On the night before her last spell in the hospital, Dawn was haunted again by that old dream about the stone men. As always, she woke the moment she couldn’t stand being terrorized any longer. She opened her eyes and sat up. Her heart raced frantically; her face was drenched in cold sweat. She was still partially entangled in the throes of the nightmare when she realized she wasn’t alone in the room. Julia was sitting on the edge of the bed, glancing at her from the dark.

“What’s going on?” asked Dawn.

“You probably had a nightmare,” Julia said softly, “I want to hear all about it, angel.”

Dawn was about to tell Julia about her dream but wound up saying: “I don’t remember.”

“Here we go again,” Julia huffed. “You never tell me anything anymore.”

“Why are you sitting there like that?”

“It’s my last chance to look at you while you’re sleeping,” Julia explained, “you’re walking out on me.”

Dawn struggled to settle her breathing. Julia slid over on the bed and gently caressed Dawn’s closely shaved scalp.

“Angel,” she whispered in her ear, “please don’t leave me.”

Dawn emitted a helpless sigh. Her eyes were half shut by a persistent veil of sleep crust. She was still overwhelmed by the stone men. With great difficulty she uttered: “I’m not walking out on you.”

“Right, you’re abandoning me.”

“You know I have to do this.”

“No, I don’t.”

“We talked about it a thousand times.”

“You talked, you decided, as always. You never gave me a chance.”

Dawn lowered her head, evading Julia’s irresistible feline green eyes. She didn’t know what to say. Once again she was stunned by the ease with which Julia molded reality to fit her desires. And yet Julia’s conviction seemed to be so absolute and genuine and therefore reassuring, that Dawn felt tempted to believe that this was really how things had transpired. “Stop it.”

“Stop what? I don’t understand. You don’t need this shit.”

“I already explained…” Dawn pleaded. “Daphne says that…”

“Agghhh! I can’t listen to this anymore! So she says! So what? What is she, like, fucking God?!

“No…”

“Can’t you see she’s evil?!

“Don’t talk about her that way.”

“Why not?”

“You know how much she helps me.”

“No. What I do know is that she wants to take you away from me. And if you can’t see it you’re fucking blind.”

“Do you have any idea how crazy you sound?”

Julia shot Dawn a cold look. After a moment of dead silence she said: “You’re in love with her.”

“What?”

“I knew it…” muttered Julia. She got up and started walking around the room nervously.

“That’s nonsense.”

Julia paused. “Yeah? Weird, you didn’t used to talk to me like this.”

“Like how?”

“You used to appreciate everything I did for you.”

“And I still do, babe, you know that,” Dawn implored, finally managing to unglue herself from the top of the bed and cautiously approach Julia.

“Who do you love more, me or her?”

Dawn couldn’t bring herself to answer.

Julia threw herself face-down onto the bed and burrowed her face in a pillow, muttering, “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”

Now she seemed so tiny and fragile that Dawn was flooded with compassion. She felt the need to apologize for something. She wrapped her bony arms around Julia and stroked her long brown hair. “Please don’t be angry with me, babe,” she said, “I don’t have a choice…”

“But you have me!” cried Julia, turning her head up from the pillow, “You’re my life!”

The love and helplessness in Julia’s words and eyes almost had Dawn caving in. For a brief moment she thought to herself, No one’s ever going to love me so powerfully, what am I doing, giving this up? But she shook the thought away.

“I’m twenty-eight years old,” she said. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?” Julia sat up. “You’re the most amazing thing in the universe! I was sitting here for an hour thinking I must be blessed by God if He gave me such a perfect angel. It’s only because of you that I know I’m good. Without you I’m nothing.” Julia took hold of Dawn’s chin and tilted her face towards herself, saying, “And you know what else I was thinking? What if I covered your mouth and pinched your nose while you were sleeping? Then you wouldn’t ever leave me.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Scaring you my ass!” said Julia, disengaging abruptly and jumping off the bed. “I’m protecting you! I love you! I’m the only one that truly loves you! Get that through your thick skull!” she shouted, waiving an accusing finger at Dawn’s face. Then she lowered her voice. “That’s it,” she said decisively, “You’re fucked. You’re like a different person now. I don’t recognize you anymore.”

