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she was on the inside, but now she feels as if she is always on the outside, watching everyone else being normal, having fun, wanting to join them, but it is as if she has forgotten how.
    She used to be so carefree; now she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. The pressure of her senior year, of leaving home, getting into the right school, even being allowed to go to the school of her choice.
    It all feels too much. She was always desperate to grow up, but now that she is on the threshold, it is terrifying. Choosing not to eat, controlling her food, makes her feel safe—superior, even. It is something she, and only she, has absolute control over.
    It started off innocently. It truly was an attempt to lose weight, to try to get the boy she had always wanted.
    AJ was, she had always thought, entirely unobtainable, too good-looking, too popular, which didn’t stop him being the subject of her fantasies throughout middle school.
    A passing comment to Claudia—he thought Eve would be really hot if she lost weight and got thin—set Eve off on the beginning of the change. AJ was supposed to have noticed, but his family moved to England when she was just eight pounds down, and that was it. The beginning of the change.
    There was a brief snapshot in time when she felt she had a good body, proudly showed it off in a striped bikini from Urban Outfitters, not bothering to cover up to go inside and grab a drink, or walk to the other side of the pool.
    As a young teenager, she’d felt too self-consciously large to be comfortable, and now, at seventeen, she is still too self-consciously … wrong.
    Everyone is telling her she is too thin: her mother, her friends, the parents of her friends, and there is a part of her brain that is able to acknowledge that. For a few seconds. It is fleeting, and quickly replaced with the thought that there are still ten more pounds to go. That she still isn’t happy, and if she loses ten more pounds, then she will be perfect, and with perfection comes happiness.
    On a low wooden table by the chaise are bowls of chips, guacamole, salsa. A bag of popcorn lies on its side, spilling onto the floor, a plastic container of chocolate chip cookies half-empty, soda cans.
    Eve stares at the chocolate chip cookies. They are the ones she used to love. The soft, chewy kind. Buttery, moist, these were the ones her mom would always keep in the pantry, the ones Eve would steal when no one was looking. She can’t take her eyes off them, imagines biting into them, feeling the familiar sweetness on her tongue, the sweetness of her childhood. Everything around her fades as she stares at the cookies, wanting to cry.
    Her stomach growls. She is so hungry. She has eaten two egg whites today. This is her latest decision. She read somewhere that a singer, whose weight famously went up and down, lost by eating only egg whites. The singer would eat twenty at a time, but Eve feels more in control when she is challenging herself by eating as little as possible. Two egg whites felt like too many. Tomorrow she is planning to have one.
    But those cookies are overpowering. Unable to stop herself, she stands, walking over to the food.
    “I’m just going to clean up a bit,” she says, knowing they will tease her, for she has always been a control freak.
    “Don’t!” Claudia says. “You’re crazy! Leave it. We’ll all do it later.”
    “You know me.” Eve smiles. “Nothing gives me more pleasure than cleaning.” Claudia laughs, shaking her head with incomprehension as Eve picks up the spilled popcorn bag and cookies.
    No one watches, no one is paying attention as Eve heads inside, her heart pounding, standing at the kitchen counter so she can check no one comes in, no one can see.
    She eats the first cookie, savoring it, closing her eyes, unable to believe she has refrained from sugar, from anything this good for such a long time. The second, then third, are barely chewed before being swallowed. Eve eats as if