The Year I Didn't Eat

by Pollen

  This is that Mini Roll, times a million.

  My first-ever binge.

  My jaw moves without me thinking about it, like those mechanical ones they use to cut people out of cars. Robotic. Relentless. I feel the lumps of food in my throat—big, ragged lumps, because I’m not chewing. I picture a snake with a series of mouse-shaped lumps along its body.

  I bite my cheek, and for a second, I want to scream, but I don’t. I control myself. See? I’m still in control. It doesn’t stop me. Nothing can stop me. Chew, chew, chew, swallow. All of the duck has gone. I start on the rice.

  Now there are two voices inside my head: Ana has developed a split personality. My mental health problem has her own mental health problem.

  Stop. Stop. STOP. What are you doing? You’re disgusting. You’re ruining everything.

  Keep going. It feels good, admit it. It feels so good to finally EAT. And if you keep it up, your family will love you again.

  No—they’ll be ashamed of you. Fat, hopeless you. What happened? You used to have willpower.

  They can’t love you while you’re anorexic. They won’t. You’ve got to show them you’re okay.

  This isn’t okay. This is disgusting. And you have no idea how much you’re going to regret it.

  Five minutes later—probably less—I’m done. The duck, the wontons, the prawn toast—it’s all gone. And for a moment, I feel this rush, like, I did it. I won!

  Then the pain starts.

  When you stop eating, your stomach becomes less elastic. It can’t expand like it used to. So if you barely put anything in it for an entire year, and then sit down and eat two days’ worth of food in one sitting, you’re in trouble.

  Snakes can do it. Polar bears can do it. We can’t.

  The cramps make me double over. I feel like my guts are about to explode all over the floor. I hate myself. And I don’t know what to do.

  What did I tell you?

  I crawl over to the sink, grab the edge, drag myself up. I stick my fingers down my throat. I retch, but nothing comes.

  You’re rubbish at that, remember? You can’t do anything right.

  I grab my phone, and google how to make yourself sick. The first hit is this herbal remedy website that tells you to drink a mixture of mustard and water.

  So I do.

  It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever tasted. But it works. I’m pretty sure no one’s ever been this happy about throwing up before. It feels amazing. It hurts, but I don’t care: I’ve not been this happy for ages. Because now I know the secret. I know how to pretend to be normal. How to stay in control, forever. Now I can show Mum and Dad I’m okay. They don’t need to know that I’m spewing my guts up every night. I feel like an archaeologist who’s just discovered a lost city he’s been searching for his whole life.

  Then I turn around and see Dad.

  Before I even clock what’s happening, he’s hugging me, and I’m crying into his shoulder. “We’re going to fix this,” he whispers in my ear. And I try to pretend he’s talking about him and Mum, as well as me. But I know he isn’t.

  A conversation I had with Robin, before things got really bad (I thought they were already really bad at the time. But they weren’t):

  Robin: Do you remember Mum’s stopwatch?

  I shake my head.

  Robin: It was the only way she could get you to do anything when you were little.

  It comes back to me gradually, like a ship through mist. When I was little, I put stuff off for hours. Getting up, finishing my tea—anything. But if Mum bet me I couldn’t get dressed for school in thirty seconds, I’d be ready in twenty-nine.

  Me: Don’t put this all on me, Robin. She used it on you too.

  Robin: True. She had that lanyard so she could take it everywhere. You know, I wish she’d used it when I was doing my A-levels. Maybe I would’ve got that A in math then.

  I guess Mum’s lesson didn’t change Robin. But it changed me. Now I count time like I count calories: day in, day out. I can’t stop. I count my steps as I walk, and I count the number of days left in the year. When I can’t face doing anything else or I can’t be bothered, I sit in my room, close my eyes, and start the stopwatch on my phone, and see how close I can get to a minute counting in my head. Usually, I’m a second or two too slow. Even though I know I’m usually a second or two too slow, I can’t seem to adjust for it: No matter what I do, it always comes out that way. Like the world is moving too fast for me. Like I’m always chasing things, and I never have time to catch my breath.

