68 ~ Deformed Baby Birds-2

I was abruptly interrupted when I felt the strong embrace of my mother knocking into me, the words silencing on my tongue and leaving me breathless, and I felt her tears cool on my shoulder as she gripped me, tightly, as if she was afraid that I would slip through her fingers if she loosened her grasp around my waist and shoulders, her brown hair clinging to the wet trails of my own teardrops, and I froze in her embrace. “You are important,” she murmured in my ear, her voice thick and shaky as she spoke, and I blinked as I heard the rattling of her breaths in my ear as she continued. “You’re important to me, and to your father. Your sister and your friends. You’re important to that boy who called on us the phone and told us what happened.” I thought of Orion, reaching into his pocket just as the ambulance left, watching as the ambulance grew smaller in his eyes as he waited for them to answer, and I smiled, faintly, at the thought. “And you were important to Roxanne. You were so important to her that she wouldn’t want you doing this to yourself. She loved you so, so much.” She loved you so, so much. I squeezed my eyes close as I heard this, gasping to catch my next breath that hissed past my lips, and I wrapped my arms around my mother, gripping onto the fabric of her cardigan and holding on, feeling my father’s hand on the back of my head, and the brush of my sister’s fingers against my own, interlocking them. And for the first time since Roxanne had died, I didn’t feel completely alone. . . . The morning I was supposed to be discharged from the hospital and I slipped out of the tiny pair of shorts that still smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and beer since when I had punched Evan Dillinger, his beer had spilled onto the edge of my shorts, and the hoodie that Orion gave me, and I folded it gently and tucked it into the plastic bag, the only item of clothing I hadn’t thrown into the trash can, and waited for my doctor to come and give me my dieting instructions and a list of therapists trained with eating disorders. I hadn’t necessarily agreed to the idea of sitting on the leather, tear-soaked couch in a small room with a therapist scribbling down his analysis of me and my problems, but I hadn’t resisted either when my mother told the doctor that I was bulimic, even though I still flinched at the word. My mother had also told me that Evan Dillinger wasn’t pressing charges against me, remarking aloud as she stared out into the parking lot from the hospital room window that she wasn’t exactly sure why, and even though I nodded at this, I knew why. It was because he was hoping somehow that if he didn’t press charges against me then I wouldn’t tell the police about Roxanne and him, and I considered this as I sat on the foot of my hospital bed while my dad brought the car around and I convinced my mother to get me something from the cafeteria, even though I wasn’t that hungry. I just wanted a moment to ruminate whether or not I should tell someone, the authorities or my parents, about the phone call and her confession that it held. As I pondered the idea of telling the police officers that I had attacked Evan Dillinger because he had raped my best friend or if anything would actually come of it since there wasn’t any proof now without Roxanne, I heard a soft knock on the door. “You can come in, Mom,” I called out, shoving Evan Dillinger and the message in the corners of my mind, and I smoothed my hair back away from my face as the door slowly opened, revealing the black, short curls and large blue eyes of Kara Webber as she pressed her fingers against the right side of the door, her blue and gray sneakers squeaking against the gleaming, white floor, and her lips held a tentative smile as she stepped into the room. I hadn’t seen Kara since that night at the pageant when she collapsed on the stage, the teal fabric of her dress falling in a swoosh of greenish blue as she fell, and then when I saw her vomiting blood into the kidney shaped dish in the back of the ambulance a few weeks ago, after her mother said that she wanted Kara away from us and to focus on her therapy instead, on getting better she had said, and now, as I gazed at her standing in my hospital room, I noticed that she looked different. Her face was fuller and her skin glowed her natural ashen hue but it didn’t look flushed anymore, and her eyes looked full, no longer vacant or distant, and the fingers she used to grasp onto the large handle of the door weren’t as frail or slender. She was still small and medium sized clothing would probably look somewhat baggy on her frame but I could see that she had gained a few pounds that she hadn’t shed with vomiting. Her hair was glossy and thick, and I imagined that if she ran her fingers through it, black strands wouldn’t be woven around her fingers when she pulled her hand away. She looked healthy, and maybe even free.