The novel is available in its entirety here and can also be downloaded (for offline reading) at Seedpod Publishing. This version includes foreshadowed links, embedded videos, and photos to tell the story in multiple media and time periods. Readers can add their own stories, recipes, and interpretations on our Readers Write page.

 

Lydia Poole wants to be a good person—the kind of person who does everything right and deserves to be loved. To accomplish this, she eats only one cup of Cheerios per day and lets her weight drop below ninety pounds. When Lydia’s sister introduces Jesse, a new friend and filmmaker, Lydia agrees to be the subject of his documentary. Jesse’s camera follows Lydia as she’s hospitalized for anorexia, as she walks the line between hoping for death and wanting life, as her weight continues to fall. With the camera running, Lydia shifts from the viewfinder’s object to the eye behind the camera. In doing so, she discovers how she wants to see her world.

 

After the Strawberry is a novel about a girl who disappears while trying to be seen.

 

 

What Others Are Saying About After the Strawberry

"Kathryn Pope's After the Strawberry has everything I want in a novel: elegant, precise prose, unique, unsettling images, and a compelling, disquieting story. It is a work of real menace and real beauty. Not only that, but she somehow manages to combine the traditional pleasures of storytelling with the adventure of hypertext in ways that are lucid and visually startling. All this is testament to the endless range of her wild imagination and genuine talent. I can't recommend this book highly enough."

-Alistair McCartney, author of The End of the World Book: A Novel (University of Wisconsin Press)

 

 

 

Chapter One 

---

 

Lydia still had to go to school. There was no question. She’d be in the way if she stayed. So, when Dad was finally quiet and asleep, she crept downstairs and took a thirteen minute shower, with the water turned as hot as it would go, which wasn't hot enough. She scrubbed her arms with a loofa. She went in circles, until she could see white flakes of skin coming off like eraser dust, then little pinpricks of red. The water streams looked blue against the blue shower, and she’d left the overhead lights off, so the curtain cast a blue shadow over everything.

 

Her skin was tomato red when she got out of the shower. The steam rose from her arms like little plumes of smoke, then disappeared. She would weigh herself only after she dried off and used the hair dryer. It was important to get completely dry first, because even a little extra water could add artificial weight. She scrubbed the towel on her skin like she was scouring a pan. Then the hair dryer—kept in the same spot on her head until it burned, until she could barely stand it any longer. Then came the most important moment of the day.

 

She stepped on the scale. She looked down at her feet—at the toenails, cut so short that she could feel the new skin underneath them. She watched the needle on the scale waver over the numbers. It looked like a speedometer needle. The needle settled on its number -- not the number Lydia wanted it to be.

 

She stood on the edge of the bath tub so she could examine her stomach in the mirror. She poked at the softer spots so she would really disgust herself—especially that spot right beneath her belly button, that little pillow of fat that the belly button curved into. She wished her whole stomach could be like the inside of the belly button—rough, star-shaped, and at least a few millimeters flatter than her real belly. She climbed down to take a good look at her face, then washed it twice to make sure her eyes didn’t show any red around the edges. That was the last thing Mom and Dad needed.

 

Lydia dressed in three layers and sat fully clothed under the heater for a minute, listening to its hum, not moving. She pretended she was in New York with Bette --that this was Bette's bathroom. They were getting ready to go to college--they were both in college. They were going to stop at Starbucks on the way. Bette would order a gigantic coffee, and Lydia wouldn't have to order anything, but she'd get a cup to carry around. And they'd walk along the streets of New York and look at all those faces--all their blank stares, like Bette described. Lydia would catch her reflection in a store window, and she'd be thin and graceful and sophisticated and perfect. Then maybe Mom and Dad would come to New York too. Dad would have no Meniere's disease, no hearing problems, no attacks of vertigo. They'd go to that huge library Bette talked about, and they'd sit next to the cement lions, holding coffee cups and being quiet -- not because they had to this time, but because it felt nice, because there was no need to say anything. Everyone felt the same.

