"Kayla, why are you avoiding me? You said yesterday you'd be caught up on your articles and you'd stay at my place tonight." I could feel his frustration through the line.

"I'm not avoiding you. Of course I miss you. I'm trying to make as much money as possible so I don't have to work when school starts again."

"Kayla, you write your articles online. Why can't you bring your laptop and work here?"

I tried to sound coy. "Too many distractions?"

"Kayla, I need to see you," he said. "We're only an hour apart and I haven't been with you in two weeks. If something is going on ... if there's someone else, you need to be honest with me."

The idea of there being another guy was laughable. The only man I saw on a regular basis was the guy who worked at the twenty-four-hour convenience store. I would stop there a couple of times a week to stock up on my binge foods. I'd go in there incognito, wearing a baseball cap and baggy clothes to hide my ident.i.ty, and, not surprisingly, the clerk had addressed me as "sir" more than once.

As my conversation with Cameron hit a lull, I asked myself again, why couldn't I just let him go? I was hurting us both by not ending things. Still, I felt like there were two sides of my personality: There was the other Kayla, who wanted to run back to Cameron, kiss him into oblivion and forget the bulls.h.i.t keeping us apart; and there was the Kayla of the here and now, who realized the minute he saw how much more weight I'd lost, he'd combine forces with my sister to stage an intervention.

"There's no one else ..." Tears strangled my words. "There will never be anyone else."

"Kayla, just get in the car and drive to my apartment. Or, I get off of work in an hour, and I can come to you. I'll do whatever it takes to see you tonight." His voice was gruff and I suddenly missed him desperately. What was wrong with me? How could my weight be more important than the feelings I had for this mind-blowing guy?

"I can't," I whispered. "I'll call you soon." I hung up and turned off my phone to prevent him from calling me back. I had to get my head together before talking to him again. Cameron deserved better and I would have to figure out if I could give him what he needed.

My mom was in the living room watching TV when I walked robotically downstairs. She'd been dating Jake for a while, which kept her distracted enough that I didn't have to deal with her overpowering personality on a regular basis. She had dropped several hints about Lila and me meeting her boyfriend, but we'd avoided it thus far.

She turned to face me, her lovely features pinched together. Although it was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, Charlotte Marlowe was dressed to the nines. Her red silk blouse and white Capri pants were simple and stylish, and she appeared even more statuesque with her six-inch heels. My frumpy sweatpants, paired with Cameron's Rutgers sweatshirt, wouldn't go unnoticed.

"It's alive!" she quipped. "My lord, Kayla, you look like one of the extras from that zombie show your sister is so fond of." She did a quick onceover of my appearance as I collapsed onto the loveseat. Bringing my knees to my chest, I turned away from her unsettling inspection and looked toward the TV.

My mother cleared her throat. "Kayla, it's wonderful you were able to lose weight, but I think it's time to work on the rest of your appearance. How about I make an appointment for us at my salon? The staff there could do wonders with your hair and nails." My nails were brittle, splitting apart and forcing me to keep them cut to the quick. And despite the expensive conditioner my mother had purchased, my hair was thin and dull.

"I don't want to go to the salon with you," I muttered and reached for the remote.

My mother injected false cheer into her voice, her lips twisting into her version of a smile. "Kayla, we'll have loads of fun! We can go get spray tans after! It's the start of summer, and you should have some color."

I would have rather gouged my own eyes out than go with my mother for spray tans. Instead, I said dejectedly, "Maybe some other time, Mom."

"What's wrong with you? Did Cameron break up with you? Because I simply can't understand what all this moping is about."

"I don't know, Mom, maybe I miss Dad like crazy. Not all of us can move on as quickly as you can," I snapped. I covered my mouth with my hand, startled by my own outburst. Submissive Kayla was being pushed aside by angry and bitter Kayla.

My mother rose above me, her expression stern. "You have no idea what you're talking about. Your father loved me and would want to see me happy. You're disgracing his memory by wallowing in your own self-pity. When you want to act like a grown-up, come find me, and we'll talk."

