When Logan and I broke up the first time, back in eighth grade, I forgave him, and he corrected what he was doing wrong: he had stopped listening to me. He stopped listening, and I forgot that to be listened to, you have to speak up. People not listening to what I say, though, has stayed with me. He doesn't do it anymore, he wouldn't dare, but...others do.

I've been trying to put my finger on why I haven't been eager to spend time with Carly lately. At first I thought it was because of that trust issue that was raised in our conversation, but that wasn't right: I give time to everyone, and Carly is a great, amazing, talented person, why wouldn't I want to spend time with someone like that, even if it never deepened into a friendship because of her own reservations? And then I realized it as Shoshannah made me a bowl of Cream of Wheat for breakfast: it's soft like soup but not as messy as oatmeal. I don't like oatmeal right now, it's so ragged looking, you can't keep it even as you eat it. I was smoothing the surface of the food and I looked up, it hit me that I hadn't even had to say that I was struggling, everyone knew. At some point, my voice stopped being important. Everyone can see that I've lost weight. That I'm...my food habits have picked up, that I'm counting every bite. My voice has disappeared: if I said I was fine, everyone would ignore me, wouldn't they.

Carly ignored what I said. And I'm upset. I guess I didn't realize it until just now.

( Ghosts appear and fade away. )

I don't know.

If someone hurt me, physically hurt me, I'd want...I'd expect Logan to defend me, to stand up for me. To hurt them like they hurt me. On the other...I'm angry at Pete for doing that. I'm pissed, genuinely upset at him, for something that I'd want Logan to do for me. I guess: no. I'd want Logan to defend me, but I wouldn't want it to be public. The fact that Pete did it in front of other people meant that everybody now knows. Everybody. Why couldn't he wait, why couldn't he do it in private! I don't understand.

I have trouble looking some of my friends in the eye sometimes, because they know: they know my dark secret, they know I was in a hospital, and so many of them know what I did, and I want to crawl out of my skin, I'm so shamed by the fact that they know. And I feel this pressure to be more perfect than ever around them, so that they think that I'm fine now. Maybe they'll forget. Maybe they'll forget that I smashed apart, maybe...if I were Andi, and everybody knew that my boyfriend beat me, I'd kill myself. I'd kill myself, I couldn't do it, I couldn't go to school, knowing that everybody knew...Andi's stronger than I am. But...I just...I don't know.

How do I tell her how much I ache for her? You can't go up to someone and say, So there's this rumor... I can't. But how do I tell her...and I feel so stupid, my God, I feel...how stupid I was! I cooed over that bracelet...my necklace looks like hers, I'll never be able to wear this necklace again, I'm so ashamed of myself for gushing over how romantic it was that Andi had changed Bruce while he was making her bleed. I want to be here for Andi now, I want to sit with her if she wants to talk, if she wants to not talk...but I don't want to crowd her, shadow her, scare her...these rumors, that I know because of a rumor...

Logan's coming over tonight. I asked the Hirschs if he could, and they didn't care, and we asked his parents, and it took a bit of convincing, but because of what happened to his mother, I suppose they yielded because we found their sensitive button and pushed it: when girls are treated badly. I just want him around tonight. I want to talk. I want to not talk. But...I just want my boyfriend around tonight because...just because. I just want him, and I don't care if that makes me stupid or weak or lame, I want him tonight. Because I'm scared. Because I'm angry at a good friend, and I won't ever tell him why because I can't bear to let him know that I'm not All Better. Because I'll never be perfect enough to make it all go away.

Because all I can do is cry for Andi, and not a single tear makes it better for her. Not a single one.

I don't know why I said what I said to Marty. All I want is for everyone to think I'm...I mean, I might as well have just told him that I am anorectic, I suffer from depression...that I'm suicidal, I should have just told him everything, considering what I said.

Dr. Axtell says that it could be that I wanted to show someone in this school who thinks I'm such an angel that I'm not, that I'm actually broken inside. Or maybe I wanted what would happen if I showed that side of me.

But I wonder if...if it wasn't the part in me that wanted Marty Bukowski, Marty who hits, Marty who yells, Marty who judges and is rude and base...that I wanted Marty to punish me for being so broken. That he'd mock me or...maybe a tiny part of me wanted him to tell everyone, then I'd be...and it would force me to try it again because I couldn't...