Dawn found herself crawling to the edge of the bed, pleading, “Please don’t be mad at me, babe, please. I just want to be normal.”

“Fuck normal! There’s no such thing! It’s all men’s definitions! They just want to control us!”

“You know what?” Dawn sputtered. “Today, before you came back from work, I was so fucking scared of tomorrow that I took half a pack of Ex-lax!”

“So, what else is new?”

“Does that seem like the kind of thing a normal person would do?”

Julia crossed her thin arms against her lean chest, walked to the window and looked outside. “So I understand your decision is final.”

“Yes…” Dawn mumbled.

There was a moment of tense silence before Julia erupted: “Fuck you! When Daphne kicked you out, who did you come to? Huh? Me! Like a dog you came, crawling! And I let you live here, rent-free, I let you drive my car, I bought you cigarettes! But you?! You never really loved me! You lying whore!”

“That’s not true! Please!”

“You don’t know how to love. You’re evil. You’re a goddamn heart of stone.”

Dawn froze. She could have withstood anything Julia threw her way, anything but those last three words. Tears started flowing from her eyes. “I can’t believe you just said that…”

“I guess it’s true what they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Julia took a few steps back towards the door. “Oh, and you can forget about a ride tomorrow!”

“But you promised!”

“Tough.”

“But how will I get there?”

“Take the bus; call a cab.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Uber then. Get some woman to drive you. I’m done with you.”

 

 *

 

When Dawn woke up the next morning she found the apartment empty. Julia was gone, without even a note. It wasn’t uncharacteristic of her to pull off this kind of disappearing act in a moment of rage. This time, Dawn had no time to waste pondering Julia’s whereabouts.

Good thing she prepared her suitcase yesterday, before swallowing all that Ex-lax. Now she could dress quickly and call an Uber, insisting on a female driver, as always. Unfortunately, on her first day back in the hospital, there was no escaping a similarly dreadful situation. She had to go through the chief of the eating disorders unit, Dr. Katz.

She had met him during her first hospitalization, nearly a decade ago. Over the years she had repeatedly described him as the devil incarnate. She called him a “misogynist” and a “woman-hater.” His most horrific attribute as far as Dawn was concerned was that she couldn’t even venture a guess as to how he felt about her. So she assumed he hated her.

When she entered his cramped office he didn’t make the slightest gesture of recognition. Dawn took a seat in front of his desk while morphing into her usual character—the good, compliant girl—that was so far off from who she really was.

During the short interview, which felt like a small eternity, she performed sweetness and adorability like a pro. She threw everything she had at him. But Dr. Katz remained chillingly serious and correct. He did not respond to her futile attempts at goofiness. He did not smile or laugh at her jokes. He did not even take his eyes off the computer screen while asking his routine questions. And when he typed in her responses, there were stretches of torturous silences which she strove to eradicate by flooding the room with grand declarations of her high motivation and promises that this time would be different.

“I even broke up with Julia,” she said, “Daphne helped me understand that she’s no good for me, that she colludes with my…” she paused to clear her throat, “with my pathology.”

Dr. Katz was obviously unimpressed by her deployment of professional jargon. He took off his glasses and leaned back in his armchair, his lengthy gaze invading Dawn, squeezing her heart in its pincers.

“Did you break up with her, or did she break up with you?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“No.”

“Why are you dismissing it? Do you have any idea how hard it was?”

“Oh, I’m sure it was hard. But I have a vivid recollection of the kind of bond you two formed here. You would never have initiated a separation.”

“My relationship with Julia is another way for me to harm myself,” Dawn recited Daphne’s words.

“And…?”

“And I don’t want to harm myself anymore.”

Dawn met his beady, dispassionate eyes with desperation. “I’ll be honest with you, Dawn,” he said, “I didn’t want to admit you.”