I flinched at her words. Her back was rigid as she stormed from the room. If my plan was to drive everyone away, it was working perfectly. My stomach growled, begging to be fed. I drove my fingernails into my palm, hoping the pain would silence the noise in my gut, and I fell back onto the loveseat, curled into a ball. Then, I pushed my face into the cushion and screamed.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

I had no idea how much time had pa.s.sed while I stayed in the same position. The living room darkened, casting late-afternoon shadows across the wood flooring. I couldn't move. Nothing could rouse me, not even the insistent ringing of the doorbell. My mother strode into the room, glaring at me, before answering the door.

"I'd say what a pleasant surprise, but we'd both know that was a lie," she said. "She's in the living room. Maybe you can talk some sense into her because I'm done with her melodrama."

Heavy footsteps pounded in my direction. It took too much energy to lift my head, provoking me to stay still. A masculine growl grabbed my attention and I moved my head toward the disruption. My attention was captivated by a gorgeous set of deep blue eyes. They were filled with too many emotions for me to discern. Before I could prepare a response, a familiar pair of hands was lifting me off the loveseat. Faltering as my feet hit the ground; it took a moment for me to regain my bearings. When I came out of my stupor, I realized Cameron was standing before me.

My mother was behind him with her arms folded across her chest. They were staring at me expectantly, and it felt as if I was on trial and they were to be the ones to decide my fate. My lack of food and the sudden movement off the loveseat left me dizzy, and I grabbed the end table for balance.

I managed to croak out, "What are you doing here?"

Cameron stepped forward and cradled my face in his palms. "I was worried, Kayla. You hung up on me and then didn't answer the phone. I thought something was wrong."

"I'm sorry you wasted your time. As you can see, I'm perfectly all right," I mumbled. I tried to take a step forward, but I stumbled again. Cameron pulled me toward him. Before I could react, I felt his hands slip under the edge of my sweatshirt and wrap around my waist.

I squirmed out of his grasp, but by the look on his face I could tell I was too late. Instead of addressing me, he spun on my mother. "Do you not see her? She's been here a month. Have you bothered to look at her?"

My mother's mouth hung open. Cameron didn't wait for a reply. Instead, he crouched a little until his eyes were level with mine. "Babe, we're leaving here. Let's go pack your things. You can't stay in this house anymore."

He took me by the hand and led me toward the stairs. I flung his hand away. "What are you doing?"

"Kayla, you need help. I can feel the bones sticking out of your skin. I'll be the a.s.shole here if I have to, but I'm taking you to a doctor. This has gone on long enough." He was practically snarling, and I could see a vein pulsing on his forehead.

I dug in my heels as he tried to reach for me again. "Stop it Cameron! I'm not going anywhere. I'm not someone you need to save." I narrowed my eyes before sneering, "I'm not your mom."

I had verbally punched him in the face. His jaw went slack and an angry flush colored his cheeks. "That was a really s.h.i.tty thing to say. I'm going to chalk it up to you being sick and let it slide." He spoke through clenched teeth.

"It's true though, isn't it? You couldn't make her better and you can't deal with it. Now, you've decided I need mending. You're using me to make up for the things that happened to you as a kid. You couldn't be a rescuer back then and you want the chance to be my knight in shining armor."

I was a monster. His love for me was beautiful and I was twisting it into something hideous. I was trying to hurt him where I knew his deepest vulnerability lay. I wasn't merely pushing Cameron away-I was attempting to hurl him into a black hole with the promise he would never return again.

His breathing was labored and I had stunned him speechless. My mother intervened and stepped between us. The mask of disdain she typically wore in his presence faded and she spoke to him gently. "Why don't we talk outside for a minute?"

If Cameron had earned my mother's sympathy, I must've turned into something truly heinous. I forced my body to turn away as she walked him outside. I couldn't stand to see the hurt and rage directed at me. He'd let me in, revealing the ghosts from his past that haunted him, and I'd used it against him. But I was delusional enough to believe I had done it for his own good. I tried my hardest to make things work, to have a normal relationship, but I couldn't pretend any longer.

