I turn and walk toward the door. Jack says something, but it doesn't register. I don't look back because I don't want to look at Ethan's face.
I don't go far, just down the hall, I have nowhere to go. I slide to the ground, press my palms against my eyes until I see stars. I don't cry. I won't give this place, this system, this moment, the satisfaction. I fucking hate him. And that's a lie, because I love him too much, and that's why it hurts so bad.
The next meal comes too fast. Lunch. I barely have time to scrub my face and pretend I haven't been sitting on the hallway floor.
Only I don't get to join the herd. Not anymore.
A guard I've seen around but never spoken to intercepts me at the entrance. She's tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair pulled into a severe bun, dark skin, and her nametag reads SANTOS. She doesn't smile.
"Marsal," she says, not a question. "You're with me."
She guides me to a table in the far corner of the cafeteria, separated from the others. It's a two-person table shoved against the wall. My tray is already there, waiting for me. Mashed potatoes. Green beans. Some unidentifiable protein. A carton of milk. A bread roll. Same old.
I sit. Santos pulls out the chair across from me, positions it at a slight angle so she can see both me and the rest of the room, and sits. She doesn't speak. She doesn't pull out a phone or a book or even a clipboard. She just watches me with those flat, professional eyes.
The humiliation is total.
Every kid in this cafeteria can see me. The weird kid at thecorner table with a personal babysitter, eating under supervision like a toddler who can't be trusted with a spoon. I can feel their eyes, the quick glances, the whispered conversations. I can practically hear Harry's commentary from wherever he's sitting, and the thought makes my skin crawl.
I pick up my fork. The mashed potatoes are cold. I put a bite in my mouth and chew, staring at a spot on the wall just above Santos's left shoulder. She doesn't react. Doesn't nod encouragingly, doesn't check off some invisible box. Just sits there, breathing, existing, being a witness to my degradation.
I feel Ethan watching me, sitting with Jack and Miles. I don't look. I won't give him that. He doesn't get to watch me suffer and feel good about it, like he’s helping me heal. He doesn't get to sit over there with his clean conscience and hisI did it because I love youbullshit and see me acknowledge him. He gets nothing.
I take another bite. The green beans taste disgusting. I chew. Swallow. My throat works against the food like it's swallowing glass.
Santos shifts slightly in her chair, recrossing her arms. Still silent. Still watching. I wonder if she drew the short straw for this assignment or if she volunteered. I wonder if she thinks I'm pathetic. I wonder if she's been briefed on my file, on the specifics, on the clinical language they use to describe what I do:bulimia,purging behavior, self-induced emesis, compensatory mechanisms.Words that make it sound clean and medical instead of what it actually is, which is me on my knees in a bathroom stall with my fingers down my throat, crying.
I eat another forkful. And another. Each one is a small act of violence against myself, which is ironic, because the whole point of this exercise is supposedly to stop me from committing violence against myself.
The bread roll is dense and dry. I tear it into pieces, eating them one by one, washing each down with a sip of milk. Mystomach cramps. Not because I'm full, not yet, but because my body knows what's supposed to come next, the relief, the release, the three seconds of silence, and it's bracing for a ritual that won't happen. I'd love to vomit right there, just to spite them.
Across the room, the normal sounds of lunch continue. Plastic trays clattering. Conversations overlapping. Someone laughs, loud and sharp. Everyone else gets to eat like a person. Everyone else gets to sit with their friends, make jokes, complain about the food, benormal. I get a corner table and a silent guard and the knowledge that the boy I love is the one who put me here.
And I can’t even get as angry as he deserves.
Chapter 23. Liam
A week passes. Then two.
Ethan and I don't speak. Not once. Not a single word, not a syllable, not even the accidental kind that happens when two people share a room the size of a parking space. It's impressive, really. Someone should give us a fucking award.
At meals, I sit at my designated corner table with Santos or whoever drew the short straw that day, and I eat my monitored portions like a good little boy while Ethan sits with Jack and Miles on the other side of the cafeteria, having oh so much fun. In the dorm, we pretend each other isn’t there. He reads his nursing textbook. I stare at the wall. Jack tries to crack jokes that land in the dead air between us and die slow, painful deaths. Miles, to his credit, doesn't try at all. Harry is always trying to convince us to play poker with him, but no one is in the mood. We’re all just quiet.
At night, we lie in our bunks, three feet apart, and the silence hurts. I can hear him breathing.
I'm still angry. I am. The anger lives in my chest like a hot coal, flaring every time I see Santos pull out her chair at my table, every time I sit across from Dr. Herrera and she asks me how I'mfeeling about my relationship with food, every time some kid glances at my corner table and then quickly looks away in secondhand embarrassment. Ethan did this to me. He took the one thing I had, the one mechanism, the one releasevalve, and he handed it over to the system.
But here's the thing about anger: it burns hot, and then it burns out, and what's left underneath is so much worse.
Because more than angry, I'm hurt. The hurt is a different animal entirely. It's the hurt of being betrayed by the person you trusted most. It's the hurt of hearingI love you. It's the hurt of knowing he saw me at my ugliest, my most desperate, and instead of holding me through it, he reported me. I know he’s right to worry. But he had no fucking right. And I'm so hurt that he did it with my best interest in mind. Not to hurt me, not even a little bit.
I miss him.
I miss him like crazy. Like a physical ache. I miss the weight of his arm around my waist during Quiet Time. I miss his fingers. I miss the smell of him. I miss his voice in the dark. I miss listening to music with him. Now I can’t even use my radio, it hurts too much. I miss being calledbabyin that way he had.
I miss him, and I hate that I miss him, and I hate that hating it doesn't make it stop.
The counseling sessions with Dr. Herrera are twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means they pulled me out of kitchen duty as well, so now I don’t even have Lu, Margarete, and Dora. Therapy is in a small office that smells like carpet cleaner. She's okay, I guess. Mid-forties, dark hair streaked with gray, glasses that she pushes up her nose every thirty seconds. She doesn't talk to me like I'm broken, which I appreciate, but she also doesn't let me bullshit her, which I definitely don't appreciate.
