Disclaimer: I own nothing. Unless you want to push the envelope a little and say that I invented Graziella's parents, which you're welcome to do if you'd like to give me some credit here, but which I also find ridiculous. I mean, obviously the girl has parents. She had to get here somehow…

A/N: This is my first departure in a little while into something serious. I know I missed eating disorder awareness week by thismuch, to be blamed more on midterms than on any intentional motivation on my part, but let it be known that I was aiming. This is a subject with a lot of meaning to me, and I feel like not nearly enough people really take the time to understand what it would be like. It's not vanity; it's a serious and debilitating problem that can beat a person down until it breaks them. If you feel like it's about to break you, please don't hold it in by yourself. Tell someone who cares about you. There's life without EDs. There's life with hope and happiness. It can and will be your life.

Anyhow. I'm not trying to make a public service announcement, and I'm not trying to be self-righteous. Without further rambling, I give you the latest in my reasonably extensive series of disconnected West Side Story fanfics. Any feedback is appreciated beyond your wildest dreams.

I'm finished, I'm getting out of your way, I promise!

Snowglobe Girl

"We was at the rumble, and somethin'… somethin' went wrong."

She didn't need to wait for A-Rab or Snowboy to explain what had happened. The looks on their faces were enough, the tear-tracks of clean skin down the dust and dirt that colored their cheeks told the story. The two Jets stood in her doorway, as out of place among the wrought-iron curlicues on the head of her daybed and the plush white carpet as two stray dogs wandering through an art museum, unable to meet her eyes or finish the message they had been sent by Action to deliver. That was the beauty of being acting commander. You could delegate jobs like this to other people. No one in his right mind would want to do this of his own free will.

She sat on her bed, looking at them emptily. The white summer dress she had carefully chosen now seemed laughably out of place, painfully so. It was a beautiful, sheer sundress, straps thinner than her little finger and the tiniest rounded arcs of lace that rose up across her breasts like waves on the ocean, light enough to give the hint of the black underwear that lay in wait for him beneath. The August wind breathed gently through her open window, lifting her auburn hair around her shoulders and blowing the short skirt of the dress across her thigh. She looked like a mermaid newly granted legs, her long plait of hair trailing down her back, her legs folded up next to her, one calf crossed over the other.

As the news began to make more sense, her posture did not change. Her face showed no sign that she had even heard them. She may as well have been a statue from a museum, chiseled from marble and white lace, deposited on the daybed to wait for a patron that would never arrive.

"I'm… We're real sorry," Snowboy attempted, knowing that the words were useless and that it might be better for him to say nothing at all. The silence was too oppressive on the ever-talkative Jet. Silence meant that serious things were being thought about. Words could drown out thought, but silence weighed so much it could murder.

"Go away," she said. Her voice was even, level, perfectly measured. She didn't scream it, like she might have, and she didn't command them to get the hell out before she started throwing things, like she had done many times. It was this lack of any emotional coloring that made the two Jets look at each other uneasily. She shouldn't be left alone tonight, not after receiving news like that. But what good could they do by staying? They may as well be keeping a corpse company. The door closed with a soft click behind them.

Hold on tight. Just hold on. Get a grip on something.

Graziella lay back on her bed, the motion smooth like the strategic crumpling of a marionette once all the strings have been cut by one deft motion of shining silver scissors. The images, the sounds, the faces were coming too hard and too fast, they had entered her body with A-Rab's nine simple words and flushed her soul out to make room. She felt like an empty shell of the person she had been two minutes ago, occupied not by her own feelings and dreams but by one face, flashing green eyes specked with gold, dirty-blonde hair that always liked to go the maximum practical distance between cuts, a quick smile and a quicker tongue, the voice that seemed to be drifting through the window on the steady, soft breeze.

Riff was dead.

She grasped the pillow with a desperate hold, so tightly it seemed inevitable that it should burst into two pieces. The room was moving at a dizzying speed, tilting steadily sideways at a sickening, drunken angle. She was going to fall, the bed would be standing straight on its side and she would fall, fall from her perch to the window when the wall had become the floor, and her body would hit the street that had taken Riff… The pillow was her lifeline to something physical, something that would not move. She choked back a desperate sob and buried her face in it, a porcelain doll in her lace sundress that had been dropped facedown on the bed of a child. Nothing seemed real, and at the same time every feeling, every sound, every sensation of the sheets and the pillow against her skin, the skin that would never again brush against Riff's, was far too real for her to bear.

