“So you’re not going to turn me in?”
A laugh broke through her serious expression. “I am, like, so offended right now.”
Fresh tears ran down Emmett’s cheeks. It was hard to believe he could be accepted this fully by anyone but his mother. But if anyone had ever shown him it was possible, it was Lizette.
Finally she went to grab her purse. “I need to head back to Mando’s. I left Tubbs there.”
“Are you coming back?”
She paused at the door; her head swiveled around, her smile loving but burdened. “Yeah. Soon. Maybe tomorrow.”
Emmett hated that she needed time, but it was the least he could give her. “Okay.”
“Just please. I don’t want to come back to find a half-eaten corpse in my bed or some shit.”
“I’ll contain them to my room.” It surprised Emmett that he could joke at a time like this, and how grounding it felt. He didn’t deserve it, or her. “Promise.”
CHAPTER 35
Lizette returned to the apartment with tacos late that night, making a joke that Cotija’s was out of human meat and he’d have to settle for al pastor. Things between them were pretty much normal after that.
Confiding in her had halved Emmett’s burden, but the part that remained still weighed on him. After two days he still hadn’t heard back from Aaron. This wasn’t totally unusual. Maybe he was still feeling awkward after seeing him naked. Still, Emmett worried something was wrong. Had Aaron seen the same article about Emmett’s car Lizette had and gotten suspicious?
Emmett checked in and was relieved when Aaron blamed his radio silence on a “crazy week.” He said he’d been working behind the scenes so that Emmett could start sooner at the museum, pending the successful clearance of a background check (he and Lizette had a good laugh at this—if only HR knew). He wasn’t sure Aaron was being totally forthcoming with his feelings, but he seemed to want to move forward, and that was what mattered.
Emmett tried to enjoy his last few days off work, but it was hard when he couldn’t stop refreshing the news sites, and every siren outside his window left him sick and winded from fear.
The anxiety accelerated his weight loss back to a couple of pounds per day. He’d recently entered the healthy weight zone and looked better than ever: not just average, but handsome. The kind of good-looking you wouldn’t dream of covering up with baggy clothes or magenta hair. The kind of weight loss most people,normalpeople, would kill for.
It made him resent his excess skin even more, the last bastion of ugliness holding him back from perfect days at the beach. It made him regret letting Lizette convince him to destroy his remaining doses, snapping the injector pens and pouring the serum down the sink.
Yes, he had to get off Obexity. Yes, it was evil. Yes, it had driven him to kill.
But it had also given him a chance at life.
CHAPTER 36
“One ninety-seven. You’ve put on a pound,” Dr. Halleck said two weeks later, reading over Emmett’s vitals at his scheduled check-in.
“H-have I?”
Emmett’s hands fidgeted in his lap. He’d been dreading the appointment. Given the ongoing murder investigation, it was silly to be nervous about a doctor’s visit, but the Cronus Health medical office gave him the creeps, and it always felt like Halleck was one bad day away from ordering Emmett’s euthanasia.
If he’d gained a pound since his last doctor’s visit, then he’d put on a hell of a lot more since he was at his lowest weight. This didn’t necessarily surprise him. He’d been off Obexity for weeks, and although his physical hunger had abated, his eating had remained out of control. It felt like he spent most of his monthly trial stipend on fast food and groceries, at least what remained of it after paying rent and the loan on his new-to-him Nissan Sentra. It was all he could do to cope with the stress.
“You been taking your doses?” Halleck said, eyes on the clipboard.
“Yeah,” Emmett answered. Even to his own ear, it sounded like a lie. “I mean, I might’ve forgotten once or twice. The drug affects my memory.”
“Do you think EmaC-8 is a joke?”
“No—”
“It’s not. Even a slight variance from the prescribed dosage can lead to extreme volatility in the endocrine system.”
“Endocrine?”
“The system that creates and releases hormones. It’s how your body regulates mood, metabolism, growth. We’ve seen cases of participants doubling up doses, creating a sudden, dramatic imbalance in thyroxine and triiodothyronine, with weight fluctuations to match. Double that in moments of high stress.” There was something strange about the way he said “high stress.” Had he read Emmett’s last health journal? Part of him had been expecting him to bring it up.