My mother was expressionless when she found me in the kitchen twenty minutes later. I was gulping down water, another pointer provided to me by Pro-Ana to stave off hunger. With a long-suffering sigh, she sank into one of the kitchen chairs and really looked at me for the first time in ages.

As seconds pa.s.sed, I could no longer take the tension. "Did he leave?"

"Yes, he's gone."

The statement made me feel like I'd just been given a prognosis of a terminal disease. My breath whooshed out of me and the room started to spin. I thought I must have been having an out-of-body experience, because that couldn't possibly be what my life had come to. Being thin was supposed to be the key to unlocking the joy shut away inside of me. My intentions were never to be left alone and dejected.

My mother's gaze turned shrewd. "How much do you weigh now?"

"I'm not answering that question," I replied primly, and I returned to guzzling my water. Raw grief was a raging fire through me and I was trying to extinguish it. Once I pulled the bottle away from my mouth, I asked, "What did you say to him?"

Before she could answer, I heard the front door open and slam shut. Lila charged into the kitchen. Her backpack fell to the floor as her eyes bounced back and forth between my mother and me. "What's going on?"

"I believe your sister just broke things off with her boyfriend." My mom addressed Lila, but her eyes stayed on me.

Lila's dark eyes grew large. She demanded, "What? Is that true?"

I could hear the hurt in her tone. I wasn't surprised by her reaction; Cameron had become like a surrogate big brother to her. Besides clandestine conversations regarding my well-being, they enjoyed spending hours playing Xbox when the three of us were together. I would watch from the couch, giggling as the two of them talked trash while shooting each other with virtual machine guns.

"I don't want to talk about it," I mumbled and started to leave the kitchen. I wanted to warn them: proceed with caution. I was highly combustible, and flicking a lighter in my direction was ill advised.

Lila jumped into my path and grabbed my arms to hold me in place. This wasn't challenging for her, because she probably outweighed me by thirty pounds. Her voice was pleading. "You need help, Kayla. You're anorexic, bulimic, depressed; I could probably list your problems all day long."

"Don't do this to me, Lila," I begged quietly. "It has always been me and you against everyone else. Don't turn on me, too."

"Kayla, you promised you'd never leave me. But you are. You've stopped caring about everything. The only thing that matters to you now is what the scale says. This isn't the Kayla who came into my room at night after Dad died, wiping away my tears and telling me outrageous stories until I fell asleep."

The memory warmed me. I wasn't the greatest storyteller, but I made an effort for my fourteen-year-old bereaved sister. I would twist fairy tales, telling stories of how princesses saved princes, and I wouldn't stop talking until her eyes fluttered closed.

My mother placed her arm around Lila, a rare display of affection. "You need to get hold of yourself, Kayla. I saw your grades for the semester. I chalked it up to you getting caught up in a new relationship, but I'm starting to see there's more going on here. If you keep it up, you'll be academically dismissed from college. Also, if you insist on treating Lila and me like garbage, I'll seriously consider asking you to leave this house. You're twenty-one, old enough to take responsibility for your actions."

At Lila's silence, I understood they'd become a united front against me. My mother, a villain hiding behind her mask of exquisiteness, had poisoned my sister into believing I was the problem within our dysfunctional household. I could fill a dictionary with all the slights, all the disdainful glares, but my sister had turned amnesiac and thought I was the one who deserved to be locked away.

Wordlessly, I took flight. I had to escape. My mom was right, I was an adult and I'd make my own decisions. It was my body-no one was going to dictate how I treated it. I was creating new truths, a fictional tale of Kayla versus the world. Cameron, Lila, and my mother were all trying to force-feed me their ideas of how I should be. Their unwillingness to accept who I was drove me away, and I refused to relinquish control of my life.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

"Thanks for letting me stay here for a couple of days," I said awkwardly to the rail-thin girl standing in front of me. When SkinnyGirl89, aka Marti, answered the door, I was taken aback for a minute. I couldn't look like that. She wore a tank top and a skimpy pair of shorts. The bones of her rib cage were visible through the fabric of her shirt, and her collarbone was prominent. During our online exchanges, Marti had stated she was anorexic and proud of it for the past two years.

