The Art of Starving

by Sam J. Miller

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “I’m Dr. Kashtan. Can you tell me a little bit about what brought you here?”

  She had rimless glasses, small rectangles over shrewd, kind eyes. Black hair and white hair, trimmed short, warred for dominance of her head, but it seemed like a tie game so far. She looked like a teacher. “Sure,” I said, trying to sit but giving up after five seconds. My muscles, always pretty flimsy, had now progressed to full uselessness. “I’ve been vomiting all day. Food poisoning, probably. I ate a bad chicken sandwich, I think.”

  “And this is the first such incident?”

  I nodded.

  She looked like a teacher who is pissed at you.

  “Your mom says you haven’t experienced any recent illness, haven’t been stranded on a desert island for any significant amount of time . . . so why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, all innocence.

  “Your whole body is showing signs of malnutrition. Your mom’s worried. She says there’s plenty of food in the house, yet you choose not to eat. Why?”

  I shrugged. “I’m in training. I want to go out for the track team in the spring.”

  Amazing, what the brain can come up with, even in the absence of superpowers.

  “They don’t accept corpses on varsity,” she said. She looked like a teacher who is kind but can be unkind when she has to be. From a folder, she produced a stack of photos. “Pick the one that you think is closest to your own body.”

  The photos showed shirtless men, ranging from Concentration-Camp Skinny to So Fat They Make a Documentary About You.

  Smart lady, this doctor.

  “This one,” I said, settling on something utterly average, neither fat nor skinny, instead of the Ridiculous Blimp picture.

  She eyed it, then eyed me. Then she asked me a bunch of other questions, about food and my body. Except, I was on to her. I knew what she was gunning for and wouldn’t give her anything that could be used against me. I had learned my lesson with the shrink they sent me to at school, the one who taught me exciting new vocabulary words like suicidal ideation.

  Do you count calories?

  Do you cut your food into small pieces?

  Do you avoid completely certain types of food—carbohydrates, fried foods, etc.?

  Do you ever experience guilt after a meal?

  Do you ever feel that others pressure you to eat?

  Do you ever induce vomiting after a meal?

  Do you believe that you’re less attractive than others in your peer group?

  Do you feel a lack of control in your day-to-day life?

  No, no, no no no, no no, and no.

  And so on. For an hour.

  “Are you gay?” she asked finally.

  “Can you even ask me that?”

  “Many gay and lesbian adolescents have a much harder time at your age than their heterosexual counterparts, especially if there are no opportunities for positive romantic and sexual relationships. They do not experience the emotional fulfillment of being physically desired by someone they in turn desire, and it makes them feel unhappy with their physical appearance. Does that sound at all familiar?”

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  “No.”

  She nodded, put her folder away, sat up straight. She looked like a teacher who had realized she couldn’t pierce a particular student’s shell of obstinacy and assholery. “I’m concerned that there might be underlying psychological causes to your malnutrition, and I think you should see a therapist to talk through it. You should know that since you’re a minor, we do have the power to force you into a treatment program with your mother’s consent, and she’s prepared to give that if your behavior and health do not improve. Are we clear?” She stood up, stuck out her hand. We shook. Why did I feel bad about disappointing this lady I just met, and would never see again?

  “I gave your mother the information on several therapists. You can call them, ask them questions, assess which ones might be a good fit. They all take your mother’s insurance.”

  I followed her back to the waiting room, where my mother waited with her head in her hands. Her face was red where I could see it. She had never seemed so small before. I stopped, throat clenching as hard as it had with the feeding tube rammed down it, and thought I worried I would break her heart by being gay. Instead I broke it like this.

  RULE #26

  One secret smells the same as any other.

  DAY: 21

  TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 2000

  “Who’s Tariq?” my mother asked when I woke up and stumbled into the kitchen late that afternoon.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, still groggy, and angry to hear his name in my mother’s mouth. He’s not worth the time it takes her to say those syllables, I thought.

  “Someone named Tariq left four voice-mail messages for you,” she said. “Sounded very concerned.”

  “A friend from school,” I said.

  Every word was an effort. Take the disorientation you feel when you come out of a nap, and multiply it by a hundred. That’s how befuddled I was. Why are the lights out? I thought, and then Someone should get up and turn on the lights and then I should get up and turn on the lights and then But wait, for real, why are the lights turned off?

  “I guess the word is out,” she said. “People must be talking. Goddamn small town. One busybody in the emergency room starts blabbing . . .”

  She went to the basement door and stood there for several seconds.

  “Why are you still here?” I asked. “I thought you had to work this afternoon.”

  “Hours cut for the day,” she said. “Got the call when we got back from the hospital.”

  “Oh,” I said, and avoided looking at her, afraid of the fear I’d find there, the knowing of what “hours cut” meant.

  “We need to talk,” she said. “About you. About what they told me at the hospital.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Now?”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said without looking at me, and went down the stairs to the basement.

  I made myself some coffee. Sleepiness and satiety had me feeling stupid, stuck in a swamp. I sucked down caffeine as fast as I could, but it would not make a dent. Below me, Mom cursed and grunted, opened boxes, moved heavy things.

