r/WaningGirls

CW: themes of eating disorders / anorexia

Last Friday, I think, was when we started seeing through Elsie. Really seeing through, I mean, not just pretending she wasn’t around. Her limbs were wisps of smoke, her face rippled in the harsh kitchen light, and looking through her was like peering out of frosted glass.

“I’m transparent,” she murmured. Mum had her by the wrist, rotating her arm by the shoulder like she was fiddling with one of those plastic skeletons we had just taken down after Halloween. I looked down at my own hands, stubby fingers, warm, full of colour, fully there. I could see the blurred marble through Elsie’s toes, where she stood barefoot on the tiled floor.

“You’ll be alright,” Mum told her firmly. “You look a little ill. You need a warm drink, that’s all.”

Elsie had always been on the slim side, tall and lean, but she’d always been… visible. I’d seen some girls at school do the same: shimmer under the hallway lights, whispering about new diets, weight loss programs, about all the translucent actresses on the television. Giggling and testing out whether they could read pages through each others’ hands. Imogen had her growth spurt last week, shot up to about five ten, and was so skinny I could poke my nail right through her cheek and come out the other side.

That was a few weeks ago, though. Imogen had put on some teenage weight, and was back to being solid. “Umm… something about puberty, my doctor said,” she told me. I had fiddled with her braid as it flickered in and out of sight between my fingers. “Happening to a lot of girls in our year. He said it’s temporary. They’ll all come back as soon as they put some of that chub back on.”

But Elsie wasn’t in our year; she was near graduating sixth form, turning eighteen next month, well past puberty. Day by day, her shadow thinned on the walls, until the sun slipped straight through her and left behind nothing at all.

If you go onto Reddit, you can find posts about it, because Reddit has a post for everything. The earliest one I can find is from 2019, another girl desperately seeking answers about her sister.

“Pls help,” u/NoMoreLosses writes. “My sissy has been getting lighter and lighter but today we stopped seeing her at all. Sometimes we can hear her voice, but it sounds like it’s coming from overhead speakers or smthing. Where is she?? Anyone else experienced this b4???”

My sissy — though I’ve never called her that — is getting lighter and lighter too. She’s always been Elsie to me, and Eleanor to everyone else, except Granddad, who calls her Nori. She’s loved that nickname since she was little, so much so that it’s her username on every platform she’s ever had. u/luv_nori24 responded to the Reddit post last Friday, and to many, many more on r/WaningGirls. I guess that’s what they’re calling it: waning. Like they’re candles, not girls, or perhaps even the moon.

There’s one difference from the moon, though. Every 28 days, it reappears in the sky, fresh-faced and full.

“im sorry,” u/luv_nori24 says. “they dont ever come back.”

“Do you think you’re waning?” I asked her one night. I’d stared up at the glowing ceiling, covered in those pasty stars we got at a birthday party when I was six. Can’t see those in the day, either, but they come to life at night. Elsie turned to me sharply, though I could’ve sworn she was already half-asleep.

“Who taught you that word?” she hissed. Never been the scary sort, my sister, but her face contorted into something nightmarish just then, beady eyes narrowing, dark tendrils pouring over her warped expression.

“You did,” I replied. “I’m not a baby anymore. I’m fifteen. I’m on the internet. I’ve seen you telling those girls what you told me, about how a banana can keep you full the whole afternoon if you blend it with a bit of milk. How you can pretend you ate your lunch by scooping it back into the pan when Mum’s not looking. I’ve seen you asking those questions, like how light do you have to be before you start waning,” her eyebrows tensed at my use of the word again, “and how long before you disappear for good.” My voice wobbled, but I’d bravely fought back my tears. This was serious business, and I wasn’t going to cry. “I don’t want you to disappear.”

“Oh, Freya,” her voice wobbled too, but not in the see same way, and in that moment I understood what u/NoMoreLosses meant about the speakers. It was like she was just barely there, or rather, like she was there but somewhere else, like her voice was coming from somewhere afar, just out of reach. In that moment I reached out for her, and she held me close as she did every sleepover we’d ever had, and both of us wept as we slept, though I could hardly feel the wetness of her tears on my skin. I’d woken to the dampness reminiscent of an overnight pour, one you knew had happened, but only so by its smell and your own imagination. I’d found Elsie on the bathroom scales, so light the needle didn’t even shake beneath her weight.

