1.
I looked out the kitchen window, mesmerized by the earth under rain. Gallons of rain, torrents, beating down on the roof and windows, as though an angry sky had been torn open. As though this was the sky’s one chance to release it all. Drown out everything before the drought.
I curled my hand tighter around the chipped blue mug, attempting to drive the warmth into the bones of my eternally cold fingers. I sipped my morning coffee, plain black, quickly, not wanting to avert my eyes from the rain. I swished the bitter drink through my mouth, letting it soak into each crevice and groove. "Why do we taste," I wondered. "Is there even a point?"
"Sure, it makes me smile," Sam answered. I realized that I had been thinking aloud. He had been watching me, gulping down his creamy coffee and slurping a bowl of sugared cereal. He made me a bowl too. The electric colors bled into the milk for an hour before he finally threw it out.
2.
It wasn’t raining the Friday afternoon we drove up. The October sun was still burning from summer's long days, and less than an hour into our journey north we saw the color spread over the mountain ranges. The trees, glowing with embers of orange, red and yellow leaves, covered the hills that stretched before the open rode. Valleys and peaks; bumps and mounds, like voluptuous goddess lounging under the sun and sky. "Beautiful," Sam whispered, in awe of the passion and heat the mountains exuded. I could admire it as one admires a painting, but I could never contain it neatly. It was too beautiful, too passionate, too messy for me. Never could I ever handle anything in such excess. Never could I ever take up more space than I am allowed. Things would simply come undone.
3.
As Sam's Volvo climbed further north, away from the city, away from term papers and professors, the vibrancy of the leaves began to dwindle until it was only gray bark. You could see the sharpness of the branches endlessly reaching towards the sky. I liked them; they had goals with out the cloying leaves to deter their progress.
We crossed through a spider's web of roads which Sam knew by heart; his family had owned the cabin all of his life. He thought it would be good for us to get away for a weekend, clear our minds, take a break. I should have told him that I never forget to pack.
4.
By lunchtime the rain had cleared. Sam stretched out on the deck with his newspaper and I wandered the cabin. It was small, cozy and charming. There were pictures on the wall of Sam as little boy here; Sam with a sparkler on the 4th of July, Sam in ski goggles with his little sister, Sam smiling over a birthday cake. I was painfully aware of my proximity to the kitchen; everywhere you stood in the cabin you knew that it wasn't far.
The kitchen was the central point of the house, the hub of a wheel on which we all spin. ‘At least in the dorms there are no kitchens,’ I thought to myself. ‘It's easy to just walk past the cafeteria, run past it, on your way to a class, or a club, on your way to greatness.’
I opened the refrigerator, the jars and bottles clanked against the door swung into motion, and the generator hummed with extra gusto. Like the blind, I felt the contents with outstretched hands; all the groceries Sam's parent's had last from the weekend before. The light buzzing behind the fried chicken, the milk, the amber bottles of beer and the jar of mayonnaise made them glow, as if they were artifacts on display at a museum. I touched everything, trying at satiate a need I've denied for years now, as if touching is ever enough.
5.
Trying to relax was difficult then. I sat down on the couch, sunken and stained with age, and pulled a knitted blanket over myself. I flicked on the television. Nothing was on except for some day time soaps filled with lanky starlets gliding across the screen, filling the living room with a blue glow. Sleep came down on me like a crashing wave.
6.
I woke up to Sam stroking my hair. He often did it to wake me up. It had made me think that he would be a good father one day.
“Are you hungry? I’ll make you something. Do want pancakes? We have syrup and-”
“No, nothing. Just maybe some tea or an apple?” I stood up, and swayed a bit; I had gotten up too fast. Sam looked crushed.
“Please? I’ll do anything, what ever you want. I just want you to eat.” This is an old conversation. I sighed and shook my head. Then Sam did something I wasn’t expecting; he crumpled down to the ground and hugged my knees, clattering the joints together, cushioned by only skin and blue jean. He heaved into me, sobbing and crying. I had wanted to cry too, but I held the tears back. I was strong, if anything I was strong. I twisted my fingers in his locks of brown hair, told him I’d be okay; I’m really working very hard on it. He kept telling me he would do anything for me. ‘What have I done to him?’ I asked myself. ‘He’s so good. He doesn’t deserve this. I’m a punishment.’
7.
We were not always like this, and I wasn’t always this way. Sam met me when my cheeks still glowed, when I was happy and full of life. I cannot, no matter how hard I try, find the exact point of origin of all this. Maybe there was none; just a million ripples crashing and colliding in the dark water, but the stone fall which began the crescendo has been lost along the way. In the beginning I was playing with fire, half wanting to get burned, and that weekend I was in the midst of an inferno.
