The Year I Didn't Eat

by Pollen

  My phone beeps. I pull it out of my pocket and wake up the screen.

  I do a double take.

  “Max, it’s your turn.”

  “Hold on a sec,” I say.

  “Mum says we’re not allowed to check our phones at the kitchen table,” Louise appeals to Robin.

  Robin shakes his head. “You have a phone? What are you, like, five?”

  Louise looks furious. “I’m seven,” she declares.

  “Fair enough then. I take it all back. Everything okay, Max?” Robin asks me.

  “Yeah. Um, sorry,” I mumble. “I have to go to the bathroom. Sorry.”

  I’d pretty much given up on the idea of anyone visiting. I figured that, somehow, word had got around that the new cache in Bolford is owned by a sad little anorexic, and no one should visit. But now I’m sitting on the toilet, cover down, staring at the first comment ever on my cache:

  TFTC! Nicely hidden. :D

  The user is called Stallone05. Which is a pretty stupid name. But I don’t care.

  A complete stranger found my cache and took the time to write a message.

  For me. To me.

  It might not sound like a big deal. Okay, it probably sounds super-lame. But remember, this is me. Max Howarth, the boring, loser anorexic.

  The guy who crosses the street to avoid strangers.

  The guy who hasn’t spoken to anyone outside of my family over the weekend for, like, six months.

  Today, a stranger went out of their way get in touch with me.

  I hear a knock on the door. “Everything okay in there?” asks Robin. And for once, I can give him an honest answer.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  After the game—Louise ends up winning by a country mile—I start cooking tea. Well, cooking is a bit of a stretch: All I have to do is put the pizza in the oven and make some salad. While I slice cucumbers and tomatoes, Robin lays the table, and James and Louise go back to Bob’s Burgers.

  Twenty minutes later, I call everyone to the table. I’ve already put a plate with pizza in front of everyone; the salad’s in a bowl, except mine, which I’ve already portioned out on my plate. I know it’s sad, but I’m pretty proud of the salad. I cut the vegetables really neatly and laid them in rings on top of the lettuce to make a nice pattern. I even made a vinaigrette.

  Just to be clear, you’re definitely 100 percent a sad case.

  “I’m not hungry,” Louise declares as soon as she sees the food. She crosses her arms to emphasize the point.

  We take our seats. Louise flops down and sighs, and leans right back in her chair.

  “Probably all those Doritos you ate,” Robin says. He glances across at James, who is happily cramming a slice of pizza into his mouth. He either hasn’t clocked the salad or isn’t interested. “It doesn’t seem to have bothered your brother much, mind.”

  James doesn’t look up. I’m not sure he actually hears anything over the sound of his jaws gnashing.

  “It’s no big deal,” I say, sticking to my mantra.

  But Robin carries on. “You’ve got to eat it, Louise,” he says gently. “Max made it for us.”

  “All he did was heat up some pizzas,” she mutters, pushing her plate away.

  “One, don’t be rude,” Robin says. “Two, that’s not the point.”

  Of course, Louise is right. But it’s kind of a low blow. And Robin knows that that’s not the only thing I’ll be upset about.

  Food waste drives me crazy. I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe it’s because in my world, food is everything, and however else I feel about it, I can’t imagine not caring about it. I can’t imagine happily throwing it away. I get upset about tiny things, like when people peel too much off potatoes or cut the crusts off bread. You can imagine how I felt watching my cousin refuse to eat a whole meal.

  Once again, my brother’s looking out for me. But if there’s one thing I hate more than food waste, it’s attention. “It’s no big deal,” I say again.

  Robin gives me a stern look. “It is, Max.”

  “Why did you eat those Doritos, idiot?” James says to his sister, with a grin.

  “You ate them, too,” Louise replies accusingly.

  “But I’m still eating my tea, aren’t I?”

  Robin rubs his eyes. “James, you’re not really helping.” He sounds tired rather than cross. Like he’s spent all day looking after three stupid kids, and he’s had enough.

  “I’m just saying,” mutters James, picking up another slice of pizza.

