Skin and Bones Read online

  He saw himself in the hall when he first got here—watching himself as he dragged his duffel over the highly polished linoleum—watching his mom as she leaned unsteadily against the reception desk—seeing his cowardly self too chickenshit to look back for one last good-bye.

  He was terrified to tell his family how not eating made him feel. How many hours he’d spent lying on his back with a ruler balanced on his hipbones. How he pictured a battalion of Pacmen marching inside his body, chomping away. How he’d awake to the sound of his stomach growling, ecstatic because it meant his body was eating itself.

  If Bones’s parents knew the whole disgusting truth about his relationship with his body, he’d be locked up longer than six weeks. And it’d be a different kind of hospital. Lard droned on, a head-splitting buzz saw. The entire hospital could barf its guts out in the ward and no one would hear them.

  God, Bones needed a scale. Bad. He dropped to the floor and alternated crunches with push-ups. Within twenty minutes he was drowning in a pool of sweat. His body was doing what it did best—dissolving itself. The ultimate liquidation.

  Then he crawled into bed and passed out.

  The next day Bones rolled over in the too bright, too loud morning. He got dressed and sauntered down the too bright hallway. He was setting up a card table when he noticed a piece of paper taped to the table’s underside. The lined paper appeared torn from someone’s journal. The note itself was partially printed in pen and more hurriedly scribbled in smudged pencil, like it had been written at different times.

  Bones undid the tape, careful not to rip the paper.

  It was Calvin Webb who saved specie homo sapiens. All by strumming his guitar. No electric cords. No amplifiers. No distortion peddles. Just the sweet hum of calluses skimming steel strings.

  He lost himself in solo rehearsals for a band he’d heard about—a gang called CRAP (Criminally Rebellious Adolescent Population), kids about his age rumored to have run away, setting up camp in some crumbling 20th century hospital. Supposedly, like him, they played illegal instruments ripped off from the state depository: assorted brass and drums, a piano with non-synthetic keys.

  Calvin longed to join them.

  Bones put the paper in his pocket, wondering who’d written it.

  People wandered in slowly while Unibrow delivered breakfast trays. Bones wondered if Eve’s absence meant she’d overslept. Or if she’d been discharged like she’d said. Then he wondered what part of the hospital Alice was in and wished he’d paid more attention to the map in the lobby.

  Teresa and the new girl, another bulimic named Mary-Jane, mumbled while they ate, their heads down in conspiracy.

  From what he could overhear, all of the guys they’d dated dumped them after finding out they threw up after said date had paid for a meal. Guess they were annoyed to find out their hard-earned dollars were being flushed down the toilet.

  “Jerks,” Teresa said.

  Mary-Jane played with the fake braid clipped above her ear. “Assholes.”

  Lard didn’t say much when he ate because he was really into his food. He actually liked it. Bones rolled on his gloves. He didn’t say much either, partly because he never talked with food in his mouth, but mainly because he didn’t want to do anything to make the ordeal last longer than necessary.

  Bones gagged on the disgusting sounds of people chewing. The rest of his egg-soaked toast would fit in his pocket if Unibrow and a nurse he’d never seen before weren’t circling the tables. He stared at his hands. His fingers were getting fatter. Another forty-three minutes and there wasn’t anything left on his plate but half a grapefruit rind.

  “I could’ve remained a wonderfully content anorexic with a future as an attic crawler,” Bones said.

  Lard looked confused.

  “The guys who work in attics fixing insulation and stuff,” Bones said, then joked, “or maybe I could’ve been a laxative salesman.”

  Lard smirked. “You’d soil your skivvies, man.”

  “That’s why washing machines were invented,” Mary-Jane added.

  Bones wanted to die.

  He needed a red M&M.

  When most of the plates were empty, Unibrow and the nurse let down their guards, chatting in the corner. Bones took a chance and stashed two knives under his shirt, praying like hell no one in the kitchen counted utensils.