Knock, knock, knock.

"Honey?" Her mother, from the other side of the door. "Open the door, honey. It'll be all right, let me in."

"Go away." Graziella's voice was hollow. She barely recognized it; it may as well not have been her voice at all. Her mother would never understand. She had always hated Riff anyway, thought he'd been a bad influence on her supposedly virginally pure daughter. This was Graziella's private grief, and her mother merited no part of it.

Riff was dead. His ghost was everywhere.

"How are you feeling today, Gratz?"

It had been five days since A-Rab and Snowboy had delivered the news. The sun had risen and set, the earth had gotten a little farther in its celestial pilgrimage around the sun. Mr. Van Wylder had brewed and consumed ten cups of coffee. Mrs. Van Wylder had put a total of twenty-five large foam curlers in her hair and let them set over the course of five nights. Five newspapers had fallen on the front steps of the Van Wylder's brick townhouse. Three boys had been buried.

"Fine," Graziella said tonelessly, and took a measured sip of tea.

Her parents looked at each other for a moment across the breakfast table, then back at their daughter. Neither of them were particularly good at having heart-to-heart conversations with the teenage girl they didn't understand as well as they would have liked, but they meant as well as parents can be expected to. Mrs. Van Wylder cleared her throat nervously, while her husband distractedly buttered a piece of toast. The scraping of the slightly burned bread echoed deafeningly across the profoundly silent kitchen, sounding like someone dragging their feet through a sidewalk full of dead leaves. Graziella continued to say nothing, her eyes avoiding her parents and targeting themselves instead on the piece of toast in her father's hand, giving it importance that it ought not to have possessed in the scheme of things.

"Dear, it's perfectly normal to still feel overwhelmed by all of this," Mrs. ventured. "It's an enormous shock to all of us, and it hasn't been long enough for anyone to get over it yet. When you want to talk about it, all you need to do is say so and we'll be ready to listen for as long as you need."

The look Graziella gave the two of them could have started a fire in an empty hearth. Talk to them? About what? What words could she possibly have used to explain the thoughts and sensations coursing through her every second of every day? She couldn't hope to say anything about them. They weren't experiences that could be translated into words. Not that she hadn't tried, but she couldn't remember feeling a single emotion over the course of the last five days. The closest she could come to describing it, she decided, was that she had been consumed with colors. Her insides felt like a constant swirling mix of paints, some blindingly bright and others so dark that they sucked light into them and refused to let anything reflect back. Worst of all were those dark moments, the emerald greens, the deepest navy blue, the charcoal. Those were the moments where she could not even look at her parents. She spent them in her room, the shades pulled and the door closed regardless of how brightly the sun was shining just outside, laying flat on her back in bed and staring at the ceiling. She would fold her arms across her chest, pinning a pillow in her grasp as a man lost at sea clings to a piece of wood. How could she explain the swirling mess inside her ribcage to people like her parents? They hadn't known Riff like she had known him. Nobody had.

"Thanks, mom," she answered dutifully, "I'll let you know." She took another tiny sip of tea.

"Graziella, you should really eat something," Mr. said. He lapsed back into the only parenting strategy he knew, the for-your-own-good observations and pointed remarks that only when viewed in the proper light were more signs of his affection than nagging. "Your mother and I are worried you've lost weight after all of this."

She stood up suddenly, shoving her chair back with such force that it toppled over backwards and landed on the linoleum floor with a heavy crash. "You don't have any idea what I need," she snarled. "Would you just leave me alone?" Her parents stared at her in surprise, watching the sudden overflow of emotions explode out of what had been a shadow of their daughter five seconds before. She stormed over to the front door and snatched up a black jacket thrown over the end table in the hall. "I'm going out," she said coldly, and the door slammed behind her.

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Van Wylder could decide if this momentary explosion was a sign that things were getting worse or better.

