Summary

In the prologue, “Rachel,” when Rachel was in first grade, she made friends with a girl named Elizabeth. The more time she spent with her, the more Rachel wanted “to become Elizabeth” (4). She was only six, but “the boundaries between people felt porous” (4). Sometimes she worried that sitting next to a chubby boy in school would make her chubby.

Rachel started refusing to eat. Her teacher Ms. Calfin encouraged her, but Rachel resisted.

Rachel “went to Hebrew school” (5). Celebrating Yom Kippur made her realize she could “say no to food” (5). After three days without eating, her mother took her “to the pediatrician” (5). Although she saw Rachel as “an exuberant and silly” child, Rachel’s father’s girlfriend Linda later told her she was “the saddest child she had ever known” (6).

Rachel was admitted to Children’s Hospital of Michigan “for ‘failure to eat...