The Way We Talk

There is, it seems, life after the fall out.

Some people treat breakups like the end of the world. And I do see this as a breakup of sorts; there's not other way to describe that violent a separation. Anyway, I've never been the type to sit in bed for a month and eat my body weight several times over in Häagen-Dazs. I did always see me as more of a woman of action.

That being said, life after him is pretty dull.

I can't even say his name anymore. Nor can anyone else, it seems. Everyone treats me like I'm the Christmas China and the mere mention of his name is the bull ready to charge. I want someone to scream it. Christian. Christian Climer. Christian Alan Climer.

I wish just thinking about it didn't twist the knife.

I keep busy. I've been good with my J-Street funds up until now thanks to dinner parties in Ivory, so now I'm splurging. I find whatever friend is available for every meal in the hopes that eventually people will realize that I'm find and stop treating me like a cancer patient. I study compulsively. Maybe it's weird to spend so much time buried in my textbooks, but I'm behind in my work and I want that 4.0 this semester so bad that I can almost taste it. My exit-fail after the post-friend-dumping dryhump has inspired me to exercise more often. I pick the times that I know there will be an empty treadmill and run until the Health and Wellness Center employees tell me that I'm pushing myself too hard and that I need to stop.

I know things won't go back to normal, and I won't even try. I'm going to be better. I am determined to embrace the new Erica.

--

My name is Sammy, and I'm Erica's roommate.

I'm worried about her. She's not dealing with the fact that she and Christian aren't friends anymore. Or, at least, not in a healthy way.

She's become nocturnal. She pulls all-nighters in Eckles all the time. She says it's because it's quieter than Gelman and the study rooms are empty enough that it's okay for her to have one to herself. I know she wants to pull her grades up to sky-high standards, but I can't help but feel like it's an excuse to be a whole campus away from him.

Every day is the same. She crashes our dorm really early in the morning, like 4 AM, then sleeps until Hell-Well opens. Eventually, the staff kicks her off the treadmill, and she goes back to sleep until she meets someone for breakfast. She sleeps between classes and meals, then heads to Eckles Library to continue the cycle.

It's become obsessive- her quest for perfection, that is. It's like, if she loses a dress size or pulls straight-As for the semester, she'll prove that she's better off without him.

I wonder if she's even fooling herself.

--

I'm Katy, and I'm Erica's best friend.

I'm losing her. I'm losing her, and the more I try to steady my grasp, the faster she's slipping through my fingers.

I try to get her to talk about it. She doesn't want to. She's dismissed it. It's over, let it die. But when I change the subject to something benign, she's wholly uninterested. I don't even think she's listening. She talks in one word, unspecific sentences for the most part when she decides to answer at all.

I've never seen her like this. With Dave, she spent a few days immersed in her packing. Then, she bounced back into herself. Invited herself over my house with a half-gallon of cookies & cream for a good, old-fashioned bitch session. We ate ice cream straight out of the carton- sisters don't have germs- and complained about slut and sluttier (I can't remember who was who between Lauren and Dave). He called twice and we ignored his calls. We screamed obscenities at her phone, and I think I should mention that my parents weren't home then.

I'm waiting for her to bounce back, but it's almost like waiting for rain in the place that the book Holes was set in. Christian isn't Dave. He's not the loser ex-boyfriend that Erica dated in her 'I like being treated like dog shit' phase. Erica won't confirm or deny it- she ignores the subject completely- but their split of sorts wasn't Christian's choice. Nor was Dave's split with Ric, but it was his decision to enter (quite literally) the open doors of Lauren Marcus's vagina. Either way, Christian's evil half (as opposed to Erica, he's rightful better half) probably put her foot down and Christian did what he thought he had to.

It doesn't mean that I don't hate what he did to her. Ric got out of her relationship with Dave relatively unscathed, two days of isolation and one complain-and-cry healed whatever damage he caused. But Christian took my best friend's shiny little heart and turned it into bloody confetti.

I just want my best friend back.

--

We're Chelsey and Ava, and Erica's the other third of our trio.

We've bonded since day one. We see each other almost every day. Even when Erica seemed to spend every spare moment with He-Who-Must-Be-Named (NOT Voldemort, moron; guitar boy) she still manages to make time for us. We'd have long, leisurely dinners were we shared our stories and our desserts.

Erica doesn't do a lot of either. Talking or eating, that is. The talking doesn't bother us as much as the eating; she doesn't have to open up until she wants to.

It's been a week, and we haven't seen her come to close to finishing a single meal. She mostly just pushes around the contents of her taco bowl (or whatever meal she's chosen) with her plastic fork as the two of us engage in a dialogue. She eats enough to keep the hunger pains at bay, we think, and she expects us to pretend that nothing is wrong.

We think she has the beginnings of an eating disorder. Neither of us knows much about EDs, but something's wrong. She's lost some weight- too much for such a small amount of time- and if she moves the wrong way, she tries her hardest not to cry out in pain. She tries to hide it, but we can tell she's so sore. She doesn't say how much she works out per day, only that Hell-Well is threatening to report her to Student Health Services if she keeps exercising this much. She doesn't see why it's such a big deal, but we're afraid the evidence might protrude out soon enough.

We're not sure if it's worth risking the friendship to turn her in ourselves.

--

I'm Rena, and Erica's the coolest person I've met in the last two years that I've been in college.

I don't recognize her anymore. The only time I've seen her she was in a ratty tee and gym shorts, and I wondered when the last time she showered or brushed her hair. She opted not to go to my spring formal with me, and turned down two lunches.

She doesn't want to party. She certainly doesn't want to talk. I'm probably luckily she agreed to get our tattoos yesterday.

I'm pretty sure she lied on the pre-ink paperwork; the girl doesn't look like she's eaten in the last few days, much less the last eight hours. She seemed pretty uninterested in the placement of our tats- a matching star on our left ankle. She seemed to be immune to the pain, and I know that her pain tolerance isn't quite that high.

I droned on about my soccer team fuck buddy and it was like talking to a wall. You know, if walls nibbled on pizza with their mind elsewhere.

I wanted to slap that spaced-expression off her face and have her say something. Anything. She's bottled up it all and it's not healthy. The combination of it all is going to make her self-destruct. I've never met Christian, but if I've learned anything in the twenty years I've been alive, it's that he can't be worth all this.

I'm scared that's she's not going to snap out of this.