She couldn't remember the exact moment she'd discovered that this made her feel better. "Better," of course, was a highly subjective word. Better than lost, better than helpless, better than nothing. It certainly did that. As she walked down the quiet, proper street where her parents' quiet, proper townhouse stood firmly rooted to the ground, she felt the feeling taking over her again. Still not an emotion, what she felt now was a physical sensation that still could only be described in colors. The blackness had lifted, though the swirling had not stopped. Within her chest now was a blinding whiteness, cold and pure and vast, and she embraced the feeling. It was like the ocean, vast and unstoppable. It was like the first snowfall in Central Park, two years ago, the nor'easter that had dumped fourteen inches on the city whose oppressive heat and enclosed spaces discouraged more than an inch or two most of the winter, the fourteen inches in which she and Riff had had their first date, pelting each other with snowballs until they were out of breath and their faces were flushed with the cold. That feeling was trapped in her, and she had brought it up.

She had done it herself. She was in control of this pure, white feeling. All she had to do was to find something she could direct, something simple.

In the past twenty-four hours, Graziella had eaten two cups of tea and one piece of toast.

Riff had always told her she was beautiful. Memories of his voice drifted at her from behind fire hydrants, around corners, as she continued to walk in the dying August warmth. When things had been good, when they weren't fighting, he had always said she was perfect like this. He had liked to run his fingers through her hair when they made love (she called it that, in her head; he had many names for it, each more creative than the last), and once he had requested that they leave the lights on, "so's I can see just how damn lucky I am." She'd eaten what she wanted, worn what she wanted, said what she thought and let him take out of it what he would. So she couldn't claim that it made any sense, what she was doing.

It didn't need to make sense. Nothing made sense anymore. Riff had been stabbed and had bled to death under the highway five nights ago. Who still had the nerve to ask her for reasons?

The contracting of her stomach on nothing, the sharp feeling in her chest of purity and emptiness, distracted her from that train of thought, let her return to where she had been before. The world stopped tilting as badly as it had been. She no longer felt like she would fall off into nothingness. There was something tethering her to the mundane, the ordinary, the physical, and that was lunch. She had escaped breakfast neatly enough, that hadn't taken much effort. It would be more difficult later on, once her parents started paying more attention and her stomach started making empty noises to give her away, but she had faith that she could handle it. This snow-white feeling was right, and anything that took it away from her, that had to be avoided at all costs. She was in control, taking charge of these little things like how much butter one could get away with putting on toast before it started to have negative side effects. Riff was dead, Riff was still dead, and Riff would always be dead. But Graziella Van Wylder was not going to think about any of that right now.

She put one hand on her stomach, flat between her hipbones, and let the cold whiteness rush over her like the blizzard of a snowglobe, shaken until the breaking point, the lone figurine staring at the world through glass walls and a torrent of pure white flakes.

The weather had started to change now. The oppressive, muggy heat of late summer had finally peaked, and the haze that had clung to the asphalt began to dissipate in a lazy, winding spiral up into the air, where it blended with the grey sheets of autumn clouds hanging like the roof of a canvas tent above the city. It was all the same to Graziella; she hadn't felt warm in weeks, and it seemed to her to always be snowing, though she couldn't see it. The fine, almost transparent hairs on her arms were almost perpetually standing on end, even when it had been late August, even when she was inside. She knew she was probably the only girl in the city wearing sweaters during the end of that stifling summer, but that made little difference to her. And if anyone else noticed and thought it strange, well, she dared them to ask what had happened to make her feel so cold.

It had been one day since A-Rab and Snowboy had told her about Riff's death. It had been centuries, years, months, weeks, days, and only hours, all at once. She thought her lack of ability to remember the span of time she'd been doing something like living without him spoke more than if she had been able to give the answer down to the hour. Every day had begun to feel the same, the same battle against the swirling abyss of colors. Did it matter how many times you spun in a circle if you weren't going anywhere? Could a ballerina ever tell you how many times she had executed a flawless pirouette? She would tell you only that she had been spinning, spinning in place for God only knew how long, seeing her drawn face reflected endlessly at her out of the mirrors lining the walls.

