Read Elena Vanishing for Free Online Page B

comes with a wheelchair and rolls me outside. Mom walks beside us past big brick buildings and tall trees. Then the tech buzzes us through a door and takes the wheelchair away.
    My first impression of Drew Center is doors: handsome, heavy, wood-paneled doors—New England doors, front doors—the kind you’d see in
The Amityville Horror
. But these doors aren’t just on the outside. They’re everywhere.
    Mom and I walked through the first front door, the one that buzzed, and it left us in a small waiting room. Now another big front door opens on the other side of the room. It leads into a bare office. Mom isn’t with me in the office. They made her stay behind.
    A girl maybe four years older than me with straight brown hair and badly plucked eyebrows sits on the other side of a desk. “I’m going to be asking you some questions,” she tells me. “Your answers are confidential.”
    Bullshit!
warns the voice in my head.
    Still, I surprise myself by being more candid than I thought I would be. I tell her stuff nobody else knows. Maybe it’s because I’m finally at a real anorexia treatment center. That’s kind of cool. I feel like I’m talking the bouncer into letting me into a club.
    â€œDo you restrict?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat’s the longest time you’ve gone without eating?”
    â€œTwenty-one days.”
    My friends and I were doing a three-week juice fast, but I was the only one who made it. I think about the willpower I exhibited then and feel a glow of pride.
    The girl pauses before she writes this down. “No food at all?”
    â€œIt was a juice fast.”
    â€œAh.”
    She makes a note, and I feel the glow slip away.
    All those bottles of juice!
laments the voice in my head.
So many grams of simple sugars! You could have made it without them.
    â€œHave you ever experienced sexual assault?” the girl is asking in the meantime.
    This jars me out of my thoughts.
    â€œWhy don’t people say ‘rape’ anymore?” I snap. “What’s wrong with calling it what it is?”
    The girl looks serious. “Sexual assault covers more than rape,” she says. “It covers any kind of unwanted sexual contact.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œWell?” she prods.
    â€œWhat?” I say.
    â€œHave you ever experienced sexual assault?”
    Her pen hovers over the paper, waiting to check a box. There are several lines below that so she can write down the juicy details.
    I’m a big fan of writing things down. I keep boxes full of letters and notes, and I even save old text messages on my phone. I like to go back and reread them. They make things real for me.
    Since I was eleven years old, I’ve kept a journal. I’ve written down every single important thing that’s happened.
    Except one.
    You were so stupid!
mutters the voice in my head.
    â€œWhy would I tell you?” I say out loud.
    The girl looks startled. “What do you mean?”
    â€œLet’s say I’ve been ‘sexually assaulted.’ Why would I want to tell you?”
    â€œIt’s important to work with a therapist if you’re a victim of sexual trauma,” she says. “Remember, your answers here are confidential.”
    â€œYeah,” I say. “Just between you and me and about thirty other people who work here, so you can all whisper about me behind my back.”
    â€œWe wouldn’t do that!”
    â€œOh, yeah? Well, how about I say you’re going to ‘consult’ about me instead? No thanks! And I’m not a
victim
of anything.”
    Her pen still hovers over the paper.
    â€œSo that’s a no?” she says. “Is that your answer?”
    Since I was eleven years old, I’ve kept a journal. But I didn’t write about one thing. And then I burned the notebook I didn’t write it in, just to make sure.
    â€œMy answer,” I say, “is that it’s