Page 188 of Built to Fall
Silence. None of us move.
It takes us a moment to realize what she’s doing, and before any of us can stop her, she’s ripping off her dress, completely exposing herself. “Is this what you would have liked for me to have done?” Her body is shaking with sobs, cracking under the pressure of our gazes. She swallows hard, her bony throat emphasizing every motion.
And then something inside of her fully unravels.
Meredith’s body sinks to the floor, spine curling as she wraps her arms around her legs. The sobs coming from her sound like they’ve been living within her foryears,begging to be released.
We all freeze at the sight of her crumbling frame, mascara streaking down her face as her cries become increasingly guttural. Loud. Painful.
It only takes a second before Eden moves toward her, dropping down beside her without hesitation and wrapping her in her arms. Kara follows next, kneeling on the other side of her, gripping her hand even as it violently shakes. I pull a blanket from the foot of her bed, sitting so I can wrap her nearly naked body in it.
Nobody speaks for a while. Instead, we stay on the floor, anchoring Meredith with us.
After a while, her voice breaks through, barely audible: “I didn’t want to be yourproblem.I don’t want to be pitied. You all have your own shit, and I didn’t think it was fair for me to add to that. That’s all.”
The tension stretching between Meredith and the rest of us feels like a balance beam of sorts. Like if any of us make the wrong move or say the wrong thing, it’s going to send her toppling over the edge.
And despite saying she doesn’t want us to treat her differently, we’re still trying to be conscious of her feelings.
“You need to get help,” Kara says point-blank, pushing some of her hair back. She couldn’t care less about tipping the balance. She jumps off of it. “That’s the bottom line. I know you don’t want us to know about it, but like I’vebeentelling you, if you don’t want us to treat you differently, then you can’t sit around and do nothing about the way you’re treating your body poorly.”
Been telling her?I look over at Eden, who has the same confused look on her face. Has Kara known about this?
It wouldn’t change anything whether she had or hadn’t, but it does make something twist painfully in my gut. It’s a nauseating realization that none of us have been talking in the way we should have been. We’ve been seamlessly orbiting around each other, acting as though these tough conversations are radioactive.
And the poison is finally catching up to us.
Meredith doesn’t move. She just breathes. Slowly. Causing every protruding bone in her body to contract in our hold, like the weight of those words was something she was already carrying, and Kara just set them down for her.
“Ididget help,” she says eventually, quieter now. “Last summer. At Rosehill. For eight weeks.”
It must be a place near her home in Washington, and with her mom being a doctor, I’m sure she wanted Meredith nearby.
I’m sure I look as stunned as I feel. “You never told us?—”
“Of course I didn’t. I didn’t want anyone looking at me like I was broken.”
“But you were doing better,” Eden whispers. “Weren’t you?”
Meredith’s gaze flickers to the floor. “I was. I thought I was. I guess that doesn’t matter now. Things change.”
“They’re going to change again,” Kara tells her strongly. “We’re going to make sure of it.”
All of the secrets that have been hidden and half-spoken feel void now. Like dust settling in the light. Because this—standing here together in the fallout—is the most honest we’ve ever been.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
GRANT
On the day of Lina’s surprise birthday party, her roommates and Savannah bar me from their apartment until dinner time.
I’m not sure what they’re doing, holed up in unit 434, but they’ve given me a list of things that need to be done before the party tonight.
How they ended up taking control of the party that was my idea in the first place is beyond me. I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty good party planner, but the second the girls got ahold of the news, they were coming up with ideas and making sure I was doing certain things that needed to be done. I realized very quickly how out of my depth I was.
Now, I’ve fallen back into my grunt work roots.
I could pretend to be annoyed by all of the errands—picking up the cake and dinner and decorations I didn’t know I needed—but the truth is, I kind of like seeing all of them care so much about her.
