Skin and Bones Read online

  Bones nearly backed down. But if he didn’t get it out now, he never would. “There’d be all this room in my head for other things to obsess about,” he said. “It might be fun to find out what they’d be.”

  They got up and walked to the edge of the roof, peering through the chain-link fence. Bones shivered inside his sweats and wool beanie. His eyes watered. His nose ran. He sniffled while connecting stars into mythical monsters. It would’ve been scary if the sky wasn’t so beautiful. Bones couldn’t believe no one else was with them to see it. Alice seemed just as mesmerized.

  Even though they stood close to each other, he felt like he was on the outside of a snow globe, admiring her perfection inside. Alice must’ve sensed him staring at her because she started telling him stuff, and it was like they were stepping into the most magical part of their relationship, and in the sharing, the magic was bringing him slowly inside the globe with her.

  “My mom was pissed when she got pregnant and not just because she gained sixty pounds. Stretch marks and sagging boobs were a serious setback in her career,” she said. “My parents never forgave me for choosing ballet over acting. It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t dance, but it’s like being in another world. Just me and the music.”

  She stood still and played with the fringe on her scarf. “Nothing else matters, Bones. Nothing. Not eating or sleeping or parents with screwed-up priorities or grades and all that school bullshit.”

  He used to feel that way about lifting weights. Just him alone in his bedroom, head to toe in heavy fleece, space heaters cranked on high. Now that’s how he felt about Alice. She mattered more than anything.

  Her biggest secret, she said, was that she’d pretended to be the perfect daughter while really hating her mom and dad, and they pretended to be perfect parents while being unforgiving of her failures, and her biggest fear of all was that she’d end up being just as phony as they were.

  “You could never be—”

  She stopped him. “It’s okay, Bones, I know who I am.”

  They stood there for a while in the crisp night without talking. Below, streetlamps glowed amber. Brake lights flashed. An ambulance screamed by. Just being with her like this made him happy. He didn’t know what to say anyway.

  “There’s a bus stop in front of the hospital,” Alice said, pressing into him. “You can go just about anywhere from here.”

  Bones pressed back. Being aroused could be so awkward.

  “Wouldn’t it be fun to get on a bus and not know where you’d end up?” she asked.

  Bones didn’t answer because he wasn’t sure if she was inviting him. He willed his arm upward, letting it hover over her shoulder, wanting to touch her, but not sure he should. He hoped she wouldn’t turn abruptly, and lose an eye to his elbow.

  She turned to him abruptly. Even in the dark her gaze was intense. “I’m either in class or rehearsing for a studio performance or exhausted from class and rehearsing and sleeping. It’s like that twenty-four-seven. I don’t have time for anything else. But if I ever thought it was possible to have—you know, a boyfriend…”

  Bones tried to appear nonchalant, but the word boyfriend had so much power he knew he was in danger of tripping, falling through the fence, dropping headfirst ten stories to the sidewalk. Another Romeo bites the dust.

  “And not just because I think skinny is sexy.” She shivered against the cold. “But because you’re skinny and cute.”

  They strolled back to the chairs and snuggled under the same blanket and the astonishingly romantic sky—her smoking and him not doing anything but thinking how much he loved her—and on fire because she’d just called him sexy.

  “I had your room last summer,” she said quietly.

  That set off a whole new set of fantasies in his head.

  “I hid something in there. Could you look for me?”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “Blank hospital menus,” she said.

  Bones knew the significance of having something like that. “Where did you get them?”

  “Someone I hung out with.”

  Bones felt a twinge of jealousy wondering who’d take such a risk for her.

  “I wrapped them in plastic,” she said.

  Lard and Teresa ambled back to the chairs holding hands. Lard’s glasses had fogged up. He wiped them repeatedly. His hulk of a body was overheated and making endless steam.

  No one asked what time it was, but they knew they had to go back. Bones wanted to walk Alice to her room, sit with her in the dark, stroke her hair until she fell asleep. But he knew it was safer if they split up. Alice and Teresa took the elevator. Bones and Lard headed for the stairs.

