by Alex McElroy
* * *
At the start of the Winter of Hunger, Dyson showed me his latest attribute: visible veins. Veins forking up his abdomen; veins crossing the undersides of his forearms; a single vein arcing over each bicep muscle when he flexed. Even his calves were beginning to vein—though of course they could be thinner, he told me.
* * *
I presented Dyson with a selection of samples: cleansers and face masks and creams. Plus a two-dose packet of green tea fat-burning pills. The products my mother and I never needed.
* * *
The Spring of Hunger was supplement season. To combat the fat on his body, Dyson invested in green tea fat-burning pills and all-natural fat-burning pills and acai fat-burning pills and synthetic caffeine pills and caffeine powder and nitrous powder and oxide powder and whey powder and powdered peanut butter and vitamin C and vitamin B and tummy tea and laxative tea and tea tree oil and coconut oil and olive oil on everything—though never too much—and garcinia cambogia extract and Hydroxycut and Alli and raspberry ketones and glucomannan and Meratrim and radiocut and deoxidized fermaldehyde root and CLA and TTY and seaglass fruit and bitter orange and birch and chipped rose petal and water and water and water. To combat his acne, he invested in topical creams, drying lotions, Proactiv, unguents, Accutane, blood pressure pills, snail slime, slug slime, clam intestines, face masks, spironolactone, black light clinics, charcoal, cryotherapy, colloidal sulfur, licorice powder, Icelandic antibacterial sulfur, primal screaming, acupuncture, fish oil, oregano oil, arachnid milk, salicylic acid, peroxide, cortisone shots, epidermal asphyxiation, and dozens of hundreds of rubs.
The acne solutions would work for a week before his face would break out even worse than before. The fat-burning supplements worked too well. They bunked the beat of his heart, made it irregular, heavy. Sometimes I feel my heart leaping out of my chest, he admitted. Even when I’m sitting. Not doing anything! He sounded as if he were bragging.
* * *
One afternoon that spring, Dyson came to my house after school to smoke weed. He brought three plastic bags fat with snacks: diet ice cream and chips and iced animal crackers and oatmeal sandwich cookies and reduced-sodium crackers and a barrel of party mix. We smoked out of a soda can in the kitchen, exhaling into the exhaust fan over the sink.
I nodded at the food. So you’re eating in front of people again.
It’s easier when I’m high, he said. He passed me the soda can, then performed a few cursory crunches on the kitchen floor. Ten minutes later, red-eyed and giggly, Dyson opened a box of Little Debbie oatmeal cookies. He fit a whole cookie in his mouth. I fit two in my mouth. He tried for three but couldn’t fit the second inside. He spit cookie shards in my face and curled over in laughter. I catapulted a full spoon of ice cream at his chest. He sucked the ice cream off his shirt, then scooped a full hand of party mix. I shrunk like he might fling the food at me. Instead, he brought the hand to his mouth.
I would have preferred to share a nice meal with Dyson, something with forks and napkins—rather than mountains of junk consumed standing up in my kitchen—but I was pleased to see him eating. I hadn’t seen him this reckless with food in months. This put me at ease. And I allowed myself ice cream and chips and cookies. Not nearly as much as Dyson, though, who ate as if angry at the food, like he couldn’t rest until it was not merely gone but obliterated.
Slow down, I said.
There’s not much time, he said.
My mom won’t be home until six.
He tossed an empty box of crackers behind him. Something feral flashed to his face. He dragged his arm across his lips. I need to go to the bathroom, he said.
He kept the fan running, but it was impossible not to hear him. I could have knocked on the door—I considered it; I even walked right up to the door, hovered my knuckle inches away—but I felt responsible, and embarrassed, and told myself if he did it again I would stop him.
* * *
We did it again the next week and the next and the next until it became a routine. Most of the girls I knew had thrown up at some point in their lives—it hadn’t killed them. They survived. Surely it wouldn’t hurt Dyson. On rare occasions, when I felt uncomfortably full after bingeing with him, I would slip into the upstairs bathroom as he threw up downstairs. It demanded too much of me, though. It seemed something people outgrew. I outgrew it by the end of the school year, and I assumed Dyson would, too.
