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So she put her pointer finger into her mouth. It still had cheesy powder residue on it that tickled her tongue as she pushed it further and further back.
She hesitated as her knuckles scraped against her front teeth. She didn’t have to do this. She didn’t have to torture herself. She could just walk right back into the dorm and laugh it off and talk with Bri about stoner nonsense. Or she could go to that AFC party. She could sit poolside and watch all the chuckleheads splash each other while the shark movie played. She could go for a walk around grounds and just take in all the sights at night. She bet the Rotunda looked beautiful lit up for the evening.
She had so many choices.
Shutting her eyes tight, she made her choice.
She pushed her finger back and tickled her uvula.
Her body’s first response was a dry heave. She coughed and hacked, then spewed up a mouthful of saliva. She felt her stomach turn over. A throatful of foul air expelled through her mouth. A combination of the banana from earlier that day mixed with all the greasy flavorings of the chips and snacks she’d just devoured.
But it was just air. She hadn’t lost it yet.
Then she started estimating the number of calories she’d probably consumed back in the dorm room. 800? 900? 1,000?
It was too much.
She swiftly pushed two fingers down her throat and touched her tonsils and uvula.
That did it. A quarter pound of junk food shot up her esophagus like a hose and spewed out of her mouth in every direction.
She leaned as far forward as she could to avoid getting any on herself, but she heard it hitting her shoes along with the leaves and tree.
Her eyes watered as another blast came up from her belly, and she shook as her breathing was cut off by the flow. Her throat and mouth tingled, like they were bathed in acid. She was overwhelmed by the taste of potatoes and cheese mixed with a dank bitter tartness. It felt like it would never stop. But it finally did, and she took several deep breaths to catch up.
The burning sensation persisted, the vile taste coated every inch of her tongue and throat.
She looked at the tree, saw her vomit looked like neon-orange oatmeal. The smell of it rose up and hit her nostrils.
This caused her to lose control again and another blast of puke came up, her stomach attacking her mouth. It poured down her chin along with its expulsion against the tree, splashing back against her shoes and socks.
She felt like she might pass out.
But even in the depths of her pain, she was relieved. She’d probably pushed every ounce of the junk food out.
She was back at equilibrium.
Struggling to catch her breath, she listened carefully to see if anyone was within eyeshot or earshot. Still clear.
She looked back at the dorm and realized she couldn’t handle that. She couldn’t go back in there and act normal.
She looked up and saw a small building at the top of the hill. She climbed up the remainder of the hill and saw it was a satellite building for another set of dorms. She saw four large buildings spread out over a large hill. She walked up to the other side of the satellite building and saw that through a glass door, there was a computer lab and a lounge. She opened the door and walked in. No one was in the lab or lounge space. She realized there was probably no one in the remote dorm buildings, either, since classes weren’t in session.
She walked around a corner and found the bathrooms. She went in and washed her hands. She looked at herself in the mirror, saw her cheeks and chin both covered with fluid, two different kinds. She washed her face off, smearing away her subtle makeup. She grabbed three of the tan-colored abrasive paper towels and dried off her face and hands.
She stared into her own eyes and felt a deep sense of loss. She’d given in to temptation, not once but twice. She’d overindulged her appetite for junk, and then doubled down by shooting it all back up. Her throat always burned for days whenever she did this. She hadn’t done it in months.
She shut her eyes and threw away the three paper towels. She walked out of the bathroom without giving her reflection any more grief. She walked up to the nearby water fountain and took a long drink to cool off her burning throat.
She then saw something she hadn’t been able to see at the angle she walked in.
A vending machine.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten food out of a vending machine.
And she certainly wasn’t about to start.
I mean, I don’t have any money. Who carries money anymore?
Then she noticed a sliding mechanism next to the alphanumeric buttons. She reached in her pocket and felt the credit card that Dad had given her. For incidental expenses.
She pulled out the credit card and looked at it, then at the machine. It was a gateway to every taste and sensation she’d denied herself for so long. What could it hurt to just try one?
So she looked at the code under the Whatchamacallit bar. She typed B5 and then swiped the credit card. After a few seconds of delay, the metal ring in front of the candy bar rotated and pushed it forward. It hit the plastic base with a dull thud.
Cara’s heart raced as she pushed the double-secured slot open and retrieved the contraband. She looked out at the lounge and computer lab area to confirm she was still alone.
She then creeped into a corner, tore open and bit into the forbidden food.
Another burst of exhilarating chemicals washed over her mind, and she could feel the blood rushing through her veins faster than ever in excitement at this new sensation.
The crispy bouquet of a chocolate bar was gone painfully fast.
With brown-stained fingers, she turned over the wrapper, saw it had 240 calories.
