It's funny what you think of before you die.
My thoughts were pinpointed on a little girl, one who was ten when I was nine. I was trying to find the moment when something went off, something failed. I would never know what went off or what failed, but it couldn't hurt to try.
The little girl in question had been my best friend. I had been drawn to her instantly in school, she just seemed so strange. With dusty blonde hair cropped down to a short bob, pale sun deprived skin, and smirk plastered on her face at all times, she diverged from the rest of the classroom. Her smile was small with curled edges, one that spoke of mischievous to be committed. Her form could be described as petite, though that would be wrong. She was frail and boney.
Most of my class had been full of children with sun darkened skin and sun bleached hair. Everyone seemed to be all uneven tan lines and sun burns, including me. I had never noticed this girl before, and always eager to make new friends at that age, I followed her around like a lost puppy. At that time, My face was still round with baby fat, brown hair pulled back in two pig tails, and a face filled with freckles.
After several failed attempts to befriend, or sometimes, even find this mysterious girl during the short time of recess, I had gotten the message that if she had gone through the trouble of hiding from me, she must not want to be friends all that badly. So imagine my surprise when she walked up to me, that subtle smile played out on her face. She simply held out her hand to me, and for a moment I was unsure what to do. After an embarrassingly long time I realized I should probably shake her hand.
I introduced myself, practically bouncing where I stood, full of zeal from finally talking to the mystery girl. The mystery girl had a name of course, one that she admitted to disliking, though I believed it was good. Hannah White, she announced herself as, that tiny smile never stretching past her mouth, never wrinkling her eyes. That should have been the red flag.
From that day onward I learned a lot about Hannah White, and yet everything I learned about her seemed to raise more questions than I had before. All the questions I had asked, she would answer simply, with little to no emotion or opinion on what she was saying. I had felt bad for prying, most of the things she would tell me were rather personal, so I tried telling her about my life. To my surprise, she seemed very interested in my family, always asking what its like to have an older sister or a younger brother, if I could boss said younger brother around, how much she would give to be an older sister. It had to be one of the strangest reactions from her yet.
It was next year until I truly learned anything about Hannah, and so it dawned on me that for a whole year she hadn't been answering questions with little interest, she had been avoiding questions. It had been a simple thing that I had asked, when I realized this.
I was older now, it was the rare month when me and Hannah shared the same age. We where both ten for a little under a month, and then Hannah would turn eleven. At this age, my face was still round and filled with freckles, though the pigtails had been replaced with a single pony tail, and my limbs had turned from long to lanky.
“Why did you move down here?” I had questioned as I pulled myself up onto a short stone wall that traced around one of the more rich neighborhoods. School had just let out a while ago, me and Hannah had a habit of walking aimlessly around until the sun started to get too low in the horizon.
I wasn't expecting the usual lip curl to show teeth this time, making it look more like a snarl then a smile. “Moved in with my grandparents.” Her answer was short and without any more explanation than that. I could already feel it, the little why? that I managed to catch before I could say. It would feel wrong to ask that for some reason, a topic that was not meant for me. Instead, I scrunched up my nose and, after a long moment of thinking, said, “You told me you lived with your dad.”
Hannah looked at me like she didn't believe she could have uttered those words at some point or another, but the expression soon vanished, and she replied in an uncaring voice, “I used to live with my father, now I live with my grandparents.” The blond looked down at her shoes as if they had just become the most fascinating things in existence. I didn't want her to feel uncomfortable, so I tried to distract her from whatever stray thought caused her to become despondent.
“Your grandparents,” I began, “Are they your father's parents or your mother's parents?”
For a moment, it looked like Hannah was just going to get down from that rock wall and walk away, but instead, she turned her face up to the sky and sighed. “Mother's. My father's parents live somewhere else, like Canada or Europe or something.” She made vague gestures with her hands. For a couple of minutes, we fell into silence. I had more questions, but it was obvious Hannah was getting tired of this.
I sat up straighter and announced, “I only have two grandmas. One lives in-” I tapped my chin, trying to remember, “-someplace. Uh...” I shrugged, having given up on remembering the location. “A long time ago I had two grandpas and two grandmas, but I only met one of my grandpas.” I supplied instead, running my finger along the bumpy surface of the stone wall.
Another long silence fell between us. Hannah seemed to like the silence more than me though, because she visibly relaxed. I was a little surprised at this, I hadn't even realized her shoulders were stiff at her sides, and I wondered how long she was tense. Another thing I wondered, was how she was so thin. Her entire body had gone from boney to almost skeletal, so slowly that I hadn't seen the change until I truly looked.
With that, something that seemed rather insignificant at the time yet important now dawned on me. I had never seen Hannah eat. Even at school, she would push the food around on her tray for a long while, just looking at it like she looked at everything else. Barely interested, though alert. Thus led to my next question. “What's your favorite food?”
Hannah nearly jumped at my voice, though the look of alarm on her face soon fell to show that smile that I knew all too well. She seemed to consider the question for a long time, even tapping her chin, a trait she picked up from me, before answering, “Applesauce.”
I couldn't help it. I raised both of my eyebrows, both with amusement and confusion. “Applesauce? I was expecting you to say pizza or fudge.” Perhaps because that was what my favorite foods were, and my ten year old mind had yet to grasp the concept that not everyone had the same exact thoughts, motives, likes, and dislikes as me. Hannah shook her head, making a disgusted face at the mere thought of eating said foods.
“I've never had pizza before, and fudge makes me sick unless if its melted.” She spat the words pizza and fudge in the same way I would have said celery.
I couldn't hide my disbelief. “Everyone has had pizza at some point or another.” I argued.
