Kara sat on Diana’s bed. “It sucks,” she said. “I know. It’s the worst feeling in the world. But school’s going to start again, and there’re plenty of fish in the sea.” She grinned. “The best way to get over one guy is to get under a different one!”
Diana had tried to smile. Meanwhile, she thought, I’ll never have sex again.
The school year passed in a lurching blur. Sometimes Diana would sit down at the start of class and blink to discover that forty-five minutes had passed and the bell was ringing and she had no memory of what the teacher had said or what material had been covered. Sometimes, the time dragged like cold mud, making the days and hours feel like an endless slog. Her nights were restless, her sleep interrupted by bad dreams. She’d skip two, three, four meals in a row, and then find herself at the refrigerator, gorging on whatever came to hand, once spooning the entire contents of a jar of blue cheese salad dressing into her mouth. Her middle softened. Her clothes stopped fitting. Her grades slipped. Everyone worried.
Tell me what’s wrong. Her mother asked; her friends asked, her sisters asked. Her former soccer coach asked when he saw her in the hall, and her favorite English teacher from the year before cornered her in the cafeteria. She knew that her mom had called Dr. Levy to see if anything had happened, and she prayed she’d been a good enough actress during those last two days for Dr. Levy to say “no.” “But she’s worried about you,” her mother reported. “So am I. We’re all worried.” Like that was a news flash; like she’d somehow missed the incessant chorus of Tell us, tell us, tell us what happened. We can’t help you if we don’t know what’s wrong.
Nothing’s wrong, Diana would say. I’m just tired.
Finally, her mother had taken her to her pediatrician, the man who’d given her Disney stickers and cherry lollipops after her shots. Diana had loved to bite them and feel the candy shatter on her tongue and cling to her teeth.
Dr. Emmerich shuffled through her chart and finally said, “Your mother’s worried you’re depressed.”
“I’m not depressed,” Diana said. “I’m fine.”
He gave her a probing look. “Is it a boy?”
She shook her head, hair swinging around the soft, pale moon of her face.
“A girl?”
She shook her head again.
“Drinking? Drugs? Too much pressure at school? Anything you tell me is confidential. I won’t tell your parents. That’s a promise. But they’re worried, and I am, too.” He sighed, and put his hand on her arm, gently. “I don’t like to see a girl’s spark go out.”
Somehow, after all the questions, all the people asking and begging and insisting that she tell them what was wrong, that was what made her start to cry. His hand on her arm; the kindness in his voice, the idea that her spark had gone out. The idea that she’d ever had a spark, and that it had been stolen from her.
“I’m fine,” she said again, in her robot voice.
Dr. Emmerich sighed and wheeled his stool away from her, back toward the counter. “I’m going to give your parents the names of two psychologists. They’re both women, and they’re both excellent. Even if everything’s okay, it can be good to have someone to talk to.” He wheeled himself back and looked her in the eyes. “People care for you. They want to help. You just have to let them.”
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t, because there was no helping her; no fixing her. She was a broken thing, thanks to her own stupidity, her own dumb, naive, trusting nature. And now, for as long as she lived, she’d be hearing those boys laughing at her. She’d remember what had happened; what they’d done. It would be the first thing she’d think of in the morning and the last thing she’d remember at night.
Tenth grade, eleventh grade, twelfth grade all went by, in the same unhappy gray miasma. Hours felt like they were endless; months passed by with Diana barely seeing the oak tree outside her bedroom window that had once been her preview of the seasons. Now she hardly noticed when the leaves were changing, or when leaves were gone, or when they’d come back, fresh and new and green again. She ate, late at night, until she couldn’t feel anything, stuffing cookies on top of cold chicken on top of ice cream on top of bread. Sometimes she’d eat so much she’d vomit. More often, she’d just stumble to bed and lie there, half-asleep, her stomach aching as much as her heart did.
College, said her parents. So she went to the University of Massachusetts, where she lasted three semesters. It was the boys that were the problem. She’d be walking across the campus and catch sight of someone whose hair and height reminded her of Poe, or she’d be in the student center, eating lunch, and hear a laugh that sounded like one of the boys from the beach. Her roommates dragged her to parties, but the taste of beer made her gag. Her sisters came and collected her for a road trip to Florida, but the smell of sunscreen made her queasy. After three semesters’ worth of Ds and Fs, her parents had let her come home.