  9

  Most of the time, most of the girls wore pajamas to group session. Bones had to admit he liked it. Today, though, Teresa had on jeans that hung a little loose and a sweatshirt that read Worries Go Better with Bagels. She’d done something fluffy with her hair and had on lip gloss. She sat next to Lard, her thigh touching his. He seemed okay with it.

  Bones thought of Alice and wondered if she always wore tights. They were so thin, almost like a delicate layer of skin. It suddenly seemed so simple he was surprised he hadn’t thought of it before. Having a girlfriend who looked at the world the same way he did was just what he needed to improve his mood.

  “Who finished their writing assignment about emotions?” Dr. Chu asked.

  “Part of it,” said Sarah, a girl who reminded Bones of a friend of his sister’s because she also used her sunglasses like a headband.

  “Sort of,” said Nicole, a girl his age with braces.

  “Anyways, I finished mine then went to get a snack,” Elsie said, as obnoxious as ever. “And a mouse ate it. Then a cat ate the mouse. Like, seriously, I checked the litter box.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Dr. Chu passed around rainbow markers. “Reread your assignment, then highlight every word or passage that expresses a feeling.” He emphasized feeling with air quotes.

  “Literally or figuratively.”

  “What is this anyways?” Elsie asked. “Dumbbell English?”

  “I don’t mean to be disrespectful,” Mary-Jane added. Her feet were on the rung of her chair, knees poking through intentionally ripped pj’s. “But what’s the point?”

  Dr. Chu had a far-off look, like he was trying to come up with an intelligent answer. “Consider the word sorrow,” he said. “It might mean a person is depressed or maybe heartbroken. Using general terms to describe a feeling can remove you from a more intimate experience of said emotion. So whenever possible, try to be specific.”

  It was hard to listen to someone who continually talked out of his ass. Especially someone with gravy stains on his tie.

  “Who’d like to share?”

  Lard frowned, took off his glasses, rubbed his nose.

  Bones picked lint off his sweats. Teresa bent forward like she might have something to say then changed her mind and leaned back.

  Sarah chewed on the tip of her sunglasses. “I used to go to the market and fill my cart with food I wasn’t going to buy,” she said, speaking up. “I’d walk up and down the aisle eating about a million doughnuts then stash the empty boxes.”

  Bones listened, even though he’d heard plenty of stories like hers. “I scarfed down all that food without tasting it—without really seeing it. I don’t know how to explain it…”

  Sarah positioned her glasses back on her head and glanced at Dr. Chu. He nodded for her to go on.

  “It was like some twisted high,” she said. “Stashing the empty boxes was the same as pretending the doughnuts had never existed. Like I never ate them in the first place.”

  This realization made Bones more sympathetic to her particular illness, even though, technically, she’d been shoplifting, not that he cared.

  Most people thought anorexics didn’t eat at all. We eat too! he wanted to shout. Just not the same as the rest of you. Standing at the kitchen scraping macaroni from the pot because standing-up-eating calories count less than sitting-at-the-table calories. Stealing a bite of chocolate cake off his sister’s plate because those calories count less than when they’re on your own plate.

  He thought about his sister’s birthday party a couple of years ago when her friends came over for cheesecake. He’d only taken a bite
before shoving his plate aside. “I’d pay a million dollars for your self-control,” Amanda had said. She’d been Jill’s best friend since kindergarten. Before that, she’d hardly said two words to him.

  “I’d trade my SAT scores to be skinny,” another friend jumped in. “I just don’t have any will power when it comes to dessert.”

  “Highest bidder wins,” Bones said, soaking up the attention.

  Amanda had squeezed his arm affectionately, as if pinching off bits of will power. It made him feel important, because he had something she wanted. That had never happened to him before.

  After that he began eliminating certain things from his diet. Not all at once, but slowly. Within a couple of months he was living on grapefruit, low-fat yogurt, and M&M’s. That kind of self-control was intoxicating. Just another couple of pounds, he kept telling himself. Then another couple to make sure he had a cushion.

