XL

by Scott Brown

  “At first?” said Ethan. “Because I’m in love with Sidney Lim. I have been since eighth grade. Didn’t you notice? Let me answer for you: no. You didn’t. No one did. Not even Sidney. My point is, I’m in love with her, and you’re not. You never were.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I studied your whole life like it was that film of Kennedy getting shot. Because I was this nothing thing, and you were this nothing thing, and then…off you went! And at first…I just wanted to know why…and then wanting to know why became…wanting to do something about it….”

  I nodded. This made a lot of sense. It was bonkers, it was creepy, but it made a lot of sense. Hell, it almost gave Ethan Neville a kind of…I wanted to say nobility? And insanity, of course.

  “You know, we broke up. Sid and I.”

  “Uh, you make it sound mutual. You broke up with her, bro. Really messed her up. I drove her home, she was a wreck. That’s why I dropped the atom bomb with that photo, before the tip. I was on the fence about it. Then you broke my girl’s heart. On Game Day! On Game Day, man! You don’t get away with that, no matter how big you get.”

  The buzz in my hands again, and the blood in my ears. “Hey, Ethan? You still want me to kill you? ’Cause that’s definitely still on the table, especially when you talk like that.”

  Ethan thought about it. “I’m gonna finish this sandwich first.”

  He started eating again. I held on to the table very tightly, until civility returned to my extremities. Which were feeling pretty extreme.

  “You said, At first. What changed? Why are we here?”

  Ethan chewed thoughtfully. “It seemed evil.”

  “Yeah? Which part?”

  “Serving you up to Spencer.”

  “Oh, THAT seemed evil.”

  “I mean, did I save you? I think you would’ve taken those guys. You’re a freakin’ dreadnought, man. This is weird, but I swear it’s true: I’m a troll, but I’m also a fan.”

  I got up. The rage electricity was tickling my hands again.

  “Where you going?”

  “Home.”

  “You’re blowing it, man. I gotta tell you, as a fan, you’re blowing it.”

  I stopped. Ethan didn’t.

  “You’re living the life people like me dream about, and you’re blowing it. You throw away things other people think are precious. You even threw Sidney away—”

  I got into Ethan’s face. I had to stoop. A long way. Because he was sitting. And I was me. He smelled like chicken.

  “Of all the shit you said to me…all the shit about Monica and Drew…the shit about my mom, man, my dead mom—”

  “I know. I know! I’m a piece of—”

  “I didn’t throw anybody away. First off. Second, you don’t get to decide what I am. How I should be. You don’t get to study me from a safe distance. There is no safe distance, you shitty little—”

  I caught our reflection then, in the fun-house mirror of the Coca-Cola Freestyle machine. I saw a broken person, and there was a creature towering over him, a tall, rangy thing, all long, grasping limbs, half gorilla, half spider. This thing, this menace, this monster was leaning into Ethan’s small, crumpled face, roaring, showing how big his gullet was and how easily a broken thing could go down it—

  I sat down. I diminished myself.

  “Hey. Hey. Ethan? I’m…I’m sorry. I’m…I’m trying to figure some shit out myself.”

  “Do you know…,” Ethan sobbed, “…do you know the worst part of all this?”

  I didn’t. I really didn’t. There was so much to choose from, right here in this Carl’s Jr., where people were starting to stare.

  “We used to be friends.”

  I blinked.

  “At basketball camp? You, me, Drew, Rafty. We were Blue Squad?”

  I had no memory of this. I mean, I remembered Blue Squad. I remembered Drew and Rafty, back when we were all little boys, and the stakes seemed high but weren’t. The stakes were Red Squad. I remembered Red Squad. But I didn’t remember Ethan.

  “See?” sputtered Ethan. “That’s the worst part. You never saw me coming. Because you didn’t see me at all.”

  And that? I understood. All too well.

  “You used to be me,” said Ethan. “And you still never saw me coming.”

  ETHAN WENT INTO therapy. He had a great LCSW. Talked my ear off about him.

  I could probably have used some therapy myself. Ethan was the closest thing I had to a sympathetic ear. Sad to say.

  I was suddenly [jack]less. And without [jack], without my fellow monster, my mirror monster, my failures as a person became impossible to hide.

  * * *

  —

  “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” Rafty began.

  We were sitting on my car, the two of us. Sitting on my car had recently become much easier than sitting in my car. At least for one of us. I lay back with my head on the roof, scalp grazing the rear window, my body draped down the windshield and hood. My feet were planted firmly on the pavement. Rafty perched on the rear bumper, looking the other way.

  “I can’t keep you on as a client.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your case…the image management issues here…they’re beyond my powers. That’s…that’s tough for me to admit. But now that you’re in Guinness…well, you might want to explore more…professional options.” I heard a little gulp. Real emotion in Rafty’s voice. “I hope we can stay friends, though.”

  “Rafty?”

  “Yeah, Will?”

  “I don’t know if I was ever your client. Since I never signed anything or paid you or agreed to be your client.”

  “Well, that was because of our preexisting friendship.”

  “Can we just stick with that? Our preexisting friendship?”