“I know…”

“Good. It would be your seventh time here. Not a rare occurrence, unfortunately, but who knows better than you the resources we invest in our patients. You get an APRN, a social worker and a dietitian. You get individual psychotherapy twice a week, participation in a psychodynamic group, CBT group, DBT group, art therapy, dance therapy, occupational therapy…”

“I know all this…”

“So you understand, we provide you with every opportunity to thrive. But I don’t like investing so much in someone who doesn’t want to get better.”

“But I do!” Dawn protested.

“I think you’re saying what you think I want to hear. But all I want from you is the truth.”

“So what’s the truth?”

“The truth is that I don’t see any indication that you are truly willing to give up your illness. Daphne thinks you are. It’s only because I value her judgment so highly that I agreed to give you another chance.”

She dropped her gaze involuntarily to the floor.

“But…” said Dr. Katz as he leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table, “since you are here now, I do hope you’ll prove me wrong.”

Dawn forced her head up. What she saw was a smug monster of a man.

“I understand that we have a plan set up then,” he continued, “You spend three months here. If you make it, you go back to the rehabilitation home and continue your recovery there, just like you and Daphne decided.”

Dawn stared at him bleakly.

“There’s one thing that Daphne and I agree on: you still haven’t made up your mind about wanting to live.”

Dawn began to shiver for no apparent reason. The space seemed to be shrinking. Faintly, she said: “I do want.”

And that was that.

When she left Dr. Katz’s office and looked around at the gray corridors of the unit her head began to spin. She felt sick to her stomach. Her vision blurred. She wanted to run away and not be—here, or anywhere else, for that matter. A familiar voice snuck in, whispering: You don’t stand a chance.

 

*

 

Dawn spent the first weeks in the eating disorders unit re-familiarizing herself with everything she hated about the place. The strict regimented routine drove her crazy. Between meals she sat in the common room like a junky in withdrawal—agitated, biting her nails.

She couldn’t believe she was back in a place where she wasn’t allowed to take a shit without asking for permission and, to add insult to injury, without being escorted by a staff member. Although she knew all the unit’s policies by heart, she sounded surprised when she complained about them to Daphne in their weekly phone conversations. She ranted about how they forbade her to close the door completely or to flush the toilet before it was checked for signs of vomit. She went on and on about how hurtful it was to be so mistrusted.

She also hated the greasy food, telling Daphne that “It kind of puts me off balance.” But what she hated even more was hearing the other girls complain about it not being “healthy enough.” They didn’t understand that if they could survive this crap, there’s nothing in the world they wouldn’t be able to eat.

The close surveillance during meals annoyed her, but not as much as the comparative, competitive, envious looks the girls gave one another. It was also hard to see them chewing and swallowing so incorrectly, as though they were never taught the basics of proper eating or had simply forgotten after a long period of self-starvation.

Dawn was still outraged by all those little tricks they pulled to minimize the amount of food they’d taken or deprive themselves of any pleasure, God forbid they learn to enjoy eating. Zoe, for instance, cut her chicken breast into a hundred tiny pieces. Myriam ate her morning yogurt with a fork, inevitably spilling most of it. And there was that breakfast when Sharon poured ketchup into her Special K.

Yet these insubordinations were only the tip of the iceberg as far as the girls’ covert operations were concerned. Some girls went about it like fucking morons. Others were unbelievably adept transgressors. The staff person on duty had no chance of detecting every little thing that went on. But when a girl was caught red-handed, there were immediate sanctions, going all the way from extended post-meal detention to—and this was the girls’ worst nightmare—being forced to drink Ensure.

Dawn saw everything, and because she felt these misdemeanors came at her expense in some way, she was tempted to snitch. In another sense it made her feel better about herself, more advanced than the other girls. She was now able to look back at the year she’d spent at the rehabilitation home and realize it hadn’t been, as Julia kept telling her, a complete waste of time.

This feeling built Dawn’s confidence, but every day, in the shower, all that confidence peeled off and went down the drain. Outside the hospital Dawn used to go weeks without showering, even in summertime. She walked, ran and kick-boxed, wearing the same long sweatshirts and sweatpants, almost suffocating in her own foul stench, skillfully exterminating any chance of a man being attracted to her enough to come dangerously close.