She wondered if throwing up had made room for this. Had she gotten rid of 240 previous calories, in addition to all the calories from the junk food binge? Or—wait—was it 140 calories she needed to lose to make room for this? What had her total been for the day? She’d lost count.
This was the first time she’d lost mental track of her daily calorie intake. She’d been keeping a mental tally of this number since she turned fifteen. She got the idea in her head that there was no way she’d ever be able to know what was truly “good” and “bad” in terms of things to eat, but as long as she kept her calorie total under 1500 daily, she’d be fine. Then a year later, she added a restriction on junk food. She’d stepped on the scale on the morning of her “sweet sixteenth” birthday and found she was five pounds heavier than the previous year. Disregarding the possibility that she may have grown during that time, she became convinced that the type of calorie mattered just as much as the number of calories. So she cut all processed foods out of her diet. No more candy, no more salty snacks, no more snack cakes. When she stepped on the scale on her birthday a year later, she was overjoyed to find the number equal to the previous year’s. She didn’t obsessively check her weight because she understood that water weight and other factors could cause it to fluctuate. But it felt like a huge loss every random time she stepped on there and saw a high number. She felt like queen of the world if the number was lower than expected.
And on her eighteenth birthday, the number on the scale was ten pounds lower than the previous year. She was overjoyed, rather than worried. Her approach had worked.
And now she was alone and looking at a wall of junk behind a glass shield. And she wanted all of it. She didn’t care about the number on the scale, not at that moment.
She tapped B7 and swiped. A bag of Reese’s Pieces fell and disappeared into her mouth.
A5. Hershey’s Cookies & Cream bar. Devoured.
C2. Three Musketeers. Gone in three bites.
B8. King-Size Snickers. Eaten even faster than a fun-size Snickers.
A4. Nestlé Crunch. Munched.
C3. Butterfinger. Chomped. Then she reached in with her index fingernail to dig the small chunks of candy that persistently stuck to her teeth.
I did it again.
She’d read it can take the stomach fifteen minutes to deliver the signal to the brain it was full. That seemed inefficient and lazy on the stomach’s part. But her stomach was finally hitting her brain with what she’d done. She felt even fuller and sicker than she had in the dorm room with Bri.
She wondered how fast the nutrients in her stomach could be absorbed into her system. She wondered if it was already too late, if the worst parts were already digested and going to work on nurturing fat cells.
She leaped up from her spot in the corner and ran into the bathroom stall and shut and locked the door. She pulled the seat up and stared at the shallow toilet water in the immaculately clean bowl.
If you stare into the toilet, the toilet stares back into you.
She tried to tell herself she didn’t have to do this. She could be okay. Sometimes everyone lost control and ate too much, people overate with Halloween candy after trick-or-treating and ended up fine, she’d be fine too, this was such a ridiculous amount of food that surely it would just go right through her. The human body could only absorb so much of what you ate, right? She wished she knew more about diet and nutrition and digestion. She was just making wild guesses in the dark. She often thought she avoided learning the specifics of digestion so she wouldn’t feel even more self-conscious about everything she ate and everything she did.
She felt her stomach stabbing and stretching under the assault of all the candy she’d just shoved in there. She felt herself growing fatter. She felt another roll adding itself to her.
And she put two fingers into her mouth and pushed them back as far as they could go. She vomited a thick brown paste around her knuckles before she could even pull her fingers out of the way. It spilled all over the edges of the toilet bowl, only partially hitting the water. She saw drips of it raining down on the surrounding floor, as well. She realized she’d have to get more of those abrasive paper towels and clean that up.
And then she noticed something else. For all that just came up, it wasn’t nearly enough.
Her stomach churned and gurgled and her throat and digestive tract burned under the strain. But she knew she’d only purged a small portion of her junk intake.
She pushed the flesh at the back of her throat again, pressing the Eject button on her system. But nothing came up, just some saliva and dry heaves. She pushed again. Nothing.
Her eyes watered and her hair started falling forward, sticking to her vomit-sprinkled cheeks.
She wondered if the garbage calories were stuck inside her. She couldn’t bear the thought. She unlocked and shoved the stall door open with moist fingers, washed her hands off at the sink in a cursory bathing-the-bacteria-in-cold-water fashion, then opened the bathroom door and took a long drink of water. She hoped it would loosen the food that was in her stomach and make it more willing and able to make the journey back up. But then it occurred to her that she might be lubricating it and making it travel more swiftly down her intestines.
She ran back into the bathroom and shut and locked the stall and pushed her fingers all the way back and bounced them between her tonsils repeatedly. That did it.
Several mouthfuls of too-tangy chocolate and peanut butter and cookies and cream flavoring rushed past her throat and tongue. Most of it hit the toilet water this time, but the impact caused it to splash up and hit her in the face and the side of the stall and the floor all around the bowl.
