Elena Vanishing

A woman leads a group therapy session and tells the patients that their problems are their own to solve because their parents “caused” their eating disorder and thus cannot support them. Elena considers this and feels like it isn’t true in her case, but then a memory comes back of her father staring at her at the table, expecting her to eat a fried egg. Elena thought the egg looked unappealing and sat there until her father reluctantly negotiated that she could just eat some of it. Elena felt like a hero when she won over her father in those moments.

Karen talks about how her father was absent from her life and how her mother left one day without warning, never to return. Karen was placed in foster care and eventually ended up at the center. The therapist claims Karen’s parents indirectly “set her up” to develop an eating disorder by abandoning her. The therapist moves on to Elena, who talks about her older sister, Valerie. Valerie’s health slipped away from her when she started isolating herself and self-harming to an extreme degree. It was difficult for Elena to watch her sister’s mental health decline in this way. Elena also admits that in boarding school she knew two girls who had anorexia and admired them for their discipline. One girl in particular stopped eating and speaking after becoming frustrated with a biased grading system. Elena admired the girl’s willpower and wanted the same for herself.

Talking to the therapist, Elena starts to become frustrated with the way she frames everything and tells her that there’s nothing wrong with her or anyone else who doesn’t eat: “This is who we are! This is what we choose!” (62). Later, an 18-year-old girl decides to leave Drew Center to stay with a man she’s been talking to online. The other girls pull their money together to fund her bus ticket, and the nurses worry about her safety.

Valerie’s previous psychiatrist, Dr. Harris, refers Elena to a neurologist who takes a 48-hour assessment of her brain signals. The neurologist hopes that Elena will have one of her blackouts so that he can see what is causing them, so he sets up a camera in her room. Elena hates the idea of eating in front of a camera, and when her parents leave her alone, she becomes stressed and her head starts to hurt. She doesn’t remember much else, but she and her parents have a chance to watch the video of what took place. For 40 minutes, Elena twitched and clawed at herself until her chest bled. Watching the video, Elena feels like she’s looking at some other person.

Elena and her parents drive across the country to Texas to see Dr. Harris next. Elena likes him because he doesn’t push too much and doesn’t assume anything about her. Elena explains that in boarding school, her best friend, Ramona, had a binge eating disorder and that Elena used to eat with her. Once, Elena threw up, but only because the sight of Ramona’s vomit made her sick. Elena insists to Dr. Harris that she doesn’t purge. When Dr. Harris clears Elena, she feels confident she can handle her challenges on her own. Her mother isn’t so sure, and on the drive back to the coast, she constantly mentions food and pressures Elena to eat. Elena eats a huge meal at Subway to get her mother to stop bothering her. Afterward, she goes into the bathroom and throws it up and discovers a new sort of “high” that she hadn’t known before.

Eight months later, senior year is almost over. Elena has spent the year in Germany with her friends and is also volunteering as a nurse at the military hospital. Elena loves working at the hospital and helping wherever she can. She helps an army trainee put an IV in a patient for the first time and helps a doctor drain a cyst on a soldier’s back. Later, Elena overhears some people talking about some of the most unbelievable things they’ve seen, and one mentions a patient who “burned a smiley face into her arm” (86). Elena knows this was Valerie. The man apologizes, but Elena has already begun thinking about Valerie’s mental illness and how she tried to die by suicide at one point. Valerie recovered but abandoned the family. Because Elena relied on her sister, she still harbors anger toward Valerie for leaving.

Elena has lots of friends at her school, but one of her closest friends is Barbara. Despite their closeness, Elena pretends to eat and drink around Barbara, concealing the fact that she consumes very little. As Elena goes about her day, she observes other girls who seem to struggle similarly with eating and judges them for not being as subtle as she is. Later, Elena’s mother takes her to the doctor because Elena has been experiencing chest pain. Elena is told that she either has acid reflux or cracked cartilage and is given a painful injection.

Elena spends the rest of the day volunteering at the hospital, where she and some other people sort through Christmas donations for the soldiers. Elena finds that many of the donations appear to be kind gestures on the surface but are disguised gestures of ill will, like a box of chocolates filled with spit. 

When Elena’s mother picks her up, the first thing she asks about is if Elena ate supper, not even greeting her. Elena feels like there is distance between herself and her mother these days, as Elena’s mother is constantly observing her food intake, and Elena has started to blame her mother for her problems. At home, Elena watches Swan Lake in her room, which has become a nightly ritual. She admires the protagonist’s ability to rise above everything and to exhibit “beauty in pain” (99). Elena wakes up in the night after having a nightmare and signs onto her computer. She finds an email from Valerie, apologizing and asking Elena to write back. Elena deletes the email and decides to write an essay for school about Valerie’s bedroom door. The door holds all of the memories of what Valerie went through, as well as acting as a constant reminder that she left and of Elena’s questions as to why.