 

Lydia opened the bathroom door and headed out. Mom sat in the kitchen, holding a cup of coffee in her hand. The coffee inside the cup was too milky, and by the way Mom stroked the sides of the mug, Lydia could tell the coffee was already cold. Mom stared at some spot in the air in front of her.

 

“Mom?”

 

She held out a hand and touched Lydia’s sleeve. Mom’s hand was like Bette’s, with long fingers and freckles.

 

“Dad had an attack this morning,” Mom said, and Lydia imagined the faces of New Yorkers, completely blank. She tried to do that with her face.

 

“He’s sleeping now?”

 

Mom nodded and opened her arms for a hug. Lydia rested her head on Mom’s shoulder and let the flannel pajamas close on her. She could smell the lemony remnants of whatever Mom used to clean up Dad’s vomit. She tried to listen for Mom’s heartbeat, but it was too soft. The lace on Mom’s cuffs brushed against Lydia’s ears once, then twice, then settled there until Mom let go. She held Lydia there to make long eye contact in a way that made Lydia want to get away -- go somewhere free from Mom’s eyes and what Lydia was supposed to know from looking at them. It was embarrassing. 

 

Lydia tried to think of the best thing to say, but there was no best thing, and she couldn't look at Mom anymore. So Lydia left as quietly as she could. When she closed the door, she held the doorknob carefully before letting it rotate back to closed, so it wouldn't make even a clicking sound.

 

---

 

 

 

Lydia had a singing lesson with Miss Ruben first thing. Miss Ruben was beautiful. Everyone thought so. She didn’t have a thick neck, like Mrs. Englewood. She didn’t even have any extra fat around her middle or on the backs of her arms. She was skinny, and Lydia wished she knew how Miss Ruben did it. She probably skipped breakfast every day, but that wasn’t hard. Maybe she ran a few miles every morning. Or maybe she ate only salads, no dressing.

 

Maybe Lydia should start running more. Three miles was nothing, really. She could probably do five—maybe eight.

 

Lydia had her singing lessons in the practice room—a tiny room with sky blue walls, sound cork that looked like a wasps’ nest, and nothing else in it but a piano and a table where kids dropped their books. Lydia came here during study hall to practice. Jennifer B. was here to practice today too. She sat on the floor with her back against the wall, watching Lydia or Miss Ruben or maybe nothing.

 

Eight miles would burn at least eight hundred calories. Eight hundred calories amounted to the exact minimum a person needed each day, so if Lydia burned an extra eight hundred, she could burn a total of sixteen hundred calories a day. Sixteen hundred calories had to make a difference.

 

 

Lydia stood in the center of the room, ready to start. She watched Miss Ruben sit at the piano bench. When she scooted the bench in, the wood made a screech against the floor, like a dying seal. The edge of Miss Ruben’s skirt touched the floor, and Lydia could see that the background of the flower print matched the gray of the floor exactly. Miss Ruben raised her hands to the piano keys.

 

Lydia had to start on a D, which wasn’t a bad note for her. She adjusted her shoulders so she was standing tall, tried to be sure her feet were shoulder-length’s width apart and that her chin wasn’t at the wrong angle. Then the first note came, clear and outside herself, like someone else was singing it—nobody like her. She looked toward Jennifer B., who was smiling in a vacant sort of way, twisting a long strand of hair around her thick finger. Lydia sucked in for the two-line trill. She raised her eyebrows, set her shoulders firm, and trilled until the second to last note, where the air stopped and her voice trailed into breathy nothing. She felt her cheeks run red, and pulled the D again to end the section. Jennifer B. smiled a weird kind of smile. If she were a man, she’d look lecherous.

 

“Beautiful,” Miss Ruben said. “Such a clear voice, like an angel.”

 

But Miss Ruben had to say nice things like that.

 

“I didn’t get the run,” Lydia said.

 

---

 

 

Lydia went to the sewing room at lunchtime, to work on the quilt she was making for Mom, a crazy quilt, the sewing teacher called it, which really meant that it had no set pattern. Lydia sat there alone, or maybe with a freshman or two, like the large girl with permed hair who listened to Garth Brooks while she ironed.

