110

THE PADDED CELL

The next morn­ing I got up be­fore the sun had even sent a wisp of light over the hills that sur­round­ed Eas­ton. It wasn't as if ly­ing there wide awake, as I had all night, was do­ing me any good. All I had done was stare at the wall and imag­ine my­self get­ting caught by Noelle, Ar­iana, Ki­ran, and Tay­lor in a mil­lion dif­fer­ent ways. I pic­tured what they would do, how they would re­act. In one ver­sion Noelle took out a bat and whacked me across the head, show­er­ing her bestest friends with blood and brains. But I think I had been drift­ing off when that one oc­curred, so it was a half-?dream. What­ev­er the case, it had kept me awake for the next three hours.

So I got up, made my own bed, straight­ened my stuff, and took a show­er. Natasha tossed and turned and huffed when­ev­er I made a noise above a whis­per, but she said noth­ing. Good thing. I was, af­ter all, do­ing this all for her.

And for my­self. And my fu­ture.

Soon ev­ery­one start­ed to stir and I was able to vac­uum. Some girls said good morn­ing to me on their way down­stairs; oth­ers

111

/> didn't both­er. I didn't care much. All I could think about was what I was about to do.

I was hov­er­ing in the shad­ows at the end of the hall­way when Ki­ran and Tay­lor walked out to­geth­er, de­bat­ing whether trav­el with­in the con­tigu­ous Unit­ed States was even worth the time it took to pack a bag. (Tay­lor was pro, Ki­ran was con.) Shak­ing like I was about to meet my ex­ecu­tion­er, I wait­ed un­til they round­ed the cor­ner, then sprang for­ward and slipped in­to their room. The sec­ond I was in­side, I re­al­ized there was no need for the cloakand-?dag­ger act. I was sup­posed to be here. There were the un­made beds, the piles of laun­dry, the musty bath­room. I could have walked in here while they were still get­ting dressed and it would have been fine. Ex­pect­ed, even. Way to stress my­self out.

Re­lax­ing ev­er so slight­ly, I got to work on the beds. I'd do the chores first and get them over with, then snoop around a lit­tle. That way if I had to leave sud­den­ly, my work would be done when I bailed. Af­ter mak­ing sure ev­ery­thing was in or­der, I stood in the cen­ter of the room and looked around. Where to be­gin?

My eyes fell on Ki­ran's clos­et. Might as well start with my fa­vorite place in the room. I walked over and placed my hands on the two knobs that worked the slid­ing doors. I lis­tened for nois­es. Some­one was show­er­ing in an­oth­er room, but that was all I could hear. I steeled my­self--I was do­ing this for a rea­son, I was do­ing this be­cause I had to--and threw the doors open.

Right. Don't get dis­tract­ed by the thou­sands up­on thou­sands of dol­lars' worth of de­sign­er clothes. You want to get this over with.

112

Shoe box­es lined the floor, stacked three box­es high and at least twelve across. I dropped to my knees and opened the first box. Black stilet­tos. The one un­der it, suede camel sling backs. The one un­der that, red kit­ten-?heeled san­dals. God, a girl could go crazy in here.

Fo­cus. Your fu­ture or try­ing on a pair of shoes?

I opt­ed for a fu­ture. One by one I went through all the box­es and found noth­ing but shoes, shoes, and more shoes. Then on the far end, the purs­es be­gan. I worked my way up through shelves of clutch­es and ho­bos and shop­pers and mi­nis to the shelves of sweaters above the hang­ing rod. Al­ready I was sweat­ing. This could take for­ev­er.

I dragged Tay­lor's desk chair over and stood up on it, mov­ing the first stack of sweaters aside care­ful­ly so that they would ap­pear un­touched. My eyes fell on some­thing out of place. It was a huge, black-?and-?white NO!

Well. That was in­crim­inat­ing enough. Ten­der­ly I took down two stacks of sweaters and laid them rev­er­ent­ly on Ki­ran's bed. I stepped back up on the chair to have a bet­ter look. There, shoved in­to the far­thest, dark­est cor­ner of Ki­ran's clos­et, was a brown box with a small pad­lock and mag­azine clip­pings past­ed all over it. Like some­thing out of a se­ri­al killer's house.

no!

stay away

don't touch

Itch­ing with cu­rios­ity, I reached for the box and pulled it to­ward me. It was heavy and made of wood. Among the words and.

113

hasti­ly as­sem­bled let­ters were clip­pings of pic­tures of farm an­imals. Pigs and cows, most­ly. What the hell was this thing?

I reached for the lock, ex­pect­ing it to be, of course, locked, but it fell right open. My heart skipped a beat. I re­moved the lock and slow­ly opened the box. The first thing I no­ticed was the pic­ture of some poor wom­an's hu­mon­gous, cel­lulite-?rid­den ass in a flow­ered bathing suit taped up in­side the box top. The sec­ond was the smell of ic­ing.

Oh. My. God.

The box was full of snacks. Host­ess cup­cakes, Twinkies, Ore­os, Ding Dongs, Nut­ter But­ters, brown­ies, cof­fee cakes, SnoBalls, Mi­lanos. It was sick. If she was so wor­ried about eat­ing it, why go to all the trou­ble of cre­at­ing a box to keep it in--a box de­signed to keep her away? Was it some kind of tor­ture?

I no­ticed a small, spi­ral-?bound note­book propped flat against the side of the box and moved some Dev­il Dogs aside to pull it out. In­side was an en­try marked Septem­ber 9. Be­neath it was a list of ev­ery sin­gle thing Ki­ran had eat­en that day and the calo­rie con­tent of that item. At the bot­tom was writ­ten “Twen­ty Ore­os,” and next to it, in a psy­chot­ic scrawl, the words “No, No, No!”

I cov­ered my mouth with my hand. This poor girl. This poor, poor girl. Talk about an eat­ing dis­or­der; this was more like an in­fec­tious dis­ease. Ki­ran was se­ri­ous­ly strug­gling.

I turned the page in the note­book. The fol­low­ing day there was no sug­ar in­take and a smil­ing face was drawn at the bot­tom. But ev­ery day af­ter that there were more snacks and more crazy ad­mon­ish­ments.

Tags: Kate Brian Private
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