I haven't been able to eat since. And I don't want to eat today. I was able to hide it in front of Loesy last night at the Rodowskys, thanks to Jackie interrupting dinner about twelve times. Not eating lets me balance this anniversary against how I feel inside, so that I can enjoy it and still...

I told Marty what I cannot tell people, and he was...so decent, and...Loes is so sweet, and...

...and I can't eat.

Alexander kissed me yesterday, and instead of pulling away, I kissed him back, thinking about how easy it would be if I were with him instead of Logan. To be with someone who doesn't know. But then...it's like an itch that lives under my skin: I'm in love. And it's hard to be with someone when the relationship gets this deep and this serious, and with someone as popular as Logan and someone as...broken as me. It's so hard, and yet...

I love him. So I won't let go.

And if I fight for us, why can't I fight for myself.

And that's why I'm writing this on my laptop, at the hospital at Yale. I needed Dr. Axtell to call Dad to tell him that I needed this, just a day or two to have doctors helping me all day long before...I mean, I kissed Alexander back because I wanted to...

I need help. I need now, because this time, I...next time, I might not...but this time I know that I do.

All because of that kiss. I don't know if Loes will forgive me, I don't know if Alexander...I don't know a thing, except...in a way, I'm so glad for that kiss, because it's stopped me before I slid right out of myself.

My boyfriend and I have dated longer than any other couple in our class, I'm so in love with him that I can feel it like it's a part of me, and yet...

...why does it feel like everyone else in the world is having sex except for me?!

I can't cry anymore. It's worthless, all of those tears. Wasted water: I remember once, after the fire, when I couldn't cry I overheard Mrs. Thomas whisper about that to Sharon. Mary Anne hasn't cried. Why should I: I shed an ocean of tears before that fire, enough to put out the blaze...all of it, wasted.

I'm tired of crying. It does nothing, not a thing. I'm sitting in my room looking just like I did when I was ten...same size, too. Sharon's tried to talk to Dad, but the fight was so disasterous that I ran downstairs and begged her to stop, just stop. I deserved it, I told her. It was okay. So I sit up here since I'm grounded for the rest of the week: no phone. No TV. I had to get my thoughts down, so I asked my therapist if I could use her computer. This is all I'm allowed out of the house for, therapy and my sitting appointments. So, I sit here and knit and quilt and read and take portrait after portrait of my body, of every bone that stick out, looking like it just begs to break. I've been forcing myself to eat, even though it's the last thing I want to do.

I don't know anymore. All I know is I don't want to cry over what my father has done or how much I miss Logan because just like none of the water I cried could put out that fire or bring back everything I lost, none of the tears I cry now would convince my father that I'm not what he thinks I am...or bring back the boy I love. Nothing. It's hopeless, that's all it is. No point. I just stay here, with my braids, in saddle shoes, in this room that never got the makeover that we started. It's been halted, stopped, right in the middle of its change. Just frozen here, like me, my little room.

Cam paid for it. My bill for treatment, all of it, even the part that insurance was supposed to cover. And he left instructions with the Lodge that if I ever needed treatment again that he was supposed to be billed.

He paid over a hundred thousand dollars. Just for me.

Dad called him on his cell phone, tried to fight him and get him to change his mind, but Cam was Cam, slightly arrogant and smooth, and he said that having me there was as much for him as it was for me. Then he said he had a photocall and hung up, which I could feel was a lie, even from across an ocean.

It's the most incredible gift...I don't know what to say.

Oh...no. He can't...I mean...is Cam in love with me?

...the kiss...what he said during our last night there...now this?

...how in the world do I explain this all to Logan without him thinking that I'm...

I...touched him. Loes. Twice. Once in the hot tub. and then again in the morning, this morning, when we were alone in his bed at six in the morning, waking up an hour earlier than we had to, so scared of being caught. And that time, I could see it there, the blankets tangled around his legs, as I ran my hand like he showed me. I've never felt so shivery before, so excited, watching how his face went soft and slack and because of me doing that to him. It's one thing for him to look at me like he does when I'm kissing him or we're telling each other how much I love him and he loves me. This is...so different, that look.

Am I sexually active now? Or do you only say that if you've had real sex? Or oral sex or...they didn't say this part in health class. But this is what I want to know.

