Twelve hours. In twelve hours she must have consumed 10,000 calories. She’d stopped counting once she’d breached 2,000. That number alone was unacceptable, twice of her normal daily allotment. Alfie was right, she thought as she purged the last of the chicken sandwich.

Bread was rough. It always seems like carbs are worth it going down. But coming up …

It was a bad day, one of her worst. After the incident with Alfie, with Sean in the car, it had satiated her for awhile. But Sean worked that night, and when he’d dropped her off at home she’d fallen asleep before the sun went down.

Awake at three in the morning, her housemates in deep sleep, she was free to raid the fridge. Items that required measurement or weighing to calculate the caloric intake were the most dangerous. It had started innocently enough. She’d found half-eaten pack of parmesan crisps in the pantry from Whole Foods.

The entire box was just under 500 calories, but there were virtually no carbs. Plus, the richness and saltiness was moderately satisfying. This looks like half the pack, right? So, what, 250 calories? Let’s call it 300 just in case.

After that, it was an entire box of sugar-free fudge bars. Forty calories each, and six in the unopened box. Still not too bad.

The special Joseph’s low-carb pita bread she ordered stared at her from the shelf. Six pitas at 50 calories each, with maybe 200 calories of the PB2 high-protein, low-sugar faux peanut butter, a thin layer on each. And the sugar-free jam. Ten calories for two tablespoons. If that’s right, how can they fit so many servings in these little jars?

She hadn’t stopped at the pack of pita bread and peanut butter. Harper was on a rampage like never before, and kicked herself for thinking she had control. When she’d started with the crisps, she didn’t see a binge coming. But nighttime eating disorder, that goddamned NES, had a way of twisting things.

By the time she’d heated up the pizza in the microwave, carefully watching the timer so it didn’t ding and wake someone, she didn’t care that she didn’t have her usual Cheeto foundation. The parmesan crisps were kind of orange. Surely they’ll show up.

Harper spit up nothing but bile by the time the first of the housemates awoke. She’d left the shower running on cold to drown out the sound of her retching. Normally, she was impressively skilled at purging quietly, but nothing was coming up now.

Molly knocked on the door. “Who’s in there? You’re going to use all the hot water!”

“One minute,” she replied. She didn’t recognize her own voice. Harper could sense Molly, uncertain, on the other side of the door before she padded away.

“You’re fucking weak,” she told herself, though she tried one last time to see if there was anything left.

There was a strength in anorexia, in starvation. “I’d love to have your willpower,” a flight attendant had told her once on a flight to London for a shoot. She’d passed up every single treat, meal and snack offered. The airplane seats hurt her ass, and she spent most of the flight using her hands as a buffer. But it was worth it. Harper glanced at her fellow passengers, heads hunched over their trays like pigs at a trough, and could easily see she had more room in her seat than anyone else.

But purging? That was straight shameful. If you can’t stop yourself from eating, you should live with the consequences, she’d told herself countless times. But she couldn’t help it. Usually, she balanced both. Heavy restriction at no more than 1,000 calories a day, combined with the occasional purging just in case she messed up a calculation or the restaurant didn’t hold the mayo, cheese, ranch or whatever else was loaded with calories. Purging in those circumstances, that’s not my fault. They tricked me, she told herself.

If she were just anoretic, that might be okay. Hell, everybody was in Los Angeles, whether they called it that or clean eating. Go low-carb, and cut out a bunch of food. Add in veganism, and there’s even less. Organic, seasonal, local, Paleo, gluten-free, sugar-free because you’re prone to diabetes? You’ve got yourself a doctor-approved eating disorder.

She waited until she didn’t hear any commotion in the hallway and slipped into her bedroom where she clicked the lock as quietly as possible. If Sean ever finds out about my messed up eating, he’ll dump me for sure, she thought. Especially the bulimia.

But what was the alternative? Get fat? Nobody would want her then, either. It was a catch-22 no matter how she turned it over.

