A new novel one day?
published: 2009-05-27Leila is 17 years old. Her best friend Elizabeth is dying. Elizabeth’s parents are refusing to see this. She is 35 kilos and for the very first time in three years, she has admitted to Leila that she may need her help. But Leila doesn’t know where to start, what to do. So Leila sits both Elizabeth and her mother down at one table and says to Elizabeth’s mother, “please take a very good luck at your daughter. She is not just ‘petite’ and I am not jealous of her, or of the fact that she is better in ballet than I am as you recently suggested. She needs help and if you’re not going to do anything, she will die.”
Leila hardly dares look at Elizabeth. When she does, she sees what she was afraid of: Elizabeth has planted her eyes on Leila’s face. They say, “how could you?”
It has always been them against the grown-ups. Now it has become Elizabeth against the world.
Leila goes to university, Elizabeth to a clinic. She recovers. But her trust in Leila never does.
Go for it. No good deed goes unpunished.