“Our favorites,” Dana Sue confirmed. “Is there enough food?”
“Plenty,” Sarah confirmed. “I can’t remember the last time I stuffed myself with pizza, and those brownies you brought home from the restaurant are fabulous. I’ve had two.”
Dana Sue fought the urge to ask whether Annie had indulged in either the pizza or the brownies. Sarah took it out of her hands.
“You want to know if Annie’s had any, don’t you?” she asked.
Dana Sue nodded. “You know why it matters, don’t you, Sarah? If it weren’t so important, I would never ask you to rat on her. I’m afraid she’s in real trouble.”
“I know. I worry about her, too,” Sarah admitted in a low voice. “I think she’s—”
“Sarah, what’s taking so long?” Annie called out, walking into the kitchen. When she spotted the two of them together, her eyes immediately narrowed in suspicion. “Hi, Mom. You’re early. How come?”
“Erik said he could handle things, so I decided to make an early night of it,” Dana Sue said, disappointed that Annie’s untimely interruption had kept Sarah from answering her question. She forced a smile. “Having fun, baby?”
“We’re having a great time, aren’t we, Sarah?”
“The best,” she confirmed, avoiding Dana Sue’s eyes.
“You’re not going to hang out with us, are you?” Annie demanded.
“Of course not,” Dana Sue said, noting her daughter’s flushed cheeks and wondering if that was due to excitement or guilt about the boys who’d been there. “I’m heading upstairs to bed.”
Annie nodded. “Okay, then. Sarah, I’ll help you grab those sodas. Everybody’s hot from dancing.”
Dana Sue waited while the girls took half a dozen cans of diet soda and bottled water from the refrigerator. As they left the room, Sarah glanced back and gave a subtle shake of her head to say that Annie hadn’t been eating along with everyone else. Dana Sue felt like sitting down at the kitchen table and crying.
She’d wanted so badly to believe that all her instincts were wrong, that Annie wasn’t anorexic, after all. She’d watched her so closely for the past year, redoubling her efforts after that fainting spell at Maddie’s reception. But obviously Annie was more clever at hiding her eating disorder than Dana Sue was at detecting it. She could blame it on her schedule, being away from home for too many meals, but she’d tried to supervise Annie’s diet, she really had. She’d insisted she come by the restaurant for dinner. She’d packed nutritious lunches. But the honest-to-God truth was she hadn’t been there to see that every bite went into her daughter’s mouth. As for the obvious signs that Annie was in crisis, she’d obviously been in deep denial.
No more, though. They were going to have to confront this head-on. It was time. Past time. Add in the fact that Annie had apparently had boys over in direct defiance of Dana Sue’s instructions, and tomorrow was going to be a tough day. She and her daughter were going to have a heart-to-heart, and Annie wasn’t going to like the outcome—a visit to Doc Marshall’s office and then being grounded for a month—one bit.
With the music downstairs playing at a deafening volume, Dana Sue finally managed to fall into a restless, troubled sleep around two in the morning. She’d barely closed her eyes, it seemed, when someone started frantically shaking her.
“Mrs. Sullivan, wake up!” Sarah commanded, sounding panicked.
Dana Sue’s eyes snapped open. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Annie,” the girl said, tears streaking down her face. “She’s passed out and we can’t wake her up. Hurry, please.”
Dana Sue tore down the stairs with the sobbing Sarah on her heels. The other girls were kneeling around a prostrate Annie.
“I don’t think she’s breathing,” Raylene said, looking up at Dana Sue with wide eyes. “I’ve been giving her CPR, just the way we learned to in health class.”
“Move,” Dana Sue said, drawing on some inner reserve of calm, even though she was terrified. “Someone call 911, okay?”
“I already have,” one of the girls said, sounding scared.
“Thanks. Keep an eye out for them, please?” Dana Sue said, focusing on Annie’s pale face. Her lips were turning blue and she was still. So damn still. Kneeling beside her, Dana Sue began doing chest compressions as she’d been taught in her own CPR classes, then trying to force breath into her lungs. The girls stood around in stricken silence, holding hands, their faces damp with tears.
Time seemed to stand still as Dana Sue tried desperately to breathe life back into her daughter. She was only dimly aware of the sirens when the ambulance arrived. Then the EMTs were there, forcing her aside, taking over, talking in a code she didn’t understand as they barked information about resting heart rate and other vital signs into a cell phone that apparently linked them to the emergency room. Sarah slipped up beside Dana Sue and clung to her hand.
“She’s going to be okay,” Sarah whispered. “She’s going to be okay.”
Dana Sue squeezed her hand. “Of course she is,” she agreed, though she was certain of no such thing.
Raylene approached. “I called Mrs. Maddox,” she said. “Is that okay? She said she’d phone Ms. Decatur and have her come by and pick us up. Mrs. Maddox is coming straight here to go with you to the hospital.”
Dana Sue gave Raylene a grateful look. “You did exactly the right thing,” she told her, impressed by the girl’s ability to act so quickly in a crisis. She had a cool head and good instincts. “Thank you.”
“We want to go to the hospital with you,” Sarah said. “Can we do that? Our folks aren’t expecting us home, anyway. Please, Mrs. Sullivan. Ms. Decatur can take us there just as easily as she can take us home.”
Dana Sue knew what it was like to wait for information when someone was seriously ill. She’d waited all alone in a hospital emergency room when her mother had been taken in that last time. She’d been only a few years older than these girls were now. Annie had been little more than a toddler, and Ronnie had stayed home with her. Maddie and Helen had rushed over the second Dana Sue had called them, but the wait for them and for news had seemed interminable. Maybe it would be easier for Annie’s friends to wait together at the hospital, where they would have news as soon as it was available.
“Okay,” she said at last. “But as soon as it’s morning, I want you to call your folks and tell them where you are, okay? Then it will be up to them whether you go home or stay.”
“I’m sure Annie will be fine by then,” Sarah said staunchly.
“Of course she will be,” Raylene agreed.
The next half hour was a blur as the EMTs loaded Annie, who was breathing now, but still unconscious, into the ambulance. Helen briskly piled the girls into her car, and Maddie saw to it that Dana Sue pulled herself together, then wrapped an arm around her waist and guided her into her car. She still wore Ronnie’s shirt, but had at least added a respectable pair of jeans.
“Annie’s going to be fine,” Maddie said, giving Dana Sue’s hand one last squeeze before she started the engine and pulled out of the driveway.
“She wasn’t breathing,” Dana Sue said, shivering despite the warm night. “It was as if her heart had just stopped. It’s this damned eating disorder, I know it. God, Maddie, what if she…?” She couldn’t even voice the question.
“She’s breathing now,” her friend reminded her. “Focus on that. You heard the EMTs. She was breathing okay on her own when they left the house.”
Dana Sue frowned at her. “Don’t make it sound as if this was nothing. It’s not like when