* * *
That spring, I accepted a scholarship to attend the Fashion Institute in Manhattan. My mother and I fought about my decision. She wanted me closer to home—and at a very different kind of school—and we drifted apart once I left. She was right to accuse me of abandoning her. I wanted out of that house, away from her grievances and paranoia and rules. At college, however, I committed to the life she never could. I swore off makeup and lotions and rinses, half to honor my mother, half to compete with her. This made me interesting (annoying) among the other women at college. I treated my mother’s theories like doctrine—Chap Stick chapped your lips; anti-wrinkle creams thickened wrinkles; astringents pitted your skin—grumbled her grumblings to my suitemates as they tended their faces at night.
* * *
Dyson enrolled in a state school close to home. He visited me in the city every few weeks, thinner every time he returned, his head ballooning above his spectral, twiggy frame. We smoked weed in my suite and binged on delivery. My suitemates were all women like me, thin and pretty and nervous. Around us, Dyson freely worried over his body out loud. He gasped at the hefty portions of food we received—How could anyone eat this much?—and refused the most dangerous foods—mozzarella sticks, fried chicken wings—with brusque I really shouldn’ts. My suitemates loved having him there. They loved the humiliating childhood stories he told about me; they loved his enthusiastic celebrity impressions. He never creeped on anyone, never extended a hand where it wasn’t invited.
* * *
I think your friend passed out over the stall, said one of my suitemates. Chunks of pizza floated in the bowl of the toilet. His fingers were slimy. I slapped his cheeks, but he wouldn’t wake up. Shallow breaths slipped through his lips. His chest was rising and falling, rising and falling, as paramedics lifted him onto a stretcher. A new pill he took to lose weight clashed with a new pill he took to clear up his acne. His heart was too weak to purge.
* * *
I lost my scholarship for sneaking a boy onto the women’s floor without permission and transferred to a state school in New Jersey—close to the city, too far away to repair my relationship with my mother. Around this time, I began working at Gravee. Dyson spent two weeks in a facility, bankrupting his mother. He exhausted me with apologies—though I was the one who felt responsible. I never told him this. I was too ashamed to admit my culpability.
After college, he moved to L.A. I stayed in Jersey, close to the city. He and I spoke on the phone every night after I got off my shifts. Our conversations served as a kind of therapy—he talked me through shitty relationships; I encouraged him to keep going out for roles. His living so far away put me on edge. I felt responsible for his well-being, and though he assured me he was healthier and eating consistently, I feared some bombed audition in the future might cause him to relapse. He did not do well on his own. He flourished best beneath the burning eye of guidance. After all, he’d thrived under my direction in high school, when he needed to take off the weight. And in an effort to keep him healthier, safe, I outlined for him the lifestyle regimen that would later grow into ABANDON. Dyson followed it out of deference and guilt. He still regretted costing me my scholarship, though I’d long ago forgiven him. The loss was an appropriate punishment for failing to confront him when I had the chance.
* * *
Often, my coworkers at Gravee asked what products I used on my face. Nothing, I told them.
There has to be something, they’d tell me.
My system is nothing, I’d say. Then I told them what my mother told me.
&
nbsp; Is that from a program? they’d ask. Because I’m looking for a new program.
* * *
I needed the money. Who didn’t need money? And plenty of people far duller than me were cashing in on beauty tutorials. Starting a regimen was one of the last remaining ways to make good money, to be your own boss—to help people, to share what I knew with the world. And I knew far more than most skin-care influencers—though influencer was not yet a word anyone used. It was merely an idea buried in ice, waiting for its prison to melt.
* * *
My first dozen videos averaged around twenty-five views. They struggled to find the right viewers. They made me no money, attracted no sponsors. There was no money in debunking products—no matter how much I knew. The money, I realized, was in stories. Successful influencers all had origin stories. They had been summoned to beauty, to skin care, to exercise regimens and enema teas, by the hand of divine coincidence or heartbreak or trauma.
