by Schow, Ryan
I cannot drag myself out of the gravitational pull of the song; I just want to snug myself into Maggie’s back and curl up with her forever. I want to tell her I know her suffering, about wanting to disappear. I want to promise to be her safety net, the one person who’ll keep her from drowning in her depression. Nothing, however, comes out of my worthless mouth. No words. Not anything.
It’s only when the song ends that I find my voice. Gently, I drape an arm over her, so she knows she’s not alone. “If I could, I’d pull all the sadness, hurt and pain out of your heart,” I all but whisper to her. “I would take the weight of it. I’d do anything to save you from this.”
She turns her head further away from me and I feel the slightest trembling in her back. I know she’s crying. I can’t help but do the same. It’s like we both caught this depression, like it’s contagious.
“If I could, I would fill you with happiness and love, I would make your heart know how many people care about you.”
She wipes her eyes and turns further into the bed. After awhile, she says, “Thank you,” because it’s all she can manage. When it seems she won’t be coming to dinner, I crawl out of bed, and take her iPod with me.
“What are you doing?” she says, groggily.
“Going to eat.”
“Give me my iPod.”
“No way. This shit’s beautifully depressing.”
“I like it,” she whispers, her voice so thick and full of anguish I can barely stand it. “The words sound like how I feel.”
“If you want your iPod, you can come and get it.”
She mumbles something I can’t understand, then turns over again.
“It’s only because I love you that I’m doing this.”
“I know,” she says, so faint, I wonder if I even heard her right.
5
Maggie never does join us for dinner. Twice I check on her and both times I find her in the same place on the bed, curled on her side, her body facing the darkest ends of the room. The second time, standing silently inside the doorway, I wait long enough to see the in and out movements of her body breathing. This seems silly, I know, but as depressed as she is, it wouldn’t surprise me if her heart stopped beating.
During dinner, Netty entertains us with the details of her new job while Brayden talks about his upcoming nose job and wonders how his face will change. Even a blind man can see how nervous he is. Tomorrow is his consultation. With everything going on, I can’t help thinking, is this really what I’m doing with my time? A promise is a promise, though.
That night, lying in bed next to Rebecca (because she asked me to sleep with her), my mind is considering so many things, but mostly it won’t stop thinking of getting Rebecca home. At this point, I don’t even know how I’m going to find her family. Maybe her memory will come back. When I ask if she remembers her family, she says nothing and I don’t know what that means.
Is there a real block here? A lapse in her long term memory from being in the pink goop for so long? It’s impossible to know. Perhaps there’s more. Does she not want to go home? Does she blame her parents for her abduction? As beautiful as she is, I have to wonder if she was always like this, or if she was like the first version of me: a hideous wildebeest with chemical and psychological problems.
God, my mind is such the high speed blender right now!
Eventually my chaotic thoughts abate, and then my mind turns to Maggie. As much as I try to picture her happy and whole, I can’t make my mind conjure such images. And then I think of Jacob and how he wants so badly to be with me, and how I keep leading him on. The idea of avenging my former self is appealing, but anymore, what’s the point? Part of me actually wants to go on a date with him. If I could ever find the time. And what about Damien?
Damien…
I send him a text, apologizing for not calling. He texts back, says it’s okay, and is it possible to talk tomorrow. Maybe I should call him.
It’s too late, though.
Besides, I’m still thinking about Jacob, truth be told. I’m wondering why I should settle for Jacob when I have Damien waiting for me.
When I think about everything that’s happened with Brayden and Professor Teller (Jake), with Damien and my first crush, Jacob, the most profound conclusion I can muster is that it’s easier being fat and alone. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought this. I mean, honestly, all I really need is my ice cream and my television. When you’re fat, no one expects anything from you except to maybe get skinny or be depressed. At least, that’s how it was in my house. Now it feels like everyone needs me, but I can’t be everywhere and everyone at once. I can’t fill the holes in those closest to me no matter how hard I try. Even worse, I’m desperate to help them, and haunted by the idea of not being able to. All I can do is try my best. The problem is, even I’m smart enough to know it’s not enough.
