Skinny

  I did know. Campers were worth eleven thousand dollars apiece. He didn’t want to tell their parents that under his supervision, their children had eaten McDonald’s and were now toying with new eating disorders. He didn’t want to explain to them how loosely he had screened candidates during the hiring process. He didn’t want to lose campers when, compared with other weight-loss camps, he already had so few. He didn’t want to deal with angry parents asking for refunds or writing on weight-loss camp websites about how incompetent Lewis Teller was, how his brand-new revolutionary weight-loss camp for children was nothing but a joke.

  “I didn’t send them home because I believe in every child. Some just need more help than others.”

  “So they’re going to get help? Are you bringing in a shrink or something?”

  “There’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Aren’t eating disorders . . . um . . . serious?”

  “They don’t have eating disorders.”

  “They eat and throw up their food.”

  “They’ll stop now.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I told them they better cut the shit.”

  “So you don’t think—”

  “Some kids just need more help with their self-esteem. That’s what I’m here for. That’s why my camp will succeed when all other camps have failed: I’m committed to the children. People will know me as Lewis Teller, the man who really cares about the kids.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  At Lewis’s request, Bennett stood outside Sheena’s room while she packed, to prevent her from pulling a gun from under her bed and moving through the dorms on a shooting rampage. Every female camper and counselor had gathered in our hall. Kimmy hung back on the edges of the crowd with one of her counselors, sucking her thumb, her puffy eyes wide. Among the Sheena supporters, several campers were weeping with their whole bodies, shouting that Sheena had been framed.

  Eden was leaning against the closed door of her room, a solitary tear dribbling down her cheek (“Here comes Brenda Preston!” I could hear my father saying).

  “It wasn’t Sheena’s fault!” Whitney shrieked. She had slid down the wall and was sitting on the floor, her knees tucked to her chin. “She’s the best counselor in the whole camp!”

  Whitney’s words felt, not like a punch or a stab, nothing that drastic, but at least like a jostle—like someone had knocked into me in a crowd, not bothering to turn around and apologize. I wasn’t delusional; I knew I wasn’t the best counselor at Camp Carolina. But Sheena? Really? I looked around at the tear-streaked cheeks, the kids standing in supportive clusters, arms snaked around one another’s shoulders, and I saw that it was true: Sheena had made an impact, forged a closeness with the kids, made camp more fun. What had I done? I had experimented with green eye shadow and glitter. I had meditated diligently on blow jobs. I had done Kegels. I had found an aesthetician in Melrose to wax my pubic hair into a heart.

  “Nobody cares about us!” Whitney said. “Sheena’s the only one who ever cared.” She climbed to her feet. “We’re all going to have to go back to being invisible now. We’ll just be the fat kids everyone pretends not to see.” She raised her arms and tipped her face toward the ceiling, as if to invoke lightning. “Sheena saw us!” she shouted.

  Eden used the knuckle of each of her thumbs to wipe dramatically beneath her eyes. Miss, who was sitting and weeping at Whitney’s feet, wailed, “This camp is gay!”

  This was not the picture Lewis had painted of Whitney and Miss and their repentance. These were not girls who seemed sorry.

  When Sheena finished packing, she stood on the threshold and looked out on the chaos. The crowd went quiet, as if she were controlling the volume with a dial.

  “Let’s go,” Bennett said, slipping into her room. “Let’s get your stuff to your car.” He loaded his arms with her things.

  Sheena ignored him. “Y’all,” she said, “don’t worry.” She looked at me then, her face serene. “You’ll see me again.” And with that, she lifted a duffel bag in each hand, squared her shoulders, and strode toward the stairwell, Bennett trailing her.

  We all followed, a crowd that should have been carrying votive candles and humming something sad and strong.

  “We love you, Sheena!” the kids shrieked. “Don’t leave us here!”

  Even a couple of the counselors cried quietly, walking with their heads bowed, as if toward Sheena’s crucifixion.