* * *
My thirteenth video was the first to catch on.
* * *
I’ve never told you this, I said to my camera, because, admittedly, I thought you might think less of me if ABANDON wasn’t all about me. But I need to tell you the truth: I didn’t start this regimen for me. I started it because of a friend. My best friend. He nearly died using products I pushed him to use—the same products so many other “experts” on here are promoting—products I foolishly thought would help him lose weight and clear up his skin. And after he recovered—thank god—I swore to myself I would make it up to him. I promised to create a program that would allow him to enhance his self-esteem and appearance safely. And that is how I came up with ABANDON. That is why this regimen means so much to me. And that’s why I’m sharing ABANDON with you. Because I care about you. I want you to give up on everything hurting you. I want you to thrive. I want you to be happy and beautiful and, most of all, I want you to be safe.
III.
thirteen
I KNOW WHAT’S been said about us. I’ve watched the documentaries and read the exposés claiming to know what happened the day the men arrived at the camp. However, very little of what was reported—and it would not be a stretch to say none of what appeared in print or film or public debates—offers an accurate portrait of the arrival. This doesn’t surprise me. I understand the deep human need to identify villains, but there were no villains that day. Only accidents made by good people doing their best. That type of story doesn’t make anyone click, though, so Dyson and I were made into villains.
The problem was simple: The barn’s generator ran out of gas overnight. Dyson was late to pick up the men at the airport and, rather than check the generator, as he did most mornings, he hurried the bus onto the road. By the time I made it to the clearing, later that morning, I had no way of knowing how long the power had been out. Fifteen minutes? Ten? Dyson planned to cook the men a celebratory lunch of pork tenderloin, and it seemed needlessly cautious—and risky—to discard the meat he’d marinated overnight. We needed to feed the men something when they arrived. After all, their savings were funding the meals—theirs and ours. Dyson collected “Enrollment Fees” from them weeks earlier to purchase building supplies and months’ worth of groceries. I gave the raw meat and the sides a prolonged, dutiful sniff. Nothing smelled rancid or bold. So: I refueled the gas tank. The power returned. I hoped for the best.
I was dressed in my standard uniform: light wash jeans and a black Atmospherians T-shirt—the one with Sasha ending in a flourish—no makeup, lips thickly Chap Sticked, hair in a schoolteacher bun. I stood in front of the barn gripping a clipboard against my chest. The midday sun was pinned to a pool-water sky. Across the clearing, pines leaned dreamily in the breeze. The generator burped and gurgled; its smoke seasoned the air.
My stomach was in knots over the men. Part of me wished Dyson had kept me in the dark about their pasts. I felt no more prepared for their arrival, only a slick of dread spilling through me. I tried to slow my breathing, tried practicing lines, tried to soak up and appreciate my last few precious minutes of solitude for some time—but the men charged through my mind like rhinoceroses, goring every hope in my head. Our men were unhinged and resentful, with fingers inexplicably missing, men with grudges and prior convictions and restraining orders and big, bellyish laughs. Their families and friends had discarded these men like fat trimmings cut from a steak. They were unwanted. They couldn’t stand to be with themselves. They feared their own thoughts the way flies fear rolled-up magazines.
Last night, Dyson again reassured me that the men would follow our orders so long as we remained confident, firm, and friendly—as if we were training hounds. I didn’t trust this to be true. But at this point, I had no other choice but to put faith in him.
Dyson was scheduled to arrive at 12:00 exactly—but 12:00 became 12:01 became 12:02 became 12:03 became 12:27. 12:43. 1:09. Sweat collected beneath the band of my watch and under my bra. I imagined scenarios in which he never returned, fantasizing about surviving here on my own. There was enough food to last me for months. I could create a new life for myself. I could remake myself into an online homesteader—claim the cabin and barn as my own constructions, claim Barney as my loyal best friend. This life appealed to me more than the life set to arrive at any moment. I drifted into a reverie of isolation.
