Color Me Pretty

lace shirt she's wearing and shows me the bandages on her throat. Wow. “My boyfriend's brother came over to pick up his cat.” She pauses. “Ex-boyfriend, sorry. If I'd known he was coming, I would've waited.” She turns to look at me with massive green eyes, as big as mine but nowhere near as out of place. “But don't tell anybody that. I just said it was a cry for attention, that I had no idea cutting the carotid artery could kill you so fast.” Kylie sighs. “I can't wait to get the hell out of here.” She looks me up and down and smiles. “I'm on a state hold, too, but I skipped group the first three days of mine, so now I'm here for the week.”
    “You're wrong,” I tell her and she gives me a quizzical look. “ You're the rebel. I'm the heroine, the one who isn't really crazy.” Kylie laughs and takes my hand. We walk all the way down the hall with our fingers entwined.

The group therapy session is exactly what I thought it would be – long, drawn out, and boring. Nobody has any breakthroughs or life altering revelations. I mean, from what I can tell, we're all there against our will and none of us are crazy, just people with problems who are being bossed around by other people who probably have their own hidden issues. One girl cries, but I think that's because she wants the whole thing to end and knows that Dr. Hial won't let us go until progress has been made.
    The man sits on a chair on one side of the circle and just keeps smiling and smiling and smiling, just like Donald from the hospital. I thought shrinks were supposed to be depressed, beaten down by all the terrible shit they have to listen to. Instead, all the ones I keep encountering seem kind of excited to be there. Maybe they're living vicariously through all of us; maybe their life is all sunshine and rainbows. I mean, pain is its own kind of pleasure in a way. I can't imagine anyone turning into a well-rounded human being without experiencing at least a little bit of it.
    Kylie and I sit next to each other, opposite Dr. Hial, and only speak when our turns roll around. I tell the truth about the glass, but I say nothing about the anorexia or the bulimia or any of that. Those are my crosses to bear; I'd rather not hand one out to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. People stare at me, and I know they know, but they keep quiet. Nobody wants to pry into me for fear I'll do the same to them.
    Kylie briefly mentions her ex, says she wanted to keep him and thought it would be easy to trick him into getting back together with her by shedding a little blood. The circle moves on, but I think a lot about what she said. There's so much more to her story than she's letting on. I wish I knew all her secrets.
    The second we walk out of that room, I blurt out what Emmett said. I don't know why, really; it just happens.
    “My boyfriend just told me he loves me.”
    “Bummer,” Kylie says, taking me towards a set of doors with an ominous smell leaking from them. Food. Fuck. I have to eat in the cafeteria and have an orderly sign off to say they saw me. How screwed up is that? Shouldn't it be my choice if I want to eat or not? I mean, I'd do it anyway because I want to get better, but I don't want to do it while somebody watches. I'm not ready for that. I can't even imagine how bad things would be if I'd actually been enrolled in their ED program. As things stand, I'm getting off terribly light. I wonder if I could purge tonight? The fantasy's appealing – losing all those calories to the toilet – but the reality is harsh. If I get caught, I'm basically screwed. Besides, I want to get better, right? Right? “How long have you been together?” Eons, I wish I could say, but instead the answer is much less compelling.
    “I don't know.”
    “You don't know?” Kylie asks as she pushes through the doors. I'd been expecting a school cafeteria look, something with trays and long, Formica tabletops, lunch ladies with nets, linoleum floors. Instead, we walk into a carpeted area that looks an awful lot like the restaurant my parents used to take Marlena and me to after school on Friday. It even smells the same – like mac 'n' cheese mixed with steak sauce. Hmm. I hope to God it tastes better than the food at the hospital. “That's a good sign then, I guess.”
    “Why's that?”
    “Because you fell together accidentally. You didn't make a conscious decision. That's good.” Kylie walks me over to a table and pulls out a chair. Unsure as to what exactly