I Lost 90 Pounds, Only to Find He Tried to Give Me Away novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: Thanksgiving Night

I sat down on my old bed.

It still had the purple comforter from eighth grade.

My mom stood in front of the closet with the jeans in her hands and waited.

She's good at waiting.

She does it for a living.

"I am now," I said. "I wasn't."

"For how long?"

"Ten months."

She didn't move.

"How much?"

"Nine hundred calories a day," I said. "Some days less. I ran at five before my shift. In the dark, in January."

"I'd come home from the bakery and you'd be asleep. And when you were up, I'd say I ate there."

My mom closed her eyes.

"I signed a loan," she said. "I signed a loan and I thought you looked tired from the bakery."

"Mom."

"I'm an ER nurse, Callie. I see it every week. I see girls your age come in with their hearts doing things hearts shouldn't do."

"I know."

"And I was asleep in the next room."

She put the jeans down on the dresser very carefully.

"Why?" she said.

So I told her.

Not all of it.

The guild chat, the shipping label, the buffet post.

"I like girls who take care of themselves."

"Keep going."

She'd heard pieces of it on the campus news.

She hadn't known what it had done inside her own house.

When I got to the Christmas party, the cookies I'd made and didn't eat, her face broke.

She crossed the room and sat down on the purple comforter and pulled me in.

She smelled like turkey and the hospital soap she uses even on her days off.

She held on the way Betsy had held on the night of the bonfire, shoes and all.

I hadn't been held by my mom like that since I was small enough to fit.

I cried into her good sweater until it had a wet spot the size of my hand.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said, "When did you start eating again?"

"September. Betsy's mom's chicken and noodles. On the floor of my dorm."

My mom let out a laugh that was mostly a sob.

"I'm sending that woman flowers," she said. "I'm sending her a car."

"You can't afford a car."

"I'll send her a picture of a car."

I laughed into her shoulder.

She pulled back and took my face in both hands, nurse hands, cool and dry.

"Here's what's going to happen," she said. "When you go back, you go to the student health center. You tell them what you told me. You see somebody, every week, until they say stop."

"Okay."

"That's not me asking."

"I know, Mom. Okay."

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she nodded, once.

I picked up the jeans.

I peeled off the sticky note that said AUGUST and folded it in half and in half again.

Then I took the jeans downstairs and put them in the bag by the back door that goes to the church thrift store.

My mom watched from the bottom step.

She didn't say anything.

She didn't have to.

At 10:25 she came down in her scrubs with her badge on its reel and her car keys in her hand.

Beck was at the kitchen sink, washing the roasting pan, because nobody had asked him to.

She stopped beside him.

"Leave that. It needs to soak."

"Yes, ma'am."

"What did I say about ma'am?"

"Sorry. Yes."

She looked at him, then at me in the doorway with my red eyes, then at him again.

"She told me," my mom said.

Beck put the scrubber down.

"I'm glad," he said.

"You knew."

"I knew she wasn't eating in June. I asked every night. I didn't know how bad."

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