Annie was so grateful to hear Hank’s footsteps in the hall that she didn’t even tell him to get back to bed.
“What’s up?”
“I’m too excited to sleep.”
The second graders always performed a few song-and-dance numbers at Fall Fest, and Hank and his classmates had been practicing since September.
He spread his arms wide. “I have the whole room to myself. I don’t really miss Laurel. At all.”
“I won’t tell her.”
“She can’t try to lock me out, and before bed, she won’t play that stupid song fifteen million times and she won’t wake me up at two in the morning either.”
“Laurel wakes you up at two in the morning?”
“She turns on her bed lamp and types all night.”
“What is she typing?”
“She said it was research.”
“Homework?”
Hank shrugged. He had a well-earned reputation for hyperbole. Laurel had probably woken him up once at ten. Nonetheless, the Perleys’ one big rule was: no screens in the bedroom.
“Want another tuck-in?” Annie asked.
“Okay,” Hank said agreeably.
She followed him into the bedroom, smoothed the covers over him with one gentle yank. Annie felt a tug of guilt about how small the room was.
Maybe Laurel’s recent prickliness was about lack of privacy. Annie had always told herself that Cottonwood Estates was worth any sacrifice in space. But an almost fourteen-year-old having to share to share a bunk bed with her seven-year-old brother wasn’t ideal.
“Did you invite Mrs. Meeker to Fall Fest?” Hank asked. “She’s really excited about my dance.”
Too crowded, Lena had said to Annie, and her eyes had begged for the conversation to end. “She can’t make it,” Annie said, “but we’ll send pictures.”
“She told me she’s going to buy me a skateboard.”
Annie sighed. “You have to stop asking her for things, Hank.”
“She said it makes her happy.”
“Even so.” Lena and her brother Ernie had done enough for the Perleys. Due entirely to Ernie’s connections and word of mouth, Mike’s restaurant was booked through next month. There’s definite buzz, Mike had said, buzz buzz buzz. Hank had pretended to be a bee for the entire rest of the night.
“At least try to limit your requests,” she said.
“I’ll try,” Hank said, in a tone of voice that made clear he couldn’t promise anything. “Night.”
“Night.”
Annie flicked off the light and, on her way out of the room, lifted the grab handle of Laurel’s backpack, which had been left by the door.
An eighth grader a few years back had—unbeknownst to her parents or therapist until the girl fainted in world history—spent hours each day studying evil websites that glamorized anorexia: how to abuse laxatives and count calories and binge and purge. She’d missed the entire rest of the school year. It always struck Annie how entirely clueless the parents had been.
The friends had known, though. The friends always knew.
But Laurel didn’t have an eating disorder. Her appetite, larger than even Mike’s, was a running family joke. Last night, she’d downed three helpings of lasagna with a huge side of salad and then belched healthily, because she’d known it would make Hank laugh until he fell off his chair.
Unless it was disordered to eat so much? Had they drawn too much attention to her big appetite, made it a thing?
That swirling anxious feeling Annie had while reading about Fiona was because she knew something was off with Laurel. She just didn’t know what.
Laurel did seem self-conscious in her body, at least compared to Sierra. When she’d worn the miniskirt, she’d hunched over, tugged down the skirt.
And when Annie had asked Laurel what flavor cake she wanted for her birthday in a few weeks, Laurel had claimed to not need a cake at all.
Most teenage girls were uncomfortable in their bodies, though, and maybe Laurel was experimenting, trying to shed childhood traditions in favor of more grown-up ones.
None of it meant that Laurel had an eating disorder.
Annie shouldn’t make up issues. Laurel enjoyed food, she wasn’t obsessed by it.
（Which is probably exactly what the family of the girl who had been hospitalized had thought.）
The computer part—the late-night typing—was troubling. And what did research mean anyway? There were any number of horrible places on the World Wide Web where a teenaged girl might conduct “research.”