Not nearly enough.
6
In the morning I wake up, roll over and scream. Brayden just smiles as I take a swing at him for scaring me.
“What the hell, Brayden?”
That’s when I realize I’m spooning Rebecca and he’s enjoying the show.
“When am I ever going to see something like this again?”
I throw the covers back, swing my legs over the edge of the bed and say, “College, if you’re lucky. Don’t be such a perv.” My hair, I’m realizing, is a mess. I try to push it down, shape it into something normal. I’m pretty sure it looks like Lego hair though, if they had Lego hair for homeless looking Lego people.
“Asking me not to be a perv is like asking God not to rule the world, or Jesus not to save us from our sins, or M. Night Shyamalan movies not to completely suck huge bags of smashed buttholes. I’m a man, and most men are pervs. You can’t change the DNA of us. Acceptance is key.”
“Yes, well don’t do it while I’m sleeping. That’s just creepy.”
“And now that you’re awake?”
With my hair messy, my breath like sour milk and my bed clothes all out of sorts, I’m thinking about my privacy. Then something inside me stirs to life. Of all the boys I spent time with, Brayden makes me feel the best about myself. Even now, in the middle of my morning uglies, part of me likes the attention. It’s terrible to admit, but a girl wants her attention. Checking the vanity mirror, I realize I look better than I imagined. I should shut the bathroom door, but I don’t. Instead I start the shower and turn to him. He’s just standing there, watching me, and part of me isn’t terribly grossed out, but part of me is totally miffed.
“Get out Brayden or the nose job is off.”
He puts his hands up in mock surrender, looks down at Rebecca, and says, “Would she mind terribly if I replace you in bed?”
“She’s a child,” I say, pulling my shirt off. He’s seen my boobs before, but only barely, and I remember the thrill like it was yesterday. But now there is a bra involved. I pull off my sweats, keeping the g-string end of my butt out of view and I say, “Time to go, Brayden.”
He’s watching me and for a second I like how he’s looking at me. He looks paralyzed by need. Before I became one of Gerhard’s dolls, a genetically modified kid, I was so gross no one would look at me but to make fun of me. Granted, Brayden is no Damien, but there’s something about him that makes me lower my guard. He knows I was ugly, and gross. With guys like Damien and Professor Teller and Jacob, they’ve always had hot girls around them, but Brayden? The fact that he appreciates the hell out of me makes me think more of him.
“I don’t like that bra,” he says.
“What?” I look down at it. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s on,” he says. The way he’s fidgeting, how his cheeks have the slightest flush of red, it makes me hot thinking about him being that interested in seeing me.
I have to smile. Even with things this dark, he manages to crack my armor and let a little light in. I ease out of the bra and I can see the effect on him. It’s like he can’t breathe. I can’t breathe either. My
insides swoop with the warmest thrill, like waves of euphoria crashing around inside me. I can’t help the low stirring I’m feeling, or what I want to do because of it.
“I hate those panties, too,” he says, softer, weaker.
“Yes, well I happen to like them,” I say. As I close the bathroom door, the expression on his face becomes disappointment.
The rush of water on my skin is cool compared to the searing heat coiling its way through me. I twist the faucet from red to blue and let the cooler water bleed away the fire inside.
Jesus, this must be what it’s like to be a man. Swept up by the moment. Responsibility and prudence abandoned in a blink. The sudden flush of need, so surprising, so consuming, so insistent.
The way I feel right now is careless.
The cool water culls my lust to some degree, but my brain refuses to cease its constant analyzing. Why did I do that? And why did I get such a thrill at Brayden’s reaction? I wash my hair and shave my legs and still my mind continues to turn. Thinking these thoughts, reliving the erotic incident, my body courses once more with a lascivious heat.