I keep wondering what Dad would think, if he knew. If he knew that I spent the night with Logan, that I...gosh, I can't say it, it's too pervy to write handjob that down. Ew. Can I be good and do things like this? Or maybe I can do things like this...and just work harder to be good in other places, like balancing a set of scales.

Because i want to do it again. And then be ready...to do more.

Sunny's gone; she left yesterday. I...wish I knew what to say about it, but all I am is empty. After being so close to Sunny, the selfish hurricane of her, I feel a bit ruined, like the shingles of my roof have been pulled off, windows shattered.

Ever since I yelled at her...I've felt the empty place in me that is shaped like my mother. And it's so large inside of me: it bleeds into the empty place of growing up for over a decade with a man who treated me like a china doll in a glass case and not a girl, the empty place of being denied Grandma and Grandpa, the empty place that makes it so hard to get out of bed some days that I don't even understand. On my birthday last year, Abby and Anna were showing Kristy how to pass your finger through a flame, real quick, touching fire without being burned. I stared at them in fascination for a moment, to be that cavalier about fire, and then I reached out my hand to the birthday candles they had relit and did it too. But I was staring at the fire and...I guess I forgot to move my finger because suddenly, Abby was yanking my hand back and my finger was red and scalded by the fire. And I didn't feel a thing, I just stared at my blistered skin and waited for the hurt. But all there was left was an empty place where the sorrow had been, eroding me down into a hollow canyon.

Sunny's torn it all back up again. I really don't want to talk to Dawn; she was such an apologist for so long, I just...I'm not angry with her, but I need time to try to manuever around the empty places again before I can pretend that I'm all better around her. And the Sunny stuff, the Dawn stuff...I can't eat. I am so disgusting on the inside...I can't. No one's really noticed yet, and I need to work really hard to make sure that they don't. I need to make some order in my life, I have to. I can't take people telling me what's right: they aren't me. This is what I need to get by, and everyone can just jump off a bridge if they don't like it, this is what I need. I just...do.

I'm curled up on my bed with Roo, the most adorable puppy in the world, something that Sunny treated like a broken toy. He hates Dawn's room because that room equals Sunny who equals bad memories, and not that I can blame him. Tigger doesn't like to be inside much: he hasn't, since the fire. I understand that...I don't, either. But it's left me lonely, missing his warm body beside me at night, the way I'm beginning to miss Logan at night, the memory that lingers in the empty space. Like my insides turned out. Having Roo around, it's like a salve. He balls against the concave curve of my stomach, and he doesn't tell me its too thin. He just cuddles there and doesn't move, even in the dark tuck of the night, when smoke curls in my mind and makes me tighten in fright. He stays with me, all night, and when I feel so empty that I wonder if I'm still real, there in the darkness, I can reach out and feel his breathing against my hand...and I know that I can make it to morning, at least.

When I was crying to Logan during lunch the other day...I thought to myself how I couldn't understand how Sunny would run away. No: what I didn't understand was how Sunny would want to run away and not want to come back. How she can live like she does.

But I was wrong. I know how Sunny can want to run away. I wanted to do it, too, once. Not run away, though. I wanted to die. I never got far enough to decide how, if I wanted to swallow pills or sit in the garage with the car running and fall asleep on the concrete of the garage that was mine was I was a little girl. Never wake up. Or maybe I'd slit my wrists because feeling real pain in my body might distract me from how empty I was feeling. How far away and detached, like I was floating three feet above this thing called Mary Anne, this pathetic thing with her pathetic, ashed out life. The fire burned away everything, even my will. I was empty.

Nobody knows. Only Logan. And my doctors, but...I had to. I didn't mean to tell Logan, and it changed every inch of us. It's why he hovered so much...nobody really understood, how the boy who said that I didn't have to talk to him after the fire, but he wanted me to talk to somebody, like Dr. Reese, could suddenly cover me like a blanket, so worried every moment for me. Things didn't get better until I was able to live my life again: until I wanted my life again. And I couldn't want my life with Logan telling me to want it. I had to put my pieces back.

So I understand, where Sunny is coming from. Logan's wrong, she and I are similar...so I have to help her. I don't know how. I don't know what it is that she'd hiding from and what it is that she needs. I'm still learning that about myself...every day. Every minute, every day, I'm trying to understand myself, and what all of the empty parts mean.