"So I says to her, 'Minnie,' I says, 'ya can't go out wearin' a skirt like that, it's about twenty degrees outside, and a-sides, ya walk up a flight a' stairs and you's gonna give the whole neighborhood a show,'" Pauline Morrison said in her familiar, drawling voice, snapping a piece of bubblegum with panache. She sat next to Graziella on a stool in Sam's Soda Shop, a little hole in the wall that she'd been frequenting with her best friend since about the sixth grade, when she'd realized just how good-looking Sam Jr. had turned out to be. She swung her legs lazily, two pendulums released and completely independent from one another, and rhythmically tapped her fingers against the counter, starting with a filed and red-polished pinkie and moving in a ripple effect to the thumb, then back again.

If Pauline had been hoping for some resounding endorsement or shared emotion about the fashion scandal, she was to be sorely disappointed. "Yeah, well, you know how she is." Graziella seemed to have calculated the very minimum of emotion she could fit into the words without being mistaken for a dead woman. At least she had answered- Pauline, for all her best efforts, hadn't been sure she would succeed even that far. Her friend hadn't seemed herself lately, a fact only exacerbated because that self had always been so vibrant and inescapable. Her auburn hair, once the feature giving her the most pride, had been cut into a brutally short pixie, and the only explanation she had volunteered to her scandalized friend at the lackluster reveal had been that "she just couldn't be bothered anymore." Her eyes seemed vacant somehow, and though she'd managed to respond with something vaguely appropriate to the conversation Pauline wasn't convinced that she'd listened to a single word that had been said.

Looking at her seriously, Pauline reached over and touched her hand, acutely aware that she could probably circle her friend's wrist with two fingers had she attempted it. "Girl," she said, "if you was hurtin' and ya needed help, you'd tell me, yeah? I know you's strong, stronger'n me 'n all, but this is big stuff we's talkin' here. If ya ever need someone to talk to, promise me you's gonna let me know, all right? I's always here."

Graziella had no idea what to say. Not that she didn't know what would be the polite response under the circumstances, not even that she didn't know how to begin talking about what was taking over her from the inside out, not any of that. She honestly felt like she had lost all knowledge of words. Logic and language had fled, but they didn't leave a void for long before she felt a river rushing through her chest, rough and white-capped.

No. Not here. Not in front of Pauline. Whatever you do, don't do it in front of Pauline.

"I've gotta go." The words were louder and quicker than she had intended, and she stood up so quickly that the edges of her vision blurred ever so slightly, and tiny gold dots danced in front of her eyes like fireflies. Even the thought of fireflies, suspended in the thick air of a summer's night, made the river rush faster, until it physically hurt her chest to keep it restrained any longer. Pauline stood up in an effort to steady her as she swayed to the left, the simple act of standing up without losing consciousness now a crapshoot, but Graziella pushed her off and fled the shop.

She didn't stop running until she'd rounded the corner and Sam's was out of sight, and then she crumpled on the nearest bench moments before her knees would have given out anyhow. Her sobs poured out of her in a deluge that frightened her, so hard and fast that she could hardly catch her breath. Her shoulders shook as she doubled over, hugging her knees to her chest because there was nothing else there to hold onto. The noises that escaped her echoed loud and strange in her ears. Out of her control, out of her understanding, they just were, like pieces of her heart that desperately wanted out of this body. Her loss of control frightened her, and the fear only egged the tears on.

Nobody on the street stopped to ask if she was all right, nobody passing on the street stopped to look twice. It was rude to interrupt somebody when they were crying, after all. Or if not rude, exactly, it was certainly awkward as hell.

How long? How long's it going to hurt? Is this going to last forever?

Was Riff going to come back from the dead?

This doesn't even feel real anymore. This can't be real life. Whose life am I living?

What's happened to me?

Where did I go?

It didn't even work all the time anymore.

Graziella felt as though she was trapped on her bed. She could have gotten up, walked over and opened the window-blind, cleaned up the disorganized mess her room had become and done something with the Saturday afternoon, but even thinking about the amount of energy that would have taken made her feel tired. And what was the point? Was there anything outside she wanted to see? Was there anything anywhere that she wanted to see? The answer to the question, evidenced by her immobility for the past twenty-five minutes, felt obvious. Lying there in the darkness, staring up in the direction of the ceiling, she felt herself surrounded by words, angry words, the vicious voice in the back of her head that had become her sole companion during the span of time when either the world had abandoned her or she had abandoned the world.