  Was she looking for the scotch?

  I couldn’t blame her for needing a drink. I’d smelled the thirst, the alcoholism she’d kept under control for my whole life. And it didn’t take superpowers to figure out that she’d be pretty thirsty right about now.

  Sleepy and stuffed, my body was out of commission. My senses were offline. I was alone with my mind. Which maybe wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe I’d made a mistake, expecting my senses to save me. Expecting hunger to solve my problems.

  “Sorry, honey, I need to go,” she said, emerging. “Shift starts in an hour, and I gotta run some errands first. We’ll talk later.”

  “What errands?”

  “Grocery store, pharmacy,” she said, exaggeratedly nonchalant, a tell for potential lies that I knew very well, since I used it often. That’s how badly she needed relief; that’s how deep the hurt I had caused her ran. “You need anything?”

  “Nope. Love you.”

  “Love you, Matt.”

  I sat in darkness. I thought about my mission, about Maya, about Tariq. What the Maybe-Dream-and-Maybe-Actual Maya said. You’re trying to win someone else’s fight for them.

  All this deviousness—befriending him, manipulating him, trying to force a confession out of him—none of that would help my sister. What Maya needed was justice, swift and brutal. She couldn’t wait for the days it would take my powers to build up again.

  I called Tariq.

  “Matt?” he said, his voice bright and happy.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey! How are you?”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “You heard what happened?”

  “Ott’s cousin was at the ER with
his girlfriend, whose brother had a bad reaction to some crystal and fell down some stairs and hit his head pretty bad. He saw you there. Said you were passed out.”

  Plausible. Ott had a lot of cousins. “What does the rumor mill say was wrong with me?”

  “It’s not like that. No rumor mill. He told Ott, Ott told me. Were you—are you—?”

  “Meet me at the pine forest in half an hour,” I said. “Where the trees are tallest. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Want me to pick you up?”

  “I’ll ride my bike.”

  “Christ, Matt, it’s going to be dark soon. Why don’t—”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. It hurts my innocent ears.”

  “Whatever, Jew.”

  “Whatever, Muslim.”

  We hung up. He had been worried about me.

  Fuck him.

  I picked up saltshakers, refrigerator magnets, piles of mail. Where before I had seen whole endless chains of events, the long history of every object, now my mortal senses just saw . . . things. And there was something comforting about that.

  I got on my bike and barreled out to Route 23 and headed west. On the way, I stopped at a convenience store and bought a half-gallon of gasoline, which I stuffed into my backpack and covered up with old homework assignments.

  To hell with waiting for a confession. To hell with tricking him into something. I’d confront him with what I knew. Tell him the truth. Throw his crimes in his face. See whether he had the guts to deny any of it. So what if I couldn’t summon fire from the air? I could burn down his father’s business just as well with everyday tools.

  By the time I got there, afternoon had just started to tip into twilight. The trees were tall black shadows towering over me, monsters mocking my helpless body and the deranged mission I had come here on.

  You think you can destroy us? We were here when your grandfather first set foot on this side of the ocean; we will be here when your bones join our roots in the earth.

  But that was me talking: my mind, my fear. I let my bike drop into a ditch, sat down under a tree to wait. I thought about dousing the tree trunks with the gasoline, so I’d be ready to drop a match the moment I’d said my piece, but I wanted to have the conversation as equals.

  If it came to a fight—and it probably would—I was finished. Brutal assaulters don’t like to be confronted, and he was strong and tall, and I was neither of those things. With my senses dulled, I couldn’t see a hit coming, couldn’t dodge a fist if it came at me in slow motion. But what did it matter if he beat me, broke my ribs, put me back in the hospital? I’d have won. I’d have gotten the truth and watched him wither, wilt, fade. Unless he murdered me, I was going to burn down his forest sooner or later.

  And if he did murder me, I’d be dead. And he’d go to jail.

  That right there sounded like a win-win.

  “Matt!” he said, his voice ringing out through the deepening gloom. A dark shape moving through darkness.

  “I thought for sure you’d get here before me,” I called out.

  “My dad,” he said, stepping into the light. He made a face like there was more to the story and said nothing else. He stopped, looking suddenly embarrassed.

  My knees wobbled. My heart beat like a punk-rock drum roll. The moment had come. My destruction of Tariq was at hand. I opened my mouth but couldn’t tell what to do next.

  “You’re okay?” he whispered.

  “Of course. I—”

  He stepped forward uncertainly. “I was so worried.”

  And there it was again, so big and heavy I could smell it even with my senses almost completely submerged: the Secret, the thing Tariq lived in fear of me finding out.

  So maybe I wouldn’t need to confront him, maybe the confession would come on its own, maybe the universe would deliver it up to me as an act of providence, a reward for finally being strong enough to stand up to him. Finally being ready to drop the charade and confront him.

  “There’s something I need to say to you,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  Tariq took one, two, three steps forward. He pressed both hands to my cheeks and pulled my face toward him and, his lips parted, kissed me on the mouth.

  RULE #27

  Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own mind.

  DAY: 21, CONTINUED . . .