 

Lydia didn’t talk with her. Sometimes, when the girl didn’t notice, Lydia would just sit and watch her, wondering what her life was like, wondering if she never dieted, and if so, why it hadn’t worked. Sometimes the girl brought in her lunch, although no one was allowed to eat in the sewing room. She usually brought a Mountain Dew and a sandwich, usually a sandwich with some kind of meat and mustard—and Fritos. She always brought Fritos. She’d brush the salt from her fingers after each chip, and she’d crunch them with her mouth open, like someone with a cold trying to eat and breathe through her mouth at the same time.

 

Fritos had one hundred, eighty calories per serving. And a little bag like that had two servings, not one. That fact made Lydia so sad.

 

Lydia sewed by hand, tiny stitches less than a millimeter, so sometimes she’d accidentally put the needle in the same weave of fabric she’d pulled it from. She never went to the cafeteria anymore. She was safe here, away from the calories, the process of digestion. She didn’t have to pick a table in the back, hoping no one would sit next to her. Nobody in the sewing room would come up to her with a carton of chocolate milk and ask her to take it, like Amy Spegler did last week. Amy Spegler had a high thyroid. She couldn’t gain weight if she tried. Her eyes bulged like a dragonfly, and she was the skinniest girl in school. When she wore short sleeves, her arms hung out like pencils. The skinniest girl in school—offering chocolate milk, for god’s sake.

 

At least the freshman with the Fritos wouldn’t give Lydia chocolate milk. Lydia could sit here and make her millimeter-sized stitches. And it didn’t hurt to be hungry. It felt good most of the time. Finally, she was getting clean. She couldn’t poop or sweat or get zits. She could get rid of her body. She could become nothing. The square root of zero. She pricked her finger with the needle, and a bead of blood formed in a sphere at the tip.

 

---

 

 

When Lydia got home from school, the kitchen was empty. Mom’s blue coffee mug sat on the table, where she’d set it to hug Lydia that morning. The coffee pot was still on, humming like it was trying to brew air. The room was gray in the almost-dark light. The phone rang, and Lydia answered.

 

“Lydia? It’s me.”

 

Bette sounded like she’d been running. Maybe she exercised now. Lydia tipped Mom’s mug and looked at the leftover coffee inside. It was colored like milk chocolate.

 

“Lydia, we’re coming to visit. Jesse and I.”

 

“Who’s Jesse?”

 

Lydia smelled the coffee. It smelled like dirt. She tilted the cup as far as she could without spilling. She wanted to touch the coffee. It was probably greasy.

 

“The filmmaker. The friend who’s doing the documentary on me. I told you about him, right?”

 

“No.”

 

Bette didn’t tell Lydia anything anymore. Not even about important things like documentaries. Lydia tilted the mug in another direction, and looked at the veins in her hands, which were puffy. They bulged.

 

“Well, I’m coming home, and he’s coming with me. He wants to film you guys. Are Mom and Dad there?”

 

“No. He wants to film us?”

 

But Bette was already talking again. Lydia pictured her in Grandpa’s apartment, standing in running shoes, ready to run out the door. Maybe Bette had running shoes now. That’s why this Jesse person wanted to do the documentary on her. She was an athlete.

 

“Oh, well you’ll tell them about it, right? We’re coming next Friday. We already have the flight. It was one of those last minute deals. Oh, I’ve gotta go. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

 

When Lydia hung up the phone, it made a little ringing sound, like it was trying to call her back. Mom’s note was tacked up right next to the phone. She’d written it on hot pink paper, with a marker that looked black against the pink. Lydia knew the ink was really blue. She’d used the marker yesterday. She stared at the letters and numbers for a while, until they formed a double image that moved from the note to the countertop.

 

“Lydia, call us at the hospital after 7:30. They’re just running tests.”

