The Secret to Lying (28 page)

“Sure.” I stared at the yellow curtain surrounding Ellie’s bed. It made me think of the pod in the center of the core where I’d left the Thief, surrounded by Nomanchulators. My stomach knotted.

Chuck squeezed my shoulder and headed off. I listened to his footsteps recede.

“Can I come in?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“If you want to,” Ellie replied. Covers rustled as she moved about.

I parted the curtain and stepped through.

Ellie sat among several pillows with her legs crooked beneath a blanket. She had a hair band in her mouth and she struggled to put her straight blond hair back in a ponytail, only it was too short so it kept slipping free. She gave up finally, leaving half her hair pulled back while the other half brushed her cheek. “I’ve got bed-head,” she muttered.

“You look great,” I said, my voice wavering. Shadows underlined her eyes and her skin was sallow.

Ellie scoffed.

“You do,” I added, trying to cover up my shock at how different she seemed. “It’s good to see you.”

“Please. I can tell when you’re lying.”

I took a step back and considered leaving. Obviously, she didn’t want me there, but if I left now, I might hurt her feelings again. I didn’t want her to know how much it bothered me to see her like this.

“So, how’s it going?” I asked, attempting to play it cool.

Ellie didn’t respond.

I searched the room for something else to talk about. An IV hung next to her bed, but there were no beeping machines or ventilators. There were no flowers or balloons, either. I wondered if she’d had any visitors. Chuck probably thought I’d cheer her up. I should have told him that Ellie hated me.

“You want to hear something funny?” I asked.

Her eyes flicked over me but she still didn’t talk.

“In the emergency waiting room, we passed this guy with a two-by-four nailed to his foot.” I held up my hands to show how long the board was. “No kidding. He shot a nail straight through his foot, boot and all, and into a block of wood.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Guess you had to see it. He seemed pretty embar-rassed.”

Ellie fidgeted with the blanket, smoothing out the wrinkles over her legs. I stuck my hands in my pockets, hoping she’d say something to end the awkwardness, but she didn’t.

“Why are you here?” I finally asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

I looked at her sunken cheeks and thin arms. It
was
obvious, but that didn’t explain why. I shook my head.

“What are people saying about me at school?”

“Nothing,” I said, leaving off the fact that almost no one talked to me anymore.

“Oh.” She stared at the blanket. “Well, I passed out.”

“Why?”

“Low blood sugar, I suppose. The doctor said my electrolytes were so out of balance that I could have gone into cardiac arrest. That’s why they kept me this time.”

“You have heart problems?”

“Not exactly.” Her hands kept fidgeting with the blanket, twisting a loose thread around her finger. “It’s what happens when you only eat toast and lettuce for long enough. Your body starts to feed off itself. First the fat, then your muscles and joints. Then your brain can’t regulate things. Bones deteriorate. . . . Pretty, huh?”

I glanced around the room, unable to meet her gaze. An orange cafeteria tray sat on a rolling cart near the side of her bed. It had one of those metal covers on it — the sort butlers used in cartoons to keep food warm. The smell made me hungry. “At least the food here’s probably better than ASMA’s,” I joked.

“Of course,” Ellie said. “Everyone thinks it’s so simple. All I have to do is eat a cinnamon roll or a hot dog and I’ll be better, right?”

My face flushed. “It’s not like you need to diet.”

“Right. Because this is all about looking cute in a hospital gown.”

“So why do you starve yourself?”

“Why do you cut yourself?” she countered.

I hesitated, stung by her question. “Okay,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s not so simple.”

Ellie scooted over and moved her book —
The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath. “Here,” she said. “You can sit.”

I hoisted myself onto the bed, crossing my legs.

“Chuck says it’s about control,” she explained. “I can’t control my life, so I try to control myself by not eating. And the worse I feel, the more I have to starve myself to be good. Or pure. Or worthy.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Sometimes.” She twisted the loose hospital band on her arm. “The explanations don’t really matter, though. They don’t change anything. I’m still stuck in this cycle, wanting to be thin.”

“But you are thin.”

“I’m never thin enough,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

I thought of all the things she’d written to me — about how she was consumed by image, and how she wanted to be a zero, as if disappearing was the only way to be perfect. She’d kept telling me that she could never be herself in person, but I was too blinded by what I wanted her to be to see what she was talking about. Only now, when I looked at her intense eyes and slender neck, and how lost her tiny arms seemed in the wide sleeves of her hospital gown, it was like some spell had finally broken. Her image dissolved, and I saw her true self — the ghost that was fading away.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“Sorry I said you were dead inside. I didn’t mean it.”

“Then why’d you say it?”

“Because I was afraid you’d see the truth about me.”

Ellie studied me.

There was no point lying anymore — I’d already lost everything. “I’m not who people think I am,” I said.

“Who is?”

“This is different. I lied to everyone about my past. The things I’ve done . . . Who I am . . . Everything about me is fake.”

She grew silent, lost in thought for a moment. Then she nudged my leg. “Thank you.”

“For being a massive jerk?”

“For being honest.”

“But I’m not honest. That’s what I’m telling you —I can’t be honest. I don’t even know what’s real anymore.” I picked at the hospital blanket, pulling off a fluff ball. “These last few weeks, I’ve been trying to act normal and fit in, only I can’t do it right. Everyone takes it for granted that they’re real, but I have to try to be real. And if you try to be real, what are you?”

“I know what you mean.”

“You do?”

“I’m like that all the time,” she said. “I’m constantly obsessing over how I should talk, or act, or eat — calculating the exact number of calories I need to cut to become this idea of who I’m supposed to be. I do it so often, I don’t think there’s anything real left underneath.” She shrugged. “There’s just this empty shell, pretending to be human.”

“That’s not true.” I wished she could see herself the way I saw her — not some cold, distant model, but the girl who’d IM’d me and kept me from being alone. “You are the most sincere, passionate, real person I’ve ever met.”

“I don’t think that person exists anymore.”

“She does,” I said. “I’m talking to her.”

Ellie grew silent, staring at her hands. I blew on the blanket fluff I’d pulled off and the tiny ball swirled into the air, landing in her lap. She picked it up and smiled shyly, as if I’d given her something precious and she feared she might lose it.

“
Smilet,
”
I said.

“Huh?”

“That’s my favorite word. Not
ucalegon. Smilet.
It means half smile, only it’s not really a word. I think Shakespeare made it up.”

“I like it. It should be a word.”

“As in,” I added, “‘You have the prettiest smilet in the world.’”

“Or, ‘Wipe that smilet off your face!’”

She said it in such a mean voice that we both cracked up.

We talked for a little while after that about school, and our parents, and our hometowns, but we didn’t have much time left before Chuck came to take me back.

Instead of saying good-bye, I pointed to a crease in the blanket between us.

“That’s the gap,” I said. Then I held out my hand and reached across.

Ellie reached back, wrapping her slender fingers around mine. “So are you disappointed that I’m not the perfect girl you thought I was?”

“No. I like you much better now — bed-head and all.”

“You, too,” she replied. “It’s good to finally meet you, James.”