I watched him lift. Veins stood out in his neck. His beard and hair shone with sweat. His abs and pecs became hard as iron, strong as anything the Spartans wore into battle.
He can’t possibly believe that I’m sexy. There’s no way he can look at this disgusting useless weak flabby body and feel physical desire. He must be lying. He just wants to get me into bed. Or maybe it’s a bet? Like some gay version of all those movies where the jock’s friends bet him he can’t bed the class weirdo or nerd or telekinetic religious fanatic. He caught me staring, between sets, and he smiled. I smiled. And I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was real. We were real.
When I was alone, however, the voices went to work. Reminding me what a worthless ugly slug I was, how filthy and sinful, how only treachery and deceit could explain anything remotely good in my life. Tariq took me home. “Here,” he said, reaching into his gym bag to hand me an orange. “Last one, from what we stole up at Albany Academy.”
“Thanks,” I said, and held it to my nose. It smelled like him. And like an orange.
When he was gone, I went up to my room and sat on my bed. Facing the full-length mirror I’d draped in clothes so long ago. Staring at where my face would have been.
You’re too sexy.
I decided to put the echo to good use. Quickly, before my mind could intervene, I stood up and stripped the clothes away from the mirror. And stared at the boy I found there, the one with the giant lopsided eyes and too-big chin. Touched my face, pinched my cheek, thumbed my lips.
Is this what Tariq sees?
And then took off my sweatshirt. And my T-shirt. And my pants. And turned the teddy bear around to join me in judging myself.
I stood there, in socks and underwear, and made myself watch. Made me see myself.
I felt: fine. Not great, but fine. My stomach still felt swollen and immense, my thighs were still all jiggly flab while my calves were chicken-leg-thin, my arms when I tried to flex a bicep actually laughed at me—but looking up at the mirror the boy I saw was . . . not disgusting.
What the hell happened? I wondered.
Tariq is magic, I answered myself.
Figuring I’d quit while I was ahead, I stepped away from the mirror and dressed myself. Turned off the lights, opened the window, knelt there to breathe in the cold bitter wind. And focus.
A crash from down the hall. Something heavy falling. Something breaking. My heart, already overburdened, sputtered and stopped.
“Mom?” I called, opening my bedroom door.
Silence. I said it again, and took two steps into the hallway.
“I’m okay!” she called. “Stay in your room, okay, honey?”
“What happened?”
“I just tripped over something,” she said. Her voice muddled from sleep or . . . something. “Everything is okay. Just go back to bed. Okay?”
I stood there. Wondering what I should do. And then, to my great shame, I did what she asked me to do.
I needed to feel my powers at work. I went into the bathroom and sat down on the floor, reached under the sink to grip the pipe with both hands. Shut my eyes, listened for vibrations. Extended my awareness down the pipe, feeling the miles of cold earth it dug through, the knotted junctures where the copper piping of our house’s water line connected with the iron of the county water main, branching back down to someone’s home, through their basement and into their bathroom, and listening, listening—
But my sense of touch was dull, and all I “heard” were faint droning sounds like distant machines. When I released the pipe I felt as empty as it was.
Happiness had blunted me. I needed to be sharp again.
In the hallway, I stopped to listen, but heard nothing. My mother was dying. Her situation was killing her, just as surely as if she had some kind of disease.
If I couldn’t save my sister—if she had no need of saving—then I needed to keep my powers up for my mother. I just had to be stronger. I could start with sharpening another superpower: use of the internet. I researched the company that owned Mom’s slaughterhouse. Global trends in hog production. I learned that Westfield Foods was “jockeying hard” to be acquired by a Chinese meat-processing giant. They’d been trying to “spend down debt” by selling off assets. They were closing plants all over the country.
Useful. High school would work so much better if the things we learned could actually make a difference in our lives.
I felt my mind kick into overdrive, processing all that information. I began to see the patterns in the chaos, make the connections, understand the problems—but I was still so sluggish, smothered in the food I allowed myself to eat. If only I were a little hungrier I’d be able to see clear as day what needed to be done.
RULE #36
Depending on what the body you’re born into looks like, you get put in a box marked either Boy or Girl. That box is packed with expectations and requirements, demands and obligations. The box says you can like This, but not That. The box says you can wear This, but not That. The box might fit you perfectly. In that case, everything will be wonderful. Alternately, the box might be so cramped and tight and full of horrible things that you’d rather be dead than spend another minute in it.
There will always be something. Some horrible thing to stress you out, make you miserable, remind you how little control you have. Once you have begun to practice the Art of Starving, there will be a thousand reasons to continue.
DAY: 28
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1000
Tariq is a communist.
He told me this nonchalantly, the way you do with a deep dark secret you want someone to believe is no big deal. We were in his room, his broad and spacious room, with the wide windows and clean lines and dark cherry wood. His well-ordered room full of books and technology and a closet almost as big as my whole bedroom, his room that brought home to me in a whole new way how different we were, how much money he had, and how much something like money changes who you are. Tariq was never ashamed to bring someone home; Tariq never had to wear the same sweater more than once a week. Tariq’s mom, who I met when I arrived, who was sweet and thin and quiet and seemingly as in awe of her son as I was, did not have to go to work. Did not have to heave a hammer, murder hogs, drench her forearms in blood every day.