  A pause. Then Rafty said, “Yeah. That’d be good, I think.”

  We watched a small plane fly over.

  “I’m sorry I made the dunking video. I…I should’ve asked.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry I got scary and broke your backboard.”

  “It’s okay.” Another long pause. This one was warmer. Felt less like a void, more like a cushion. Then Rafty said, “How’s everything with Monica and Drew?”

  “Bad.”

  * * *

  —

  We’d all managed to avoid each other for almost a week. Granted, it was a busy time. Drew had juvie-mandated anger management classes to attend. Monica was, presumably, finishing up college applications and prepping for interviews.

  My seventeenth birthday came and went without a single candle lit, without a single song screeched. I’d asked Brian and Laura not to make a big deal of it this year, not to make anything of it, and definitely not to make a cake. In a measure of how bad things were, they agreed to those terms.

  The good news just kept rolling in. My last appointment with Dr. Helman was…well, I don’t want to say informative. Those appointments rarely were. But it was terrifying. Terrifying and clarifying.

  I’d already bled for Nurseferatu and was heading back to the waiting room to find Brian when Dr. Helman appeared. “Would you like to sit?”

  No. I would not. Chairs were back to being uncomfortable. Also: I didn’t like it when doctors invited me to sit. Nobody’s invited to sit for good news, not in real life.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I wanted to talk to you before I talked to your parents.”

  Oh, Christ. Oh no. Not now.

  “It’s not bad news.”

  Okay? “So it’s good news.”

  “It’s what science usually is: it’s ambiguous.”

  I sat.

  “Those extra brakes we applied,” Dr. Helman began. “They aren’t really…applying themselve
s. At all.”

  That much I’d figured out on my own. “Okay.”

  “You’re healthy. You’re not presenting with musculoskeletal imbalances or joint problems or any pathologies related to the growth trend. And you’re still feeling good….”

  I was getting tired of these relative measurements. What was “feeling good” to a guy who’d spent the last year ruining his life?

  “Dr. Helman,” I said. “I am over seven feet tall. I weigh three hundred pounds. I can’t keep going like this. Right?”

  Dr. Helman took off her glasses. I’d never seen her without her glasses. She looked younger. Less like she knew everything. More like me, like someone who tried to get his head around scary things by reaching for the biggest idea, and when that effort came up short, reaching for the next-biggest. Someone who’d gotten to the top of a mountain after a hard climb, a real slog, and looked out from the peak to see…not the ocean, not the promised land, but…more mountains, and mountains behind those mountains, and all higher than the one he just climbed.

  “Will,” said Dr. Helman, “why we grow to a certain size and stop, how those genetic switches work—it’s still pretty mysterious. Plenty of animals never stop growing. The dinosaurs didn’t.”

  (Ah, Dr. Helman. Tone-deaf as ever. Of all the examples to choose from, in the vast smorgasbord of biology, she would go with an extinct one.)

  “The point is, it’s not as simple as off or on. It’s not as simple as you’re growing or you’ve stopped. This growth, what’s causing it, this hormonal-enzymatic feedback loop: it’s stable, it’s not changing, and your bone density is keeping pace with—”

  “Are you saying I could just…keep growing? Like this? Forever?”

  “I’m saying,” said Dr. Helman, laying a tiny hand on my enormous forepaw, “that we’ll just have to see.”

  * * *

  —

  We all react to bad news in different ways.

  I, for instance, react to bad news badly.

  First, I slept on it. As much as I could sleep, which wasn’t much.

  Then at five a.m., I texted Monica. I said it was an emergency.

  It was an emergency.

  I told her to meet me at the Lowlands. Then I texted Drew and told him the same thing. Actually, I’d pulled my old trick: I told Drew to be there an hour later. I needed to talk to Monica alone.

  Something had to give. Nice Guy Will had failed completely. Time for Grow-liath to take the wheel.

  * * *

  —

  The Aggression Log needed updating, because the Aggression Log always needed updating. Things had been especially rocky since Magic Mike took over. There were questions among the keepers—and, apparently, among the apes—about whether he was up to the job he’d lucked (murdered?) his way into.

  (No one else thought it was murder, of course; that was my interpretation, and mine alone. But then, nobody knew Magic Mike quite the way I did.)

  I was in my apron. It looked like a miniskirt on me these days. All my clothes looked ridiculous again, now that I’d been swallowed by one end of the bell curve and shat out the other. I was a freak again, just a different-size freak. My brief intermission of normality was over: my clothes were rags, my bed was too short for my legs, too narrow to turn over in, my car was too small for me, wasn’t even drivable by me anymore, my whole life felt like a toothpaste tube I’d been squeezed out of, and the villagers with pitchforks and torches were probably right around the corner. So I sifted protein kibble for mealworms and waited for destiny to arrive.

  Monica came in.

  Her hoodie looked even more beat to shit than usual, like she’d slept in it. Her hair was longer, wilder, her anime spikes drooping.

  I looked at her and thought, in defiance of a whole year of monstrosity:

  Nothing’s changed.

  It can all be like it was, back when it was good.

  I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’ll always love you. That’ll never change.

  That was my plan. Basically, to say that.

