Page 25 of Reckless Girls
Or it could just be that the food is so, so good.
After the accident, during those first few black months (in the before), Brittany hadn’t wanted to eat anything. Had barely been able to, and what she did eat had no taste, and sat heavy on her tongue until she invariably spit it out or threw it up. Her weight dropped, her eyes sank deeper into her face, and the shape of her skull emerged beneath her thinning hair. She’d taken a perverse comfort in watching herself almost disappear, fading into the background. It felt easier than going forward and trying to live in this new world.
Now when she looks in the mirror, she’s still too thin, but it’s not as scary anymore, and yesterday, when she took her first bite of basil gelato in the Piazza Navona, it had exploded on her tongue, creamy and rich, bright and fresh, and she’d felt like maybe she was getting better. Maybe life wouldn’t always feel so hard, so pointless.
She feels that way now, sitting at a café with Amma, the sunshine hot on her bare shoulders as they sip cappuccinos and Amma scrolls through the pictures on her phone.
“This one is good,” she says, holding it up for Brittany to see.
It’s of the two of them in front of the Colosseum, and itisgood. They’re smiling, arms around each other, and Brittany thinks that if you saw that picture in a dorm room or on a fridge, you’d think,Those girls are so lucky.
No pity, no concern. Two pretty, happy friends, making the most of their youth and traveling the world together.
Every day of this trip, she feels a little closer to actuallybeingthat girl, the one she’s pretending to be.
“Send that one to me,” she says to Amma, and as soon as the text comes through, she sets it as her phone background.
Four weeks ago, before they left for Europe, the background was a picture of her family. All four of them, her mom and dad, and her younger brother, Brian. Smiling with the setting sun behind them, their faces a little sunburned because they had been on their annual beach trip to Florida.
The last vacation they’d taken.
Brittany used to look at that picture on her phone and wonder if it would’ve been better if she’d known it would be the last time. She had fought with Brian, who’d brought his PlayStation with him and spent hours screaming into his headset, those piercing whoops and battle cries that drove her insane. There had been too many slamming doors on that trip, and on the last night, Brittany sat on her bed, playing on her phone, and told her mom just to bring something back from dinner, because she didn’t feel like going out.
Her mom had been disappointed, but had agreed.
That was the thing that still killed Brittany to remember, the way the corners of her mother’s mouth had turned down, the soft sigh as she’d closed Brittany’s door, her dark hair swinging just above her shoulders as she’d turned away.
After the accident, Brittany replayed that sigh over and over in her mind, just like she catalogued every missed and neverreturned phone call, every time she hadn’t replied to a like or a comment on a Facebook post.
Sometimes she hates that past version of herself so much she wants to crawl out of her own skin.
But doing this, replacing the background on her phone, helps a little. It makes her feel like she’s starting to build that new, future self that Dr. Amin keeps telling her about.
She looks at those smiling girls, and she almost believes she’s one of them.
BUT THE CRYING STARTS AGAINon their fifth night in Rome.
It shocks her at first, the sobs that seem to well up in her chest out of nowhere, the sudden ache in her throat. That panicky feeling, her face too hot, her eyes stinging, her whole body shaking as she tries so hard to push the tears away.
I thought I was getting better,and the words are pitiful even in the silence of her own mind.I thought this was over.
But she’s beginning to realize there isn’t an over, not really. The waves can just keep on coming like this, and there’s nothing she can do to stop them.
Amma doesn’t cross the space between their beds this time, doesn’t make those soothing noises that Brittany simultaneously hates and appreciates, so Brittany stays curled up into herself like a wounded animal, waiting for the sun to rise.
Once it does, they go back out, walk the streets, duck into shops, eat more overpriced pasta, and it’s only as the sky turns to dusk, as they sit at another outdoor café, that Brittany utters the words that have been on the tip of her tongue all day.
“Maybe we should go home.”
She knows Amma is thinking it, too: that they’ve had their moments of fun, but this isn’t the escape they were after. Except, maybe it is, for Amma? Brittany can never really tell. She loves theother girl, loves her more dearly than she’s ever loved any friend, but over and over again, she’s reminded that they only have this one awful thing in common, and nothing else. She doesn’t really know what Amma is like, regular Amma, in-the-before Amma. She could be suffering, too—just better at hiding it.
Now, she looks across the table at Brittany and gives a little shrug. “Maybe we should. My money is getting tight, and at least we got to see Paris and we’ve had nearly a week here in Rome. That’s not nothing.”
It’s true. Brittany had always dreamed of visiting both cities, had hung a poster of the Eiffel Tower in her dorm room, for fuck’s sake, and now she’s also tasted gelato in the shadow of the Colosseum. Maybe it’s enough.
She stirs her cappuccino, glances over at the table of people next to her, raggedy backpacks by their feet. They’re a little sunburned, their clothes wrinkled and dull in the way things get when they’re repeatedly cleaned in hostel sinks and never dry completely. One of the girls leans down to unbuckle her sandal, laughing when the straps fall away to reveal stripes of pale skin amongst a layer of dust. Brittany’s accumulated that dust, too, walking through Rome, and she wishes she had that girl’s easy laugh, wishes all of this wasn’t so fucking hard for her for some reason.
And then she realizes the girl is staring directly at her, her sheaf of strawberry-blond hair pushed behind one ear as she grins and waves at Brittany.
