Day 6025

The next morning it’s hard to raise my head from the pillow, hard to raise my arms from my sides, hard to raise my body from the bed.

                This is because I must weigh at least 300 pounds.

I have been heavy before, but I don’t think I’ve ever been this heavy. It takes so much effort to do anything. Because this is not muscular heaviness. I am not a linebacker. No, I’m fat. Flabby, unwieldy fat.

                When I finally take a look around and take a look inside, I’m not very excited about what I see.  Finn Taylor has retreated from most of the world; his size comes from negligence and laziness, a carelessness that would be pathological if it had any meticulousness in it.

                I trudge to the bathroom. I have to push hard to get anything done. And within 5 minutes of getting out of the shower, I’m sweating.

I don’t want Jessica to see me like this. But I have to see Jessica – I can’t cancel on her for a second day in a row, not when things feel so precarious between us.

                I warn her, I say in my email that I am huge today. But I still want to see her after school. I’m close to the Clover Bookstore, so I propose that as a meeting place.

                I pray that she’ll come.

I go to school and I’ve worn black today, because I heard so often that it’s supposed to be slimming. But instead I am this sphere of darkness submarining through the halls.

                Thank God I have Finn’s two best friends, Puck and Sam, who makes fun of his size, but it’s clear that they don’t really care. If Finn was thin, they’d make fun of him for that, too. I feel I can relax around them.

I go home, have a shower and change. As I’m drying myself off, I wonder if I could plan a traumatic memory in Finn’s brain, something shocking so that he would stop eating so much. Then I’m horrified at myself for even thinking such a thing, when it’s not my business to tell him what to do.

                I put on his best clothes – an XXXL button-down and some size 46 jeans – to meet up with Jessica. I even try a tie, but it looks ridiculous.

                The chairs are wobbly underneath me at the bookstore’s café. I decide to walk the aisle instead, but they’re too narrow, and I keep knocking things off the shelves. In the end, I wait for her out front.

                She spots me right away; it’s not like she can miss me. The recognition’s in her eyes, but it’s not a particularly happy one.