  Bones weighed himself constantly, thrilled as the numbers dipped below normal. He was making his own rules and it felt great. Pretty soon girls at his school began to notice. “Have you seen Jack?” he heard them whisper in the halls. “How do you think he did it?”

  Bones had never felt such power.

  He was happily addicted.

  Sarah was still talking. “I’d be so depressed I’d sit in my car and throw up in a plastic bucket.” Then she started talking super fast, like she had to get it all out or die. “I’d tell myself it was the last time, but—”

  Elsie nodded, like she got it. “The only way to be noticed in this town is to be skinny.”

  “It’s hard not to buy into that crap when everything in our society is either black or white,” Nicole said. “Good or bad. Fat or thin.”

  “We have to find middle ground,” Mary-Jane said. “And stop obsessing about our screw-ups.”

  Teresa hugged her knees. She was staring out the window at something that wasn’t there. “I know why I’m fat,” she said quietly. “And I think I understand why I turned to food to—” She choked herself off.

  Bones glanced at her sideways.

  “I, uh, I didn’t want guys to like me. I didn’t want anyone to touch me again. Ever. Like that dirtbag who used to live next door. I babysat his kids…and this one night he came home early without his wife.

  “I was on the couch watching a rerun of a dumb show about models. He stood behind me, which was creepy enough. Then he started rubbing my neck, asking me about school and stuff. I was terrified…”

  Teresa wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  Nicole passed her a tissue.

  Everyone waited.

  The air was being sucked from the room.

  “Afterward, I ran home and told my mom.”

  Lard reached for her hand but she pulled it away.

  “She rocked me and whispered, Hush, Angelita, hush.” Teresa took another tissue, trying not to let her voice shake. “The next morning Mom wouldn’t look at me, like she was suddenly ashamed of me or something. She made me promise not to tell anyone…” She dropped her head into her hands. “He took something away from me, and my mom let him do it.”

  “Fucking creep,” Elsie said. “And your mom—I can’t believe she treated you like that.”

  Bones wished he could say something to help. This wasn’t the first time he realized he’d spent too much time alone with his own thoughts, overanalyzing things to the point that he couldn’t think or act like a normal person. His shoulders rose and fell. He tried to look—what? Sympathetic?

  Yeah, that was it.

  Nicole shook her head and shrugged. “God.”

  Lard took off his glasses to rub his eyes.

  Teresa let her hands fall into her lap. “That’s when I started pushing people away. Guess it worked because my friends stopped calling—not because I’d gotten fat—but because I spent every afternoon in front of the TV eating ice cream from the carton with a soup spoon.

  “When I got tired of being alone it was too late. All those years gorging on take-out in the middle of the night…I was stuck in this crazy cycle of using food to make me feel better,” she said quietly. “Guess I was a victim—a victim of myself.”

  Dr. Chu got up when Teresa looked like she was going to dissolve into herself. “You’re a survivor,” he said gently. “Not a victim.”

  Teresa wiped snot and tears with the back of her hand. “On my last birthday I decided I wasn’t going to let that asshole control my life. So I wrote him a letter, tore it up, dropped it in the toilet, and peed on it.”

  Bones thought she was the bravest person he’d ever met.

  10

  Something must have happened because the next day Lard blew his top. He kicked over the wastebasket, sending an empty cracker box across the floor. “You know what I said about my mom? She wasn’t in a commune. That was pure unadulterated bullshit. She’s a second grade teacher at Northridge Elementary School. You want to know the truth about my dad?”

  Bones closed his magazine. “I guess. What’s up?”

  “I’ve been thinking about Teresa, man. You know, what she went through.” His nose dripped and his glasses steamed up. “She had the guts to tell the truth about what happened to her, so I thought I’d tell someone about my dad. Unless you’re too fucking busy.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Lard’s fists were two boxing gloves. “He’s number 87305. Cellblock 11. Folsom State Prison. A shit-for-brains loser who forges checks because he thinks he’s too good for a regular job.”

  Bones said the only thing he could think of. “Want to hit the roof?”

