Harper put down the toilet lid and sank onto the hard plastic seat. Outside, her escort, a girl whose name she’d already forgotten, waited patiently by the sinks. Harper could see her shoes with their thick soles, but nothing else. The girl listened for the sounds of gagging.

Day three of rehabilitation and it ate away at her. She hadn’t expected it to be so hard. Of course she knew it wouldn’t be easy, but this was like being drawn and quartered. For the past six hours in group, she’d been slammed with everyone’s stories. She’d expected that—but what she hadn’t expected was to see so much of herself reflected in them.

There was Billy the ballet dancer, who everyone quickly dubbed Billy Elliott. Today, he talked about the time he’d restricted himself so severely for three days before a performance that when it came down to it he couldn’t even dance. He’d wanted to look flawless in his skintight, beige costume and hadn’t even brushed his teeth for seventy-two hours because he thought a drop of water might make its way down his throat. The lack of food and water had punched up his insomnia. When he’d arrived at the performance, he hadn’t slept in thirty-five hours and had passed out before he could even get his costume on.

“That was my last chance, that’s what the director said.” He said it so matter-of-factly, like everyone got kicked out of one of the best dance companies in the world. Billy didn’t look older than nineteen, and his life was already over. And here I am complaining about not modeling for another decade.

There was the forty-three-year-old mother of two who traced her anorexia to the year her second daughter was born. “It started out, you know, normal. I just wanted to lose the baby weight,” she said with a shrug. “I was thirty-six at the time and certainly didn’t fit the mold of what an anorexic should look like.”

“Anoretic,” one of the thinnest girls replied. Nobody liked that girl, and it wasn’t just that she tried to play therapist. Harper had instantly sized herself up against everyone in the room and knew this girl’s thighs were at least half her size.

“It doesn’t matter,” the group leader, a doctor decorated with three degrees, said. “Please continue.”

The mother sighed. “I mean look at me!” she said. “I was closer to forty than thirty, half-black, not exactly rich … who would have thought I’d get an eating disorder? I mean, I know anyone can have an eating disorder,” she corrected herself quickly. “But, you know, I just didn’t think it would happen to me. I just … it started with a diet. With working out more. I hadn’t been to a gym in like four years. And when I got to my first goal weight, why not set it even lower? I was getting attention from men who weren’t my husband for the first time since college. All these women were telling me how great I was looking … and then that I was too thin. To eat a cheeseburger and all that. And that’s what really felt good. You know? Women, they stop complimenting you when you turn into a threat.”

That hit home for Harper. It was true. Women were quick to pile on the compliments to fat women. Your tits are amazing! You have such a pretty face. But when you were really hot? They got nasty. It was how you could tell you looked good.

“Harper?” the group lead asked as she turned to her. “Is there anything you’d like to share today?”

“Um … no. If that’s okay,” she said.

“Of course. It’s a good idea to listen during your first week. Observation is a great way to get your feet wet.”

“Harper? Are you okay?” The escort’s voice sounded like a boom in the otherwise unoccupied bathroom.

“Uh, yeah!” Harper said. “One minute.” She thought about flushing the toilet, but didn’t bother. The girl knew she hadn’t done anything in there anyway.

When she emerged, she was greeted with a small but kind smile. “If you ever just need to get away while you’re here, decompress, you can always go into one of the meditation rooms,” the girl said. “Trust me, they’re a lot more comfortable than the bathroom.”

“Thanks,” Harper said. She used the last of her day’s strength to offer up her own smile.

She made her way into the bright sunlight and was thankful for the familiar scent of her car. For the first two days, Sean had driven her, but she felt guilty. Why should he spend his day chauffeuring her around? Outpatient was supposed to help keep life as normal as possible.

Exhaustion spread through her, all the way to the marrow, on the short drive home.

“How was it?” Sean asked when she walked inside. He had his feet up on the coffee table and a sketch pad in his lap.

“Tiring,” she said. “It’s going to be an early night for me.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “You want some tea?”

“No, thanks,” she said. “I think I’m just gonna lie down for awhile.”

“Okay. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be out here with my charcoal.”

She ran her fingers through his thick dark hair as she walked to her bedroom. Harper was surprised at how unobtrusive he was. How he could balance on the precipice between caring and respectful. She’d somewhat expected him to go all in on therapy, but since the first day he’d kept a watchful distance. It was nice to be able to come home and not relive the past however many hours of therapy she’d endured.

As soon as she flopped on her bed, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Instead, the stories from group just kept knocking around in her head. There was another model in the group, though her career had largely been in London. She’d moved to her aunt’s house in Hollywood to get away from the scene that had nurtured her bulimia and anorexia.

She was pretty, fair, and still a teenager—the epitome of the kind of girl who starved herself. “I don’t really know when it started,” she said with a shrug. “I … like I remember my mum talking about liquid diets when I was around ten. I asked her if I could do it, too, and she said alright. I don’t think I really wanted to lose weight then, you know? It just sounded fun, like a challenge. And very adult.”

“Can you recall the first time you did take action toward restricting to alter your body?” the therapist said.

“Not really,” the girl said. “But I remember the first time I was really aware of what fat was. My mum, I think she always talked about how you could tell if a girl was prone to fat by her upper arms. I think I was in … second grade, I think you call it here. Like seven years old. I’d never thought of that before,” she said with another shrug. “But I started looking at other girls in class. And at myself. I practiced holding my arm away from me in the mirror so it wouldn’t get all pressed and fatter looking. You know? And then … we had these kind of lavish school lunches. It was a private school, kind of posh. But very English, with lots of meats and fat and everything. I started only eating the veggies, fruits and bread. Then eventually just a couple bits of the vegetables.”

“And how did your classmates react to this? Your teachers?”

“They didn’t,” she said simply. “I mean, I got good at making up excuses to ‘eat’ in various study places or whatever. I … I never had that many friends. So it’s not like it was hard to keep it a secret.”

Harper knew how that felt. She couldn’t recall a single good friend from her childhood. “Models don’t need friends,” her mom always said. “Why bother? You’ll be flying off to shoots when they’re talking about what to wear to homecoming.”

A lot of the girls in the group drove away everyone around them—or at least everyone who could possibly help them. Instead, they held tight to the ones who encouraged their restriction. Almost every time, if there was another person involved, it was their mother. Although sometimes it was a boyfriend. One who called them fat and worthless, so they tried to buy his approval with their life.

She needed something to busy her mind. I don’t want to be like them, she thought. She grabbed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt from the shelf. It had collected dust for months. If she could escape into the life of an orphaned boy enthralled in the art world, maybe she could stop thinking about fat, calories, and the skeletons that talked around her all afternoon.

Sean looked up when she shuffled into the living room and sat across from him, but he didn’t speak. He went back to drawing.

Harper cracked open the book and breathed in its scent. It was nice, this cozy silence. She realized she’d never had that before, not with anyone in her life. She’d always been in the midst of a cacophony of noise, and had assumed that it was natural. What will it be like, letting my own thoughts, my own voice, emerge?