8.
That night we went to bed in silence. I shivered and shifted as the mattress springs bruised my bones, waiting for Sam to fall asleep. An hour later his breathing fell to a slow and steady rhythm. I curled up to his chest, wishing that my body would learn from his; feel the steady beat of his heart as it pulsed in perfect harmony with the natural world. My own heart flutters and jumps, careens off roads, driven insane by its oppressor and ready to retaliate.
When I was sure he was asleep, my tortured night began. I ran my palms over my face and belly, brushing the fur my body had produced to guard against the chill. Between two fingers I pinched every inch of flesh to check the thickness. I was convinced it was thicker than the day before. I counted my ribs, twenty-four, and the bumps on my spine which looked like stacked dice, twenty-two, before I drew in my knees and shook my thighs to see if anything jiggled. I checked that Sam was still asleep before I slid from bed and into the bathroom. Lying on the tile floor was a scale. I couldn’t help myself; I stripped off my pajamas and stepped the platform. I cautiously peered down at the spinning dial. It circled back and forth, hovering, until it rested on seventy-eight. I stepped on and off six more times just to be certain. I’ve never been so small, and yet I’ve never felt so empty.
I dressed and crawled back into bed, pinching skin, drinking tears and being driven mad by this heartbeat, a pulse which still, after all this time, shouted at me with every flutter, “I need, I need, I need.”
9.
I slept most of Sunday away. It was the last day of our vacation and it was again raining. Furious rain, and now the wind and electricity had gotten involved; trees shook and bent, those who still had leaves were spraying them off and the thunder and lighting crashed and blazed like immortal gods. I’m not sure what Sam had spent his day doing, but when he woke me up at four in the afternoon it was dark out and he looked tired.
“Get up, darling. Let’s go into the kitchen.” I waved him away with my hand and rolled over. Even if I had wanted to get up, my legs wouldn’t let me. I felt an arm slide under my back. In a way I felt proud that he could lift me with such ease and carry me into the kitchen, how gently he placed me in a chair before a plate of steaming dinner.
“Eat,” Sam said. It was a demand. It was urgent and it was necessary and it would possibly save my life. I knew all these things. My body knew it even more than my mind; my mouth watered, my hands shook and I felt dizzy with want. My body begged, but my mind refused. I looked up at Sam and quite earnestly said, “I can’t.” He was at the end of his rope, but so was I.
He threw a chair at the ground; I followed the chair with the plate of food. Smash it into a million bits, throw it up, give it to the dog, hide it in a napkin, push it around, flatten it out; it’s all the same.
Then we threw words at each other. He screamed at me that I was selfish. He was telling the truth. I screamed at him that he drank too much, that he chased other women, and that he had no class. I was lying.
10.
I threw open the cabin’s front door and ran into the storm barefoot, manic with rage and starvation’s own form of madness. Fat rain droplets were twisting in tornadoes of wind, wet leaves smacked my legs and thunder boomed in my ears. I started running and didn’t look back even though I knew Sam was pursuing me. I ran so fast that I couldn’t even feel my feet; I floated down the dirt roads and into the dark woods.
I still don’t know how I was able to run that fast. I was weak, dizzy and starving, yet I escaped from Sam’s sight and kept going. I found the strength I had been wanting all along. I wanted to bottle it, hold it forever. I was all-powerful, I was in control, I had no needs, no wants; I could run a million miles on nothing but water and air. Then I turned a corner, into a grove of dead and decaying trees, and everything went black.
11.
Sam found me lying on a bed of moss and soaking leaves, rain drenched and shivering. He carried me to the car and drove me away. Of course I remember none of that.
12.
I woke up in a hospital bed amid bouquets of flowers with an IV in my arm and feeding tube up my nose. The doctors told me that I would have less than a year to live if
I were to continue on they way I had been. I remember thinking how long less than a year seemed. It seemed endless and daunting, just too much. I don’t think that anymore, which is progress, they assure me. There are days when I feel fine, maybe even exuberant; I’m nineteen and the whole world lies ahead of me. But there are also days when I don’t know what to feel, days I don’t know where I will end up, except for maybe another hospital. There are days I just wrap myself up in the itchy white sheets and never want to get up. You see, the world is such an uncertain place when you are empty.
*Age 17 (2006). Published on seventeenmagazine.com, Second Place Winner of Seventeen Magazine’s Fiction Contest for Fall 2007.