  Okay, I straight up stole that rule from the Buddha.

  It’s one of those things you see on the internet when you’re a sheltered small-town idiot who is trying to learn some incredibly complex concepts—one of those glib little meme-ready sayings that sticks in your head without making a lick of sense, lurking there like a land mine, waiting for someone or something to trip it, so the bomb-blast epiphany will blow you to bits.

  “I’m sorry,” Tariq said, pulling his lips away from mine. And then: “I’m not sorry.”

  His eyes bored into mine from inches away, alive with the setting sun. Wind whispered in the tree branches, reminding me to breathe.

  “Say something,” he said, his voice soft and husky.

  “I . . .”

  I had lots of somethings to say.

  I don’t understand.

  This can’t be the Secret.

  This? That you’re—gay?

  No. The Secret is that you’re a monster. That you hurt my sister.

  It has to be.

  I’ve put so much energy into hating you.

  If I have no reason to hate you, what has all of this been for?

  “Do you know I’ve wanted to do that since the eighth grade?”

  “What?” I asked.

  Tariq frowned. “Kiss you.”

  At that—inexplicably, irrationally, infuriatingly—I giggled. “Eighth grade? What happened then? You found that stained blue sweatshirt I wore every single day particularly sexy?”

  Tariq laughed. “I remember that sweatshirt. But no. It wasn’t that.”

  We stared at each other. I shut my eyes to smell him, to see the image of him as my mind’s eye held it. The wide nose, the lustrous black hair swooped up, the dimpled grin—he was too fine, too beautiful for this planet, let alone for me.

  “You didn’t—you never . . . but you’ve had girlfriends!”

  He shook his head. Shrugged. Looked scrumptiously sad.

  “Then . . .”

  “You do the things you have to do. My friends? My father? I hide it. I have no choice. But you? You are who you are, and you never pretend to be anything else.”

  I sat down on soft sharp pine needles. Tariq followed.

  “I feel like my whole life is me trying to hide who I really am.”

  “Well, I know who you really are,” he whispered.

  I shut my eyes. I breathed.

  How bright the world was suddenly. How cool and pleasant the night. How light my heart was, once I’d set down the heavy burden of hate.

  I’d been such a fool. I’d been so focused on what I wanted to see and learn and smell and feel that I’d missed . . . everything.

  I’d seen Tariq’s shame, his Secret, but I was blind to its true nature. In my anger I’d turned it into proof of harm, assault, conspiracy. My senses had been sharp, but subject to the dictates of my treasonous, ignorant mind.

  All that time I’d believed my body to be the enemy, when it had been my mind all along.

  “Say something,” he said, and I could see that the euphoria of his confession was wearing off, the relief of sharing his secret was giving way to fear and worry about what I’d say in response.

  Once I’d taken pleasure in making Tariq suffer, making him afraid or uncomfortable or disoriented. Now his fear hurt. It hurt like fire, searing away the Thirst for Bloody Revenge.

  I leaned forward. I kissed him. A chaste, closed-lips, fairy-tale kiss on the lips. The kiss that awakens the enchanted princess.

  “Don’t play with me,” he said gravely.

  “I would never.”

  He laughed, and it w
as a glorious sound. He stretched out on the ground and pulled me to him. We lay there, on our backs, pressed together side to side, on a soft carpet of cold earth and fallen needles, and looked up at where the stars began to glimmer between the black mountain-peak tops of pine trees. The universe was a cold dark place. Tariq’s body was the only warm thing in it. But that was enough.

  Questions, though. They bubbled up no matter what I did. Why did my sister meet you, the night she ran away? What do you know about what happened to her? What didn’t you want her to tell anyone when I sent that text you thought was from her?

  Tariq had questions, too. “So why were you in the hospital?”

  “Food poisoning. Bad chicken. I’m fine now.”

  “You swear?”

  “Triple swear.”

  “Can we just . . . not ever leave here?” he asked.

  “I was going to suggest the same thing,” I said.

  And then, because rage dies hard, another voice hissed from the basement of my brain.

  If you didn’t hurt my sister, who did?

  RULE #28

  The heart and mind are such fickle creatures. Strong new emotions for one person can make you forget your feelings for someone else.

  DAY: 22

  TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 2700

  It’s shocking, really, how much less horrific high school becomes when you can walk down the halls and the song your heart is singing isn’t “Please God Don’t Let Me Get Jumped Today” or “I Wish All These People Were Dead.” How much better when the song shifts from a minor to a major key, when the lyrics you’re silently lip-synching are instead to a heretofore undiscovered track called “A Beautiful Boy Is in Love with Me”?

  I didn’t see Tariq all day, but he was with me. Every time I blinked, I saw his afterimage, a ghost-outline burned into my retina, and when I licked my lips I could still taste his. Every time my mind wandered away from whatever unspeakably boring nuance of precalculus or the Civil War was being droned at me, I smelled the musk of his sweater. Every time someone muttered something in my general direction, his hot sweet breath was in my ear whispering, Forget them. They have no power over us.

  Eighth period he texted me, Ride home from school? Meet me in the parking lot at 3