The Sounds of Secrets by Whitney Barbetti

Author:Whitney Barbetti [Barbetti, Whitney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-12-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

I was no Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I thought I was, desiring some kind of adventure that took me halfway across the world.

But it wasn’t for me.

I scrubbed the tears away from my face in my hotel bathroom, encouraged by the dim lighting. If I couldn’t see what I’d done to my face, I’d be better off.

My compulsion to pull had intensified, like a raging ocean. Wave after wave of embarrassment and frustration had crested sometime overnight, leaving me with a neat little pile of eyelashes on my pillowcase.

I ran my finger over what remained anyway, feeling sick over how few there were. I tried to remember ever having a full line of lashes, but I couldn’t.

I had to stop touching them, because the urge to pull them was just that much more present. I only had a few left. What was the point, anyway?

Forcing myself to stop touching, I braided the halves of my hair on my head, securing each end in clear elastic. I made them tight, so that I wouldn’t need to pull.

Even though it was dark in the dingy bathroom, I could see what my picking had done. My eyebrows, once sparse but still present, were practically nonexistent. My hair, which had once been thick like my mum’s, was now flat. I tugged at the braid, loosening the chunks until it appeared fuller.

I had to repeatedly adjust my stance due to the walking boot I wore on my leg. “You have a mid-shaft fibula fracture,” the doctor had told me. I’d been encouraged by the fact that I’d fractured the leg bone that wasn’t weight-bearing, but I needed to be in the damn boot they’d fitted me with for two weeks, and then use crutches.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but the injury itself had woken me up to my purpose. I’d been grieving the thought of losing my ability to dance, but I’d still be able to. This injury wasn’t the ender, but realizing I’d worried about it at all had been like a lightbulb flashing on.

The doctor had warned me that my muscles would undergo atrophy, so even when the bone was healed in six weeks, my leg wouldn’t be the same as it was before. But I could get it back to what it was with some rehab.

So not only was I embarrassed for having made a big deal about fracturing a bone that was more or less useless, I was embarrassed that I was stuck in my hotel room while Joss and the guys had continued on the trip I was supposed to be on. To the one place I wanted to go, Arches National Park.

I’d miss out on the hot air balloon ride as well—the boot made that too inconvenient.

I looked out the bathroom window of my room, seeing the Salt Lake City airport in the distance, and knew the next four days until my flight home would drag.

I’d been in the hotel room for two days now, watching endless television and stuffing my face.

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