But here she was forced to take better care of herself.

Taking off her clothes immediately filled her with self-loathing. She showered as quickly as possible, scrubbing herself with a thick sponge so she wouldn’t have to touch herself. She would look straight up at the ceiling, thus avoiding encountering her ugly fat belly, her disgusting plump hips, her repulsive cow-thighs, her repugnant wide shins, her abhorrent everything. She even forced herself to sing or whistle just to distract her mind from her body.

After showers she always felt a sudden urge to call Julia. But Julia never answered her calls and text messages, and Dawn felt too ashamed to tell Daphne about it. Eventually, though, she did, with tears falling from her eyes, at one of their usual phone conversations.

Daphne asked, “why are you doing this to yourself?”

Dawn knew the answer all too well. And yet she could not bring herself to say it out loud. She felt so weak she almost dropped the phone.

In her lowest moment, she even called her mother; the equivalent of cutting herself seeking some concrete, comprehensible pain that would alleviate, if only by means of replacing the dreadfully ambiguous pain that flooded her. But she hung up the moment her mom’s hoarse voice roared, “yeah?!”

That, she did not tell anyone.

 

*

 

Dawn had often described her hospital experience to Daphne as taking a walk on the edge of a cliff: constantly afraid of falling, secretly wishing it would happen already. Now two things restricted her impulse to push herself off: knowing it was her last chance to do things differently, and her fear of disappointing Daphne.

She showed up to meals on time. She followed through with her diet without shenanigans. She cooperated with her nutritionist and tried to be as open as she could in her sessions with her social worker, Erica. She steadily gained weight—1.5 pounds a week—according to plan.

At first, this made her feel anxious. But Daphne helped her see how this time around she was more afraid she would not gain weight than she was afraid she would. This, as Dawn had agreed, made all the difference in the world.

In group sessions she behaved herself, participating without dominating. She tried to be mindful of her most common pitfalls she’d fallen into, at least partially willingly, in the past. Like when she met Julia. Now she refrained from mingling with the other girls.

It was the loneliest period in her life–lonelier than her first days in the rehabilitation home, almost a year and a half ago. Every day ended exactly the same: Dawn stuffing her face in her pillow, crying herself to sleep.

 

*

 

After a month, Dawn was ready to raise the white flag. The voice that encouraged her to keep fighting was no longer superior or even distinguishable from the other, nefarious voice that was tempting her to throw up, starve herself, give in.

It was an unrelenting war of survival, and it drained Dawn completely when the finish line was hardly in sight.

And then Ronny was discharged and she found out that she was getting a new roommate.

Ronny was the classic anorexic girl: a timid, anemic creature who was too afraid of her own shadow to even dare speak to anyone, and thus kept to her diary. This had made her the perfect roommate for Dawn. Their room had been an exemplar of a symptom-free zone, a quiet and relatively safe space, a sanctuary.

In spite of everything she knew about the eating disorders unit, Dawn somehow deluded herself into thinking that Ronny’s bed would miraculously remain empty. As the days passed, her conviction became stronger.

She found out just how badly mistaken she was one morning when Dr. Katz summoned her to his office and dryly informed her of the change in her living situation. Dawn wept, begged and negotiated. Then she exploded with fury. She threatened to leave the unit immediately. Her screams echoed outside so everyone could hear. She gave it everything she had, but to no avail. Dr. Katz sat there calmly, waiting as she went through practically every stage of grief before his eyes, allowing her to complete her tantrum with a whimper while his decision stood.

Dawn ran straight to call Daphne to report the atrocity, hoping that she would pull some strings for her. After twenty minutes of complaining and crying, during which time Daphne tried to show her things weren’t as bleak as Dawn is portraying it, she offered to delve deeper into this subject in their weekly conversation that was scheduled to take place three days later. Dawn said “I get it, you don’t have time for me,” and hung up.

 

*

 

The new roommate arrived after lunch.

Dawn was killing time with some of the other girls in the lounge area outside the common room. They sat in clear sight of the entrance to the unit. A tall silver-haired man wearing a fancy blue suit entered the building. Radiating success, this was not your ordinary visitor. He was followed by a short black-haired young woman wrapped in a black hooded sweatshirt.