  Lewis and Nurse were waiting in the parking lot by Sheena’s silver Camry. The boys were clustered nearby, some of the young ones perched on the shoulders of their counselors. Sheena and Bennett loaded the trunk and the backseat. And then Sheena opened the driver’s side door, bent into the car to start the ignition, and stood again to address the masses. She wore a flowing white sundress that fell to her ankles, delicate leather sandals adorned with turquoise beads. Her hair was crimped and loose and full of fire, a flame blowing in an unlikely wind. I had never seen her more beautiful. A cloud or a stage should have appeared beneath the soles of her shoes.

  Everyone went quiet, awaiting a speech.

  “Y’all know how to reach me,” she said. She held her cell phone aloft like a sword. “I know how fucked up this place is. You know I do.”

  “That’s enough,” Lewis said, stepping toward her. “You’re finished here.”

  Sheena looked at him, her eyes smoldering like cigarette burns in the smooth white plane of her face. She lowered her arm to her side. And then she smiled two smiles—with her lips and with her scar—and said something cryptic: “Child molester.” She balled her fist, the cell phone inside it, wound up, and punched Lewis squarely in the gut. For a second, her hand disappeared up to the wrist.

  The crowd sucked in a collective breath. Lewis whimpered in one warbling note and doubled over, his knee jerking up to his chest. When he righted himself and tried to speak, Sheena lifted her skirt above her ankles, picked up one leg, and launched a powerful kick at Lewis’s crotch.

  “Stop that!” Bennett said, reaching for her. “Sheena! What in—”

  Sheena hopped into her car and backed it out of the parking lot with a screech. The tires crunched over gravel. The silver paint glistened and winked in the sunshine. She honked her horn twice. She straightened the car. And then she was gone.

  The second casualty.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Now that Kimmy—Judas, Brutus, Benedict Arnold—was on the outs with Whitney and Miss, she spent her time with the other thirteen-year-olds in the intermediate group. The wide-eyed anxiety left her face. She sucked her thumb with less urgency. Kimmy didn’t care who was popular. She never had. That was what had made her popular in the first place. Kimmy just liked to be comfortable. If she’d grown up when I had, she would have favored beanbags and Laura Ashley bedroom sets. I expected that one day she would be a mother who wore the best, most expensive sweat suits and sipped hot tea from a meticulously chipped mug. With Sheena gone, Kimmy was comfortable. Ex-communicated and comfortable.

  And so the meek inherited the earth: For the first time in her life, Eden was “in.” It started with the tears she shed upon Sheena’s departure. That night, she, Whitney, and Miss locked themselves in Miss’s room for hours. At Lights Out, when they finally emerged, Eden’s initiation was sealed. Her skin glowed. Her fingernails were painted red.

  I slept in my own bed that night. Staring at the moonlight through the unfamiliar slits of my blinds, I called Bennett from my cell phone. “You’re so close. I can’t believe how close you are and I can’t touch you.”

  “Blame Sheena.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Why’d she pick McDonald’s? McDonald’s hasn’t had a good special all summer.”

  I hugged my pillow to my body. “What the hell happened today?”

  “Well, a nineteen-year-old girl kicked Lewis’s ass.”

  I giggled. “But why did she call him a child molester?”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” B
ennett said. “I was going to ask you.”

  Whitney, Eden, and Miss began writing WEM on the walls and on their clothing. They walked in an impenetrable, unsmiling line, elbows linked, heads up, potent in movie star sunglasses. They told everyone, “You can’t touch WEM.”

  Eden promptly withdrew from me. Gone were the days when she would sulk on my bed, my window fan blowing her hair across her face. Around Whitney and Miss, she was cautious, but elated. I could practically see the static of excitement crackling on her skin. She stopped talking like she was black, but started trying to do her hair like Miss’s, even though Miss’s hair was gorgeous, thick, sparkly, and full of light, whereas Eden’s was greasy and stringy and dark. Miss wore her hair in a high side ponytail, so Eden did, too. Sometimes the three of them wore matching outfits. Sometimes they suffered synchronized injuries. They frequently disappeared into one another’s rooms and locked the door. If I walked by, I could hear their muffled laughter. Camp was quiet. Sheena’s absence felt like a fragile calm, a crystal figurine teetering, seconds from shattering on hardwood.

