Skin and Bones Read online

  Calvin wondered, not for the first time, if being CRAP meant you were a little bit crazy. If allowing yourself to have feelings, like they said, was the definition of madness. “Where did you come from?” he asked the girl.

  “Womb-X,” she said, seemingly ashamed. She rolled onto one side, pulling her knees up, hugging them close, as if trying to disappear altogether.

  Calvin stared at the curve of her back. Perfect, unflawed. He’d purr her name if he knew it.

  He stepped lightly over her. She seemed confused to see him still there. “I hear there are others like us,” she said in a dreamy breath. “Up here. Hiding out.”

  He kneeled, his neoprene against her flesh. She too had removed her auditory phone. Wires dangled dangerously from her ear. But he couldn’t believe she’d disconnected her feeding tube.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  She looked starved.

  She unfolded her arms, straightening her legs. He bent down, gently inserting his tube through the slit in her uniform into her navel clamp, allowing his life juice to flow into her.

  They had to get away from here.

  The story was fascinating in part because it was so frightening. And it seemed a sign, albeit in a freakish way, that Bones wasn’t alone. It had to do with Calvin’s longing for the girl he’d just met, and like Bones and Alice, they were in the early stages of getting to know each other.

  “Chu Man wants to see you in his office,” Lard said, sauntering back in. “Since it’s your weekly progress report, try to act like someone who’s, you know, making progress.”

  18

  Today Dr. Chu wore a light blue shirt and navy blue tie. It looked like a grape Popsicle had detonated in his mouth and splattered his shirt with purple juice. His face was shiny with some kind of cream that made it impossible to look at him without squinting.

  He sat rigidly behind his desk thumbing through a thick file. Bones knew he was done for when Dr. Chu said, “I just finished a conference call with your parents.”

  Since Bones couldn’t look at him directly without blinking unnaturally, he focused on the tie. “It isn’t their fault that I’m in here,” he said.

  Dr. Chu didn’t change his expression. “I told them you were making progress,” he said.

  Bones nodded because it seemed the appropriate thing to do. Besides, what could he say? Another fifteen minutes and the gang would be on the roof smoking it up. “My parents feel responsible for me being in here, which doesn’t make me feel that great.”

  “Great?” Dr. Chu leaned forward, pen clicking. “Can you be more specific?”

  “You know, responsible. Guilty.”

  Bones wasn’t sure when feeling guilty had morphed into being guilty. Or when he’d started believing he didn’t deserve anything better. He’d hoped admitting this to himself would have made him feel better. It didn’t.

  Dr. Chu closed the file. “I’d like you to write your family a letter,” he said. “And tell them what you just told me.”

  Bones stared into his lap.

  “But you don’t have to send it. And you don’t have to show it to me—just let me know when it’s finished. Fair enough?”

  Bones did the nodding thing again. “Okay.”

  “Oh, and you should know, we’ve decided to increase your caloric intake…”

  (What a surprise!)

  “Gradually, to avoid unnecessary health issues…”

  (Fat is the new thin.)

  “You’ll have a choice of a fat-free protein bar or a milkshake with vitamins and minerals…”

  (Death by calories.)

  “…every afternoon,” Dr. Chu said.

  He might as well have said, Lean forward so I can hammer thumbtacks into your head.

  “How many calories?” Bones had to know.

  Dr. Chu’s mouth formed two zeros. “About one hundred.”

  A hundred calories equaled jogging in place twelve minutes.

  Bones took the stairs to the roof, bursting through the metal fire door. He sprinted over to Lard and Teresa, who were sitting on the edge of the tomato bed. Teresa’s jeans were looser than ever. She was drawing a peace sign on Lard’s Band-Aid.

  “How’d it go with Chu Man?” Lard asked. “Did you impress him with your humility? Toss out a few agonizing emotions?”

  Bones was still jogging; three minutes to go. “Something like that.”

  “That’s my man!”

  Bones glanced at the door hoping Alice would appear in a leotard and tights with a sheer skirt tied around her tiny waist, the afternoon sun casting light on her strawberry hair.