Finally I realize the truth: I am attracted to intense appreciation. It’s not that I’m desperate for attention, it’s looks like Brayden gave me that make me feel what it’s like to be adored, to be lusted for, to be able to undo a person so thoroughly and so easily. Before, I meant nothing to everyone. I was the butt of a joke at best, an embarrassment at worst. If I would have shown a boy my tits back when I was a human sloth, that same boy would have run for his life. But not before making that face, the one that’s the direct opposite of lust: disgust.
Now the control, the satisfaction, the absolute power of it…OMFG, my mind won’t stop turning! I’m certain my boy DNA (the male sex drive in this female body) has me overcharged. I just know it. It doesn’t matter, though. Knowing it isn’t the same as stopping it.
I finish my shower, and my face is still warm from the blood at boil beneath it. There is a knock on the door, probably Rebecca. The fires inside cool. I drape the towel over my breasts, try to compose myself, and open the door…to Brayden. He’s smiling, but it’s a different smile. He looks different. Serious.
“You’re still here?” I ask. I wonder if I sound mean, or if the fog rolling over my sensibilities has me completely out of sorts. I feel like someone else. The rush of sexuality I had before Gerhard gave me the pills, it’s like that. But it’s all me. I shouldn’t feel this way! With the pills, I should be fixed, or as Gerhard says, properly calibrated.
“Why did you do that?” he asks.
“Do what?” Playing dumb seems so…dumb right now.
“Why did you show me your boobs?”
I swallow hard; my throat feels impossibly dry. I’m looking at Brayden and seeing him not as the dork he was when I first met him, or even the semi-polished guy he is now, but as someone human and flawed. His vulnerability right now is making me high. That look in his eye, it could be heroine, that’s how addicted to that look I am.
“Do you like them?” I hear my mouth ask. “My new breasts?”
He nods. His eyes trail down my body. Then he’s walking them back up, slowly, purposefully. I can practically feel the weight of his gaze on me, touching me, wanting me. Holy cow, he is different.
And when did it become so euphoric to feel this wanted?
He reaches out, takes my towel and slowly loosens the fold. When it comes off and the rush of cool air hits my bare skin, my insides absolutely swim. Standing there, I watch him while he looks me over, and then it hits me—the girl parts of me. The word modesty springs to mind. I reach down, pick up my towel, put it back on. My eyes won’t meet his. Not like this. Not with my female DNA having me feeling this embarrassed.
“You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” he says, meaning it. My embarrassment is a tangible thing; it starts to fade with his comment.
“Thank you, but you shouldn’t have done that.”
“You did it first,” he says.
“I know.”
“So why?” he asks, our conversation reduced to two word sentences.
Honestly, I don’t have an answer for him.
“Not fair,” he says. When he turns to walk away, I don’t stop him. I don’t need this right now. Jesus, I don’t need him wanting me. I ache for it, but I don’t need it. I shut the door when he’s left my room having realized I am utterly powerless against this new side of myself. Powerless and ashamed; ashamed yet needy.
The truth is, I created this mess. Which is such a guy thing to do. And totally unfair to Brayden. Ten minutes later, the shame inside me is complete. Five minutes after that I gather up my courage to face him. It’s not enough time. What’s happening is I’m flush with anxiety. Humiliated. And the two of us? We’re about to drive forty minutes into the city to see about his nose and I have no idea what to say.
7
When I finally get the stones to walk out and face Brayden, he’s in the kitchen talking to my father. My father looks at me, smiles real big and says good-morning like nothing illicit occurred less than half an hour ago. Brayden turns and smiles. I see our secret sitting in his eyes.
“Morning, Abby,” Brayden says, his smile totally disarming.
“Hi,” I tell him. It’s impossible to stop the red from pooling into my cheeks.
“Where’s Rebecca?” my father asks.
“Asleep, as usual.”
“And Maggie?”
“Same, though she’s supposed to go to the studio to record today.”
“Which studio?” my father asks.
