What I Lost by Alexandra Ballard

Author:Alexandra Ballard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

25

Lunch was stir-fry. Oily stir-fry. The good news? It had broccoli, the first vegetable besides lettuce to appear on my plate since Sally told me fourteen days ago that veggies weren’t allowed. The bad news? I couldn’t get my parents out of my head.

When I was little, Mom used to never let me have three-person playdates. “Someone always ends up feeling left out,” she’d say. I never thought it would be the same way with families, too.

“Elizabeth!” Lexi said, holding up her fork. “Look! Broccoli!” She seemed to be in a great mood—I had no idea why—and hell-bent on cheering me up.

Not wanting to be a downer, I held up my fork. “Broccoli!” I said. Her being all happy made me feel good, and all of a sudden, right there at the table, I decided I wanted to be happy for once, too. So I put my parents in a box and pushed it to the back corner of my mind.

And besides, getting broccoli really was a thing to celebrate.

“Cheers!” I said, only faking my smile a little.

“Cheers!” Willa raised hers, too.

“You guys are all nuts,” Margot said.

“Wait! I have a toast,” Lexi said. We all held our broccoli up in the air. Even Margot. “Ahem … Okay. Here’s to the men we love. Here’s to the men who love us. If the men we love aren’t the men who love us, then screw the men! Here’s to us!”

“Hear, hear!” I said, and we clinked our broccolis together.

The chicken was too fatty and the sauce was salty and my parents were a whole separate problem, but we had broccoli and I cherished every single limp and floppy piece.

And, when I thought about it, I did have things to be happy about. I’d finished my lunch. In fact, I was proud to report that I’d finished every meal and snack in the past week. Because of that, I felt better both in my body and my brain. I wasn’t psyched to be gaining weight, but my thoughts were clearer and they moved through my head faster.

Even so, when I went back to my room, I couldn’t help walking in jittery circles, the greasy chicken haunting me.

Lexi watched. “The stir-fry was bad,” she said. “But you’ll be okay.”

I stopped walking. “How can you be so calm?” Lexi was like a little island of Zen on her bed, calmly writing in her journal like lunch had never happened. “Didn’t you see all the oil?”

She shrugged. “Yes, but I’m trying not to think about it.” In the eleven days since our bone density tests, Lexi had become a star patient. I guess getting her test results really had changed her. She made it look easy.

“Oh.” I shut up.

To calm down, I lay on my bed and tried to take long, slow breaths. Breathing like that was supposed to calm you down, right?

I was at ten when Lexi interrupted me. “Hey, Elizabeth? I know this probably isn’t the best time, but I have something to tell you.

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