  Lard lit up and stared at the fat doobie between his fingers, as if the rich smoke came from the purest crop. That’s when Bones first suspected Lard was growing the stuff up here—maybe in with the tomatoes or hidden in pots behind old equipment.

  Lard took another hit and gave Bones a look of mock contempt. “Just so you know, it looks like the green beans will live.”

  Bones ramped up the last minute. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven…Then he sagged in a chair, waiting for his pulse to return to normal.

  Lard watched him rain sweat. “Don’t you like ever just kick back?”

  “Or want a snack?” Teresa asked. “It’s okay to be nice to yourself.”

  Ugh!

  To relieve the stress Lard struck a false posture of power a la Dr. Chu and his cohorts. “It’s okay to act out, son,” he said in a mockingly serious tone. “Since you suffer from ARRD, otherwise known as Anal Retentive Regressive Disorder.”

  “Constipation?” Bones joked back.

  “I said anal, not anus.”

  Teresa adopted an expression of concern. “Tell us about your fetishes, son.”

  “We want to help you psycho-bitch your babble.” Lard again. Then he slipped into his mellow stoned zone. “Relax, man. She’ll be here.”

  Bones got up and jogged back across the roof. He made his way down the stairs to the dayroom where Mary-Jane and Elsie were sitting with towels draped over their shoulders. It looked like they were coloring each other’s hair with tomato juice.

  “Anyone seen Alice?” Bones asked.

  Mary-Jane said, “No, sorry.”

  Elsie snipped, “She broke her leg and we had to shoot her.”

  She had the brain of an empty jar.

  Bones stood in front of Alice’s closed door. Doors were never closed. Never. Just then Unibrow came down the hall with a mop and bucket of cleaning supplies. “They wheeled her downstairs about an hour ago.”

  “Hasn’t she given enough blood?” Even as Bones said it he knew that wasn’t it. He backed away, a big pulse of sickness thudding through him.

  “That girl is a cardiac arrest looking for a place to happen,” Unibrow said. “Her heart was beating faster than the speed of sound.”

  Bones flew down the corridor. Downstairs. What did that mean? The emergency room? He rounded the corner and slammed into an orderly he’d never seen before. “Hey!” the guy said. “What’s the hurry?”

  Bones wasn’t about to stop to answer. When he reached the elevator, he frantically punched the down button. Come on! The door opened and he squeezed into a wall of people. Seconds later the doors opened onto a polished corridor marked emergency room.

  The waiting room was annoyingly sterile and notably more depressing than the EDU. Bones just stood inside looking around at people who clutched plastic numbers as if waiting in line at a bakery for a doughnut. A TV was tuned to the Shopping Network, blasting loud enough to make him think of earplugs, but it couldn’t drown out the wheezing moans and fear.

  He forced his feet in the direction of a chest-high window that kept the receptionist immune from bacteria. When he tapped on the glass a woman opened it from the other side. He thought she’d look more human without the hair net.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  Bones heard the whirring of life-saving machines behind her. “Alice,” he said too loud.

/>   Crap! What was her last name?

  Bones was beyond frantic. “They brought her down a few hours ago from the EDU.”

  “Oh, right. They took her—” She paused to type something into her computer.

  Took her where? OR? ICU? The morgue?

  She looked up, eyes narrowing. “Are you related?”

  He nodded. “Her brother.”

  “Yes, I see the resemblance,” she said, head tilted. “She’s on the sixth floor.”

  Bones didn’t bother to ask if she could have visitors. He knew the answer, no. He hit the elevator and got off on the sixth floor with its impersonal hallway and infinite linoleum. He rushed blindly past a nurse’s station void of nurses.

  Crap, he’d forgotten to ask the receptionist for Alice’s room number. He took endless turns, peeking in and out of rooms. Oxygen tents. Respirators. Tubes in arms, noses, mouths. Everyone looked scared to death.

  Bones found Alice in a room with a single bed. The startling paleness of her skin, smooth and light as if she’d been swimming in mayonnaise. Yet her cheekbones were too pronounced, her skin as transparent as parchment paper. She lay smothered in blankets. Light came in through the blinds, cutting her into slats.

