I thought my sister had an eating problem for a year. It looks like I was wrong.

This is how it began. My younger sister stopped eating all of a sudden last fall. Slowly at first, so you wouldn't notice unless you were paying attention, which I wasn't because I was three years older than her and her brother.

Lana used to skip breakfast and only half-eat her meals at first. She then got into the bad habit of forgetting her lunch before going to school or saying she'd buy something at the cafeteria, but she never did.

When our dad finally caught on to the habit, he started dropping her off at the school gates so that he could watch her take her food inside, which wasn't necessary because she'd just throw it away or give it to another student right away.

I didn't say anything because I thought it wasn't my business if Lana wanted to go on a diet. However, she wasn't really overweight to begin with, and as she started to lose weight, I began to wonder how I could bring it up without making both of us feel bad.

At some point, other kids at school started nudging each other in the hallway as she walked by. Lana wasn't paying attention because she was deep in her headphones and her hoodie was always half-down over her face. At that point, she looked so thin that I could have put my hand around her leg. Her cheeks were drawn in like an old witch painting you might see on someone's front porch in the autumn.