Take as Directed

Sissy is the reason The Rule exists.

Don’t miss family meals.

You lose one daughter because her body is so malnourished from self-starvation that it can’t stand up to an intentional overdose, and you create an insurance policy to make sure the other doesn’t fall down the same rabbit hole. As long as I show up for breakfast and dinner, sometimes weekend lunches if Dad is feeling real neurotic, no one bats an eyelash. I eat, therefore I will not become Dannilynn, and Mom and Dad can sleep at night.

Okay, in their defense, there was that one crash diet. Something about carbs and color-coding food and cottage cheese, a lot of cottage cheese, and I don’t know, everyone was doing it, but that was in middle school. People grow up, people change.

Dad still grounded me for a month.

Seriously. Grounded. Over a stupid diet.

You can’t cage a hurricane, Dad.

“I’m home,” I yell at the top of my lungs, slam the front door, drop my purse hard on the floor, and holy shit, the whole house is vibrating with the energy that is me. My presence is everything.

Oh my God.

I take a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth, and I swear I can taste the scent. So strongly, my whole face tingles.

What. Is Mom. Making?

I amble to the dining room, follow the mouthwatering deliciousness, the trail of breadcrumbs, the yellow brick road, the steam hand beckoning me like in the cartoons. Food. Food food food food food—

Dad.

I’ve been duped. This is the exact opposite of a cartoon pie.

He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t greet me. He doesn’t even notice me standing in the dining room entrance. He just sits there, at the head of the table, taking up too much space, his bright-ass tattoos stabbing my corneas, with his face buried in papers. Contracts probably. It’s always contracts or potential deals or a new talent’s lyrics or his own band’s work.

Unless it’s my report card.

Dad likes the report card. All the A’s lined up in a row, he can stare at them for hours, and the positive comments my teachers write? Please. He sees one ‘Brooklyn is a delight’ and he trips over himself to congratulate me. Good job, Brooklyn, I’m proud of you, Brooklyn, you’re so smart, Brooklyn, how about we get pizza to celebrate, Brooklyn, and stay up watching crappy movies, Brooklyn, you can have that three hundred dollar purse you wanted, Brooklyn, am I laying on the praise thick enough, Brooklyn, please don’t jump out a fucking window, Brooklyn.

I snort.

He doesn’t look up.

Not the report card then.

“Hi, Daddy,” I chirp, with all the pep and bounce of a three-year-old.

That gets his attention.

His eyes snap to me. They’re rimmed in vibrant red. He’s been crying. Again.

“Hey.” He shakes his head and blinks hard, then gives me a wobbly smile. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”

Whatever.

I have more important things to worry about than the cotton lodged in your brain.

I pop around the table, press a kiss to Dad’s scruffy cheek, standard greeting procedure laced with ulterior motives. The closer I get to the kitchen, the closer I get to the scent of awesome. Dad is a stepping stone in my path to deciphering dinner without raising red flags.

“How was school?”

“Fine.” I get another strong whiff of delicious. Burgers. No, pizza. Meatloaf? Probably not meatloaf. Maybe hotdogs. But Mom doesn’t make hotdogs for dinner. That’s a Dad dinner. Could be cookies.

I breathe in sharply.

Cookies for dinner is fucking genius.

“Brooklyn?”

Huh? Oh, school.

“We had a pop quiz in chem.” I glance at the glass kitchen doors. “It was okay though.” I can’t see inside. “It was the same stuff from the test.” I stood on the wrong side of Dad. Abort mission. “She’s upset because most everyone bombed it. Not me. I got an A.” I smile brightly at Dad, dimples out, my not-so-secret weapons. “I turned in my thesis outline, too. The fleshed out one that has a bunch of my sources, you know?” Tell me what’s for dinner. “And Ms. Lowenstein assigned this massive project. I’m gonna need glitter. A lot of glitter. Is that spaghetti?”

It is.

Held out in Mom’s mitt-covered hands. An offering to me in my glory. It’s all I can see, smell, hear. The buzz of conversation, Mom and Dad talking to me, at me, around me, is muted by noodles twirled around each other and drenched in Bolognese—sauces do not get served separately in this house—and saliva is collecting too fast in my mouth. I. Love. Spaghetti.

Wait.

We only have spaghetti when…

“Who died?” I blurt.

Abrupt silence. Mom and Dad stare. I’ve interrupted them. I don’t care.

Spaghetti is the bad news meal.

Because spaghetti and Sissy are synonymous to Dad. He will not eat spaghetti, I’m not positive he physically can, the word alone used to make him cry, but spaghetti is my favorite. So he uses it to smooth emotional ouchies.

“No one died,” Dad says. But he’s got that voice on. The one meant to keep me from throwing tantrums.

I know your tricks, Dad.

“What’s going on?”

Dad looks at Mom. Mom looks at Dad. They communicate in subtle head nods and eyebrow raises and blinks. It happens in the span of seconds, or minutes, fuck it could be hours, time is not moving at the proper pace, but Mom looks back at me.

And Dad’s gaze drops to the table.

Not good.

Mom is the one to speak up. “We think it’d be a good idea for you to start seeing Dr. Johnson again.”

The world tilts even farther off its axes, my heart freefalls into the pit of my stomach, I can’t breathe, it’s hot, too hot, alarms shoot right into my floaty brain. Dr. Johnson, the shrink. They want me to see the shrink.

Don’t run.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Translation: Did you find the coke in my sock drawer?

“No,” Mom says quickly, a panicked yelp really but she composes herself in a blink, and when she speaks again, she’s calm, “No, of course not. It’s just… we’re concerned.”

Dad mumbles. At the table. And for a moment, I can’t make out the words, his kicked puppy face is distracting, but then the jumbled sounds click together to form a coherent sentence. “You’ve been losing weight.”

I’ve been…

He keeps mumbling, rambling a long string of nonsense at the table. Already called… this Friday… bring you to school… girls diet… and the tabloids… but I can’t… on and on and on, but the relief hits me hard, makes me lightheaded, and there is no meaning in anything he’s saying.

He thinks I have an eating disorder.

Holy mother of fuck, Dad, I thought this was serious.

“… please—”

“Okay,” I say.

His tirade stops. His eyes dart to me, narrow, and he studies me, searches for an ounce of, what, rebellion, anger, instability, indicators I’ll down every pill I can get my hands on the day before the appointment to kill myself on the kitchen floor. He doesn’t see the dilated pupils and the white stain marring the pristine grey of my sweater and the way I swallow my laughter, literally swallow down the lump that is building hysterics. He never sees those things. He doesn’t look hard enough.

“Okay?” he asks, like he doesn’t quite believe me.

I shrug, fiddle with the hem of my sweater, give him my best I’m Hurting Please Save Me Daddy face, which makes me want to laugh worse. “I’ll go.”

Don’t you worry, Dad, Dr. Johnson will clear my eating disorder right on up.