  “Well don’t. And have some salad, please.” Robin turns to Louise and points at the pizza in front of her. “Look, if you eat some of that you can have pudding, okay?”

  Which I guess is a good tactic if the person you’re talking to actually wants pudding. But Louise lobbied pretty hard for ice cream, and only agreed to have sliced peaches when I told her she could have a scoop of vanilla with her crumble tomorrow.

  She sighs and holds her hand to her head, like a character in a Victorian novel. “No peaches for me.”

  Then James pushes his plate away. There’s one half-eaten slice of pizza in front of him. “If she’s allowed to skip stuff, how come I have to eat salad?”

  My stomach lurches. So all this food’s going to waste. Good job, Max.

  And you’ve eaten more than anyone else. Jesus Christ.

  You’re getting fat, while they stay nice and thin.

  “Everyone has to have a bit of salad,” Robin says.

  “You didn’t say anything about salad,” says Louise. “You’re changing the rules. I thought we had a deal.”

  Louise will probably tell Auntie Jess, and she’ll wind up mad at me or at Mum. I trusted him to look after them, Becks. But apparently they ate chips and cookies all day.

  I feel that hot, prickling sensation in my spine, like when you’ve been concentrating on something for too long, and you know that you’re about to flip out. I drop my hands into my lap, clasp them together, and squeeze my nails into my palms. In my head, I can see the little white dents in my skin.

  “Fine, neither of you has to have salad. But you’ve got to finish your pizza.”

  “Finish it?” says Louise. “You just said—”

  But she doesn’t get to finish. I don’t let her.

  If you put a lid on something and keep heating it, the pressure grows. That’s me: the human pressure cooker. The boy who’s been listening to every single little gripe, all day long, and trying to pretend he’s cool with it. The boy who’s found a way to control everything except himself. I can’t even describe what I’m feeling exactly. I don’t know how to categorize it. Shame. Anger. Envy. Fear. They all meld into one: one white-hot ball of emotion that’s way, way too big to fit inside me.

  The pressure grows and grows and grows. And at some point, it’s got to find a way out.

  I grab the glass in front of me, stand up, and hurl it at the wall. There’s a shimmering crash when it hits. I watch everyone flinch. They turn toward me in slo-mo, mouths and eyes wide-open. Pieces of glass skitter into every corner of the room.

  And I hear myself screaming.

  “SHUT UP! WHY CAN’T YOU ALL JUST SHUT UP?”

  My left foot is stinging.

  It’s the first thing I notice, the first thing that drifts into my head. I know it’s a cliché, but everything happened in a blur. Another fight-or-flight response. But the pain from my foot bursts the bubble. I stop dead, look around, and realize I’m already halfway home.

  I wiggle my toes. My sock feels wet. I know it’s not good for me to bleed, because of how low my iron is. I sit down on the pavement and take off my shoe and sock. It looks bad at first: My sock is strawberry-brown, soaked with sweat and blood, but when I bend my foot around, I can see how small the cut is. Dad loves telling people how the Howarths have great circulation. I mean, mine’s not as good as it used to be—but I guess it’s still all right.

  I can’t see any glass. I really don’t want to think about whether there’s g
lass inside the wound, because then I’ll definitely faint. As soon as the thought enters my head, my vision starts to go cloudy. I get on all fours, so my head isn’t too much higher than the rest of my body. It’s pretty hard for me to faint like that—and even if I do, I’m probably not going to break anything.

  I figure that the glass, or some of it, could be loose in my shoe, or stuck on my sock. Sure enough, when I turn my shoe over and shake it, I hear the tinkle of something bouncing off the pavement.

  I just hope that was all of it.

  Nice work, idiot. If your cousins didn’t think you were a fruitcake before, they definitely do now. What next?

  “I don’t know, Ana,” I reply out loud.

  It’s too dark to go to the Common. The way I see it, I’ve got two options. I can go back to Auntie Jess’s and face James, Louise, and Robin. Or I can go home and face Mum and Dad. Right now, they both seem equally terrible. My cheeks start tingling just thinking about it. All I want to do is hide.