Well, you happy now? it sneered, so loud it seemed to split her head down the middle. You fat, ugly failure, are you happy? Do you know how long you're gonna have to run to counteract what you just ate? And now we see what you get when you can't restrain yourself. Hope it was worth it, anyway.

It was a sandwich, Graziella thought weakly, noticing without any emotional connotation how small her thoughts seemed in comparison. I was hungry. I haven't eaten anything all day. I couldn't help it.

Exactly. You just couldn't help yourself, could you? Oh, how much she just wanted silence, total and complete silence without any thought and without any judgment. Impartial silence. Holy silence. You're disgusting. You fail. You can't do anything right, can you? You've been kidding yourself the whole time; he could never have loved you.

Riff. Even her Riff was no longer untouchable. The pure, snow-white escape had become a swirling black hell where nothing was sacred. He did love me. He told me. He wouldn't lie. We loved each other.

Well, great. And he's dead now. So much good that did you both.

Shut up. Please, just give me ten minutes of quiet. I'll do what you want after that. I know you're right, after all. I shouldn't be eating like that. It's the only thing I've got, the only handle on life that no one can take away. I've got no right sabotaguing myself like that, and I know you're only looking out for what's best for me. Just, please, I need ten minutes…

And I need a million dollars and a pony. Suck it up and take it. God, you're so weak. You don't deserve to rest until you fucking get it right!

Lying alone on the bed, tears silently streaming down her cheeks and into the remains of her hair, Graziella stared into the darkness where she knew the ceiling to be, though she couldn't see it. Standing alone in the snowglobe, the gently drifting flakes had turned to shards of glass, cutting as they sparkled in the sunlight.

How had his voice been replaced with this?

"Graziella, are you listening to a word I'm saying?"

The honest answer to Mrs. Van Wylder's question would have been no, but her daughter wasn't even paying her enough attention to understand that a response was expected. Her attention span had degenerated into something barely recognizable; more often than she liked to admit, she found her eyes tracing patterns in the living room carpet of their own accord, and when she would look up again at the rest of the scene she wouldn't have been able to say how much time she'd passed in thoughtless reverie.

The voice, for the moment, had slunk back into the cave at the base of her brain, though she knew the reprieve could not last more than an hour at the outermost. It had nothing to complain about, at least, for the moment. Her escape had become a trap, but she was the most obliging victim she could think of. She'd done everything it wanted, and not done everything it hadn't wanted. Weighing herself every morning had become a game of Russian roulette, and this morning the bullet had been lodged in the chamber of somebody else's gun. Ninety-six pounds. The voice had been pleased, and she had been so relieved that no screaming condemnation had assaulted her that she had genuinely been pleased, too.

Well, how about that? Got more willpower than I'd thought at first, it had told her. She could almost imagine it nodding its nonexistent head in silent approval. And then the bomb had dropped, the one that let her know she had an hour at most to enjoy this.

Just make sure it doesn't go up, would you? You can handle that, can't you? Not so hard, really. Don't do anything stupid, and you're golden.

Don't do anything stupid. Right. Because the comprehensive list of stupid ideas was completely empirical. She could have written the rule book on the stupid things she was no longer allowed to do. It was a draining task, one that took more energy than anyone else in the world would have thought it was worth. But that was the beauty of it all. All the energy that it took. All the energy that it siphoned off into this dark, haunted cave and that could not be used on another target, one that would be beyond simply difficult to face, one that would be impossible.

It was impossible to describe how much darker the cave was where the non-being that was Riff was dwelling.

"Graziella?"

So much darker…

Department-store cream-colored furniture began to blur around the edges.

"Graziella!"

Ninety-six.

Not so hard, really. Just

Spinning, slowly at first, the uncounted pirouettes of a ballerina.

And she would be the White Swan.

"Jonathan! Call somebody!"

Don't do anything stupid

Why the whole world had to start playing Russian roulette.

Just ten minutes of silence, please?

And you're golden.

There. Just at the very edge of her vision. She squinted in the figure's direction, trying to make out details, to make absolutely certain of what her heart had already determined to be true. There was no way she could stand being wrong about this, being convinced and then disappointed. But she wasn't wrong. She'd known that from the start. There was no mistaking the figure's posture, the tell-tale angle of the hips and the shoulders, the way the dirty-blond hair angled into the eyes, the eyes which she could see as the figure walked closer, green, flecked with gold.

