A whisper in my mind, I wouldn’t be Bastien’s friend without my powers.
“Makes me feel guilty, in a way,” Mom said. “To be getting a promotion even as other people are getting screwed. And to get a leg up on the competition if the plant does close, and I’m up against a couple hundred of my coworkers for a handful of jobs. But I can’t take a stand here. Being principled doesn’t do us a lot of good when we’re living out of a car.”
“Amen to that,” I said and clinked my mug against hers.
It was a raw, living thing, my mother’s love for this town. As much as I hated the place, I could still appreciate how much it meant to her. Eyes shut, silently starving, I could see and smell so much more about it now.
Wherever Mom came from, whatever town and family had created her, she never talked about it. And now I thought I knew why. Abusive or repressive or just plain boring, she ran away from it as soon as she could. Mom had the courage to escape from everything that wanted to keep her locked up tight in a box of things she did not want to be. To build a life for herself on her own terms. Some day, could I?
RULE #38
Mind and body both crave worldly things, but these attachments tie us down. Slow us up.
DAY: 29
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 400
“You don’t look so good.”
I opened my eyes. Tariq stood before me, hair still wet from showering. I sat on the fender of his truck. “Nice to see you, too,” I said.
“I wasn’t making a fashion judgment,” he said. “You look unhealthy. Were you asleep?”
“No,” I said, and didn’t offer an alternate explanation, because it would have gone something like this: I was trying to meditate my way back to the Spirit World beach where I met what might have been my sister or might have been a figment of my imagination. “And anyway you’d look rough, too, if you’d been shivering in the cold waiting for your closeted secret boyfriend to finish up being Mr. Soccer Star Man.”
“No one told you to wait out in the cold,” he said, and unlocked the doors. “Why are you mad at me?”
“I’m not,” I said and got in. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. You’re right—I’m not feeling so hot.” The shouts of post-practice locker room boasts echoed on his skin. His gym clothes were in his bag, on the seat between us, rank with the sweet scent of him. My powers were in full force. “I’m sorry.”
Irritability is another symptom of eating disorders.
“You want to do this some other time?”
“No,” I said sharply, then smiled. “I need this. We need this. Right?”
“Yeah,” he said and smiled back.
A date. A real live date. Like couples do.
Our destination? A diner, three towns to the south. Where no one would know us.
Tariq put the truck in drive. Once we were out of the parking lot, he took his right hand off the wheel and fumbled for my left one.
Hunger was a river, a surging primal force that had breached its banks and flooded me, making me into one long yelp of pain in which my stomach was merely the deepest spot. The sun was close to setting, and when I looked up I saw a sky full of black stars swelling and throbbing and bursting.
I rolled down the window and gulped cold air, tried that swallowing-the-energy-of-the-universe thing again. It didn’t do much for my pain. When I shut my eyes, the black stars didn’t go away.
“Tell me about your day,” I managed to croak.
“Practice was ridiculous,” he said, clearly relieved, and launched into a story.
That’s how we made it all the way to the thruway and south to Exit 20. He spoke, I nodded, attempted to make sounds like I was listening, like I wasn’t trying to keep a lid on the jerks and spasms my belly pains brought on.
“We should have picked a more romantic spot,” he said after we’d parked and walked into the busy diner, all clean chrome and dirty linoleum, where four glass coffeepots bubbled and steamed on the counter.
“Baby steps,” I said.
Every seat at the counter was occupied. All men, mostly middle-aged, frowning at their food. The oldest-looking one turned and watched us for what seemed like maybe a little too long.
A waitress showed us to a table.
“Y’all believe it’s dark so early?” she asked. A short, spry, aging thing.
“Crazy, right?” Tariq said.
“Solstice is close. After that, the days’ll start getting longer again. I’m a Wiccan, so I pay attention to things like that.”
“Two coffees,” Tariq said.
“I asked for a table, not your life story,” I muttered in her direction after she’d walked away.
Tariq frowned. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”
I was sure I wasn’t feeling okay. And coming had been a mistake. The place was full of food. Dead animals glistened and oozed on the plates of the people around us. Starches and fats shined in the fluorescent light. Butter and salt covered everything.
“It’s okay,” he said, leaning forward, putting one warm hand on my knee. “I’m scared, too.”
I was scared. I hadn’t realized it until he said so. But of what? These men, or the contents of the plates in front of them? Men didn’t just up and murder gay boys in diners. Did they?
I took Tariq’s hands.
“You’re freezing,” he said. We were silent a moment. Then Tariq said, “Matt. Please talk to me.”
I had to throw him off the trail of Matt is slowly killing himself in exchange for superpowers. “I want to find my dad,” I said, because Tariq knew something was up, and because maybe, just maybe, talking about it might help.
“What do you know about him?” he asked.
“Not much. Mom never talks about him.”
“What do you think happened after Maya connected with him?”
“I don’t know. How should I?”
Unfazed by my assholery, Tariq said, “I’m asking what you think. You don’t have a theory?”
I think they went back to his mansion or lavish Madison Avenue apartment, and she’s living the good life while Mom and I are miserable.
I think he kidnapped her.
I think he murdered her.
I think he told her lies and turned her against us.
I think she’s never coming home.
“I don’t think it was a cheerful family reunion,” I said. “Maya’s more the angry punishment type. She didn’t say anything to you about it?”
“Just that she had to make things right with her father. Why do you think it had to be something bad?”
“Because she abandoned us,” I said before thinking could talk me out of it.
Tariq nodded. We sat in silence and chewed on that for a while. Then food appeared in front of me. Where had it come from? Oh, right. Tariq. He had ordered. Time had passed. I looked at him, watched the healthy thoughtless way he put food into himself. His hair askew from the knit hat he’d been wearing.
“You ordered me chicken soup?”
“You said that was fine,” he said around a mouthful of pizza fries. “Anyway don’t they call it Jewish penicillin? The miracle cure of every Jewish family? You look like you’re in need of a miracle.”
“How do you know a thing like that?” I asked.