That Summer

Bryan had been steering clear of his sister for a good week and a half and he'd been doing his best to steer his friends clear of her too.

Not only was Bryan angry with his sister; deeply upset with her for insinuating he'd done anything less than hand his life over to music, but he didn't want his friends to see what Evangeline Donahue had become.

The girl that had once brought men to their knees with desire and an excruciating feeling of not being good enough was a shell of the queen she'd been. Her lithe, toned body was reduced to a flesh colored skeleton. Her perfect posture - a side effect of her dancing - was gone altogether. She now carried her withered frame around with her back continuously hunched which served only to make her look pained at all times and to amplify the hollowed appearance of her stomach.

Evangeline's eyes had gone from sapphires that used to sparkle with life to hollow pools of murky, grey water. They were also now much larger, being the prominent feature of her thinned, pale face. Her hair was thin and hung limply, her lips were dried and chapped even though she substituted entire meals for a bottle of water. And although she had not seen her brother for nearing two weeks, acutely aware of the fact that he was avoiding her like the plague, Bryan laid eyes on his sister every night as he'd taken up the habit of sneaking into her room when she was fast asleep. He knew she wouldn't wake up and he didn't want her to. He just wanted to see, needed to see, that his baby sister was still there. Bryan had to make sure she was still breathing. It scared him, the thought of losing her, and though he hated all she did and stood for with every fiber of his being, he couldn't stop the breaking of his heart and the tears in his eyes when he looked over the hollowed cheeks and sickly appearance of the too small girl in her too big bed, her chest rising slowly beneath the layers of comforters keeping her unnaturally cold body warm in the mid-summer heat.

Evangeline Donahue was gone. This new girl, the one who now slept in Evangeline's room and wore Evangeline's clothes and looked an awful lot like Evangeline, just wasn't her. She was a stranger and Bryan knew this full well. He didn't want to deal with this new girl who in so many ways was worse than the bitchy sister he'd lived with for his whole life. This girl was unbearable.

And Bryan didn't want to be near this self destructive, hurtful girl. He didn't want Martin near her or Paul near her or John near her. He didn't want them to know what she'd become. He didn't want to worry John. He didn't want to give Martin more ammunition. He didn't want Paul's heart to be broken the second he laid his eyes on the ghost of the girl he was so unreasonably and devastatingly in love with.

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"Evangeline, maybe you should skip dance classes today," Mr. Donahue suggested softly as he watched his daughter drink a mug of coffee.

"I'm fine. I'll be better once I start moving around," she assured. But even her experience of constantly lying couldn't help as she battled with fatigue to make her voice even.

"Sweetheart, the ballet company isn't going to be happy if you show up in England sick as a dog," her mother offered. "Your father and I are going to be gone for two weeks and we'd just feel so much more at ease if we knew you were resting."

"Okay," Evangeline lied with a sigh. "You're right. I should get better first."

"See? You'll get better and everything will be fine," Mrs. Donahue smiled and then glanced at her watch. "We really need to get going so we don't miss our flight. But we'll call when we land and if you need anything, our phones are always on."

Mr. and Mrs. Donahue kissed their daughter's forehead gently, each holding a worried look in their eyes as they looked her over.

"Your brother is in the studio. They're doing some mixing or final touches on the album. I'm not sure, I'm not very good with this whole music thing," Evangeline's mother laughed. "But if you need him, call his phone. He can be right over."

Evangeline nodded and kissed her parents once more before they left out the back door, climbed into their car which already held their bags and they were on their way to Aruba. She sat and wondered idly if her parents were blind, stupid, both or if they were just pretending they didn't know their daughter looked beyond death. Bryan had noticed her lack of nutritious intake, surely her parents must have noticed too. Were they really that oblivious? Or were they pretending to be, just to save themselves from having to deal with the reality?

But it didn't matter to Evangeline because her parents were now out of the house and on their way to Aruba for two weeks, far away from Boston where they wouldn't ever find out that she was still dancing. When they got back she'd tell them that she had stopped for a few days, had gotten better and then continued. Somewhere in the back of Evangeline's mind there was a small voice telling her that becoming so acquainted and comfortable with lying was a bad thing. But the rest of her brain didn't care.

Evangeline didn't have to leave the house for another half an hour, seeing as her first class had been canceled. Otherwise she would have found herself sweating out more water and sugars than her body contained in a hot studio. So Evangeline stood slowly with her now half empty mug of coffee. Her stomach couldn't take anymore of the caffeine, especially not when all she had to absorb it was a quarter of a bagel, the rest of which was sitting on a plate in her other hand. It was all she'd been able to force down her throat, trying her best not to throw it up like her body so desperately asked her to.

She placed the plate and mug on the countertop of the island, laying her hands palm down on either side. Evangeline put her head down and breathed. Her brain was pounding against her skull and she felt horrible dizzy. It was a feeling she'd gotten used to in the past couple of months but it was now so bad she was worried it, couple with the unease her stomach felt from forcing herself to eat something, would end up in Evangeline vomiting on the kitchen tile. But before she could fully comprehend the thought of this, she suddenly felt weightless and her mind had gone fuzzy. She found herself leaning forward and falling to the side as she lost her balance and collapsed. Her arms managed to slide with her body and bring everything on the countertop down with her. They landed on the tile with a resounding crash that, had Evangeline been a spectator, she would have jumped and covered her ears.

But Evangeline wasn't a spectator. She was laying motionless on the floor as her brother, who'd just opened the door as his sister was going down, stood in shock.

"Holy shit," he muttered and rushed over to his sister whose eyes were closed. "Evangeline are you okay?" he asked, reaching out softly to brush some hair from her face.

"I'm fine," she murmured, but her voice was weak and her eyes were pained when they opened.

"Please, Evangeline," Bryan pleaded as she sat up and brushed a hand through her blonde hair weakly. "You need help."
"I'm fine, Bryan," she murmured. The words escaped her mouth so often now that she said them without any emotion. They came off nonchalant and off-handed.
"Fainting is not fine. Looking like a skeleton is not fine. Not being able to lead a life because you're either sleeping or dancing is not fine, Evangeline," he insisted.

She ignored him and stood on shaky legs, avoiding the shattered porcelain that was once a plate and mug on the floor.

"Bryan, leave me alone. I eat, you've seen me," Evangeline said.
"Yeah, you eat about a quarter of a plate's worth of food at dinner and then you throw it up after. Don't think I haven't heard you in the bathroom," he shook his head. "The only thing you keep down anymore is coffee, water, and occasionally a bagel or apple."
"You don't know what I eat during the rest of the day."
"And that worries me," he responded without missing a beat. Evangeline only glared in return. "Please, you need help. If not for yourself, do it for me or mom or dad. Do it for the fucking doctor that's going to have to record your cause of death as voluntary starvation. Just...Evangeline, you can't go on like this anymore."

Bryan would have been yelling these things at his sister, but frankly he didn't have the strength. He was too tired, too scared. All he could do was plead and it didn't seem to be having an effect.

"I am fine," she stated once more, like a broken record.
"At least don't go to class today," he tried again but he knew it was in vain.
"I'm going to do what I've got to do, Bryan. And don't you have a record to be mixing so you'll become rich and famous? That is your plan, isn't it?" she sneered quietly as she was still fatigued before she left the kitchen and her brother altogether.

Part of Bryan wanted to laugh at the fact that his sister was a bitch to the end, but the other part of him that was angry was much stronger. And as Bryan threw a perfectly good plate at the wall and watched it shatter he let out a string of obscenities and declarations of "God, damn it."

He was losing his baby sister.