Riff, she tried to say, but her voice had abandoned her and no sound would come out of her mouth.

He said nothing as he approached, the walk alone telling her stories of days she'd been fighting with her life to keep out of her consciousness. That trademarked swagger that spoke of fights and conquests, arguments and reconciliations, promises neglected and more important promises kept, kisses and caresses, a life shared and a life severed. Anything Riff could have said wouldn't have added anything to the picture that was now flooding her mind. It was like the melting of an iceberg: all of a sudden she was cold all over, but it was a healing cold, almost a warming cold. She was beyond questioning the feeling. All she knew was that she hurt like she'd never known she could hurt before, and that it was the most healing hurt she had ever suffered.

Riff stopped when there were still several steps between him and Graziella. For a seemingly endless moment, he looked at her without speaking, emotion soaring up into those green-gold eyes that had always been able to disguise everything he was feeling. You let the enemy see the inner workings of your brain and you'd lost. At last the mask had shattered, and it was almost too painful for Graziella to look at.

Riff, please, she tried to say, and though no sound would come out she felt certain that he could understand her. Please, take me with you. This isn't life without you. I'm not living now as it is. Let me come with you.

"Gratz, no." The choking sob that leapt from her throat at the sound of his voice echoed endlessly, off of what she wasn't quite sure. Were there walls here? Was there a ceiling, somewhere above her head? "No. Not now. Don't ya follow me, girl. Wasn't my time, but 's more mine 'n it is yours."

I'd rather die than be without you like this.

"Then don't," Riff said, his voice severe and comforting in the same overwhelming moment. "You don't hafta be without me, Gratz. God knows I ain't without you. We're still gonna be together, girl. Just keep a part of me where you is, 'cause I won't let ya come to me instead. I won't let ya do this, girl. I won't let ya."

"Riff…"

The sound was weak, but audible, and in the total silence her whisper sounded clear as a bell struck with a mallet. He smiled, the faintest trace of the broad, careless grin she'd forbidden herself to think of. Light, in half an instant, replaced darkness, searing her eyes so accustomed to staring at imaginary ceilings, and she let out a hiss of pain. Everything was so white, so clean and pure, that it was painful for her to look at, and she clenched her eyes as tightly as she could. Even through her eyelids, a faint glow still illuminated her vision, one that she couldn't completely block out. For a moment, there was nothing but the illumination, lost in light, and then an indeterminable moment later, sound slowly followed.

The creaking of wheels on a tile floor. The hum and buzz of electrical instruments. Soft, hushed, nervous voices. The feeling of something in the crook of her arm, something dully intrusive, a needle, an IV in her vein. A periodic, rhythmic beeping. The voices again, changing timbre, losing anxiety, gaining hope.

"Mom?" Graziella whispered hoarsely, opening her eyes and looking around her pristine white hospital room.

Mrs. Van Wylder choked back a sob. "Oh, honey," she breathed. "We thought… you passed out, and we thought… we thought we'd lost you…"

"Mom," Graziella said, her voice perceptibly louder, though still weak, "I need help. I can't do this alone."

"Of course," she agreed instantly. "Whatever it takes. Whatever you need. Oh, Graziella…" And she threw her arms around her daughter, lying a shadow of her former self on a strange, sterile hospital bed. For the first time in she still didn't know exactly how long, Graziella allowed her mother to embrace her, and she hugged her back so hard that she was afraid it would hurt her. She held on to her mother like a man lost at sea clings to a piece of wood, she held on to her mother as a stable force in an endlessly pirouetting world, she held on as if she would never let go.

But she knew she would.

And she knew she would stand again.

"Thank you," she breathed, and the face that swam before her eyes flashed its broad, effervescent grin at her from somewhere endlessly far away, and yet closer than ever before.

The glass prison had cracked. Not shattered; it would take time, it always takes more time than anyone is willing to allow. But the crack was expansive and deep, and little by little the ice-cold water of the globe was draining away, forming a small puddle on the floor. Allowed to run its course, the melted iceberg would disappear in favor of clearer seas.

Given time, even the last snowflake would melt away.