American Chordata: Magazine of New Writing Issue One, Spring 2015 | Page 118

100
FICTION

“My mom says no visitors. What a b.”
“Ur mom’s crazy. Companionship is vital to healing!”
Before Jack and I got together, he had been seeing Therese, the
reigning babe of all babes at our high school. She was the star
forward on the soccer team. Her flawless smile hadn’t required
braces, and her hair was so thick she could tie a bun around a pencil and it would stay. She exerted a mysterious power over the rest
of us. She was known to hawk petty gossip, for example, and had
famously stuck a quarter in Neil Klinger’s butt crack, which was
always showing because there were no pants that suited his physique.
She hurled traffic cones on the lawns of our teachers. The boys
adored her. She and Jack dated all through the fall. She, the terror,
and he, the sweet soccer goalie who smelled a little like earth, who
loved programming games on his graphing calculator. I’d tried to
flirt with him in geometry, leaning in close so he could smell the
strawberry body splash I’d applied that morning, but for the months
he was with Therese I was invisible. It was only after she expended
him, as she eventually did all of her boyfriends, that Jack invited
me to see Xtreme Speed 2, held my sweaty hand, and told me I was
the “apple of his eyeball.”
From my spot in bed, I watched through the window as summer
bloomed. As the heat intensified, so did the sunlight, which seemed
to thicken into the color of pollen. Then there were the long evenings, dusky pink that lasted for hours, until dark blue became
total shadow. Before a thunderstorm, the light was always sickly
green. Over the days, I felt myself grow weaker, deprived as I was
of solid food. Under the fluorescent bathroom light, my skin was
the color of old newspaper. I dreamed of eating—pizza, spaghetti,
potato chips—and filling out again. One afternoon, my mother
brought me a hot dog smoothie. I thought it was some kind of
chocolate-strawberry creation, but then I saw the curdled bits floating around.
“From scratch,” she said, setting it on my nightstand.
I looked at her.
“What?” she said. “You need protein.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Thanks.”