off the deep end; As teenage athletes, two sisters grappled with the pressure to stay thin.

Byline: Hibi Pendleton

I was on the way out the door to teach my philosophy course when the phone rang. I didn't pick up, but I could hear my father's voice on the answering machine, asking to speak to my husband. That was strange-why didn't he want to speak to me?

"Did you talk to my dad?" I asked my husband the moment I got home from teaching. I could tell by his face that he had. "It's about Leslie, isn't it?" For two decades my family had watched helplessly as my younger sister, Leslie, battled anorexia and bulimia. She tried _everything-drugs, therapy, even a stay in an exclusive hospital. Nothing worked.

Her funeral would be in Missoula, Montana, where she had moved with her husband twelve years before. I booked a flight and braced myself for the ten-hour journey from my home in upstate New York. Long plane rides incline me to brooding and melancholy even in the best of circumstances. After takeoff, I pressed my forehead to the window to hide my tears as my mind circled the mystery at the center of my sister's life.

As the only girls in a family with four boys, Leslie and I were natural allies. We also looked alike, except that I've always had baby-fine blonde hair, while hers was a mane of deep-red waves. That and her electric smile made her the beauty of the family. Our parents encouraged us to be athletes as well as scholars. I became a ballerina, mostly because I was told I had the textbook body for it, though I never had the innate gift. Leslie, on the other hand, was a born athlete. She began diving at age twelve and over the next five years went quickly from Texas state champion to a nationally ranked tower diver who was in her element leaping from a ten-_meter platform in feats so terrifying my stoic father couldn't bear to watch. She graduated from high school with straight A's and won a scholarship to a Big Ten university with one of the best diving programs in the country. But she turned down the scholarship and enrolled at Columbia University, where I had just finished my sophomore year. She wanted an Ivy League education more than a chance at the Olympics. I like to think she also wanted to be with me.

Soon after my plane landed in Missoula, my sister's friend Cami let me in Leslie's house and showed me the corner of the bedroom where she had found my sister's body. As I sat on my sister's bed in horrified silence, Cami picked up a blue notebook. It was the journal Leslie had kept for Overeaters Anonymous, a group that apparently also welcomes those who don't eat enough. I had to hold myself back from snatching it. Here were pages and pages, in her own words, explaining the evolution of the eating disorder that was her undoing.

I was surprised to see my own name. "I learned most of my dieting tips from my sister, Hibi, who was a ballerina and constantly on a diet-which meant fasting for the most part. We shared a bathroom, and I saw her diet pills, diuretics, and laxatives lying around. It was a prize when Hibi would plan a diet with me." Sometimes we would fast, she wrote; if not, "it was still spartan: grapefruit for breakfast, no food at school, a small boiled potato before our workouts, and either no dinner or three cups of air-_popped popcorn. How we got through our workouts and studying and caring for our brothers is beyond me. I guess we come from a stock of nomads."