 

Lydia carried the note with her to the window, where she looked out at the blue snow. If she looked, she could see the room reflected on this side of the window, and in the reflection, she could see the note in her hand. She took the note to the bathroom, where she turned on the heating fan, then went upstairs to get her running clothes. She grabbed the sweats that she’d left draped on the bed and went back to the bathroom. It had started to warm up inside, but still wasn’t hot. She set the note on the edge of the sink. The paper looked an even hotter pink next to the white porcelain. She sat on the toilet lid and untied her shoes. She pulled off her first layer of socks and left on the second. She moved the note to the top of the hamper where it wouldn’t get wet. She ran the sink’s water until it was hot, then stuck her hands under the stream until they were red and burning. That felt good. She put her face to the air coming from the overhead fan, closed her eyelids, and tried to pretend she didn’t feel cold.

 

She took off her first shirt—a striped velour sweatshirt she’d made in sewing class. Then she pulled off the long-sleeved T-shirt underneath, leaving only her long-john shirt. The air was getting warm now, and she shivered only a little. She pulled off her corduroy pants and stood, full of goosebumps, in her long-john shirt and pants. She breathed in and peeled them off. They stuck a little to spots of her dry skin. She pulled off her panties and bra, then stood on the scale. She looked up at the ceiling heater once more, then down at the number. It hadn’t changed since this morning.

 

Eight miles this afternoon, and she’d be eight hundred calories lighter. In just a month of this, with the right diet, she could lose 13.7 pounds. 13.7 pounds, and maybe things would be okay. Then she’d lose just a few more, just in case.

She went to the mirror and pinched the skin on her stomach, the sides of her arms. She stretched her long-johns on again. They bagged in the back and at the waist, which made her feel a little better. Then she pulled on the lavender jogging pants, two T-shirts, a sweatshirt, a puffy pair of mittens, and hat. She folded the note into thirds and put it inside her left mitten. The paper felt sharp against her hand. She sat on the toilet seat again and waited for her cheeks to warm from the heat. Then she left the bathroom, headed through the kitchen, out the door, and ran down the driveway.

 

The light outside was purple. Mrs. Adleman, across the street, hadn’t put on the lamp in her living room yet. Lydia wondered what Mrs. Adleman did in there all night, by herself. She wondered if Mrs. Adleman had any brothers or sisters—if there was anyone who called her to say hello once in a while. She wondered what would happen if she stopped to visit sometime, if maybe Mrs. Adelman would like that, maybe even come to think of Lydia as hers, her friend or maybe her granddaughter. Lydia made a right and ran past the mint green house with the motion light, and the house of the people who owned two Dobermans that never barked, then past the park and down toward the railroad tracks by the river. The river looked black right before dusk—and so calm that the water was a mirror for the trees above, already naked for winter. It looked like a postcard without the glossiness. No people, no sound. 

 

Lydia was cold again. She forced herself to run fast. She tuned her breath to different tones, listened to it running in and out, shallow, then full. She counted her breaths and lost count at twenty-six.

 

Eight hundred calories, minus ninety calories for the carton of skim milk. Round it up to an even hundred, just to be safe. That left seven hundred calories. Maybe she could run through dinner—maybe Mom and Dad wouldn’t notice; they might not even be back in time. If she did that, she would have a calorie difference of negative fifteen hundred today, her best so far. By the end of the month, she’d be skinny—maybe as skinny as Miss Ruben, or if she was lucky, as skinny as Amy Spegler.

 

As she ran, Lydia tried out different ways of holding the folded note inside her mitten. She curled her fingers around it. Then she tried keeping her hand perfectly straight, so the note would lay flat against her palm. The paper felt warmer now, and the edges were a little softer. Lydia’s muscles were getting warm too. She forced herself to go faster.

 

---

 

 

Lydia sat in front of the living room’s heat register, not turning on the lights for evening. The note was in her pocket now, bending when she bent. It was almost six o’clock. The sky outside was electric blue, and the walls inside had faded to a new and darker color. Lydia’s fingers in front of the metal rungs didn’t look like her own. They were whiter than usual, sheets of paper scrunched to look like hands. The register spewed out its last bit of warm air and hissed to a stop. Adam would be coming soon. Adam, who had taken her to prom and out to movies but not as a date.