She was a couple of inches shorter than me, and if I had to venture a guess, she couldn't weigh more than ninety pounds. Her bleach-blond hair was a.s.sembled into a messy bun, and her overdone makeup only brought more attention to her gaunt features.

"This is going to be so fun!" Marti said happily as I followed her numbly into her apartment. "I've never had a roommate before. Not a lot of people would understand how I can't keep a lot of food in the house and why I have pictures of obese women on the fridge. I was so psyched when you called!"

I had called Marti from my car an hour after the showdown with my family. She insisted her family was just as judgmental and that I should room with her until I moved back to campus. Since she lived nearby and alone, I agreed readily and made plans to leave the next morning. Lila's pleas and my mother's cold indifference as I packed up my things haunted me as I placed my suitcase in the center of Marti's foyer.

The apartment was a two-bedroom unit in a large complex. She'd been using the second bedroom as storage for her huge collection of clothes and cosmetics, but she had cleared it out once I told her I'd come stay for the rest of the summer.

Marti explained she'd make me a key and I could come and go as I pleased. She had a bartending job a few miles away and she'd be gone most nights from five o'clock to three in the morning. She said she loved the job, trilling about how she got a kick out of wearing skimpy outfits and showing off her thin body. Her hope was to break into modeling one day, and she was saving money to build her portfolio.

We were polar opposites. Marti craved the limelight, while I wished to stay invisible, safely tucked away in the shadows. But despite our differences, I was drawn to her. She'd be my safety net, my a.s.surance I would stay on track and not become fat again. Marti sympathized with my fears and told me to carry around a picture of myself at my plumpest as a reminder of how far I'd come.

As I turned in for the night, I could hear the ba.s.s from the radio playing next door. The walls were thin, and I was grateful for it. The music could block out the noise in my head. I'd turned off my phone hours ago, but now I powered it up as I lay in bed, sleepless. Unsurprisingly, I had several texts and voicemails from Cameron and Lila. They were unwavering in their resolve to never give up on me.

Lila's messages went from being enraged over my departure to later being apologetic and promising she'd never mention the word anorexia again as long as I came home. Cameron had called me an hour earlier and tears blurred my vision when I heard the familiar deep tenor of his voice.

"Well, I know your mom said I need to give you s.p.a.ce and stop pressuring you to get help, but not talking to you is destroying me. I was never trying to make things harder for you and I'm sorry if that's what happened.

"Kayla, I'm not p.i.s.sed about what you said about my mom and I hope it's not the reason you're refusing to talk to me. I get that you're trying to tear us apart, but I'm not letting you walk out on me. Maybe you weren't off base about some of the things you said-I do have a lot of unresolved s.h.i.t I need to deal with.

"Whatever you're going through, I want to help you through it. If I came on too strong, it's only because I love you so d.a.m.n much. You make everything better in my life and I only want to do the same for you. Just call me, Kayla. Please."

His words swirled around me and suffocated me with unfathomable longing. I didn't want to be in this strange bed, alone, silently reciting the rules of not eating. I wanted to be touched and loved by a man as beautiful on the inside as he was on the outside.

But I was experiencing my own personal apocalypse, and I knew I'd take him down with me. To protect him, I needed to stay away. To get past his mother's downfall, he needed to save someone. But I didn't want to be saved.

"What are you doing?" Marti asked, wandering into the kitchen the next afternoon. She grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge and sat next to me at the table wearing only a t-shirt and a thong. I had a feeling I'd have to grow accustomed to her lack of modesty.

"Adding a couple of new pages to my Thinspiration book. I want to drop these last few pounds and move on with my life. After I get below my goal weight, then maybe things can go back to normal."

Marti nodded knowingly. "I hear ya. If you drop to a couple pounds under your goal, you won't be as stressed if you gain a little bit here or there. What tips are helping you the most?"

