“It’s not the sickness that Number 23 reduced me to that frightens me. It’s how long I willingly ingested it. The last time I heard Number 23’s voice, he was telling me that I had a dependency on men, that I’d made him my life raft, that the only reason I put up with him was because I was broken inside. It was the truest thing I’ve ever been told. Although it was my life’s greatest detriment, I was unconscious of it. Unconscious male dependency was the fuel to my Number 23 rebound, a rebound that sent me back to my preteen anorexia, driving me to the vulnerable weakness that sent me crawling back to The South.”