  It’s one week until I go back to school. At the start of the holidays, there were forty-three days on the clock. I thought it was enough time to fix myself—or at least, to start fixing myself. I thought, if I tried really hard, somehow, I’d be able to catch up.

  But when it came down to it, the opposite happened. The universe said, Thanks for trying, Max. But, um, no. Sorry. Robin left. Mum and Dad broke up. The world is running away from me faster than ever.

  I keep speeding up. I keep trying. But I can feel myself fading. Like when you sprint toward the line at the end of a race and your legs start to burn, your body starts to scream no at you. You know you can only keep going for so long. You know you’re on borrowed time.

  Or maybe it’s Zeno’s Paradox. Maybe no matter how far I go, how fast I go, I’ll never catch up.

  My body is breaking in slow motion. I cut myself three weeks ago, chopping a carrot, when we were in Italy, and it still hasn’t healed. If you starve yourself for months, eventually, your body starts giving up.

  You can’t keep running forever.

  One week later. To be exact, 159 hours. In that time, an average adult male would have burnt 13,250 calories. Not me, though. Because I haven’t left this room in a week. Because I weigh a grand total of —.

  You don’t need to eat anything. Pinch your skin. See? That’s fat. That’s pure blubber. There’s enough there to last for weeks. Months, probably.

  “Hey, buddy,” Dad says from the doorway. “Can I come in?”

  He doesn’t wait for a reply, probably because he knows he isn’t getting one. He closes the door behind him and walks over to my bed.

  “I brought you some breakfast,” he says.

  I don’t need to look. It’s a pot of Shape Up Smooth Strawberry Yoghurt. Four ounces. That’s pretty much all I can stomach at this point. Sometimes, I can’t even bring myself to eat that.

  “You okay?”

  I shrug.

  I don’t get out of bed. I can’t sleep. Mostly, I stare at the walls. I never did get around to putting those posters up.

  Yeah, you’re totally okay! This is exactly how a normal teenager spends their summer. Nothing about this situation screams “freak” at all.

  Dad sits down on the edge of the bed. “Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  I turn to face him. It takes a while. I have to use my arms to lever myself over. I feel like a whale trying to unbeach itself.

  “What’s going on?” I mumble.

  “I’ve found a flat,” he says.

  And it’s like that moment on a roller coaster when you think you’ve reached the bottom, but there’s another secret drop. It turns out it’s possible to feel even worse than I already did.

  “It’s right around the corner,” he carries on. “You can come over whenever you like.”

  “That’s what Robin said,” I say.

  “Max,” Dad says, in a pained voice. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Until now, I hadn’t really clocked how tired he looks. “Your brother is just trying to settle into his new home. Anyway, my place is only a five-minute walk away.”

  I don’t reply. I feel bad, because I know Dad’s trying his best, but it’s taking all my effort not to scream. I don’t have any left over for saying the things I’m supposed to say. I lie back down in the bed.

  Dad stares at me for the longest time. I’m waiting for him to say something about how it’s all going to be okay or ask me if I
want to watch Springwatch with him later or something. But he just walks out and softly closes the door behind him. I guess he’s used up all his effort, too.

  Afterward, I realize it’s the longest conversation I’ve had in two days.

  August 30

  Dear Ana,

  At the start of the year, I told you there were six people in my life. But then Robin left, and then Dad. And when Dad left, Mum turned into a zombie.

  I was supposed to go see Lindsay yesterday, but I guess Mum forgot. I didn’t say anything. I know how these things work: NHS referrals are like gold dust now. Once you’ve missed your appointment, you’re stuffed.

  And there’s no way Stu, Ram, or Evie are going to talk to me when I go back to school. If I even make it back to school.

  I’m supposed to be the one who’s disappearing. But as I do, everyone around me melts away too.

  I guess this was your plan all along, right?