“Elsie,” I’d said in a small voice. “Look.”

In the bathroom mirror was my reflection, my pink pyjama set loosely draped around awkwardly angled limbs still figuring out what shape they were trying to grow into, unruly brown hair caught in the frame of round glasses set on a heavily-bridged nose and balanced between plump, rosy cheeks. You could see my hands trembling, a drool stain on my collar, and the empty scale beside me. There was no one there, in the mirror, just her matching purple set quivering as though a ghost was wearing them. I begged her, in my broken morning voice, to come back.

“Just tell me how,” she’d whispered in that dreadful speaker tone. “How?”

I spent the rest of the week on r/WaningGirls, asking that forlorn question every morning, like clockwork. I DMed u/NoMoreLosses, to no avail, then emailed the address attached to her account. Hundreds of comments pinged in my notifications bar. “Relevant posts,” it told me. “New today. Tell us: was this helpful?” No. I press no, again and again. No, not helpful. “We’re sorry to hear that!” It replies, but no, it’s not, it’s not sorry to hear that my sister is disappearing and I don’t know how to bring her back. My posts gain traction, fast, like me liveblogging this is some entertainment thread with weekly updates for subscribers. “I can barely see her,” I write in one. “I nearly walked through her today,” in another. Comments flood in, some asking questions, some trying to answer them.

“I’m sorry,” says u/CuriousLizard83.

“this is happening to my Aunt,” from u/pr1ncess1zzybelle. “lmk if you know how to make it stop.” Someone replies to her, creating a long chain of 80 comments I’ve read through a thousand times.

“They need to eat,” from u/wayne_waned_once. Top comment. A hundred assenters, another hundred asking followups. I don’t even know if Elsie can eat anymore. I barely see her, but no leftovers disappear from the fridge, her dinner grows cold in the pot, and our secret stash of Oreos under the bed lays untouched.

“Eleanor,” Mum calls us for breakfast that morning, but no Elsie appears in the doorway, no comiiiiiiing scorns the hall. Mum calls for her again, and a brief wind echoes near the kitchen island.

“Mum. Freya.”

“She’s here,” I tell Mum.

“This is not funny, Freya,” she snaps. “Eleanor, come down this instant or I’m not buying you those prom tickets.”

“Mum,” the wind whines back, and Mum pales as though she’s seen — or I suppose, heard — a ghost.

u/NoMoreLosses emails me back that night, telling me nothing I don’t already know.

“Dear u/freying_slightly,” she begins. “I’m sorry to hear about your sister. I’ve looked through your account and know you’ve been hearing a lot of sorrys lately, and I wish there was something more meaningful I could say. Instead, I’ll say this: we both know the answer to your question. How do you bring them back? We both know you don’t. I lost Phoebe five years ago, but there’s times I can hear her breezing about the house, like some kind of zephyr that haunts us. I’d love to say I’ve moved on, but I still hold on hope that some day she’ll reappear somehow, finally heavy enough to be present. To be here. Photos are all the proof I have left that she even existed. This is getting pessimistic… I don’t want to scare you. It sounds like she’s still around, so here’s the best advice I have: don’t let her go. Don’t let her slip away. Remind her that there’s still something to hold on to, and it’s not too late. From one little sister to another, don’t give up. With love, u/NoMoreLosses.”

I want to reply and thank her, to say she helped. I don’t.

When morning broke with a slender silence, I padded down the wooden loft stairs to find Mum printing posters. “Missing,” they read. “17 years old.” A photo of her, grinning toothily, vibrant, there. We do neighbourhood rounds before breakfast, and the dim winter sun illuminates dozens of copies of Elsie’s smiling face down the street. Mrs. Mary next door sends us a batch of cookies. Social services files a report, though neither Mum nor I can really explain how a teenager runs away just like that without anyone noticing, or, more importantly, how she leaves all the doors and windows still locked from the inside. They ask us if we know why she might do something like that. Run away. Or if she’s indicated any similar behaviours before.

