Free The Death Class: A True Story About Life by Erika Hayasaki

noticed the rusty skeleton key that Caitlin kept on a chain around her neck and asked if she knew where it had come from. Caitlin always figured the key had magically appeared in her backyard, just for her to find, separate from the ones her father gave her. But her mom explained that someone had given it to her at the hospital when Caitlin was four. That meant her mom had received it shortly after Caitlin had found her facedown in the backyard. She must have lost the key in the yard.
    Caitlin couldn’t believe it. She threw the key away. She wanted nothing to do with anything tainted by such a horrible memory. That was when her hobby of collecting skeleton keys ended.
    By the time she turned twelve, Caitlin had become withdrawn and despondent in school. She would not even reply when a teacher called on her, wouldn’t open her mouth at all. She just sat there, paralyzed with fear.
    Sometimes teachers would get upset with her lack of obedience and scold her in front of the class, which made her feel terrible. She wanted desperately to talk but just couldn’t bring herself to do it. The thought of speakingmortified her, and she began to hate herself even more for it. When class was over, she would go looking for somewhere away from everyone else to cry.
    To try to overcome this fear and shyness, she decided to try out for a school play. But she got so nervous before her audition that she ran to the bathroom and threw up all of the Doritos she had eaten beforehand. Throwing up horrified her. She had never thrown up before, at least not since she was a baby, and she couldn’t remember that far back. She detested sickness in general and would lock herself in a closet with Lysol if ill people were around. She would wipe down the toilet seat in her own house each time she went to the bathroom, and even after it had been wiped down she still did not actually sit on the toilet seat. She rubbed her hands raw with soap and water. She needed neatness. If anything in her bedroom seemed an inch out of place, or if a pencil suddenly went missing, she would notice immediately and get upset. She couldn’t stand the thought of anyone touching her stuff. After the vomiting incident, she got panic attacks in school, worrying that she might throw up again at any moment. Fear of vomiting consumed her now too.
    By middle school, Caitlin was a C student, but she had become convinced that she could make life at home better if she excelled in sports. She knew the whole family enjoyed softball, and when Caitlin played in tournaments they all came to the games and acted so happy, like a normal family. Her mom was a huge Yankees fan. And her dad enjoyed playing catch. If Caitlin could become the best softball player, if she could play the game as much as possible, maybe then, she figured, everything would be okay. But it didn’t work out that way.
    Years passed, and Caitlin kept looking for new ways to cope, to make her imperfect life feel perfect. She had become obsessed with the idea of being skinny. She consumed 500 calories a day, subsisting on coffee, oatmeal, and fruit, and ran two to three miles or spent forty-five minutes at the gym daily. She was five feet, seven inches tall and had whittled down to 100 pounds in a matter of months. She stopped getting her menstrual cycle.
    By college, Caitlin had willed herself to become a straight-A student, who panicked if she received anything less. She was now pretty and smart,or so everyone else thought. But passing herself in the mirror, she didn’t always see the captivating young lady that others commented about on Facebook, using words such as “gorgeous” and “hot,” one even saying she could be Britney Spears’s twin. Caitlin was a long-legged blonde with a sharp chin and a waist narrow enough to hug with one arm. For makeup she used just smoky eyeliner, mascara, and a few strokes of lip gloss, yet it was still enough to make heads turn. But at school she preferred baseball caps and