  I don’t care though. It’s easier this way. It’s easier to stay in control when there’s no one bothering me. It’s easier to be me when no one’s trying to fix me.

  After I write this, I’m going outside for the first time in two weeks, to get rid of the last thing connecting me to the world: my cache. I’ve already taken the listing down. But apparently, it can take a month to update in some people’s apps. And anyway, that doesn’t stop people who already know where it is from finding it. Like Evie, for instance.

  I’ll be back soon. Then it’ll just be me and you. No one else gets it. We’re better off on our own.

  25

  The wind on the Common howls through my clothes and into my joints. I ache all over, like I’m eighty years old.

  I walk like an eighty-year-old, too. Slowly, warily, because I’m afraid of tripping over a tree root and shattering my bones. I’m still out of breath, though.

  My body’s started to properly give up. When I try to stand, my legs judder underneath me, and I imagine them snapping like twigs. I can’t even do a single bloody push-up anymore. And when I comb my hair, more and more seems to come out, each strand as brittle as a piece of Shredded Wheat. Noticing this put me off Shredded Wheat forever.

  But wait. That’s not even the gross stuff.

  Gross Thing Number One: My pee has gone sort of … foamy. Seriously, it happens. When your kidneys are so screwed they can’t filter out protein anymore, your pee goes foamy. It looks like the old-man cider Dad drinks sometimes.

  Gross Thing Number Two: If I put my hand to my mouth and smell my breath, it’s like sweet and sour. Tangy. Fruity. That’s the smell of dissolving fat. We did this in biology once. It’s called ketosis: When your body runs out of sugar, it starts burning fat. As Dr. Roberts put it, Ketosis is what your body does when it has no other choice. It’s like burning your table and chairs to keep warm, because you’ve already chopped down all the trees.

  Gross Thing Number Three: This is the worst one by far. I’m turning into a monkey. There are little hairs growing all over my body, the kind newborn babies sometimes have. I can’t believe this is my life. I’m fifteen, and half the boys in my class already have beards or at least mustaches, and I’m growing peach fuzz on my face.

  Oh, and for some reason, my ankles and knees are swollen. Probably some other fun side effect I don’t even know about yet.

  Anorexia happens when you’re not looking. It’s like that game you play when you’re little, where you have to sneak up on someone and freeze whenever they turn around. As soon as you let your guard down, it pounces. Because you can always eat less. You can always take away one piece, one mouthful, one calorie. That slice of toast can be slightly thinner. That can of soup can be two portions instead of three. You do that over and over again until you can’t survive on what’s left.

  I’ve made this journey hundreds of times. Across a shimmering carpet of meadow grass and rye, dotted with purple patches of heather. Past the lake, where the ducks look as unhappy to be outside as I am, and into the birch woods. The leaves are starting to turn already; I guess it’s been a long summer. The trees are preparing for a winter without food, where the only way to survive is to manage with less.

  If only it were that easy. If only I could just drop my leaves and wait for things to get better.

  The oak tree looms over me. I cower away from it, like it’s about to attack me or something. I feel dizzy. All right, I always feel dizzy. But this is way worse than my usual haven’t-eaten-a-proper-meal-in-months dizzy. It’s more the-world-is-a-giant-washing-machine dizzy. I’m pretty sure I’m going to chuck my guts up, even though I haven’t eaten anything at all for twenty-four hours.

  I stop.

  I bend over, rest my hands on my knees. Then I decide even that’s too much effort. I slump down on the carpet of leaves that’s already forming on the forest floor. The ground is harder than I thought it would be; as I hit the dirt, I hear something snap.

  And then I realize I can’t get up.

  September 1

  Dear Ana,

  When I first saw Lindsay, she told me that the way to deal with anorexia is to focus on “rational beliefs” about food. It’s like, if I can distance myself from it, it won’t hurt me anymore.

  That’s why I tried to think of you as someone else. I gave you a name, and wrote all these letters, to convince myself that you weren’t me.

