“Haven’t seen it.”
“Go pee. I want to hear about dinner.”
Emmett closed himself in the bathroom. He didn’t really need to go, but what he needed was there and he didn’t want Lizette to give him a hard time. His mind was made up about what he had to do.
He quietly slid open the drawer, riffled around, and found the box hiding under his spare CPAP supplies. Out slid the plastic tray, revealing a set of four injector pens trembling with sky-blue liquid.
No more procrastinating, no more self-doubt. It was time to get this weight off.
Appendix R—Interview Transcript
FD:This is Frank Darrow and it’s just shy of noon on Monday, January 6, 2025. I’m here at the Starbucks on West Point Loma Boulevard with Lizette Castillo. Can you please state your age, occupation, and relationship to the subject?
LC:Thirty-one. I own a fashion brand. Emmett’s best friend and roommate.
FD:It took some convincing to get you to speak with me today. Any reason why?
LC:I told you in my email. I don’t trust anything about you or that fucking Monster Corp.
FD:By that you mean Monstera BioSciences?
LC:I knew something was off about that clinical trial. I begged him not to do it, and then look what they did to him. I was there, you know, when it happened.
FD:At the museum?
LC:I’ll never be able to unsee it.
FD:The blood? The mayhem?
LC:The look on his face.
FD:Right. Well. I just have a few questions.
LC:You’ve got five minutes.
FD:I spoke with a couple of Emmett’s former coworkers at Target, and they said he changed in the last couple months before he left. Not just physically. Did you notice that?
LC:It was that drug he was on, that Emaciate.
FD:EmaC-8, I believe it’s called.
LC:That’s what I said.
FD:So you think the treatment was to blame.
LC:The treatment, the weight loss. And the social media, my god, the fucking social media. All those people telling him how great he looked, how amazing he was for dragging himself out of the fat gutter.
FD:You think it went to his head?
LC:He for sure started acting different. Started keeping an eye on what I ate. Making little comments. He convinced me to join his gym. At first it was fun, helping him take video for his Insta. But if I said, “I don’t feel like it today,” he’d call me lazy. He’d get on me about not working hard enough, taking too long on the machines. “Are you almost done? People are waiting.” It felt like he was embarrassed of me.
FD:He’d never been that way before?
LC:Not with me. Maybe himself. He was bullied his whole life. He internalized that shit pretty bad.
FD:It sounds like he started to become a bully himself.
LC:I didn’t say bully. Just… one of them. One night we got into a big fight—
