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BEFORE WE WERE BLUE

Our gaze follows theirs. We creep closer, peek at the shut staff
room door, and the Gray kitchen past it at the end of the hall.
The Gray kitchen is for Gray girls like us, patients who
haven’t been cleared to eat by ourselves yet. Rowan and I are
late. The rest of the Gray girls should have gone in to eat by now,
but they’re gathered together, with runny, unblinking eyes.

When we reach the bottom step, Rowan grabs Jazzy’s arm,
tight and urgent. “What is it? Where are the nurses?”
Jazzy and Donna, the girls who Rowan and I room with,
stand in the center of the Gray girls. They’re both Asian, with
thick black hair and yellow teeth eroded by bulimia. Seeing
them side by side, I can’t help but think Jazzy, with her full
lips and narrow nose and poreless skin, is prettier than Donna.
On eyes, it’s a tie, both brown and deep set, but Jazzy wins
wholeheartedly again on hair, hers longer and glossier with

blunt-cut ends.
Glancing away from their bodies, I make a fervent wish I
was blind. That we all were. Blind or bodiless. I hate being so
judgmental, that my first instinct is to treat Donna as lesser
than because of the way she looks. I fight it by turning the ob-
servations inward, remembering how before RR, I was prettier.
Not pretty. Never pretty. Just prettier. Then I stopped eating

and clumps of my hair began falling out and now there’s a tiny
bald spot on the crown of my head just like Dad’s. I hide it by
clipping the front pieces back. Rowan glimpsed it one time after
a shower. Her fingers smoothed down the few strands left and
I thought maybe I would die if it was possible to decompose of
shame. But then she went on a tangent about the removable

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