  But that was never how it felt. Not really. When the voice inside my head said, “Don’t eat that. You’ll thank me later,” it never really felt like it was coming from someone else. From Ana. Because it wasn’t. They were my thoughts. My opinions. My head.

  I reckon that’s why people with mental health problems get annoyed when other people talk about “voices in your head.” Because those voices are your voice—and that makes them way, way scarier.

  “There’s still fat on your stomach. You could drop another pound, easy.”

  “Don’t give in. Don’t eat that. You’re better than that.”

  “The less you eat, the stronger you are.”

  You don’t exist, Ana. And I have zero clue where that leaves me.

  On my own, I guess.

  26

  “Come on, love, time to wake up.”

  “Ugh.”

  For a moment, I have no idea where I am. Or who’s talking to me. Or what’s going on. My head feels like it’s full of treacle and cotton wool, and I’m pretty sure there are razor blades jabbing into my lower back.

  “Come on, otherwise the day will get ahead of us, won’t it?”

  It’s Mum. She always says this: The day will get ahead of us. Robin always used to respond, The day can do what it likes, I’m staying in bed.

  I wince at the metallic screech of the curtains being pulled back. Light pours into the room. I scrunch my eyes tight.

  “Max,” Mum says.

  “Okay, okay,” I mumble.

  Slowly, I come to my senses. I unscrunch my eyes, just a little, and see a blurry Mum hovering at the end of my bed. She comes over to my bedside table and tidies the books into a neat pile.

  “Oh God,” I say. “It’s today.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Mum replies immediately. She was obviously waiting for me to realize.

  Today is September 2: the first day of school. The day that’s been approaching forever, like a train hurtling across a huge plain, getting closer so slowly you barely notice, until it’s right there. Today’s the day I’m supposed to face everyone: Ram, Stu, Darren, Shinji, my teachers. And Evie.

  I’ve gone through the conversation a hundred times in my head. They’ll ask me what I’ve been doing all summer, and I’ll tell them not too much, normal stuff, and act like everything’s fine. Or fine-ish. And then I’ll have to pretend I’m interested when they start telling me about their summers. How Ram went on holiday with his mum, then came home for one night, then went away with his dad, which was much better. How the camper Stu’s family rented broke down somewhere near Inverness, meaning they had to spend a night in the woods, in t
he pitch-black, and he was pretty sure he heard a wolf, even though there haven’t been wolves in Scotland since the seventeenth century.

  Except they won’t. I won’t. It’s not going to happen.

  Because I’m not going to school today.

  Mum’s now making small talk with the old man in the bed opposite me, Bill, who has some kind of bladder infection.

  “You know the community garden plots down on Sherbourn Road?” Bill is saying. “I’ve had one of them for thirty-two years.”

  “Gosh!” Mum says, like she is stunned by this fact. “What do you grow?”

  “All sorts. Tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes. Loads of beans. The only problem is, it all needs harvesting now, and I’m stuck in here.”

  “Oh no!” Mum says. “Isn’t there anyone who can pick them for you?”

  Mum can be invested in someone else’s life within ten seconds of meeting them. The other night, when we were eating (or not eating, in my case) takeaway, Mum said to us, Remember Sandra the florist? Her daughter’s having another baby. It turned out she’d met Sandra for less than ten minutes, two years before, in the supermarket, and never seen her since. But Mum still wanted to send a card to congratulate her. Robin said, She’ll think you’re mental.

  Bill shrugs. “I’ve tried to get my wife to go, but she says I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now.”

  Mum looks horrified. “I’ll talk to my other son, Robin. Maybe he can help. Which plot was it again?”

  I shake my head, smile a little. I haven’t seen Mum like this for ages. Soft as chalk, as Dad puts it. When Dad’s here, he mostly sits by my bed and reads, or plays cards with me when I’m awake. But Mum spends the whole time talking to other patients. If you walked in, you probably wouldn’t guess who she was here for. I kind of prefer it this way. I don’t know what to say to Dad half the time.