Fireworks

“What are you doing to yourself, Sara?”

That’s the first thing that comes out of Robin’s mouth when I see him again after school, my hair still shedding drops of water. I’m raining on the concrete, dark spots blooming like flowers on fast-forward.

He no longer looks angry. He looks confused and hurt.

I lower my head and we walk in sync down the sidewalk, past the field, past the first set of boxy houses.

“I want to be skinny.” I am incredulous that the words make it out of my mouth. The flycatcher I grew in my throat obviously didn’t work, or at least not with Robin. His fingertips graze the back of my hand and I sigh.

“You are,” he says, with such conviction I almost believe it myself until I recall the 88.1 pounds hanging on me.

“No, I’m not,” I retort, and my voice cracks. Robin sharply turns to face me but I stare straight ahead, the words coming out haltingly. “I will never be skinny. I’ll never be good enough. Everyone should look at me and their eyes should bleed.”

Robin is at a loss for words. He bites the inside of his lower lip.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I say flatly for him. “I need to be skinny. I have to do it right. It’s the one thing I can kind of do right. Everything else, I fail at. I couldn’t even keep Michelle alive. I can’t even keep Dad at home. I am just a mess of a person and I can’t eat, I’m so weak I still eat.” Now I’m not sure if I’m still speaking to him. “I can’t even do this right, I’m still eating and I’m not working out enough, look at this.” I lift my shirt and pinch the skin of my stomach. “I can’t even lose this, I can’t even lose anything. I lose. I lost. I’m losing at life, Michelle won. Michelle won at everything, she was perfect, oh God, Michelle.” I’m sobbing now. We’ve stopped walking and Robin is holding me, much like he did earlier today. Except now it’s for a different reason. I am so unstable. “I didn’t want her to leave, I didn’t know she left us until they called us up and told us. And we went to the hospital and there she was, all broken and I couldn’t even fix her, I could’ve stopped her from going. I told her she was pretty and she was so, so pretty and….”

“Sara,” Robin says. “Sara,” he says more insistently, and I look up at him, trying to discern his face through my tears.

“Sara, you are everything. You are perfect, to me you are.” He shakes my shoulders and I nod to let him know I’m hanging onto his every word. “Nothing your dad does is your fault. You couldn’t have known Michelle was going to die, none of it was your fault. You don’t have to be…killing yourself.”

“I’m not,” I interrupt, a faint smiling finally blessing my lips. “I’m doing better. I’ve gone down nine pounds in, like, two weeks. It feels great.”

“You can’t keep doing this, Sara,” declares Robin. “You have to eat. I can’t be with you and watch you starve yourself to death. I don’t want you to go…be with Michelle.”

It was like he’d flicked on a switch for a chandelier in my head. I was in a win-win situation. If I lost weight, I was skinny. Beautifully skinny. If I…lost, I would be with Michelle. There was no possible way I could screw up this one.

Robin must see or feel the change in my feelings, I am instantaneously radiating so much happiness.

And he takes a deep breath.

“Sara,” he says slowly, not looking me in the eye but rather off to the side of my cheek. “You need to eat. More.”

“I’m fine,” I reply.

Another breath. “Okay. If you’re not going to eat… Sara, I can’t be with you.”

It is like God takes an iron-handled red steel axe fizzing with thunder and lightning and swings it with all his might at my heart. I literally feel it break and blood-temperature warmth gathers in my chest where it used to be.

“What?” I mouth dumbly, not able to voice the word.

I can see it in his eyes. Something has shattered in him as well. I am so numb, I can’t feel the ground, can’t feel the wind that is rocking the trees, can’t feel the cold of the water from my hair dripping onto my skin. I can only feel his hand around my thin arm.

He sounds like he’s convincing himself he should leave me. “I don’t want to watch you die.” He releases my arm. It falls limply to my side. I am staring into his face, etching every last detail into my brain. The sweep of his dark brown hair – that I found out wasn’t black – the piercing blackness of his eyes and thick lashes, the porcelain skin and shape of his lips.

“Please get better, Sara,” he whispers, and leans in. I close my eyes, breathing his air, wanting to breathe him in so he can live inside me forever, but he only presses his lips to my forehead.

He doesn’t pull away for eleven seconds. When he does, it’s like he’s ripping the skin away from my bones and dragging it with him. I catch sight of his eyes – the darkness, shattered like glass, the longing to take back everything he’s just said – before he turns and walks away down the path.

I collapse into a heap on the leaf-strewn sidewalk and welcome every needle that’s being driven into my body, all of them telling me the same thing – you have been with Robin Macarthy for a grand total of nine days, and you have fallen in love with him.

You love Robin Macarthy.

100 – 500 crunches = 0.