My brother bit into a ginger snap with a sharp cracking sound and immediately started giggling. "What happened?" I asked. "Break a tooth? Your skull?"

"Both," he replied, but the cookie was broken. I smiled and took two more for myself. As he started on his ice cream, he grinned at me.

"I remember," he said, "when you were fifteen, you hardly ate any desert." Wince. Cower. Try to change the subject. "I like you better this way, [Scarlett.]" He gestured to the cookies, tried to pat my arm.

It isn't an option, really, any more than snatching the cookie from my brother's hand would have been. Starving myself starved them of me. I wish they would beat that into me. I wish they would throw it in my face. I wish they would stop their passive aggressive meanderings and tell me outright, daily, loudly that I can't do that to them again. Because, if not, I'll just keep listening to "Vanish" by A Perfect Circle—Disappear, disappear, thinner, thinner, into the air—and someday I'll reach my breaking point again.

It's the point where my self-esteem hits rock bottom and I suddenly need to "prove" myself. It's where my weight plummets and my grades skyrocket. It's where, slowly, cruelly, blindly, I disappear. I shouldn't listen to that song anymore. I should listen to my brother. He is fourteen, dumber, louder, and skinnier than a twig in a high wind, and wise in a way that I will never be again since I fainted, clutching my chest, at the bottom of the stairs and never told anyone.