“Her record label rented her one in San Francisco because she refused to go to the one in Santa Monica.” The record producer’s studio.
“Shouldn’t you wake her?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I walk into her room and she’s in the same place as before. Thankfully, there isn’t any depressing music playing.
I shake her shoulder lightly; she groans almost inaudibly, then rolls over and stretches. When her eyes open, I watch the depression return. It moves in like storm clouds.
“You have to record today,” I say.
“I know.”
“I’ll make some toast.” All Maggie ever eats is toast.
Deep down, I wish she wasn’t being so agreeable. Her doing what she needs to do, it means I’ll have to go back out and face Brayden. God I so don’t want to do that right now!
I hear the shower going in Maggie’s bathroom about the same time I’m dropping a piece of toast in the toaster. I can’t bring myself to look at my father or Brayden; to my relief, though, they’re talking about…whatever, who cares.
When the toast pops up, I skin it with butter and strawberry jelly, then set it on a plate and walk it into Maggie’s bathroom. Maggie is getting out of the shower. She has her towel wrapped around her waist and nothing on top.
“That was fast,” I say. She shrugs her shoulders.
Looking at her tits, normally I’d be embarrassed. But with the Rebecca incident, and my sudden lack of concern for my own modesty, Maggie’s disregard for her own nudity fails to move me. It’s how skinny she is that really has me concerned.
“Maggie,” I say, shocked, “your ribs.”
She looks down and shrugs her shoulders again. “What about them?” She pulls on a yellow tank-top, then slips matching underwear on underneath her towel. She hangs the towel on the towel rack, then goes about like nothing’s wrong.
“Eat,” I say, shoving the plate of toast her way. “You have to have a regular meal tonight. I’m serious.” She nods in agreement, but her eyes fail to meet mine. She sits on the toilet lid, her thin body looking bent and weak.
“I’m so tired,” she says.
“I know, honey, but you need to eat and move. You need a purpose, and sleeping isn’t it.”
She stands back up, which looks like a feat in itself, and Brayden’s calling my name in the other room.
“Don’t be late,” I say.
“I wo
n’t.”
I kiss her on the forehead then head out into the hallway where Brayden’s calling my name again.
“Let’s go,” is what comes out of his mouth. Brayden says good-bye to my father, who oddly fist-bumps him, and then we’re on our way. The minute I open the front door, I scream.
8
An incredibly good-looking Jacob reels hard, a startled look on his face, his fist suspended in mid-air ready to knock.
“Holy dog balls, Jacob, you scared the crap out of me!”
“Scared you?!”
“What are you doing? It’s like nine in the morning.”
“Coming to see you.”
“Well I can’t talk. Brayden and I are heading into the city for an appointment.”
Brayden says “Hey” to Jacob and Jacob says “What’s up” to him and suddenly I’m wondering, do I kiss him, hug him or pat him on the shoulder? All three options fill my stomach with dirt.
That’s when Jacob leans in to kiss me on the mouth. Normally I’d take his lips full on, but with Brayden here—and feeling shitty in the wake of my massive lapse in modesty—I turn my face and take Jacob’s kiss on the cheek. It’s all very French of me. Very uppity and non-committal. Very proper.
“I’ll try and stop by later,” I say, wondering if I’ll even get the chance.
He says good-bye and Brayden brushes past him without a word. In my S5, speeding toward San Francisco, all I can think is more and more I’m starting to feel like the image I’m putting off is slut. I mean, really…how many different guys can a girl kiss in one week? Two is too many.
Three is unconscionable.
Of course, the fat girl in me is thinking, it’s about freaking time! The fat girl in me was never an opportunist, but the new me? Who knows if things will change again? Everything could change! Then again, nothing could change. Or I could do a version 2.0 melt. My DNA could re-shift and I could turn into the incredible blob…again. Plus, a big part of me still feels like a chubber in a skinny girl bodysuit getting one over on every good looking guy I make out with.
