Paperweight by Meg Haston Page B

soothes me.
    â€œIt’s just me.” The door opens a crack and Cate is standingin the narrow sliver of light. A perfect cartoon stick figure, all spindly lines and protruding joints. Faded pink pajama pants hang from two perfectly jutting hipbones.
    â€œWhat—are you exercising?” Cate whispers the last word like she is speaking some dirty, delicious sin she can almost remember.
    â€œI can’t sleep.” I jerk my head toward Ashley, but she doesn’t move. In, out.
    â€œOh.” Cate’s outline bobs and sways. She is dying to lie down next me, to give in just this once. “You have a call. On the hall phone.”
    My throat goes dry, but I don’t move. “I didn’t hear it ring.”
    â€œIt’s from Paris.” Her voice shudders with childlike excitement. “Who do you know in Paris?”
    â€œNobody,” I say quickly. My heart is hammering in my chest. I hate my body for reacting at all, for betraying me this way. Abs tensed, I lower myself to the floor in degrees and resume my exercises. Let her watch. She’s too jealous, too weak to tell on me.
    She licks her flaky lips. “But . . . what do you want me to tell—”
    â€œWhatever. Hang up. I don’t care.” As I deepen the leg lifts, I hear her moving down the hall, then a muffled apology before she appears in the doorway again.
    â€œThey said they’d call back later.” Her plastic tube glints in the hall light, a phantom limb.
    â€œHow does that thing work?” Seamlessly, I shift to abs.
    â€œWhat thing?”
    â€œThe tube. Did you get it as soon as you got here?”
    â€œRight after my treatment team meeting, yeah.” She fiddleswith the tie on her pajama pants. “I passed out on the plane on the way here, so I guess they were worried.”
    I won’t reward that kind of arrogance with a response.
    â€œAnyway, at night they hook it up to this machine next to my bed. When they turn it on, this brown liquid stuff goes through the tube and into my stomach. I unhook it in the morning.”
    â€œGross.”
    â€œI try not to think about it.”
    On my last set of crunches, I lift myself to a seated position and hug my knees. “Did it hurt when they put it in?”
    â€œYeah. You have to lie down on a table while the nurses hold you down and stick it in. They try to get it over with as fast as they can, but sometimes they mess up and have to start over.” Her eyes flicker across the room and settle on Curly Blonde’s shape beneath the covers. “How can she sleep like that? I wake up every five minutes in this place.”
    I shrug and squeeze my knees tighter. It’s weird, but all of a sudden I want to tell her about Ashley’s scars. To describe them in detail—how they looked like snaps on a flesh straitjacket—and not because I want to process it or I want Cate to normalize what I’m feeling (recovery-speak at its finest! I’m learning!) but because it isn’t fair. I have enough inside me: Josh and Eden and the Anniversary and my own vanishing act. I shouldn’t have to hold this, too.
    Ashley slurs in her sleep.
    â€œIt’s so funny how she brought all those stuffed animals from home,” Cate murmurs.
    â€œSo? Maybe they make her feel better,” I snap. “Maybe they help her sleep.”
    Cate’s eyes widen. “I didn’t mean—I have stuffed animals at home, too. And a blanket I’ve had since I was five. Binky? Stupid, I know.”
    I watch Ashley’s body rise and fall.
    â€œAnd they gave me a rubber duck to hold when they were putting the tube in.”
    I go back to my exercises until Cate mumbles something about weight and vitals, then shuffles down the hallway. Then I get up and wander to Ashley’s side of the room. She’s got the stuffed dog and the blue bear in a headlock. The one-eared rabbit is sprawled at an unnatural angle in a