  He stood in the doorway, wondering about the many machines. An IV ran into Alice’s right arm, linking her with a bag of clear liquid. Her left arm had what looked like a blood pressure cuff. It connected to a machine with a digital screen that flashed her heart rate, blood pressure, and a number he didn’t understand.

  Bones watched Alice purr before he took a quiet step inside. He was so relieved at seeing her he could barely breathe. He watched the line of her heart rate rise and dip into valleys. Beep, beep, beep. He couldn’t imagine losing her—his love, his life—after he’d just begin to live himself.

  Her eyelids fluttered lightly. A finch fallen from its nest.

  “Alice?” he whispered, now beside her bed.

  “Bones?” Her voice was thin.

  When he held her limp hand, she squeezed back. “Are you okay?” He inhaled her sweet air. “How’re you feeling?”

  “That depends.” She smiled, her eyes still closed. “How do I look?”

  “Like a delicately carved bird.”

  “Come closer,” she whispered.

  “Okay.” But he couldn’t get any closer without climbing over the bedrail.

  “Tell me a story, Bones,” she said, her eyelashes watering. “Something to take me away from here.”

  Bones would do anything she asked, although he was lousy when it came to telling jokes or stories. Then he thought about a kid named Calvin who wore a neoprene wetsuit and risked imprisonment to play his guitar. He told Alice what he knew about Calvin’s love for a beautiful girl. How they struggled to survive after the present world was destroyed by who knew what?

  Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead.

  “What’re you doing there?” she said, teasing him.

  “Uh, I didn’t want to mess up your lipstick?”

  Alice smiled again, a nervous little twitch. He’d never hungered for her more.

  Bones was about to tell her the rest of what he knew about CRAP when the line on the screen spiked.

  “Alice?”

  No answer.

  Alice?

  Nothing.

  Wake up!

  Suddenly two sumo wrestlers in nurses’ uniforms stormed the room screaming medical stuff he didn’t understand, although, “What the hell are you doing in here?” seemed clear enough.

  Bones stepped back cringing when the biggest nurse jabbed Alice’s arm with a needle. He looked back at the screen, watching the ping-pong ball that was her heartbeat. He began praying inside, barely breathing. After an eternity the line evened out, slowly at first, like a simmer.

  “What’s wrong with her?” He was crying now.

  “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing in here,” the nurse spat with an accusing look. “But you have to leave.”

  “Alice—” He had to say her name, say good-bye.

  “Now.”

  Bones breathed in Alice’s air again before backing out of the room. He was in the hall just outside her door when one of the wrestlers barreled out, nearly knocking him down. “Do I have to call security?”

  “I’m leaving,” Bones muttered.

  Then he retraced his steps back to the fourth floor.

  He couldn’t get his brain around what had happened to her. Just last night he’d helped her sneak off the ward to rehearse—watched her fly up and down stairs, skim the landings in pink satin, never breaking a sweat.

  Bones approached the dayroom slowly, surprised to hear what sounded like a meeting in progress, not even caring that he was done for if he missed one. He hugged the wall, peeking around the corner.

  Lard sat on the couch next to Teresa.

  “She suffered heart failure…” Nancy was saying.

  Bones let out the air he’d been holding in. Alice’s air. Heads turned at the sound. For a terrible moment everything was quiet; nothingness filled the space. All he could do was stare back.

  Alice.

  They’re talking about Alice.

  Bones tried to get his shoes in a forward motion, wondering where his balance had gone.

  Nancy caught his eye. “She died a week before her thirty-third birthday—”

  Bones didn’t hear what came next. He staggered to a chair and fell into it choked by relief.

  Not Alice. Not Alice. Not Alice.

  They had to be talking about Eve.

  “The coroner said she died because of heartbeat irregularities brought on by chemical imbalances,” Nancy said. “They also cited cachexia—meaning extremely low weight and weakness.”

  Mary-Jane sat with her feet on a chair, chin on her knees. “Why couldn’t her doctors do something?”

