“Oh! Good one!” said Kara/Carol. She mimed wiping tears from the smooth skin beneath her eyes. “Okay, seriously. Is it a juice fast?”
I opened my mouth to provide another jokey denial, and for a single terrifying instant I was sure that what would tumble from my lips would be the truth, the tale of what had really happened, possibly in the rhyming lyrics of one of the talent-show songs: Vicodin, and lots of them! OxyContin, pots of them! Chewing pills up by the peck . . .. Allison was bound to wreck!
“Allison?” My knees trembled in relief as Janet came into the room, a wrapped gift box in her hands. By the time she crossed the kitchen she’d assessed the situation, setting down her gift and grabbing me in a hug. “How are you?”
“She’s thin,” said Susan van der Meer, in a tone just short of accusatory.
Janet kept one arm around me as she turned to face my interrogators. “Her dad’s been sick,” she said. “Allison and her mom had to move him into assisted living a few weeks ago.”
I saw surprise on their faces, heard sympathetic murmurs. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Susan, and Holly said, “Isn’t it the worst? We went through it last year, after Jeff’s mom had an aneurysm.”
“Excuse me for a minute,” I said. I made myself breathe until the dizziness went away, then led Janet up the stairs and down the hall to my bedroom. She closed the door behind us, then looked me up and down.
“Okay, you look . . .”
“Thin!” I said, and started making some shrill noises that approximated laughter. “I’m thin, can you believe it! What’s my secret? Do you think I should tell them, or would they just fall over dead from the shock?” I sank down on the bed and put my face in my hands. “I went rogue,” I confessed.
“Wait, what?” Janet ducked into my bathroom. I heard drawers and cabinets opening and closing. A minute later, she came out with her hands filled with concealer, brushes, my flat iron, and a comb.
“I don’t actually have a day pass. They told me I couldn’t go. It was some big red-tape nightmare. I was supposed to have a certain number of sessions with my counselor, only they didn’t even assign me a counselor until I’d been there almost a week, and then she left, and they weren’t going to let me leave . . .”
“Okay. Deep breath. You made it. You’re here now. Want some water?”
Downstairs, I could hear the door opening, and my mother, suddenly transformed into the gracious lady of the manor, greeting Ellie’s other grandmother, Doreen. If I’d stayed at Meadowcrest, if I’d gone to the talent show, then to Circle and to Share, the party would have gone off without a hitch. I wasn’t indispensible. I wasn’t even sure Ellie would have missed me.
“We should go downstairs.”
“Here. Wait.” Gently, Janet dabbed a sponge dipped in foundation on my cheeks and chin. She tapped powder onto a brush and swiped lipstick onto my lips, either undoing or redoing Aubrey’s work. “When are you getting out?”
As I started to explain the logistics, there was a knock on the door.
“Allison?” called Dave. “We’re going to get started.”
All through the afternoon, through the games, through the cupcakes and ice cream and the inevitable gluten-free versions that the allergic and intolerant kids’ mothers had sent, I felt like a fake, like this was a show someone else had written, and I’d been assigned the role of wife and mother. And, louder and louder, like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe short story, I could hear a voice whispering, Pills. While I negotiated the rest of the night with Dave, assuring him that I was free until eight o’clock, pleading with him to take me to Han Dynasty for dinner “so I can eat something that tastes like something” before he sent me back, I thought, Pills. Handing out the goody bags, packed with candy necklaces my mom and Ellie had strung and handwritten notes that read “Thank You for Coming to My Party,” I thought, Pills, pills, where am I going to find pills?
The plan, which Dave reluctantly agreed to, was to drive Ellie to Hank’s house for dinner with Hank’s family. My mom would get a break, Dave would take me out for Chinese food, we’d have our talk, and then, depending on how the talk went, either he’d drive me back to Meadowcrest or I’d convince him that I could come home.
By the time Dave, Ellie, and I got to Hank’s house, I could almost taste the familiar, delectable bitterness on my tongue. I got out of the car as soon as it stopped, led Ellie inside, and asked Mrs. Hank—her name, I finally remembered, was not Kara or Carol but Danielle—if I could borrow a tampon. She waved toward her staircase. “Master bathroom. Everything’s in the cabinet under the sink.”