two

It's Sunday morning and Mom and Dad are up and at church, and I'm at her house, standing on her porch like a nervous boyfriend. I ring the doorbell and ring my hands together like a wet rag and it's not ten seconds before she's asking, "Who's there?"

I don't have a chance to answer before she's opening the door, and she's looking at me and I'm looking at her. She's dressed in pair of grey sweatpants and a light pink tank top and her hair is in a loose ponytail. Her contacts are out and her black-rimmed glasses are on, and her face breaks into a slow smile, and it reminds me of watching the sun rise. "Well, hello there Shane. Long time no see."

"Who's there?" Her mom is screaming, and I ignore the urge to smile as she rolls her eyes and yells back, "Shane."

She grabs my hand and drags me through the hallways, and I only have time to say "Hello" to her mom, who looks at me for a second before going back to her soap opera, and she ignores me as her teenage daughter drags me into her room and locks the door.

She sits down with her back against the door and laughs like I told some hilarious joke and leans her head against my shoulder, her forehead against my collarbone. I can smell her shampoo and then, quick as lightning, she's up and pacing her room, saying, "Good God, I've been waiting for you! What took you so long?"

I stare at her as she sits down on the edge of her bed, legs crossed. She grins as she kicks a pair of underwear under her bed and I struggle to stand up and sit next to her but she gives me a hard look so I stay where I am.

"You were waiting for me, huh? Glad to see that you got all dressed up for me."

She gives me another hard look so I just laugh and twine my fingers into her thick, 70s shag carpet and yank hard. "I have a life, you know. My world doesn't revolve around you."

And bam, as quick as curfew she's up again and laughing and touching my cheek and saying, "Silly boy, of course it does. What would you do without me?"

By the tone of her voice I can tell that she means this rhetorically, so I simply rub my hand across my face, and suddenly I remember why I came here.

"Everything," I say.

Her expressions forms into one of confusion and I smirk like I finally have the upper hand, and then I repeat myself. "Everything. I'm afraid of everything."

First she looks like she wants to laugh but then she looks sad, like she's watched someone run over her newborn puppy. She comes over and sits next to me and goes, "Oh, honey," and leans her head against my shoulder again and her arms come around and embrace me and it feels a little comfortable and a little safe and a lot awkward.

I don't know what to do, so I just lay stiff in her arms like a hard piece of spaghetti for a second before she says, "Damn it, this is an emotional moment, hug me back you stupid unfeeling bastard," and I laugh and it feels so good, like taking my shoes off after practice all day long.

My arms come around her oh-so-tiny waist, and I can feel the indent of every one of her ribs and her hip bones are painful against my stomach. She feels like a paper doll and I am careful of how hard I squeeze her because all I can think is how it would sound when her glass bones would break in my hands. Her ponytail brushes against my back and I am about to make a remark about love, when she asks, "Do you want to go out for breakfast?"

I pull back from her embrace and stare at her long and hard. I feel like a tough father, trying to point out her flaws, the ones she knows about and the ones she doesn't. "You don't eat," I say, as if there is any chance in hell of her forgetting the thinness of her body, the skin stretched over her lank bones.

"No," she answers back and her voice is strangely hollow and it reminds me of an empty cave. "I don't eat often. But I'm craving pancakes. Some greazy, deep fried, syrup-y panckcakes and you're here and I'm here and we should go spend our hard earned money on pancakes and skip out on the tip for that bitch that we always get stuck with as a waitress at IHOP. We won't feel guilty at all. What do you say to that, my dear old friend?"

All I can think is 'Dear God I love this girl, why can't it be like this always, with me and her and us just being destructive and not have people staring.'

I think of the reaction of people when they see the infamous Morgan Caldwell shoveling pancakes into her mouth. They'd whisper 'Invisible Girl is eating, ohmigod, do you see it? Wait, who's with her? Is that Shane Robinson? The quaterback?'

I shake my head and I'm brought back into the real word, into the now, when I hear her drag in a deep breath and I know that it's the hunger pains twisting in her stomach and clawing at her insides. I reach out to touch her but she cringes back and she's sweating like a marathon runner and I twist my hands together, and it shouldn't hurt me this much to see her hurt this much, so I ask her, "How much do you weigh?"

"One hundred, even," she says, and there's a twisted sense of pride in her voice that makes me feel naseous. "See, I'm doing better."

"One hundred pounds at five foot nine," I say and my voice sounds strange to my own ears and she pulls away from me futher, just like I just called her that God awful word (fat) and all I can think of is how if I say something wrong she'll go into a relapse and be locked up in the hospital again, dripping sugar water into her empty veins as she looks paper thin and snow-pale against the white sheets. I think of how her mother will look at me, with extreme hatred, like it's all my fault and her indifference to her only daughter hasn't caused this, and I feel like I'm going to puke as I realize that it'll be all my fault.

She can sense how my thinking is going by the way I'm tensed up and I try to relax my body but I can't and the next thing I know is that she's stroking my hair and her fingers are stroking my cheek like a concerned mother and the pain seems to have passed out of her face. Her brow is no longer creased and she's trying not to look upset and she whispers simply, "Don't worry, I'm not some porcelian doll that'll collapse in your fingers."

I briefly debate telling that that's exactly what I think of her but decide against it. I bunch my fingers in the bottom of her tank top and then she's pulling away and sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Damn, when did she start crying? I want to ask her what's wrong but she shakes her head, a few loose curls flying around. She stands up and dusts off her pants and laughs nervously. She whispers, "I need to change," and then she's grabbing clothes from her dresser and dissappearing into her bathroom.

I sit in her floor and glance around at her room, at the unmade bed and at the stack of books and a the pile of clothes in the corner and at the collection of shoes by her bed. I stare at her ceiling and start counting how many bits of popcorn are buried there and I get to forty-three before I hear the door open and she's standing in the doorway to her room.

She's wearing a blue and white sun dress with a pair of sandals and big, bug eye sunglasses. She's applied makeup and her blonde curls are falling down her back in a gentle wave. I think she can sense my apprehension, because she says, "Are you ready? Let's go."

"Morgan-" I start, but she shakes her head and threads her arm through mine as she says, "Let's go, I'm hungry."

"Listen, are you okay?"

She closes her eyes briefly and when she opens them, she answers in a hard voice, "Drop it. Now let's go."

I don't argue and we leave her room, and her mom doesn't give us a second look (which explains so much as I feel her ribs through her dress) and we open the door and step outside into the unforgiving sunshine.