“Elsie would never run away,” I tell them. I don’t think they’re likely to believe she’d disappeared. Waned herself down to nothing, to her wrinkled pyjamas flung across the bed like some dirty laundry and not the meagre remnants of my big sister.

Her voice disappears from the overhead speakers. We leave out her dinner portions each night, as though the wafting scent will attract her back, like she’ll eat a bite and materialise in the dining room. I pull the hidden Oreos out from my room. Her bed stays unmade, nightstand lamp still on, her teddy tucked under the covers waiting for its owner to come wake it.

Noon arrives hollow and quiet, and I move through it without eating, as if the hunger belongs to someone else. My breakfast is a banana blended with some milk. I cinch my shirt around my waist in the bathroom, my reflection slimming. Slimming, but still solid. Mum catches me scraping my bowl empty.

“Do you think you’ll find her that way?” She’s stern, but not unkind. Guilt tinges her words like a nasty, rotting fluid seeping into them. Good, I think. Then the fluid spills into my head, because I’ve seen her eating less too, sucking in her cheeks to make her jawline pop, tracing the rolls and the pregnancy scars from my C-section fifteen years ago.

“I don’t even know where she is.”

“I know. And you know. Do you think that if you end up nowhere, you’ll end up in the same nowhere as her?”

In the quiet hours of the night, well past Mum’s bedtime, I’d been searching r/WaningGirls for the same answer. “Where do they go?” A post to the subreddit, and a DM to u/luv_nori24. She doesn’t reply. Doesn’t read it. No one else knows, either.

“Don’t,” Mum says, though the break in her voice makes it sound more like a question. All these questions lately, and still no answers. One afternoon I’d wondered if academics might know anything. Sounded like a bright idea at the time, when I’d typed “waning girls weight loss transparent disappearing” into Google Scholar and been met with a few hundred papers on the science behind diabetes, pregnancy, and “invisible” weight.

“Don’t,” Mum says.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t go. With her. To her. I can’t… Just don’t. It can’t be worth it. Wherever they go. Do you think it’s better than here?”

Do I?

“I don’t,” says Mum.

I finish the hidden Oreos after dinner, crumbs spilling into my duvet and pillowcase. I weigh myself on the scales. The numbers don’t change, but I feel heavier. More substantial. I think I understand, in fragments, what it feels like to take up space. To be present, to be part of the world. What Elsie wanted to escape: being loud, being rowdy, eating, consuming. Our halls hold their breath like they await her return, too, her absence ringing emptily in the air. I eat another packet of Oreos for breakfast, leaving another crumb trail down the stairs and past the island. I left a trail, I think. I won’t disappear with a trace.

Mrs. Mary thinks we ought to see a shrink, as she tells Mum everyday. I think she might be right, though I’d never say that to Mum, still updating missing posters each week, still baking Elsie’s favourite pies and airing them out on the counter. PTSD. Depression. Schizophrenia. The internet has plenty of diagnoses for this one.

“Does it hurt?” I message u/luv_nori24 a new question daily. Sometimes I wonder if the clatters in Elsie’s room are just the wind through her forever-open windows, or something more, her invisible breath wheezing across her belongings, a desperate cry to be noticed. “Do you wish you could come back?”

I ask Mum to buy four more packs of Oreos at the grocer’s. Golden thins, Elsie’s favourite. I lay awake at night wishing soft snores back into existence. I get quieter. I eat my breakfast. I eat my lunch. I eat my dinner. I listen closely in the unearthly stillness of twilight, of dusk, of dawn. I message u/luv_nori24 more unread messages. I Google psychiatrists in our town. I laminate posters. I get louder. I eat. I take up space. I exist.

I whisper Elsie questions, and stories, and pleas before bed. I plead for her to come back. I plead for her to eat. I hear whispering back from whatever nowhere she’s in, and I swear it gets louder and more tangible each day.

I wait. I wait for her to come back. I wait for her to stay.