Her phone flashed an incessant red eye at her. “You busy, sweetheart?” Sean had texted while she’d erased the night’s binge.

“Don’t feel too well,” she replied. “Tired, maybe getting a cold.”

“Want me to come over?”

Her reflection in the mirror mimicked just how exhausted and miserable she felt. “Meeting a friend for a gym date,” she said. That was a lie. She hated going to the gym with anyone except P because he never kept track of how long she was on the machine. And he wasn’t competition, just a welcome distraction.

She stripped out of her pajamas that smelled faintly of vomit and pulled on the cleanest pair of Lulus. Drive or walk? Walk, fatass, she told herself. She didn’t believe those recent stories on how walking burned just as many calories as running. That couldn’t be right. But it still burned more calories than doing nothing. I’d run if I could, she thought. The dizziness was just too much to bear. On the way back. I’ll run home.

P texted her on the way to the gym, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she put the phone on airplane mode. The last thing she needed was anything getting in the way of her time on the elliptical.

She slipped on her ear buds and shuffled her workout playlist. Kanye’s “Black Skinhead” filled her head and she drifted into the meditative rhythm of the machine.

After two hours and four minutes, when the elliptical numbers are at a nice, clean 2,000 calories burned, Harper felt somewhat redeemed.

As she’d promised herself, she jogged home. Earbuds still in, she pulled off her shoes as she entered her room and let out a shriek when she saw Sean on her bed.

“What—what are you doing here?” she asked as she ripped out the headphones. “How’d you get in?”

“Some weird, old eastern European woman let me in,” he said. “Why are you working out if you don’t feel well? And why didn’t you answer my texts?”

“Phone died,” she lied. She was nervous as she stood before him. Like she was on trial. “And if you must know, I’m exercising so I don’t get fat. It’s kind of my job.”

He raised a brow. “You’re crazy,” he said. “You can’t exercise when you don’t feel well.”

“Doctors actually say as long as you don’t have a fever, it’s fine to—”

“Get in bed,” he said. “Take those sweaty clothes off and put on pajamas.”

“I don’t sweat,” she protested, though she did as he said. For a second, she thought it was a ploy to get her naked, but there was zero sexual interest in his eyes.

Harper pulled on a clean pair of old, threadbare boxers and her softest tee-shirt. “Do you want some soup?”

God, no. That’s like up to 500 calories. “No, I’m okay,” she said. “I’m never hungry after I work out. But … I’d like it if you stayed awhile.”

He sucked in his breath and puckered his brow, but nodded. Sean settled into the little chair in front of the vanity and looked around her room. Exhaustion really did start to tug at her in a way she couldn’t remember. Harper couldn’t recall the last time she’d slept more than four hours at a stretch. The insomnia always poked at her.

“How about I read to you?” Sean asked. “It’s kind of strange, just sitting here.”

“Sure,” she said.

He looked around the room. “Not many books—oh, here we go.”

She nearly jumped out of bed to grab the book out of his hands. Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted was dog-eared well, but it wasn’t the copy she’d highlighted nearly every sentence of. That one was tucked into the old shoebox in the back of her closet along with a handful of other precious items. Her dad’s wedding ring that her mom had shrugged at, indifferent, when she’d asked if she could keep it. The photo of her best friends from camp during their last year. A wristband from her first runway show afterparty.

As Sean started to read from the beginning, she closed her eyes. She’d read the book so many times, the words came to her almost before he spoke them. Harper wondered what he would think of her having such a book, but was too tired to make up an excuse. You can always say it’s Molly’s.

If Sean had qualms about the content, it didn’t show. He read smooth and steady, just like he did everything else. As Harper slipped into sleep, there was a moment of lucidity where she was halfway between the two worlds. For once, that halfway point wasn’t punctuated with thoughts of what she could—or couldn’t—eat when she woke up. She didn’t do her normal bodily checks to see if she could still see as much light through her fingertips when she pressed them together, or if her hip bones jutted out the same distance.

She let Sean usher her into a peaceful, sound sleep for the first time in years.