The sound of the bus rustling gravel deflated this fantasy. Dirt clouded the trees. A blurry yellow pill appeared at the edge of the clearing, then expanded into a school bus as it drew near. I stepped forward ten paces from the barn—just as we’d planned—but Dyson braked too late and nearly flattened me under the hood. The engine exhaled on my face. If I’d stuck out my tongue, the tip would’ve sizzled against the grill.
I circled the bus twice. This added gravity, purpose, and we wanted to make the arrival ritualistic. The men fixed their faces on the seats in front of them. Their nostrils quietly flared. Lips were licked, ears picked; furry fingers knuckled the sleep from their eyes. I made meaningless marks on the clipboard to make the men feel judged and studied. Near the end of my second pass, at a window close to the door, I sensed one of them watching me.
He was ghoulish, gaunt, with slicked blond locks—the only one who had styled his hair—and a nose curled like the claw of a hawk. I paused beneath his window; his eyes returned to the seat back in front of him. He held this pose, as rigid as a road, until his tongue budged through his teeth like a diving board. He rushed it back, winked at me—as if flirting—and I slapped my clipboard against his window.
Dyson opened the door. Out came a gust of eggy air so foul I had to cover my mouth. The first man slugged off the bus clutching the railing. He nearly face-planted when his feet hit the grass.
“Name,” I said to him.
“Gerry Simpatico.” He was a milky, heavyset man wearing sweatpants and a Big Dogs T-shirt. His hair was thick and dark, shiny with grease, and the pupils of his blue eyes were like two tires adrift on the sea. Our Righteous Man. He’d been fired from his job for running a smear campaign against his boss. Standing before me, however, his mouth nervously quaking, he seemed to have been stripped of whatever animosity and resentment had led him here.
“Your phone,” I said. I relished this power.
He dropped it beside my foot and formed a line behind me.
“Name,” I said to the next man, then the next. What a vulnerable act, I thought, as the names and men piled up. Each man may as well have presented his head on a platter. Beneath every name was a whisper: Know me. Remember me. See me as a person.
The fifth man stepped off the bus: the one with the tongue. “Randy Dent,” he said before I asked. He pounded his fist on the bus as if denting it might prove his identity. His jaw was boxy and scabbed, his teeth shockingly white. He wore a black short-sleeved T-shirt and cargo pants. A splotch scarred both sides of his left forearm, just under the elbow. It was pale pink with a gangrenous tint at its edges, a cherry-sized bump in the center. He tapped it. “Firework accident as a runt.
I’m lucky I still have this side of my body,” he said with a laugh. He wasn’t handsome but carried himself like a handsome man would. Someone, I gathered, had once called him handsome, and the praise had clung to him like too-strong cologne.
I knew the scar hadn’t come from a firework accident. And his shame over its origin opened a window of pity inside me. That changed, however, as he continued to talk.
“You must have a lotta birds here,” he said. He added his phone to the pile. “Plenty of birds to pick off.” He mimed shooting a rifle, recoiled with the kickback.
The men in line loosened up, chattered and laughed. Randy fired again.
“I see you’re planning on being a problem,” I told him. All the pity I felt fled from me, replaced by genuine fear. It occurred to me that I had no idea what he was capable of—what any of them were capable of—and the weight of this realization coiled inside me.
“Just taking in the view I was promised.” He holstered his imaginary gun, patted my shoulder as he passed me, then took his place with the others. I flinched in disgust. Randy had some of Dyson’s father in him. They both wanted people to fear them. Dyson’s father achieved this through silence and dismissal. This instinct in Randy, however, seemed slapstick and fragile, an impulsive performance made all the more threatening because it might fall apart.
The man after him couldn’t have been any more different. Gently squinting, he stepped off the bus in a blue button-down shirt tucked in his chinos. His face was equal parts kindness and sulk. His cheeks were covered in freckles, like Blake’s face. I fought an urge to lovingly slap my hands on his cheeks—and fought even harder against the deeper, vengeful urge to clench my hands around his neck. He had the sugary prettiness of a youth pastor or high school teacher, the kind of beauty intensified by relative scarcity and surrender. I knew then I would love him—that I could love him. I always knew from the start.