Dawn immediately realized that she knew this girl, but the circumstances of their acquaintance were lost on her. 

The successful man turned to the information desk and, following a brief exchange with Nurse Tammy, proceeded to Dr. Katz’s office with the young woman following behind.

As they waited to be seen by Dr. Katz, the young woman studied her surroundings in the most cryptic fashion. Her gaze had a primary quality to it, as though this was the first time she was exposed to reality and was still taking in nothing but amorphous shapes and shadows.

It wasn’t immediately apparent that she was unwell. Her face was pale, but pretty. The dark circles around her eyes could have been explained by sleep deprivation or some kind of allergy, and her black sweatshirt with the Jolly Roger on the back almost reached her knees, camouflaging just how skinny the body underneath it was.

As she observed the new girl from afar, Dawn tried to retrieve the memory of their past encounter. The other girls were measuring her up as well, whispering with gleeful fascination. And when finally one of them said, “her name is Chelsea Craft,” Dawn’s heart quivered and she immediately got up and raced to her room to call Daphne. But Daphne didn’t pick up, so she went to Erica’s office, entering without knocking and sitting down without asking for permission. She told her that she couldn’t possibly live in the same room as Chelsea Craft, that “hateful creature.”

“What is it about Chelsea that stirs all these intense feelings in you?” Erica inquired empathically, but Dawn just repeated the same tune: Chelsea is “despicable and rotten from within.”

Then Erica made a few sensible suggestions of ways in which Dawn could protect herself while sharing a room with Chelsea, but Dawn dismissed each and every suggestion Erica made while rolling her eyes. Eventually, when Erica was in the middle of a sentence, Dawn got up and said, “I don’t like this conversation, you’re not helping me at all,” and left.

She found Chelsea sitting on her new bed and approached her with the most intimidating walk she had in her repertoire.

“You don’t talk to me,” she said, waving her finger, “you don’t look at me. To me, you don’t exist. You got that, Eva?”

Chelsea’s thin, colorless lips morphed into something resembling a smile, but the smile faded before it fully appeared. Her grayish freckles seemed to be dissipating in the hazy fog of aloofness that masked her almost transparent complexion. When she finally spoke, it was with a deceitfully suspended voice, like a late reminder of a matter long overdue.

“Yes,” she said, “I completely understand where you’re coming from.”

Dawn looked straight at those black eyes that were as distant as the eyes of a dead person. Dawn’s eyes wandered toward other parts of Chelsea. She noticed the little dark hairs sprouting above her lips and on the edges of her cheeks; her extremely bony left clavicle sticking out of her rising sweatshirt and her even bonier wrist joints. Then Dawn turned to the open window and walked over, looking outside. Chelsea immediately drifted after her.

“I weigh 61.72 pounds,” Chelsea said, yawning. “How much do you weigh?”

Dawn turned her glance on her with a swift, destructive motion. Her body began to tremble uncontrollably, her furious blue eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. “One more word and you’re dead, you hear me?!”

“Sure I do. I’m sitting right here, aren’t I?”

Dawn turned and rushed out of the room. She was already at the door when Chelsea’s feeble voice caught up with her.

“I have cigarettes, by the way,” she said. “Feel free to bum some.”

Dawn froze, took a long deep breath, and continued her journey out.

 

*

 

Throughout that day Dawn wandered the unit, shaking with almost ecstatic rage. When Chelsea didn’t show up for dinner, she felt herself about to combust. Some of the girls went to visit Chelsea in their room. They gathered around her bed as if around an idol. They bombarded her with questions, to which she replied with condescending impatience.

Dawn felt trapped outside. Every couple of minutes she looked in to check if they were still there. Finally, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she stormed in.

“Everybody out, now,” she commanded.

They left right away.

That night she couldn’t find peace with Chelsea lying next to her, breathing.

Suddenly, a voice emerged from the darkness of the room. “Your name is Dawn, right?”

Dawn didn’t answer.

“You’re Dawn, am I correct?”

