Read Online The Hazards of Sleeping Alone by Elise Juska - Free Book Online

and drops it in.
    Charlotte looks away. She presses the napkin to each eye. She hopes Emily knows it’s the spices that are making her cry.
    â€œMom.” Emily sighs. “I don’t have an eating disorder, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
    â€œThat’s not what I’m worried about.” Charlotte blows her nose.
    â€œRight.”
    â€œI mean, well, fine. Yes. It did cross my mind. Because you’ve barely touched your dinner.” She folds the used napkin into a tiny, damp square and places it in her lap. “But I didn’t really think you had one.”
    â€œGood. Because I’m not that trendy.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œGood.”
    Charlotte picks up a teabag and fingers the paper tassel. “Good Taste Tea Bag,” it says, in sticklike orange letters.
    â€œWant me to put on some water?” she asks, knowing the answer.
    â€œNo, thanks,” Emily says. “You should try some, though. It’s good.”
    â€œOh, I could never drink tea before bed.” Charlotte laughs. It’s an unattractive laugh, bitter and self-deprecating. “I’d lose more sleep than I do already.” Then she scrapes back her chair and starts packing up the leftovers, pinching the plastic lids to the sides of the sagging foil containers.
    Emily uncrosses her legs and stands to help. “You know what you need, Mom?” she says, her voice more gentle.
    â€œHmm?”
    â€œSleepytime tea. It’ll put you right out.”
    â€œWouldn’t that be nice.” Charlotte picks up the bowl of half-melted ice and dumps it in the sink. The truth is, she’s considered taking something to help her sleep, but the thought of being alone in the middle of the night, drugged, semiconscious, makes her feel more vulnerable than she does already.
    â€œJust don’t take No-Doz.” Emily starts stacking dishes. “Janie took it cramming for our Chem 101 final and didn’t sleep for the next four years.”
    Charlotte pauses, dripping foil pan in hand. “Janie Grobel?”
    â€œShe got addicted to it.”
    â€œShe did?”
    â€œShe started taking it to help her study and got completely hooked.” Emily is carrying a stack of dishes to the sink, where Charlotte stands frozen to the spot. “Senior year we had this whole intervention thing where we flushed all her pills and Janie started freaking out.” She starts scraping plates into the garbage disposal. “It was all very
90210.
”
    â€œWhy didn’t you ever tell me?”
    Emily turns the disposal on and raises her voice. “I don’t know. I mean, over-the-counter caffeine pills? It’s kind of lame as far as addictions go.” She flicks the disposal off and looks at Charlotte’s face. “Oh, come on, Mom. Please don’t get all freaked out.”
    But it’s too late. Charlotte
is
all freaked out. She can’t help but
be
all freaked out. She pictures little Janie Grobel, Emily’s roommate freshman year at Wesleyan, a sweet blond girl from Minnesota. She was on the swim team and always had a pair of pink goggles dangling around her neck. Her mother used to send the girls packages of home-baked banana bread.
    Watching her daughter, Charlotte feels fear. The same fear that creeps over her when she sees drunk driving commercials. The same fear she feels watching
20/20
and
Dateline
about raves and date-rape drugs and AIDS. The fear she felt reading
Reviving Ophelia
(a book group favorite) and absorbing story after story of happy, well-adjusted adolescent girls who suddenly, and with no warning, turned addictive, delinquent, rebellious. Now, like then, Charlotte senses the presence of an ambiguous, dangerous world—a world of girls addicted to over-the-counter pills and girls staging interventions and girls growing fur because they’ve starved all their body fat away—a world from which she can’t begin to