  You should do something really crazy, like burn down that factory or rob a bank. That would be cool.

  But I’ve got to face them eventually. And sooner is probably better than later.

  I pull my damp sock and shoe back on, stand up, and test my weight on my foot. It’s sore, but it’s bearable—as long as I don’t think about it too much.

  I take a deep breath and start walking.

  And Ana starts talking again. To keep me company, I guess. Cheers, Ana.

  You’re stupid. You’re pathetic. You’ve screwed everything up …

  When you picture someone with anorexia, who do you see? A girl, right? Clever. Pretty. She goes to the kind of school where they wear blazers and put on monthly piano recitals, and where there aren’t any boys at all. Her parents put her under tons of pressure—to get As, to pass her piano exams, to get into Oxbridge—and some of the other girls bully her. She starves herself because she’s trying to fit in with the cool girls, the bullies, or because she feels like her whole life is out of her hands and she can’t escape; and the way she eats, the way she looks, the number she sees on the scales every morning … it’s the only thing she can control.

  I’ve never spoken to a girl like that. I mean, I’ve never spoken to anyone else with anorexia, as far as I know. Maybe that’s exactly what some anorexics are like. I’ll be honest: Some of the girls on the forums sound exactly like that.

  But for me, it’s different. My parents never put me under any pressure—or at least, not about stuff like that. I don’t have a single clue where I’ll go for university or if I’ll go at all. I get picked on sometimes, but no more than anyone else. And I definitely, definitely don’t want to be friends with Darren and Shinji.

  Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m about as cool and pretty as a slug.

  Look at any website or newspaper article about anorexia, and they’ll usually blame the beauty industry for promoting unrealistic beauty standards for women, which basically means that they make women feel fat and ugly so they can sell them diets and clothes and makeup. I think that’s true. But it’s not the whole story. Because hello, I’m an anorexic, too. And last time I checked, no one’s trying to sell me makeup.

  It’s worse for girls. It must be. Their friends all tell them how good they look, how jealous they are, ask them to share their slimming secrets. I don’t know what that feels like. I mean, I used to get called chubby sometimes, and now I don’t. But that isn’t the same. No one’s actually telling me I look better this way.

  On the other hand, when it comes to recovery, all that shit might take the pressure off. Fine, I went a bit overboard there. But when everyone was telling me how good I looked, who could blame me? When you filled my brain with images of stick-thin girls and diet tips and exercise regimes, what did you expect?

  Me, I don’t have anyone else to blame. I made that nagging voice up for myself. I gave her a name, showed her how to keep me in line. It’s kind of impressive, actually, how I managed to screw my brain up all by myself.

  Men can be muscly, as well as skinny. Even I know that. If I look at a picture of some football player, I can see that they’re in shape. I can see they look good.

  So why do I want to be stick-thin?

  Now that I think of it, it’s kind of funny that Ana, my inner anorexic, is pretty much the stereotypical cool girl, the one who’s bullying the shy, high-achieving girl with the demanding parents. Even in my head, anorexia’s a disease for posh girls.

  Man up, Max, for God’s sake.

  Even before I go inside the house, I know something’s not right. There’s only one car in the drive, and all the lights are on downstairs. I guess that wouldn’t be strange in anyone else’s house—it’s not exactly late—but Dad is crazy about saving electricity. When we were little, he used to deduct five pence from our pocket money every time we left a light on accidentally.

  For a moment, I’m happy: Finally, I’ve caught Dad breaking the rules. But then I get this weird, churning feeling in my stomach, like something bad is about to happen. Like this is the first scene in a horror movie. I try to tell myself that this feeling is pretty normal for me now, which is true. Another fun symptom of anorexia: You spend hours imagining all the terrible things that could happen to you and your family. All day long—or more commonly, all night long—I imagine terrorist attacks, house fires, kidnappings. Last night, I dreamed that Sultan got hit by a car.

  “You’re being stupid,” I say out loud, trying to convince myself. It doesn’t work. I take a gulp of air, then push open the front door.

  “Hello?”