  The EDU was a tomb. Their room dark. Lard hit the bed hard, kicking off his boots and stripping to his shorts. “Teresa and I might be a couple. I like to cook and she likes to eat. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

  With that he was asleep, a buzz saw in need of WD-40.

  The depressing part of waking up to the sun blasting through a summer window was knowing you couldn’t hit the beach. Lard woke up slowly and growled, a bear coming out of hibernation. “My mouth tastes like the inside of an old shoe.” He muttered his way to the bathroom.

  Bones had already been up for an hour searching for the blank menus Alice had mentioned. He’d checked the underside of both beds, thinking she might have wedged them between the mattress and box springs. He’d shined a light on the inside of the closet door and checked behind Lard’s bulletin board, where he found another piece of CRAP.

  Near the opening above his family’s unit, Calvin heard the unmistakable melody of a human voice. Who else would defy the curfew ordinance? He dared to ask, “Who’s there?”

  No answer.

  Calvin swung off his bike, worked the front wheel into the rubble. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m CRAP. Like certifiably.”

  Then he saw her. A girl about his age, lying on her back with arms crossed over her chest. What shocked him most was the neglect of her uniform, which appeared to be sending a message to His Excellence—UP YOURS—a phrase a kid in his History Is Dead class used.

  Calvin smiled at the girl. “Are you okay?”

  She moaned.

  “What’s your name?”

  Finely spun hair framed the most exquisite face he’d ever seen. But her eyes were grave, staring. He’d seen that expression but had never figured out if it was hope, longing, or fear. Her unruly presence gave him courage to talk to her.

  “Are you CRAP?”

  She moaned louder and sank into herself.

  “Lard!” Bones called.

  Lard stuck his head out of the bathroom, holding the side of his neck. “You better not be messing with Woody!”

  “Nah, Buzz is my man. So listen to this.” He read him the first few paragraphs. “I’ve been finding pages like this all over the ward. Who do you think wrote it?”

  “George was working on a novel,” Lard said. “Is it science fiction?”

  “Yeah. Why would he hide it?”

  “Maybe so Dr. Chu wouldn’t find it?” Lard said, still clutching his neck. “Do you have any self-tanner?”

  “Nah, it turns my skin orange.”

  Lard dropped his hand, revealing a hickey.

  Bones laughed. “How about a Band-Aid?”

  “Okay.”

  Dr. Chu had called a special meeting so they could process what had happened during the snafu of Family Night. Predictably, he wanted them to express their feelings. But everyone was too emotionally rung out. As a consolation he asked if they had any grievances.

  Elsie was quick to point out how ridiculous it was to go to bed at ten o’clock on weekends. Dr. Chu very generously agreed to extend lights out to eleven on Saturday nights. But when asked if they could sleep in Sunday mornings, he said, “We’ll see,” which always meant no.

  17

  Three days had passed since Bones and Alice, Lard and Teresa had hung out on the roof. If Dr. Chu knew
they had sneaked out after curfew, he didn’t call them on it. Maybe he thought they needed to decompress after such a FUBAR of a family session and trusted them enough to know they hadn’t left hospital grounds. Or maybe he needed to decompress himself.

  Bones’s sister sent him one of those antiquated communications systems known as a postcard. It pictured a sprawling orange grove. When life sucks like lemons, hold out for Florida oranges. He found a funny one in the gift shop. I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy it.

  Other than therapy sessions and endless writing exercises that began Dear Fear, Dear Fat, or Dear Comfort Food and great mental anguish during meals, Bones spent most of his free time helping Alice prepare for her audition. He could tell she was growing stronger every day.

  “I won’t be a principal dancer at first,” she’d explained one afternoon in her room. “But that’s okay, as long as I’m dancing.”

  Bones filmed.

  Alice critiqued.

  She explained the French names of movements with a pure and radiant smile that glistened with sweat. Battement meant to beat. Piqué to prick. Port de bras wasn’t what Bones had hoped—as in, does it hook in font or in back? It meant how the arms moved.

  After lights out, sometimes at two in the morning, sometimes three or four depending on the night staff and whether or not it was Unibrow, Bones moved Alice’s bed so she had room to turn.

