning, with the flippy black hairand dancer’s hands. Her peasant blouse is now a sweatshirt, and her chunky necklace is gone. She must have been called in from home.
    The pretty woman talks to me in the cooldown room. I can’t help but wonder if Karen is behind the futon cushion.
    â€œI know this is hard,” the woman says. “But you need to trust us. We know how to help you get better.”
    Don’t listen!
says the voice in my head while she cajoles and appeals.
She wants to make you weak like she is.
    But I’m not so sure the pretty psychologist is weak. She looks like she works out.
    We come out of the cooldown room to find the other patients clustered around a patient named Melinda. Melinda’s in tears. She’s decided to leave Drew Center, and she’s over eighteen, so she can do this. She’s waited out the maximum amount of time she can be held by law against her will: seventy-two hours. But her parents are supporting the doctors and therapists who say she should stay at Drew Center—which is pretty funny, considering that those doctors and therapists are blaming all her problems on them.
    â€œMom won’t let me come home,” she sobs. “Mom and Dad say that if I leave the center, that’s it. They’re done with me. I thought they loved me!”
    â€œThey’ve been brainwashed!” one of the girls says fiercely, and the rest of us murmur in agreement.
    â€œIs there anywhere else you can go?” Susannah asks.
    â€œThere’s this guy I know,” Melinda says. “We’ve been texting. I think we have a future, but my parents don’t like him.”
    â€œYour parents aren’t going to make you well,” Steph reminds her. “They made you sick. You have to do this on your own.”
    â€œI would,” Melinda says. “I know where he lives, but it’s too far away. I’d need a bus ticket, and I don’t have any money.”
    â€œI have some money,” I say.
    And so do several of the others.
    We scatter to go get it. When we return and pile all of our collected change and bills together, we have almost fifty dollars. Melinda can buy her bus ticket. She has a place to go.
    Melinda is radiant. She packs her bag, and we take turns hugging her. One of us is escaping!
    We all win when that happens. We all celebrate her victory.
    Melinda waves from the door of the waiting room, and we all cry happily and wave back. This is who we are! They want to break us, but we choose the life we want. This is who we are!
    The pretty psychologist walks out with Melinda. When she comes back, she looks distraught. She stops at the nurses’ station, and I hear the staff talk to her in low voices.
    â€œIs she going somewhere safe at least?” asks the fat one.
    The psychologist