  “Karen was still using laxatives,” Nancy went on. “Even while she was under the care of a psychotherapist—”

  Karen?

  Bones finally got it.

  They were talking about that singer from the 1970s—her story was legendary in therapy groups like this. But he knew this wasn’t about Karen Carpenter. Not really. It was about Alice. That’s why Nancy had called the meeting.

  “Anyways,” Elsie said. “I heard she gained thirty pounds in two months.”

  Nicole rocked in her chair. “Maybe it was the shock of her body trying to be normal that killed her.”

  “That’s too much at one time,” Teresa said. “No one’s body can handle that.”

  “Could something like that happen to Alice?” Nicole asked.

  “It’s impossible to know,” Nancy said.

  The room grew quiet.

  And suddenly Bones understood.

  Alice couldn’t lose anymore weight.

  Not now.

  Not ever.

  19

  Lard stormed around their room, his combat boots seriously attacking linoleum. His face was so red Bones thought his cheeks would burst from the pressure. Splat. Blood vessels all over the aggressively sterile walls. He opened his journal, took out Alice’s phony menus, and threw them at Bones.

  “Do you think I give a shit that you lied to me about the fucking green beans?” Anger spread like a fever down his neck. His eyes were magnified behind his glasses. “YOU ALMOST KILLED HER, DICKHEAD!”

  Bones looked around helplessly, completely lost. He wanted to stop the clock, give himself a second chance to do it over again. Rewind his trip to the kitchen; bypass the box on the counter with the menus. All he could do was stare at the floor and try to picture Alice back on the ward.

  “You think I don’t know that you two meet every night? And exercise like sick fucks? But did I say anything about it? No. None of my business, I told myself while she got skinny enough to thread through a needle.”

  Bones knew he did this to her.

  All by myself.

  “You were there when I refused to substitute those menus.” Lard punch
ed the air. “You heard me say it was suicide.”

  I’m going to be sick.

  “I thought you cared about her, man. I thought you loved her.”

  “Stop it!” Bones ran to the bathroom.

  Lard chased him, pummeling the fake wood door. “I’m not finished!”

  Bones barely got his pants down, falling backward on the toilet seat, grasping at the waste can. His body erupted in a brown explosion from one end, dry heaves from the other. He flushed and flushed wishing he could go down with the mess.

  The next voice he heard was Unibrow’s. “What’s going on in there?” he called through the door.

  “Get lost!” Bones shouted back.

  “Open up!”

  “No!”

  Bones hit the shower to scrub off the stink of panic and worry and guilt.

  Lard was right.

  I could have killed her!

  Until his last meeting with Dr. Chu, Bones hadn’t spent that much time thinking about guilt. Sure he felt bad about his family. But the guilt he felt about Alice was all consuming, like a million needles injecting poison into his heart.

  Guilt.

  An invisible tattoo scarring him for life.

  Lard was gone when he came out of the bathroom. Unibrow stood in his place. “Guess that door’s going to have to come off its hinges.”

  “Bring on the screwdrivers,” Bones said.

  “Chu isn’t going to like this,” Unibrow said on his way out.

  Bones didn’t know what to do. He collapsed in his chair and stared at the letter he’d started to his parents. He’d gone on and on, thanking them for getting him up for school every morning, for staying a safe distance back when he went trick-or-treating. Bullshit like that.

  He tore the page from his notebook, crumpled it into a ball, and flung it on the floor. None of that stuff mattered now. He stared at a new page, trying to remember when he’d started telling his friends he was allergic to pizza then eating the crust they tossed back in the box. Or standing in front of the fridge obsessing over a doggie bag brought home by his parents. Sixth grade. Maybe seventh. That was around the time he thought calories in other people’s food didn’t count.

  His sister had been right. His sister had been right when she told him that everyone suffers damage on some level—just from being on the planet. The bigger issue was how people cope. Do they admit it, deal with it, and move on? Or numb themselves with drugs? Food? Or spend the rest of their lives shielding themselves from the Valerie Willendorfs of the world?