Silence.

“I’ve heard of you. I’m friends with Sacha. I understand you worked together at the Viper. I think I saw you there once. You’re very pretty.”

“I’m sleeping,” moaned Dawn.

“My apologies then; I thought you couldn’t sleep either.”

“I’m trying to sleep, and you’re bothering me.”

“Oh, sorry. I promise I’ll be quiet. I just wanted to let you know that I find you very pretty.”

 

*

 

The following night Dawn couldn’t sleep again, and again she knew she wasn’t alone.

 “It’s not your first time in here, I take it.”

Don’t answer her, don’t give that bitch anything.

“Dawn?”

Don’t answer, don’t answer.

“Dawn, are you awake?”

SHUT UP!!!

“Well, it is mine; my first time, I mean. But you probably know that already. I’ve been told that the E.D. unit is the end of the road. What do you think?”

Dawn opened her eyes and stared despairingly at the ceiling.

“Honestly, I think it’s baloney,” said Chelsea, and after a short pause added, “And you know what else I was told? That it’s like being in prison. Once you’re here it like gets you to identify with your disease or something. That’s what my therapist told me, anyway. But I think she’s just jealous. She’s obese. What do you think?”

“I think that you should shut the fuck up.”

“Interesting,” Chelsea said drily. And what else do you think?

“About what?!”

“About what my therapist said.”

Dawn couldn’t hold it any longer. The ignoring tactic had completely collapsed under the burden of her wrecked nerves.

“Are you here to make me angry?”

“Goodness, no, I’m here because they made me come here.”

“So you don’t want to get better?”

“Better than what?”

 

*

 

Chelsea gained instant notoriety throughout the unit. Even Dr. Katz had to admit that in all his years in this profession he had yet to encounter such vehement resistance to treatment. She refused to put food in her mouth and swallow it. The staff had to resort to the kind of radical measures that hadn’t been implemented at the unit for years.

At first they tried using enteral nutrition, but Chelsea simply took the tube out and threw it away. Then they attached it to her nose, but she tore it off, injuring herself. Finally, they restrained her to the bed for feeding time. This was a girl who was barely able to keep her own head lifted, she was so weak. And yet she fought so wildly, at the risk of breaking her calcium-deficient bones. It took three staff members to get the job done.

In group sessions she didn’t speak. She refused to take off her hoody and just sat there, tucked within herself, projecting disinterest, her gaze wandering outside the window.

Dawn couldn’t stand this.

They didn’t interact and just passed each other in the hallways of the unit without a word. All their communications took place during the night, and Chelsea was always the one to initiate them. And yet Dawn had the feeling that Chelsea was everywhere, conspiring against her, wishing her ill.

One night Chelsea asked her: “So you do want to get better?”

“Yes.”

“Better than what?”

“Than the instinct to ruin my own life.”

“Interesting… so… you want to stop?”

“Yes.”

“But then you won’t be so pretty anymore.”

“Fuck pretty.”

“What will you do then?”

“I’ll live. Leave me alone.”

“What makes you think you’ll succeed this time?”

“Shut up,” said Dawn, turning her back to Chelsea and vowing not to listen to her. But a few seconds later she turned again and asked, “Who forced you to be here?”

“My physician said if I keep at it I’ll be dead within a year from cardiac arrest, so my parents got scared, especially my dad. He raised hell to get me hospitalized. He’s a very powerful man.  But they don’t get it.”

“What don’t they get?”

“My body, they don’t understand it. It doesn’t need food to live.”

“Right.”

“You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“That’s because you’re jealous.”

 

*

 

Dawn went to see Erica first thing the next morning. She said she couldn’t take it anymore. Chelsea was driving her insane, she was evil, pure evil. And she was torturing her.

“What has she been doing?” Erica asked softly.

“You don’t understand,” Dawn said impatiently. “It’s not what she does, it’s like, she’s just there, you know? She wants to ruin it for all of us.”

Erica started to say something but Dawn cut her off.

“You have no idea how sick this girl is.”

“What do you mean?”

Dawn took a long breath before letting out the secret she had been carrying ever since Chelsea joined the unit.