"I think about food constantly, so I'm trying to fight my cravings. One of the things that works is I count to a hundred whenever I want something to eat. By the time I get to a hundred, I've had enough time to think of all the reasons I shouldn't eat. Another thing is I'll pinch each spot on my body where I find any fat, really hard."

Marti tapped her acrylic nails against the table while she seemed to mull over her own tips. "You know what else helps me when I want to eat? Watch people eat! It's kind of gross, especially when you see fat people doing it. Or do something else you think is revolting. Like clean the bathroom, or change kitty litter."

A buried part of me understood how sick it truly was. We were talking about how to starve ourselves in the same way people talk about the weather. It made me wonder if I should be listening to the sensible ones in my life and stop the insanity. I was on the brink of my own personal destruction, but I was too detached to care enough to stop it.

I turned the page in my Thinspiration book and froze.

I will not relent. They will not break me.

I had posted the words on a Pro-Ana forum page and printed it out afterward as a reminder of my resolve. I wrote the message during my first week back at my mom's house, at the start of my summer vacation. I was paranoid after overhearing Lila and Cameron, convinced they were concocting plans to make me fat again.

Marti may not have been the best influence, but she didn't want to undermine my goals. My object was to lose five more pounds and then return to a normal diet and a normal life. I'd stop the fasting, binging, purging, and laxative use. All the things tearing me away from the people I cared about could be in my past. I'd have it all: my dream guy, my best friends and sister back in my life, and the perfect body.

"Try and smile, Kayla, you're scaring away my good tippers," Marti joked two weeks later as I sat on a stool at the bar she worked at. The bar was a hole-in-the-wall place named the Idle Hour with clientele who were looking to get drunk fast. About ninety percent of the patrons were single men who tended to zero in on any girl who stumbled in. Marti joked about how she brought home the leftover sc.r.a.ps at the end of each night.

I watched Marti working energetically, collecting bottles of alcohol to mix drinks. When I asked her before where her endless s.p.u.n.k came from, she told me she popped caffeine-filled diet pills throughout the day.

I took a hesitant sip of my seltzer with lemon. My life had changed drastically since I'd come to live in Toms River with Marti. My days mostly involved hanging out with Marti before she went to work. We didn't have much in common, but she pa.s.sed no judgment and proved to be a distraction. There was a frantic desperation bubbling below the surface, and despite her Pro-Ana allegiances, I wondered about how content she truly was with her life.

At night, I buried myself in work, trying to take on as many article a.s.signments as I could handle. I was sleepwalking through my life; things were crumbling around me, but nothing mattered.

Marti was a storm, and I was getting sucked into the vortex. She was outspoken, chastising me for not taking pride in my body. She relished her thinness and took pleasure in her appearance. She brought home strangers from the bar, men with blurred vision, drunken with l.u.s.t for the outrageous bartender. Most nights, the sound of wall banging was what I drifted off to.

I hadn't spoken to any of my friends or family since arriving at Marti's apartment. And when I could no longer bear to listen to the pleas left on my voicemail by Cameron, Lila, and Brittany, I changed my cell number. Messages left on Facebook and in my email inbox got deleted without being read. The only communication I had was a quick one-line email to Lila letting her know I was okay-and that was only after she threatened to report me missing if I didn't get in touch with someone immediately.

I fantasized over and over again about how things would be once I got to ninety-five pounds. I'd pack up my stuff and drive right over to Cameron's place. I'd tell him how much I'd fallen for him and that I could finally be the girl he deserved. I'd be able to take my clothes off in front of him, shamelessly, and he'd be floored at how I had the body of his wildest fantasies.

Two measly pounds stood in my way. It was all I had left to lose, and I was determined more than ever to drop them.

I wanted out of this life. I didn't want to lie awake, painfully isolated, as another faceless stranger moaned through the thin walls and Marti screamed out in ecstasy. Her lifestyle was one I couldn't understand, and resentment snaked around me. How was she able to do it? How could she let go completely with someone she barely knew when I wasn't able to do the same with the man who possessed my heart?

Marti interrupted my thoughts. "Hey, take off that sweatshirt. The guy in the corner has been eyeing you."