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unpack her bag. “I’d like to see the Panhandle sometime,” I said.
    “Really, doll?”
    “I wouldn’t mind a warmer winter,” I said.
    I didn’t care about the Panhandle. I didn’t care about Whitney. I didn’t care about itchy, allergic Spider; or Miss, who would bite like a rabid dog; or Paleolithic Harriet, who might have been carrying a club, who kept her eyes down and spoke in grunts.
    All morning, I’d been watching the stairwell at the end of the hallway, waiting for Eden Bellham to appear.
    Whitney’s mother sighed, her eyes on her daughter. “You wait until we get back on our feet,” she told me. “Then when we’re all set up in a new house, you’ll come down and stay with us.” She started to swallow rapidly, like something was stuck. “Whitney, get off the phone, would you? Say good-bye to your old mother.”
    Before the parents had even left, before the last of the campers had arrived, Whitney stood in the hallway and made a speech. “I don’t like females,” she boomed, raising her index finger like a politician. “I don’t like females in my space, and I don’t like female issues. The problem with females,” she said, setting her fists on her hips, “is hormones.” Her forehead furrowed. She barely had eyebrows, but the wisps of them met above her nose. “Please keep your hormones out of my hair.” We all looked at her hair. It appeared to be chemically straightened, her ponytail secured by yellow plastic balls.
    “Are you a misogynist?” Spider asked Whitney.
    “What’s a misogynist?”
    “It means you’re sexist against women.”
    “I’m a feminist.”
    “You can’t be a feminist.”
    “Says who?”
    “Says me. Because you’re a misogynist.”
    “What is this chick’s problem ?”
    “I was named after a feminist,” Spider said.
    Miss turned to Spider. “You were named after a bug.”
    “Spiders are air-breathing Chelicerate Arthropods.”
    Miss returned her focus to Whitney, and the two of them engaged in a telepathic exchange, like a pitcher and a catcher, Whitney squinting, Miss nodding, tightening her ponytail, scratching her chin. And then Whitney reached for Miss’s freckled white hand, and the two of them marched into Whitney’s room, closing the door behind them. That was how they would spend most of the summer: together, locking everyone out.
    Eden was the last to arrive. Until she did, I didn’t quite believe she’d show up. Until I saw the touchable pieces of her—tangles in her hair, brown concealer on her pimples, silver hoop earrings—I didn’t quite believe I was going to spend my summer at a weight-loss camp.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Eden and I had the same bathing suit. After the campers’ first dinner, I watched Lewis take her “before” picture in the canteen. She stood where I had stood a few days earlier, wearing that brown U-back one-piece, her hair tangled and falling to her elbows, her skin dark and acne-pocked, her arms crossed over her stomach. How could I have missed them in pictures—the dark, twinkly eyes that had once belonged to my father?
    That morning, when Eden had arrived with Azalea, I’d hurried down the hall to hide in the bathroom, leaving Sheena to show Eden to her room. But first, I got a good look. Eden was twice Azalea’s size. Azalea was as small as my mother, her hair carefully frosted and coiffed, her eyes an anemic green. It had never been a secret that my father liked his women thin.
    “Of course he has the kids weigh in after dinner,” Sheena said now into my ear. “They’ll be at their highest weights. Just watch, on the last day of camp, he’ll weigh them in before breakfast. Then it’ll look like everyone lost more, and Lewis will be like, ‘It’s my program ! It’s because everyone surrendered to my program !’ ”
    “I didn’t even think of that.”
    “Girl!” Sheena jammed an elbow into my ribs. “What, do you trust everyone?”
    “Uncross your arms,” Lewis told Eden.
    Eden held her