  The voice comes from the lounge, and it’s quickly followed by a volley of barks from Sultan. I feel a surge of happiness. Dad’s here. Dad’s alive! I start walking down the hall, without replying: I’m so relieved I’ve forgotten that he wasn’t expecting me home.

  “Who’s there?” Dad shouts.

  I reach the door to the lounge, peer around it. “It’s me,” I say. Sultan comes over, tail ablaze. I stroke his ears.

  “Max,” Dad says curiously, like he was expecting it to be someone else. He’s standing in the middle of the room, looking lost. It doesn’t look like he got up when I came in; it looks like he’s been there for ages. “You scared me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I reply. I look up at him properly. His eyes are red. He looks tired. I thought he only looked like that when I was around.

  Sultan, satisfied that I’m a) a member of the pack and b) not about to feed him or take him for a walk, ambles over to the fireplace and slumps down on the rug.

  “What are you doing home?” Dad asks. I see his face fall, a moment of panic. “Is everything all right? Where’s Robin?”

  “He’s at Auntie Jess’s,” I say. “With James and Louise. Everything’s fine.”

  “So why are you here?”

  I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say. I follow Sultan’s lead and slump down on the sofa. Dad looks at me for a minute, then sits down next to me, and puts his arm around my shoulder.

  We sit there in silence for a while. For a few minutes, I guess. Then, under my breath, I tell him, “I freaked out, Dad.”

  “It’s okay,” he says straight back.

  “No, it’s not. I left Robin on his own. I scared James and Louise. And Auntie Jess is going to flip.”

  I’m telling Dad what happened—but really, I’m telling myself, too. I hadn’t processed any of it until now.

  Dad’s response is really weird. He laughs. I look up at him.

  “She’ll come around,” he says. “Don’t worry. Does Robin know where you are now?”

  “I guess not.”

  He goes to call him. I stay sitting on the sofa. We have this big family portrait that sits on our mantelpiece from when I was six, and Robin was thirteen. Eight years ago. I barely remember going to get it taken, but Mum and Dad have filled in the blanks over the years. Mum made Robin wear a shirt and tie. He wasn’t happy about it. He was a pretty moody teenage
r. (At least, I thought so at the time. It’s all relative I guess.) About ten minutes before we were supposed to leave, he scrunched the shirt Mum had laid out for him into a big ball. Mum was furious. By the time she’d ironed it again, we were late. In the picture, you can see Dad’s forehead is glistening slightly, and Mum’s cheeks are red. Meanwhile, Robin is scowling like an eagle owl. Apparently, the photographer shot a whole roll of film, and Robin was scowling in every single photo. Mum tells this story every Christmas; she’ll never let Robin forget it.

  In that photo, I’m the one who looks happy and carefree. The only one. Now, eight years later, I’m the scowling teenager. I’m the one making everyone’s life difficult. Will I grow out of it, like Robin did? Or am I too screwed up for that?

  “Okay,” says Dad, coming back into the room. “All sorted. Robin says they ate everything in the end. Louise even had the peaches.”

  Which—guess what—makes me feel about a thousand times worse.

  “Did you eat?” Dad says.

  I had like five bites. “Yes,” I tell him.

  “I was about to make some noodles. Are you sure you don’t—”

  I cut him off. “I’m fine. Hey, where’s Mum?” Because when was the last time Mum was out at 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday?

  I see something strange in Dad’s face—a flicker, like he was thrown off by the question somehow. But it only lasts a moment. He gives me one of his big goofy smiles. “She’s having dinner with Clare and Bill.”

  “How come you didn’t go? Are you ill?” I tilt my head. “You do look pretty tired.”

  “Gee, thanks. I just didn’t really feel like it. Plus,” he adds, pointing to the book on the table, “that thing doesn’t read itself, you know.”

  The book is Moby-Dick. Dad’s been reading it since before Christmas. The other day he said to me, You know, I used to read a book a day before I had kids.

  Reading a book doesn’t seem like a good enough reason not to go out. But what do I know?

  Dad looks at his watch. “I’m happy to drive you back over to Auntie Jess’s if you’d like.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “Unless you want to get rid of me.”