Life is tough, especially for a woman, you can never stop paying attention…
Mmph. Rebecca was usually right, but that didn’t make the constant prodding any easier. She might as well be here if they were going to talk in Kira’s head all night. Maybe they should try it. Hang out for a few hours. Would Becks chill, flirt with this bartender? Did she have any game? Kira had never known her mom to flirt, though she’d seen pictures from back in the day that suggested the possibility.
She took another swallow of the beer. She didn’t have to worry about drinking and driving, anyway. This bar was a max twenty-minute walk from the apartment they’d rented. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms in this cool old building up in Eixample, not too far from La Rambla.
* * *
She’d made sure to give Tony the bedroom next to her parents. The trip was their twentieth-anniversary present to each other, no doubt they’d be enjoying each other’s company. So to speak. Lucky for Tony, he was a heavy sleeper. Kira looked at herself in the mirror, remembering the only time she’d caught her parents truly going at it.
She was in a strange mood tonight. Maybe drunker than she thought. She rarely let herself have this memory. It shamed her.
She was a sophomore in high school, a month short of sixteen. The middle of the night, and she woke up famished. She was in her not-eating phase. Five nine, almost five ten, Kira was, aiming for one hundred twenty pounds. The target seemed reasonable enough, the numbers drumming in her head. Five nine one two zero, the zip code of the promised land. If she lined them up a whole world would open for her. Beverly Hills, that’s where I want to be…
She never went full anorexic, she and her skinny-ass friends liked to joke, You never go full anorexic, the line stolen, repurposed, from Tropic Thunder. No, you starve yourself just enough so everyone says how good you look. You turn the boys’ heads and the girls’ too. Not so much that you can count your ribs. Not all of them, anyway. Good anorexia, they called it.
But good anorexia was a balancing act. And Kira tipped far enough the whole world treated her differently that fall. Like she was a crystal; Baccarat, shiny, precious, easily shattered. She watched her parents watching her at breakfast and dinner, dancing around the issue. They snuck looks at her plate, asked if she wanted more yogurt or carrots. They never knew what to say. Looking back, Kira had to admit that watching Becks—sure-footed Rebecca—turn wobbly and tongue-tied had been part of the appeal. Cruel and selfish in retrospect. Maybe even at the time.
Lucky her, even if she didn’t think so back then, she liked to eat too much to starve herself. She never went below one-two-two, maybe one-two-one on the digital scale she bought. And she was past all that now. She hadn’t even needed to see someone—a phrase that Mrs. Daye, her kindly physics teacher, tossed out after she nearly fell over one morning—to get her head on straight.
She just decided she was tired of being hungry. She wanted to be strong. She wanted to play soccer without worrying she was going to collapse. She was about one hundred thirty-eight now, one-three-nine, though she tried not to weigh herself too often. When the numbers lined up in her head she swiped them left.
But on that fine December night, morning, whatever 3 a.m. was, her parents and brother asleep, she’d woken up hungry. That month was the worst of it, her lowest point. She’d always liked eating at Thanksgiving and Christmas, not just the turkey but the desserts, all those carbs and gooey fillings.
She snapped awake with one thought, the leftover pumpkin pie, creamy and sweet. She stepped out of bed. Every light in the house was off, her dad liked a completely dark house. She’d learned how to move in the black. She heard Tony snoring in his bedroom on the other side of the wall and behind it a murmur she didn’t recognize.
Until she opened the door and stepped into the hall.
And realized Becks and Bri were most certainly not asleep. What she had stumbled on was not the nonsense all parents got on with from time to time, Go to sleep kids, Mom and Dad need a little time together. No. Rebecca was moaning, low and wordless and involuntary. Like she wanted to catch her