  While the campers walked solemnly around the loop the morning after Sheena’s departure, I stayed with Lewis on the cafeteria steps.

  “Can you handle your girls yourself?” he asked. He looked me up and down as if sizing me up for battle.

  “Four campers? Sure. By the way, are you all right? She hit you pretty hard.”

  “I didn’t even feel it. I used to wrestle in high school.”

  “Right, but—”

  “I was always big. But I was the athletic kid. Everyone knew not to mess with Lewis Teller.” He held his fists up in front of his face and jabbed at an imaginary enemy. “I could teach you how to fight,” he said. He shuffled on his feet like a boxer. “Everyone should know how to fight.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe sometime.”

  Lewis stopped jabbing. He was out of breath. He set his hands on his massive hips. “Things are going to get better around here,” he said. “I’m glad Sheena’s gone. She was bringing everyone down.” He squinted at me. “How much weight have you lost?”

  I plucked my sunglasses from the neck of my T-shirt and put them on. “I stopped weighing in.”

  Twenty-two and three-tenths of a pound. I weighed myself every morning before the world was awake.

  I looked at Lewis’s body, from his sneakers and striped socks to his pleated gray shorts to his yellow Camp Carolina T-shirt. He looked bigger every day. Sometimes he looked bigger at dinner than he had at breakfast, as if he would eventually float into the atmosphere, farther and farther from Earth, finally becoming tiny.

  “I knew when I met you that my camp would change your life. You didn’t think so. I could see you didn’t think so.”

  “My eating habits are totally different,” I said. “I eat much smaller portions. I need so much less.”

  “You’ll never be the same again,” Lewis said.

  I thought of Chinese Buffet, the gulping, greasy indulgence of it. “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  “Gray. Don’t you know me by now? Am I ever wrong?” He grabbed for my hand and twirled me, and then gracelessly dipped me. I stumbled to a lower step. He pointed down at me with an outstretched arm. “You, Gray Lachmann, are changed.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Dear Fat People,

  I see you in motorized wheelchairs, in bus seats that don’t accommodate you. I see you taking breaks when you walk, pretending to admire the scenery. Good God, I am afraid. Not for your hearts and your joints and your arteries. No, I’m afraid for myself. I know that you’re inside me—flesh flies laying your infinite eggs in my open, pus-slick wounds. Your young will hatch in my body and eat their way up through my skin.

  Yes. I am being mean. So? You, of all people, should recognize my reasons for acting mean.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  This was a summer of loss. We lost Sheena. We lost Spider. We lost weight. We lost our inhibitions. We lost socks when we sent the laundry out. We lost our minds when it rained too much. We lost track of time in the swimming pool. We lost our old reflections, the stretch of space we could claim on a bench, some cellulite, a roll or two, our salt cravings, our caffeine habits, our distaste for sugar-free Jell-O. And then I lost my hair.

  With not even two weeks left of camp, I found that if I touched my hair—to make a ponytail, to scratch my head, to rake it back off my face—I’d wind up with a handful of it, as if it hadn’t been stitched to my scalp. I began to wonder whether, if I gave the whole mass a good tug, it would come off in my fist like a wig. I didn’t try. I didn’t tell anyone. Instead, I just ignored it. If I ignored the problem, I knew, it would take the hint and go away.

  • • •

  “Angeline,” Bennett said.