  One night she showed up in his room in the dark. “Wake up, Bones,” she said, shaking him gently. “Follow me—I need a back rub.”

  Another night he and Alice sneaked out of the ward and down the back stairs. They were nearly spotted in the lobby by a security guard but Alice saw him first. “Quick!” she whispered, dragging Bones into a storage room. They huddled in the dark listening to the sound of fading footsteps. Then Bones filmed her in front of the gift shop while she did amazing leap things. Mannequins smiled through tempered glass.

  Before saying good night, he’d hold her hummingbird feet while she did crunches. Afterward she’d ride his back while he sweated out push-ups. Each tête–à–tête filled him with longing. He knew Alice was part of him and always would be. He’d been put on this planet to be with her.

  “Was it good for you?” she asked, collapsing from exhaustion.

  His cup runneth over.

  The next weigh-in was worse than the first.

  The room was a walk-in freezer.

  Bones was a block of ice.

  This time he was commando under his gown. Utterly defenseless. No weight belt, stainless steel cutlery, or lead pellets lurking in his seams. He pinched the back of his gown further embarrassed because Nancy was in charge of his exam.

  “Take a deep breath and let it out slowly,” she said, stethoscope pressed against his chest. “You okay?”

  He couldn’t stop shaking. “Sure.”

  She slapped a blood pressure cuff on his arm, took his temperature, made a note, and told him to step on the scales. Fear tangled his legs, trying to crush his bones. What if he’d gained weight? Worse still, what if he’d lost weight? Then Dr. Chu would raise his calories even more. A lose-lose situation.

  Nancy touched his arm gingerly. “One small step…”

  Bones closed his eyes against bold numbers. He stepped up, froze. Metal burned the soles of his feet. The sound of clicking rattled in his ears. Little bullets aimed at his brain. What kind of lies would the scales tell this time?

  “Dr. Chu will be pleased,” she said.

  Bones stepped down, shivering. Nancy had returned the sliding weight to zero. “How much?” he asked.

  “Dr. Chu will go over the results with you.”

  “Can’t you tell me?”

  “Sorry, Bones.”

  “But it’s my body,” he said.

  “You’ll have to talk to the doctor.”

  What did that mean?

  Bones didn’t want to think about his body fat or fat body and he sure as shit didn’t want to talk about it. He was more than willing to join a particularly vicious game of Scrabble in the dayroom.

  Lard and Teresa were nestled on the couch intense over their tiles. Alice sat cross-legged in the easy chair; her ballet skirt hiked over her knees. She frowned, thumbing through the Scrabble dictionary. “I know derriere is a word.”

  Lard looked up. “What’s that, Spanish?”

  “French,” she said. “As in, I tripped over one of your bad jokes and fell on my derriere.”

  Teresa added an R, E, and Y to Lard’s C-O-V-E-R making it R-E-C-O-V-E-R-Y. “Twenty-three points,” she said. “Your turn, Bones. And Alice? Foreign words don’t count.” Alice shrugged, deep in the dictionary.

  “I don’t know why you cheat,” Lard said. “You’d beat us anyway.”

  “Battement,” Bones said the French word meaning beating.

  Alice grinned at him. “Impressive.”

  “Cheating,” Lard repeated.

  “It’s not cheating.” Her smoked almond eyes scanned the board. “Just implementing creative strategy.”

  Bones focused on his X. O-X, A-X-E, or C-O-X. He needed an N for A-N-O-R-E-X-I-C, which would move his score closer to Alice’s, and more importantly, thoroughly impress her with his skill and intelligence.

  Bones counted the Ns on the board. “Pass,” he said, turning in three tiles. He drew a T, S, and a blank. T-O-X-I-C S-E-X.

  “Guess what?” Alice told Bones. “I found those blank menus I told you about. Apparently furniture was moved around a couple of months ago during an E. coli outbreak.”

  “Most strains are harmless,” Lard said.

  “So hey,” she said, leaning into Lard. “I need a favor.”

  He took off his glasses and worked at a particularly stubborn smudge. A high-calorie-food byproduct, no doubt. “Forget it.”