“I guess I just got lucky.” Hannah responded with a shrug. I was about to point out that she wouldn't know if pizza was good or not if she never had it, something my mom had often insisted to me, but was interrupted by her pointing to the sky. “I'll walk you home, its getting late.”
I looked up at the sky, and sure enough, it looked like the sun would be down in about an hour or so. Normally we didn't start to go home until the sun was still barely up, and we would have to make mad dashes for our respective houses to get inside before it got dark. I voiced that fact, though Hannah had just told me she wanted to be home early to get started on homework. I could tell that it was an excuse, though decided not to point that out, and instead let myself be lead toward my home, though I could easily have made my way to my house on my own.
The next day was a Wednesday, and I had paid close attention to Hannah through out the day. I tried to dissect everything she said and every gesture she made, but failed miserably. The only thing I drew from all of that work was Hannah had a way of turning conversations around. One moment I was listening to her vague descriptions of her home life, never getting into more detail than what was asked, and the next I was going on about a dog I could barely remember, one that died when I was a toddler.
I couldn't say the exact moment she would do this, and I also couldn't tell if she had been doing it for a reason other than she would rather learn about me then talk about herself, though I had a feeling there was some other motive. Lunch was no exception to my watchful gaze. Of course, I had other friends than Hannah, such as the ever so shy Suzy, who was always hiding her face behind her hands, or Lacie, the pretty face with little personality.
We all sat at the same table with some other kids I couldn't put a name to, and my breakdown of Hannah began. She was shockingly thin, and looked even more thin than when I first met her. Her skin seemed to frame her every bone, and if I paid close attention I could see the slight rise of flesh where a vein sat underneath. Hannah would sit next to me every lunch, pushing whatever the school was serving around her plate, pretend to take a few bites, or shred whatever she had in front of her into tiny chunks.
If I asked her a question, she would answer it in the way that she does, vague with little personality or opinion. I prodded her about many things, why she lived with her grandparents, where her house, if anything was wrong, and somehow by the end of the conversation we had been discussing what was better. video games or TV. At the end of the day, I learned nearly nothing.
It was the next day that I finally made some progress. It was lunch again, she had spent a good five minutes just moving her food around her plate, posture nearly perfect. Suzy and Lacie were trapped in a half hearted argument, filled with playful insults and swatting at each other's hair.
“Why don't you just eat?” I blurted out, expecting Hannah to turn insulted or defensive. Instead, she fixed her eyes on me. Her eyes were blue, not like the sky or the ocean. If I had to be asked what her eyes reminded me of, I would simply have to say her eyes reminded me of her eyes. Like her smile, they belonged to her and her alone. Those eyes blinked slowly, then her little almost smile played at her lips. A pregnant pause past between us, both unwilling to look away, before she finally responded.
“I do eat. At least once a week.” Hannah said this proudly, puffing out her chest and holding her chin up. I expected that to be all she said, and had my mouth open to reply, though to my surprise, she continued, “Every Wednesday night, actually. I eat pudding and applesauce and sometimes jello.”
I was surprised, to say the least. I was also horrified that she spent six other days of the week starving, and seemed proud that she wasn't eating every day. “Why? Don't you get hungry?” Was all I could say though. I was glad that Hannah was on a topic that I didn't have to fight tooth and nail to stay on and end up changing the topic anyway, so I didn't want to push my luck to far.
“Why what?” Hannah asked, sounding amused and confused at the same time. She ignored the hungry question.
I didn't press her on that, instead focusing on clarification. “You know,” I began, even though she didn't seem to know, “Why don't you eat every day?”
The smirk fell as she seemed to consider this carefully. The light chin tapping and the way she studied me through slightly narrowed eyes made me want to squirm, though that feeling soon passed, when she began to speak. “Why do you eat every day?”
I really didn't know how to respond to that right away. It was an obvious reason, because I got hungry, like normal people do, but she seemed utterly indifferent to hunger, even confused. After a few moments of my stunned silence, I replied, “Well, because I get hungry. Don't you get hungry?”
“Yeah, I do get hungry. All the time.” She waved her arms above her head, gesturing toward everything.
I furrowed my brows, trying to figure this out. “So your hungry... but you don't eat?”
Hannah nodded, that little smile that belonged just to her and her alone played across her face. Her fingers threaded through her hair for a moment, pushing it out of her face and freeing a tangle in the process. “I can see it on your face. You are dieing to know why!”
I nodded eagerly, the curiosity was killing me. “Why? And don't just ask a question back!” I pointed an accusing finger at her. She gave an innocent head tilt, her expression neutral.
“I hadn't noticed you noticed that.” Hannah replied, lacing her fingers together on her lap.
“I had noticed.” I snapped back, mimicking Hannah's voice as I did so.
She looked down at her fingers again, then back up at me before responding,”My voice isn't that squeaky.” Her hands unclasped from each other, and instead she spread them out on the table.
I was about to say that yes it was, but then I realized she was leading the conversation away from the problem, so instead I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “Focus,” I demanded, “Why don't you eat?”
Hannah gave me that smile again, and I was starting to get annoyed with that smile, before she finally said, “If you really want to know, it's because the results of eating are...” Her nose scrunched, “I don't like to eat. It makes my stomach sick if I eat anything solid.”
“Why do you get sick from eating solids?” I blurted, confusion written over my face. This earned a small shrug from Hannah, her eyes anywhere but on me.
After struggling for a few moments to catch her eyes again, I gazed at Hannah skeptically, though that mischievous smile was replaced with a blank look. “One more question,” I started, holding up my index finger to further my point, “Do your grandparents know about your eating habits?”
Hannah just smiled her special smile.
