Eat My Heart Out

I wake up alone. I rub my eyes to rid them of sleep and slowly open them to stare up at the illuminated ceiling. My back aches a little, so I push myself up into sitting position, before I glance at the clock beside me.

11:59-

12:00

I smile to myself.

It’s Monday. It’s noon. And I just woke up.

I stretch my arms above my head, suddenly feeling incredibly awake and energetic, before I get out of bed, go take a leak, wash my hands and my face and then trudge up the stairs to the kitchen. I open a cabinet to find the coffee. There’s a note attached to the jar.

‘Hi Gerard,
Since you weren’t up, Mikey and Frank drove to school today. Maybe you can drive them tomorrow and then go look for a job.’

I roll my eyes.

‘We’re out of milk, so if you could drive to the market once the boys are home, that would be great, thanks. Buy some more coffee while you’re there.
Mom.’

I’m pretty sure the thing about the coffee is just a motivator for me, and that we’re actually drowning in the stuff, but I’ll go anyways. I could use some new socks anyways.

I make some coffee and spend the next hour on the couch, slowly drinking an entire pot all by myself.

At 1:14, I feel guilty. During my hour of coffee-drinking, I kept having my mom’s nagging voice in the back of my head. ‘What did you do all day? Why didn’t you do the dishes? You know, there’s plenty to do around here, if you get bored.’

So at 1:30, I do the dishes. At 2:15, I clean up my room. At 3:35, I clean up Frank’s room. I know better than to clean up Mikey’s.

I find a dirty magazine under Frank’s bed and flip through it. I’m not really in the mood, so I toss it under the bed again and continue cleaning up. When throwing something in the trashcan in his room, I spot a book behind his dresser. I guess it must’ve fallen down there, and he’s just forgotten it.

With great effort and struggle, I push the dresser out a bit to snake my hand in behind it and pull the book out. I sigh heavily and fall onto my ass when the notebook is finally in my hands. I quickly leaf through it to see if it’s been used. Oddly enough, the first few pages are empty. The writing doesn’t start until somewhere in the middle.

I open up on a random page, and while I was expecting boring equations and sums, I find something far different.

The first few lines makes my heart drop into my stomach, making me feel nauseous. The next few makes my stomach drop even further down, bile rising up in my throat. When I reach the bottom of the page, I feel empty inside.

“No.”

‘Toast x2-----------254 x2
Butter, salted------102
Juice-----------------44
Apple----------------52
Ham sandwich-----290
Coke-----------------105
Twix------------------445
Orange--------------47
Pack of Hazelnuts--600
Chicken breast-----258
Rice-----------------367
Broccoli------------26
Donna’s homemade sauce---1,000?
Today---------------3,844’

This can’t be true. What have I done?

I flip a few pages forward. It continues like this. It keeps going, only getting worse and worse. The number for ‘today’ keeps getting smaller and smaller. The letters keep getting blurrier and blurrier. They all hurt. It hurts to read. It actually, physically hurts.

But I wasn’t prepared for the last sentence of the next page I flip to. The last sentence of the extremely few that were on that page hurts so fucking much.

‘Water, approx. 1 gallon---2’

The number smears out when my tears hit it.

I look up from the book. I stare at the wall above his dresser.

‘Gerard, stop it. It tickles.’ He didn’t want to be touched.

‘My stomach hurts. I can’t eat.’ He didn’t want to eat.

‘I’m allergic to cucumber.’ He didn’t want to eat.

‘The pancakes are great.’ I should’ve noticed the look on his face then. That twisted mouth. The harsh gaze in his eyes. He was fighting to swallow that piece. He was struggling. He even stalled to go eat.

‘Just have to pee first.’ He didn’t want to eat.

I keep sitting here, thinking about all the times I should’ve noticed something was wrong. All the times he hid himself. All the times he made up excuses. All the time.

I can’t feel myself. My body is numb, and though I know my head is throbbing, I can’t feel it. I can’t bother to feel it. Even though the guilt feels like a bomb is repeatedly going off in my gut, clearing an empty, hollow path through my chest and into my head, I just can’t feel the pain anymore. I’m numb.

I sit still for about two hours. It must’ve been that long, because the front door slams shut and four feet pound against the floor as they come this way. Four becomes two, and two feet becomes a whole person.

He looks so thin. His eyes are holes in his scull. His cheekbones are sticking out. His clothes are loose. His hands are bony.

“What’s wro-“ His eyes widen. I see the panic in them, before he drops his bag and the books in his hands and runs to grab his notebook out of mine. His eyes shines with a mixture of hurt, anger and panic.
“What d’you- I-“ he stumbles over his words. I keep my mouth shut. It’s all I can do. My lips are glued together, keeping all my emotions from spilling out.
“What is wrong with you!” he suddenly yells. My eyes flinch at his harsh tone.
“You can’t just come in here and rummage through my stuff! It’s my fucking room! You have no right…” he trails off, looking around the floor as if to find the words he’s lost.

He suddenly looks me in the eye.

“What gives you the right? What if I was keeping a private journal or…or writing weird, dirty fantasies or….or…”

“Counting calories?” My voice is weak. I don’t even know how I managed to get the words out without losing it, but I did.

And those words, the truth, sets off a fire in Frank. His eyes goes from expressing panic, hurt and anger, to glaring at me with pure fury.

“Get out,” he snarls at me, pointing at his open door.
“Get out!” he screams. I slowly and shakily get up from his bed, but I don’t walk away.
“Gerard, get the fuck out!” I do. I don’t know why I’m doing it. I barely even register what I’m doing, but I do it anyways.
“I fucking hate you!” he screams at my back, before he slams his door shut. I jump, then close my eyes.

What have I done...