Although she was only nineteen, she said, Chelsea was kind of a big deal in the anorexia and bulimia community. She gained quite a reputation as a Pro-Ana celebrity. In her blog she preached self-starvation, offered advice as to how to purge efficiently and promoted the emaciated beauty ideal by, among other things, posting nude pictures of extremely anorexic women.

“She calls herself Eva X.”

“Do the other girls know that it’s her?”

“It’s obvious that they worship her for being the skinniest girl on the unit, and I heard some of them mentioning the name Eva X, but I don’t think they make the connection.”

“And how do you know it’s her?”

“We met once.”

 

*

 

The next few nights were terrible. Dawn didn’t sleep. She was afraid of everything – that Chelsea would speak to her again or that her heart would suddenly fail and she would find a dead body lying next to her in the morning.

She was constantly exhausted and nervous. She barely got out of bed in the mornings. She had to drag herself to the cafeteria. She made multiple visits to the nurse’s office, complaining about migraines and stomach aches. She begged her nutritionist to go easy on her diet, meaning, less food; fewer calories.

During mealtimes she was tempted to reduce her intake, but she knew that if she was caught that would be the end of it. Only once, when she couldn’t contain herself, did she put a ridiculous amount of salt on her rice, but she immediately regretted it.

The daily weighing made her more and more anxious, only now she couldn’t tell if she was more afraid of gaining weight or of not gaining weight. At any rate, she did gain: exactly 1.5 pounds a week, according to plan.

Suddenly she started to feel a familiar wish creeping inside her: she wanted to cut herself and alleviate that excruciating pain that poisoned her soul. But she didn’t know how to do it; as if all those tricks that she had once mastered had been completely wiped out of her memory.

And every time she took a shower she wanted to stick a finger down her throat and puke her guts out. But she was convinced that Dr. Katz was just waiting for an excuse to kick her out of the unit, and she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.

In groups she was quiet and uninvolved. When she was asked a direct question, she mumbled that she “didn’t feel like talking.”

More and more she considered, with genuine anguish, her lowly state; drowning in despair regarding her chances of ever being able to create “a life worth living,” as Daphne, who knew better than anyone how to paint a rosy horizon for Dawn, used to put it. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to call her.

She also stopped calling Julia, because being just ignored wasn’t enough anymore. She wanted to get really hurt. So she called her mother, knowing that conversations with her always ended badly.

And her mom didn’t disappoint. They hadn’t spoken in over a year. But now, after Dawn had told her where she was, her immediate response was “they let you in?! ha! You ain’t skinny enough!”

 

*

 

One morning, Dawn visited Eva X’s blog. She was astounded to see that she was still posting her demented preaching from inside the unit. Her blood began to boil. That day, she arrived at group session in her most explosive state-of-mind. For half an hour she sat there silently, her body trembling and her thoughts running amok.

At some point, Erica asked her if there was anything she wanted to say.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Dawn, what’s going on with you lately?”

And then Dawn caught fire.

“What’s going on with me? I’m fucking disgusted by what’s happening here, how you all grovel before a person that couldn’t give a fuck about you!”

“Dawn,” Erica said.

“What? Is it my fault that everyone here is fucking blind?! If she wants to ruin her life, fine! But she doesn’t have to ruin it for others.”

“Dawn, I’m asking you to calm down.”

“Fuck that! She can die for all I care.”

“That’s not how we talk here, Dawn.”

“I don’t care.”

“Dawn, I want you to leave, please.”

“I want that fucking bitch to die, you hear me?!” Dawn shouted and got up and hurled her chair at the wall. Then she approached Chelsea, towering over her. “Die already!” she screamed, “DIE!”

In those moments, all life was sucked out of the room. The girls refrained from looking directly at Dawn, except for Chelsea, who didn’t take her hollow eyes off her.

 

*

 

That night, Chelsea spoke to Dawn as if nothing had happened.

“Do you remember I was telling you how my dad was the one who forced me to come here?”

“So?”