  Alice pulled a menu from her journal and laid it on the board. It was obvious she’d filled it out herself: vegetable broth, 15 calories; strawberry Jell-O, 14 calories; 1 saltine cracker, 13 calories. “Just substitute it for tomorrow’s dinner.”

  “That’s a starvation diet, Alice,” Lard said, reading from the sheet. “As in suicide.”

  “It’s my body,” she said. “Besides, do you think I’d hurt myself? With auditions coming up?”

  He shook his head. “You can’t live on this.”

  “Just another five pounds,” she said in a voice that was both entreating and vulnerable.

  “Right. Then another five. Same old story and you’re back in ICU. Sorry, Alice, I’m not Dr. Kevorkian.”

  “What do you know about it? You think it’s easy to train without a studio? That’d be like you trying to cook without a stove. Shit, I don’t even have a decent mirror, and I have to use the bed for a barre.”

  “Fame…” he muttered.

  “Now who’s being a pompous ass?” Alice dumped her tiles on the board before knocking the whole thing on the floor. “Sometimes I just hate you!”

  “Yeah, well.” Lard stood up quietly. “Teresa, wanna help prep dinner?”

  Teresa studied the scattered alphabet, evidence of how quickly life on the ward could turn sour. “Okay.”

  “God, I need a cigarette,” Alice said after they left. She leaned forward and her leotard stretched even tighter over her chest. “I bet you wouldn’t have said no if you worked in the kitchen.”

  “Uh, well, no.”

  “You mean you’ll do it?” She appeared to be deciding exactly what to say before saying it. “If you get caught, you’re toast.”

  “I won’t get caught.”

  Her dark eyes danced. “Really?”

  “Clandestine is my middle name.”

  “An extremely attractive trait.” Alice smiled, fresh and radiant. “Gumbo keeps this box on the kitchen counter. Inside is a file with all of our menus. Signed, sealed, and delivered by Chu Man himself. It shouldn’t be that hard to swap them.”

  And Bones knew just how he’d do it.

  An hour before lunch the next day Bones stepped into the
noisy, stinky steam of the kitchen with its violently hissing pots. It smelled like something that had been dead too long. Cattle, pigs, chicken, fish, all of the above.

  “If you’re here to complain that the food is overpriced or the service is too slow or…” Lard shot over his shoulder.

  “The portions are too big,” Bones said, scanning the cluttered counter. His eyes stopped on the file box of menus sitting by the cookbooks. Not exactly in plain sight, but not hidden either. He’d have to be careful. If Lard caught him he’d be cooked alive.

  Gumbo shouted at Lard from a chopping block. “Rinse the pasta!”

  Bones got out of the way while Lard tugged on oven mitts and grabbed an enormous pot. In one slick move he dumped the pot into a strainer and cranked the cold water handle. “What’s up?” he asked.

  Bones shifted his weight hoping to seem his usual obsessive self. “Something’s assaulting the green beans in the garden. Like, seriously.”

  Lard turned, his face red and sweaty. “What can I do about it?”

  “Looks like a scourge, maybe red-bellied beetles,” Bones said, feigning concern. “Once the beans are wiped out the little bastards will move on to the tomatoes.”

  Bones registered a flash of panic in Lard’s eyes. “I could make a spray,” he said quickly. “Black pepper with dish soap should do it.”

  “Spray bottles are on a shelf by the freezer,” Gumbo hollered out.

  While Lard and Gumbo sliced and diced in a frightening frenzy, Bones filled a spray bottle with water and poured in soap. When the other two were at the stove tossing veggies in frying pans, he did what Alice had asked, swapping the menus she’d filled out with the official ones.

  Which as it turned out, was a grave mistake.

  Bones paced in his room trying to figure out what to do with Alice’s menus—the real ones he’d taken from the box in the kitchen. In the end, he tore them up and flushed them down the toilet. Bye-bye, Brussels sprouts. Farewell, garbanzo beans. Adios, toasted rye crisps. He’d just finished the last flush when he heard Lard in the bedroom. “Hey, man,” he said. “I found more CRAP.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll put it on your desk,” Lard said. “Back in a sec.”