  In case you were wondering.

  “Whatever your plan is,” said Monica, setting down her backpack, “do me a favor and…don’t.”

  “Mon,” I said, “I texted Drew. He’s coming over. We’re gonna work this out.”

  I love you. I’ve always loved you. Nothing else matters.

  Monica gave the long sigh of a thousand-year-old kung fu master.

  “No,” said Monica. “Just no.”

  “We made a wrong turn back there somewhere. Somewhere between the Old Plan and the New Plan, we just…we just broke the wrong way!”

  Monica was shaking her head. “Will, listen to me—”

  “I love you.”

  Monica pitched forward, like she’d been stabbed or poisoned. Her hair fell in front of her face protectively.

  We’d finally arrived, I thought, at the untakebackable thing.

  She mumbled something into the hand she’d slapped over her own mouth.

  Now, I’ll admit: this body language was discouraging. I’d been hoping for body language that was more Yes, everything you say is true, let’s find a sunset and drive off into it. I decided to spin again, hope for a winner.

  “Look. We survived you and Drew. We’ll survive this.”

  Monica looked up. “We? ‘Survived’ me and Drew?”

  Whoops! Maybe that phrasing wasn’t top-notch. “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t think I do, Will.”

  “We can get back to where we were. When it went wrong.”

  Now Monica was downright curious. Or downright furious. Her expression was parked somewhere between those two. “And where was that?”

  I sucked in two zeppelin lungfuls of air and began. “Mon…last year, at BoB…night of my birthday…I told you eight-fifteen….”

  “What?”

  “I told you to come at eight-fifteen. But I told Drew nine. Because…because I needed the time…to tell you…”

  Monica just nodded. Utterly befuddled.

  “And then…,” I said, and my momentum deserted me. “Well, and then you…”

  “I what?” Monica’s eyes focused on me again.

  “You gave me the ring.” I pulled it out of my shirt.

  Monica stared. “You’ve still got it?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “But…you were such a dick about it. When I gave it to you.”

  “I know! I was! Such a dick! Because I thought you were friend-zoning me. Frodo-zoning me.”

  “ ‘Frodo-zoning’? Will, Jesus…”

  “And then you…you patted me. On the head. And I couldn’t believe it. You, of all people. That’s when I figured it was never gonna happen. And then, that same night, you and Drew…well, you guys kinda confirmed that.”

  Monica stared at me. “Patted? Your head?”

  “Wait. So. Hang on. You weren’t patting my—”

  “I was trying to kiss you, you total goddamned mental case!”

  A hush fell over Keeper Access.

  “I was…reaching…Look, I’m a…tall girl, okay?” She regarded my massiveness and revised that: “I mean, I am tall, for a girl. Look, I’ve got my own hang-ups, maybe? Can I have those?”

  I wasn’t processing any of this fast enough. “Slow down, slow down—”

  But she was on a tear now. “And then I tried to take some initiative, since nobody else was, and you…you freaked out! So I, uh, y’know, determined that consent was neither clear nor enthusiastic, and I backed the hell off. But who do you think I dressed up for? Christ, Daughtry, I climbed down a cliff in that absurd lacy top….”

  My mouth felt slow. It made a word, slowly: “Drew. You dressed up for Drew.”

  “No, dummy,” she said.

  While
I was trying to figure out what that meant, Monica lifted her eyes. And stared…

  …at the observation window.

  Blue stared back. A hairy hand on the glass. Solidarity?

  We had an audience. High drama for high primates.

  Was it my line? My brain was a dial tone. It didn’t make sense, what she was saying.

  But she kept saying it: “I needed…something…to change. Maybe needed it more than you did, even.” Then she said: “I was…awkward.”

  Before that moment, I hadn’t thought Monica was capable of awkward. I hadn’t thought she was capable of anything less than…capability. Supernatural, paranormal capability. God-mode capability.

  As my blinking brain tried to catch up, she went on: “I tried to play it off, and I…I touched your hair. And then you went bananas. So that was that. And I guess the ring was the wrong present, or I said something, or I did something—”

  “Monica,” I blurted. “It wasn’t! Wrong! The ring. Monica. I loved it! I love it! Look! I’ve had it on since you gave it to me! And it was me: I made everything weird. Not you. All me. Just my insecure little-man shit. And—I’m past that now. I mean, ha! Obviously!”

  Monica was shaking her head, though. I wasn’t getting through. I needed to make her see: I had all the answers now. Or at least all the data. No more theories, no more rules, no more Plan. Not necessary. This was it: biology in motion. Planless, reckless biology in motion.

  “We can get it right,” I said. “Now.”

  She took the ring from my hand and ran her fingers over it.

  “No,” said Monica. She put the ring in her pocket.

  “No? You mean because of Drew.”

  “Yes. Because of Drew. But also because of me. And because of you.”

  “If it’s about what happened…in the kitchen…”

  “It is. You should’ve asked.”

  “I know. But you…”

  “I know I did! And I shouldn’t have! Jesus!” Monica paced to the coffee maker, then paced back to the chimp spears. “Stop looking at me like that!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’ve got answers! Why do you do that?!”