 

Lydia put her hand inside the pocket to check on the note. Still there.

 

The prom dress was too big now. Lydia remembered the way her legs stuck out below the hem in the pictures, the way the upper thigh looked, fleshy, the color of an uncooked leg of chicken.

 

She wondered if she should get a tape measure and measure her thighs now—if she could track the circumference of thighs just like tracking her weight. She could measure her waist and upper arms too—she could keep a record, write the numbers in black pen. After Adam came and went, Lydia would get the tape measure from Mom’s sewing things. That’s what she would do.

 

The room was officially dark now. There was a clicking, and the register started spitting hot air again. Lydia put her hands up to the dry air, put her toes up to the rungs, watched the pale moon out there and the blue snow, the divots where Dad had stepped when refilling the bird feeder. 

 

There was a thump at the door, and a jingle as Adam let himself in, then stood in the doorway of the living room. He smelled like outside air, and his hair was messed at the top, maybe from the wind, or maybe because he thought it looked cooler like that. Maybe Lydia told him once that she liked it messy.

 

“It’s dark in here,” he said, and when he flipped the switch, the room turned buttery.

 

Lydia moved over to give Adam room to sit next to her. He sat crossed-legged, his corduroy knee almost touching hers.

 

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “It’s warm in here.”

 

She nodded. She smiled. She told him she had to call her parents at 7:30, that he couldn’t stay long. He didn’t ask her why. Adam had the skinniest legs. His thigh circumference was probably smaller than Lydia’s. The hot air stopped blowing from the register again, and everything was quiet. Adam’s face was pink in spots, like he had windburn, maybe. Sometimes, when they were sitting like this, Lydia imagined him confessing that he had wanted to take her to the prom, that it hadn't been just as friends.

 

“I’ve been thinking,” he would say, “I mean—that I feel for you more than, you know—more than a friend.”

 

He never did say it, though, and he didn't now either. Maybe he could tell—could see that she’d been waiting for him to say something like that for a while.

 

“Do you feel that way too? About me, I mean?” he would say.

 

He wouldn't say that now either, and maybe it didn't matter anymore. Not now, anyway. Lydia looked toward her legs again. She wanted to rip them in half—maybe take a paring knife to them and pare them down until they matched his, until there was nothing there at all.

 

“Lydia?”

 

His clothes smelled like they'd been in a drawer for a long time. It was a closed-in smell. He leaned in a little, and she wanted to lean away but didn't.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she paused, because already his face had changed. She forced herself to keep going with what might be a lie. “I guess I'm a little tired for hanging out,” she said.

 

He didn't look at her again. When he raised his head he seemed to be looking over her shoulder at the wallpaper or into the other room.  “I guess I better go, then—at least for now,” he said. His face hit a funny angle from the light above, so it shined.

 

Lydia wanted to ask him to stay, but she didn't. He left quietly.

 

Then Lydia was alone at the heat register. She felt her cold skin growing hot, and the register kicked in again. This time, the humming sounded like someone crying, or like the breaths between cries, stretched out to cover all other sounds. Five thousand, three hundred and twenty calories was more than a pound, but she should do better. If she ate only a hundred calories for dinner each night, how many calories would she have burned by the end of the day? She calculated while she went into Mom’s room to find the tape measure.

 

---

 

Lydia set the note on the kitchen table. It had been folded and refolded many times now. The paper’s creases were so soft they felt like fabric. She held the phone to her ear with both hands—one on the base of the mouthpiece and one toward the top. There was one ring—long and low, like a doorbell. Lydia counted one and a half seconds before the second ring came. She counted a third ring, then a fourth. She took the note from the counter and held it half open in her hand. After six rings she hung up. She looked at the number again, to make sure that was really a six, not a zero. She called again. She hung up again. She tried the number with a zero.

 

“Jungle Video. How can I serve you today?”