  “Oh, crap. We’re supposed to go on an outing, like five minutes ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Who knows?”

  The so-called outing turned out to be a fifteen-minute walk to the drugstore to buy toothpaste, deodorant, and other necessities. It was one of those postcard days—the sky clear and the temperature in the upper-seventies—and it felt good to get away from the hospital.

  Bones was surprised Dr. Chu had given him permission to go with the others, especially since he wasn’t allowed to exercise. The thought of his impending first official weigh-in hung over him like a large, looming shadow in the fires of anorexic hell.

  When they got to the store, Bones made an excuse for not going inside. “Forgot my wallet,” he said.

  The truth was Bones didn’t trust himself to be around diet pills, diuretics, and laxatives, knowing he could probably hide them in his shoes or socks.

  Bones found a bench and caught sight of his distorted reflection in the window. He stared into the glass, reenacting his wildest fantasies about Alice, until Nancy walked into the picture, staking out the cash register, a benevolent yet formidable guard. Three was definitely a crowd.

  Lard and Teresa strolled out carrying small bags, followed by Lard. “I picked up the new Weight Watchers,” he said.

  Bones got up from the bench. “Thanks, I’ll pay you back.”

  “No need, my man.”

  Back in the ward, Bones, Lard, and Teresa set up the Scrabble board. Still no Alice. Bones was looking for a place to play C-O-V-E-T when he heard the familiar rub of Nancy’s pantyhose. She gave Bones an envelope. “Something from home,” she said. “Your sister dropped it off.”

  “Thanks.” He thought the no-personal-visit rule during the first month was ridiculous.

  “Sorry, guys.” He scooted his chair back and headed to his room, ripping open the envelope. The stationery smelled like his sister. Vanilla. He sat on his bed, relishing every word:

  Hey there, little brother. Miss us? Mom has been more compulsive than ever since you left. As if heading two nonprofits isn’t enough, she started volunteering at the library, which means there’s never time for us to just sit down and talk. Only one of a million reasons why I miss you! She’s been checking out books about eating disorders. Guess we’re all trying to understand what happened to our favorite guy and what we can do to help him. Dad’s been his crazy workaholic self so I’m feeling more
like an orphan than ever. I know you’ve only been gone six days, but I miss not having anyone to torture. Write back soon, okay? Love you tons!

  Your big sis, Jill.

  P.S. Can’t wait to see you on Family Night!

  When Bones shoved the letter in a bottom drawer of his desk, he noticed a wad of paper. He smoothed it out on his desk:

  Calvin hunkered over his rusty handlebars, pedaling his ten-speed above the transit tube that linked one underground metropolis to the next. Up here in the screwed-up ozone, all was as quiet as the day personal responsibility became illegal.

  He sweated inside his black wetsuit, black skullcap, black combat boots, hoping all this blackness would help him blend into the inky night.

  Another curfew violation and he’d get a permanent ankle monitor—an umbilical cord of the invisible kind, making sure His Excellence knew his whereabouts 24/7, as if he and everyone weren’t spied on constantly as it was.

  Calvin rode back to his zone, a dark figure among rats with gray, expressionless faces. North America had the biggest rodent population in the world, all those subterranean sewers.

  He held fast to his handlebars and the belief that there were others like him who resisted the state’s insipid laws; others who risked punishment to express themselves in any way they chose; others who thought that what a person dreamt was more important than endless essays that tested how little a person remembered about his past.

  Other times he wasn’t so sure. If only there was evidence beyond whispers during blackouts. He wondered if the world’s enemy was real or imagined. Who knew in a society where lies were truth and truth was unknown?

  Bones remembered the other part of the story. He wasn’t sure where this piece fit in—but he was intrigued by Calvin and his collapsing world—and wondered if more of the story was stashed on the ward. He went to his closet, searched his pockets, and fastened the two installments together.

  He was putting the pages in his drawer when he noticed Lard had left his lunchbox behind. What’s in that thing anyway? He was about to take a peek when Lard startled him from behind. Bones knew he was busted.