“So it’s very hypocritical of him, because if there’s a problem, and I’m certainly not saying that there is one, then he’s to blame; and my mom too, but especially him. Do you have a dad?”

“No.”

“How about a mom?”

“Hardly.”

“Where’s your dad?”

“Gone.”

“Gone as in deceased, passed away?”

“Yes.”

“Oh gosh. When did it happen?”

“A while ago.”

“How old were you?”

“Nine.”

“Oh dear, that’s teeny-tiny. Do you have any memories of him?”

“Few.”

“Please tell me.”

Dawn turned and faced Chelsea, who looked at her curiously.

“My mom used to call him ‘heart of stone’.”

“That’s funny.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

“Oh, my apologies, then why did she call him that?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“And how did you feel when he died?”

“What?”

“I’m just curious to know.”

“Why? We’re not friends.”

“I’m just interested in those kinds of things, you know, like, how do people feel when someone close to them dies.”

“You’re really fucking sick, you know that?”

“It’s a matter of perspective.”

“Bullshit.”

“Please tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“How you felt.”

“I was glad! You happy now?”

“Interesting… may I ask, why were you glad?”

“No.”

“All right, I respect that… so it’s basically you who did it.”

“Did what?”

“Killed him, killed your dad.”

“What?”

“If you were glad that he died, that means that you were hoping for it, probably even praying to God for it to come true. The obvious conclusion one would be compelled to draw is that you made it happen. You have powers.”

Dawn didn’t respond. For some time she lay in bed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Finally, she sat up and asked: “Chelsea, why are you here?”

“Pardon me?” Chelsea said, sitting up and positioning herself exactly like Dawn.

“You stir up all this shit when it’s obvious you don’t want to be here. So why are you here? Why don’t you just walk out?”

Chelsea’s ponderous eyes gleamed in the dark.

“Well, Dawn, what you have to realize here is that I was hospitalized, and—”

“That’s bullshit,” said Dawn, “You enjoy this.”

“That is simply incorrect.”

“Oh, I think it is correct. You enjoy the fight; you enjoy it when they force you to eat and tie you all up and shit, because you’re fucking deranged.”

“Not true.”

“Yeah? prove it, here’s a window, we’re on the first floor. You can open it and crawl out.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s easier than you think,” said Dawn.

Chelsea got up and approached the window, her footsteps making no sound. She studied the escape route at length before turning towards Dawn with dumbfounded eyes, as though seeking her final approval.

“You’re not a kid anymore,” said Dawn, “No one can force you to live.”

“Interesting,” said Chelsea, and returned to bed.   

 

*

 

That night, Dawn dreamt again about the stone men. As usual, the dream was preceded by that singular sensation, inexplicable by words, which she had never experienced in any other situation, ever since she was a child. Something small grows horrific; a slight rustling inflates into full blown night terror.

She tossed and turned, moaning meekly.

 

Suddenly, Dawn is thrown out of some void into that familiar image, long past. She sees a lake nestling at the foot of the mountains, the snowy-white summits glimmering in the peaceful water.

The wondrous silence surfs freely on the chilly winds filling the fresh air, until it is shattered by the sound of rowing. An ancient wooden boat appears from the mists hovering over the center of the lake, and in it Dawn sees the stone men. At the bow of the boat she sees the biggest stone man of them all. He is wearing scale armor and carrying a huge spiky club. He is roaring in the most dreadful voice, shrieking in a primitive language only Dawn can understand.

He is shouting at his stone men to row harder and faster.

And she alone knows that they are coming here, to raid the town that lies at the foot of the snowy mountains, that they are coming to plunder and pillage and rape all the women.

And the oars tear through the water, the foamy ripples spreading all over.

And the noise grows louder.

And she is twitching and groaning, quivering and convulsing, as if one of her limbs was being amputated in the pre-anesthesia age of medicine.

And as always, when the stone men hit land, she wakes up.

 

She opened her eyes, everything was blurry.

She was all terror and water. But a soft, cold wind stroked her cheeks. The window was open. The curtain was moving gently.

It was a new morning, and the room was awash with bright sunlight.

And finally, finally, the bed next to Dawn’s was empty.