Free The Stone Girl by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

mattered to you.”
Sethie looks at the ceiling. “I think I want to go home.”
“Okay,” Janey says, swinging her legs over the side of Doug’s bed. “I’ll come with you.”
Sethie shakes her head. “No. No. It’s not one in the morning or anything. I can walk myself out.” And she turns around and runs down the stairs, taking them two at a time, like a little kid who can’t wait to get downstairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa has brought her. On the sidewalk, she holds her left wrist in her right hand, and presses the fingers of her left hand to her mouth, walking as fast as she can. She lets go of her wrist to hail a cab, and when she slams the cab door behind her, Sethie is thinking two things: Oh God, I miss Shaw, and I hope this cab gets me home in time.
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15.
    H
    ome i n ti me means in time to throw up her dinner. It’s been more than an hour since she finished her meal and since then she’s skipped down stairs and run to a cab, moves that surely have made her metabolism
    start digesting. It’s funny to her that she’s racing her metabolism, the very thing whose slowness makes her need to throw up in the first place.
    In the taxi, she runs the numbers in her head. Bagel with mustard for lunch. Edamame. Miso soup. Four pieces of sushi. Soy sauce. She guesses the calories; 500 plus 100 plus 200 plus 400. Only 1200. She’s never thrown up on only 1200. She’s never thrown up when she ate exactly what she had planned to. But she knows that she wants to tonight. She slams her bathroom door behind her and curls her body over the toilet; she throws up until her stomach hurts and there are pieces of raw fish underneath her fingernails. She throws up until she can’t tell whether she’s crying because Shaw slept with other girls, because Janey knew and
    135 didn’t tell her, or because of the way she’s scratched her throat raw. Maybe she’s crying because she hates throwing up; a bulimic, Sethie thinks bitterly, is just an anorexic who isn’t trying hard enough, and I’m not even a real bulimic. When she pulls her hair into a ponytail afterward, she can see flecks of food shining against her scalp. But she can’t wash her hair now, because she’s already washed her hair once today and she knows that you’re not supposed to wash your hair twice on the same day. Janey doesn’t even wash her hair every day because her hairdresser says that’s so much better for her scalp. Sethie decides that it would be better for her hair if she just got into bed with it dirty; she can wash it, and her pillowcases, in the morning.
    Rebecca isn’t home, so Sethie puts on a tight tank top so that she will feel and see all the weight she still should lose; she would never wear something so tight when there was a chance Rebecca might see her. Alone, she will see a reminder of her fat in every reflective surface: the mirror in the bathroom, the windows of her bedroom, even the shining wood floors. The fabric of the shirt will always be touching her skin, unlike the loose, flowy tops she usually favors, so she will always feel her fat.
    Sethie doesn’t answer the phone when it rings; it can only be Janey checking up on her, and she doesn’t want to talk to Janey. Or maybe it’s Shaw, Shaw who doesn’t know what Sethie’s been told, and he’s calling to come over for what Sethie now understands is only a booty call. Sethie keeps her bedroom door shut and the phone shoved under her pillow; if her mother comes home, she won’t be able to
    136 hear the phone ring and wonder why Sethie isn’t answering it.
    Sethie is so hot that she can’t sleep. Every piece of her body is sticky, her fingers smell like vomit, her hairline is covered in sweat. When she lies on her side, she can feel her thighs rubbing together, and when she shifts, it feels like moist cold cuts being pulled apart.
    She opens the window; it’s December out, it should be cool. She kicks the blanket to the foot of the bed, then gets up and