  We were at Water Nation, land of the great, looping blue slides; of the fried dough and fat families and E. coli scares. My group—Whitney (who had begged, unsuccessfully, to stay behind at camp), Eden, Harriet, and Miss—had merged with Pudge and a couple of the other boys, and Brendan. Bennett and I were trailing behind them as they walked in a tight mass through the park. Brendan and Miss had their arms around each other’s waists. It was becoming a familiar image, the two of them linked like Rockettes. They had the air of a genuine couple, people who had been in love for years, who looked at each other for long stretches and had conversations with their eyes. Even when Brendan was alone now, he looked confident, his body language less awkward, his smile easier.

  Bennett touched the side of my head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “Your hair . . .”

  I touched my hair. I had tied it into a messy knot.

  Bennett pressed his thumb to the side of my head. “You have a bald spot. Maybe it’s just the way your hair’s done up, but . . .”

  I combed my fingernails through the sides of my hair. “That better?”

  “I can still see it.”

  “Then stop looking.”

  “You got it, Angeline. Whatever you say.” Bennett hooked his arm around my neck in a brief headlock, then let go before anyone could see.

  I should have recognized an omen. I should have known that the day Bennett pointed out a flaw on my body would mark some sort of ending. But I was oblivious. Willfully so. I wasn’t fazed by the hot gray sky that looked ready to explode. Camp would end in just over a week. But I didn’t think it would ever rain.

  We walked in our bathing suits, in love with our bodies. We were a parade for our bodies. We were one thousand pounds lighter than we’d been when we’d met.

  “I want to go on the Death Drop,” Miss said. She hopped in the air like a thin person and took off running, Whitney just behind her, Eden in tow, toward the slide that started in the sky and dropped at a ninety-degree angle to earth.

  Everyone followed. Of course we did. We had been following Miss and Whitney all summer. When we got to the base of the slide, I sat beside Bennett on a bench. Everyone else joined the line.

  “I thought Harriet would for sure stay with us,” I said. “And Whitney. And Pudge.”

  “How ’bout that,” Bennett said. “Whitney on a water slide.”

  “Nah. She won’t go through with it. Neither will Harriet. If they even let her on.”

  “You don’t give anyone enough credit.”

  I leaned my head on his shoulder. “If we have kids one day,” I said, “we should take them to this water park.” I glanced at his face, surprised not to feel his muscles go tight. “Unless they’re fat. Then we’ll make them run wind sprints.”

  “You won’t have fat kids,” he said after a minute.

  “Me. Right.”

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘You won’t have fat kids’ . . . Forget it.”

  “If I had my son with me all the time, no way he’d be overweight.”

  “You don’t have that kind of control.”

  “No? When you have kids, you’ll see, Ang
eline. If you keep an eye on them, they’ll have the best bodies in town. Besides their mama’s.”

  “I’d feed them healthy food, but what if they’re lazy? What if they eat desserts at their friends’ houses? What if they’re the types of kids who hide candy in their drawers? What if they hate to run around? What if they love video games?”

  “Then you’ll have to be the kind of mother who goes through her kids’ drawers.”

  I thought about that. “You know? I think I would be that kind of mother. Maybe I’d be looking for candy. I would want to eat their candy.” I laughed, but it came out sounding strange and choked.

  Bennett shifted in his seat and his wooden cross grazed my face.

  I imagined his home. Me inside it. Children who looked like him and would never know my father. I imagined waking up beside Bennett on a Sunday morning, zipping myself into a long floral dress, twisting my hair into a low bun, and affixing to my head a wide-brimmed, avocado-green straw hat adorned with a fat white ribbon. I imagined gathering my skirt into my fist to climb into Bennett’s car, and letting him drive me to church, a brood of children in the backseat eating MoonPies and lunch meats from plastic wrappers. My mother visiting us in the winter, standing in Bennett’s living room, tiny beside a towering Christmas tree; sipping eggnog from one of Bennett’s mugs that said WORLD’S GREATEST DAD, watching as I moved through my home in a Christmas sweater, a Christmas vest, pleated pants, a wreath pin that lit up and flashed red and green.