 

She hung up again. She called the original number. She let it ring twelve times, then thirteen. She hung up again. She sat on the floor and balanced the note on her knee. She held the phone in her hand and counted to 77. Then she called again. She let it ring 7 times. Nobody answered. She hunch over herself as she sat, holding her stomach in with her folded arms so that none of her fat could come through, so she could hardly breathe. She was still sitting there when the cowbell rigged up to the door rang, and Mom and Dad brought the cold air inside.

 

---

 

“I’m sorry, honey. We were almost home already,” Mom said.

 

Mom was already holding a cup of decaf with both hands, her bony ankles crossed over each other. Dad hunched over a piece of paper with scribbles on it. He stood to walk toward the refrigerator, then sat again. Mom asked Lydia to sit. That meant there was news. They were going to say that Dad was in serious danger. That’s what they’d found out with the tests, and now this was it. Lydia stared at the terrycloth loops on the table until they went blurry.

 

“We have a decision to make,” Mom said. “There’s a surgery that could help Dad, but it would likely destroy his hearing.”

 

Lydia breathed in.

 

“We don’t know what we’re going to do yet. We’re going to give it a few months and decide.”

 

“The surgery would make Dad deaf?”

 

Dad nodded. He made a few more marks on the scrap of paper, then swiveled it to show it to Lydia. The paper was a graph with a wavy line. On top of the graph, Dad’s block letters said “Pain threshold with noise.” Underneath was a picture of an ear. There was a scribble right in the center of the ear.

 

“Oh,” Lydia said. She wondered what it would be like if Dad couldn’t hear anything.

 

Lydia wanted to put her hands on Dad’s ears, to warm them up with her hands. Mom moved to the left of her chair, then back to the right.

 

“Lydia, we’re worried about you,” she said.

 

Lydia breathed out slowly.

 

“You don’t eat anything. You need to eat,” Dad said.

 

It was the first time, probably, that Dad had used the word need. After saying it, he got up and walked to the refrigerator, then back again. He paced like that for a few seconds before Mom crossed her ankles the other way and said, “We’re worried about you. We think you might be anorexic.”

 

Lydia looked at Dad’s ears. Each earlobe was a little pink. Lydia wondered if she could give Dad her ears—if there was a transplant or something, like they did with kidneys.

 

“You know you’re too thin, don’t you?” Mom said.

 

Too thin. That was good. Too thin meant Lydia was getting skinny—not as skinny as Amy Spegler, not as skinny as if Mom had said emaciated or something like that, but too thin was good.

 

“You’re going to eat now, all right?” Dad said, “No more of this.”

 

Lydia nodded at what he was saying, and that was the end of it. Dad stopped pacing and went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. Mom still sat there, holding the mug in both hands, staring off into distance.

 

“What’s going to happen if Dad goes deaf?” Lydia said. “Is that all they can do?”

 

Mom’s eyes were watery again. She nodded as she pulled Lydia into a hug. Lydia could feel Mom’s heart beating in the hug.

 

“I love you, honey,” Mom said, “You know that, right?”

 

Lydia nodded at that too. The slippery fabric of Mom’s blouse swished against her ears. She liked the way it sounded.

 

“I love you so much,” Mom said.

 

For a second, Lydia didn’t think about things. She didn’t think about Dad’s paper on the table, with the graph making a straight line, but then Mom pulled away slowly. She brushed a bit of hair from Lydia’s face, and Lydia did think about things again.

 

On her way to bed, Lydia pulled Dad’s slip of paper from the table and held it in her hand as she walked upstairs. If she lost ten more pounds, she might be emaciated, and if she lost twenty pounds, maybe she’d be like those nuns she’d read about who fasted for days and wore those really disgusting hair shirts in the middle of the summer so they’d sweat a lot and be miserable. When they died they were declared saints—maybe not saints. Now she couldn’t remember, but they were declared good people, anyway. That’s all Lydia wanted. Lydia pulled the covers back and slipped into bed, trying not to move the sheets as she did. She rolled to her side and held Dad’s paper up to her ear. If she listened closely enough, she thought she might hear some kind of answer to things.

 

 

 

(Next... Chapter 2)