Cara’s tears mingled with the rest of the fluid on her face as she felt a sickening triumph. She’d hollowed herself out. She’d made less of herself, so there was less of her there to have to take responsibility for her life and worry about everything and deal with all the choices and all the confusion.
And it burned. It burned like a cleansing fire all through her insides.
Her head was pounding.
She recognized that any moment, someone could walk in on this public bathroom. She flushed the toilet, then grabbed several handfuls of paper towels and got to cleaning up the floor and the top and outside the toilet bowl.
She stuffed the paper towels down to the bottom of the small metal trash can, then vigorously washed her hands. She used five squirts of foamy white soap. For good measure, she also got a handful of Purell from the dispenser on the corner of the counter and rubbed it in deeply. She then washed her face and chin and even parts of her hair.
She finally felt clean. The evidence was gone. She’d lost herself, then found herself again.
Her body was still shaking from the aftermath.
Endless self-recriminating thoughts went through her head. She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror.
She didn’t know how she was supposed to go back to her dorm. She didn’t know how she was supposed to get through the day tomorrow. Everything just felt like an overwhelming mess of complication, and she just couldn’t see the point of it all.
She threw the last paper towel in the trash and walked out of the bathroom. She took a long drink at the water fountain. She felt like she’d reached a more stable equilibrium.
She turned, looked at the vending machine.
She saw several items in there that she knew she would never let herself have again in her regular life. King-Size Kit Kats. Peanut Butter Snickers. Pay Day. Caramello.
She reached in her pocket, rubbed her freshly-washed finger against the raised plastic numbers on her credit card.
*
Twenty minutes later, she walked back out of the bathroom.
She was clean again. The bathroom was clean again.
And she’d never felt more lost.
Chapter 9
One day before Midsummers
Cara woke up feeling even more hungover than her fellow party-going students.
Her stomach was in knots. Her head was lost in fog. Her knees were sore. She also had some cuts on her calves from thistles on her impromptu run through the woods.
I might as well have gotten blackout drunk, she thought.
As the sunlight broke in around the window blinds, she saw her orange course packet.
Grateful for something to hold her attention, she got up on her elbow and grabbed it. She leafed through the pages with the day’s schedule. She wondered if she would eat breakfast. She didn’t want to eat anything, ever again.
A small burst of blue light from across the room grabbed her attention.
Cara looked over, saw Bri, holding something that looked like a sonic screwdriver in front of her face.
“What are you doing?” asked Cara.
“A vape wake-and-bake. Trying to keep my smoking under the radar here, so I got my THC in liquid form for orientation.” Bri punctuated herself with a thick exhalation of fast-evaporating smoke.
“Never heard of that,” said Cara.
“It’s great. No smell, no smoke, no harmful additives. Just the good stuff. In a few short years, traditional pot is gonna be ancient history.”
“So why did you smoke it last night?”
“I can neither confirm or deny I did any such thing. But if I did, it’s because it was offered to me. My standards go way down if something is offered to me for free.”
Cara rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “That’s great, Bri. Great.”
“Do you want any?”
“No, thanks.” Cara grabbed her orange folder and started going through her class options. She picked out a handful that might be interesting. She put blue check marks next to each of them. She didn’t worry about coordinating their scheduled times since she figured she was just creating a rough draft of her academic plans, anyway.
She then took another look at her schedule for the day and saw that her appointment with her academic advisors wasn’t until four in the afternoon. She sighed.
“Did you say something?” asked her increasingly buzzed roommate.
“Oh, nothing.
It’s just that I have to wait nine hours before I can sign up for classes.”
“Bummer. Yeah, my meeting isn’t until three. Fingers crossed I sober up by then. But it’s doubtful.”
“I don’t mind having a day free to chill and explore, but why is this class signup process even a thing? In this day and age, shouldn’t people just sign up for classes online, on a first-come, first-served basis?”
Bri shrugged in the blue-tinted darkness. “They probably just wanna add a personal touch.”
“I guess.”
Another explosion of vapor came from across the room, and Cara actually got a whiff that time. She didn’t complain, just put her paperwork in her backpack, got up, and went out into the suite’s common area.
“Could you close the door? I’m probably gonna go back to sleep,” said Bri.
“Sure, so you can wake and bake again later?”
“Exactly!”
Cara closed the door. She looked out the main suite window, impressed by the sight of the sunrise beyond the stadium and mountains.
I could wake up to this sight every day.
She got excited about her prospective studenthood again.
The night before was starting to fade like a bad dream.
She heard a beep from across the room, turned and saw a microwave going off.
Christie came out of her room, popped it open, pulling out a plate of fish sticks. She met Cara’s eyes. “I know. I know. Microwaving fish sticks? The temperature and texture’s never right when you nuke ’em. But it’s better than nothing.”
Cara laughed. “I was actually marveling that you were eating fish sticks for breakfast.”
Christie shrugged, plopped down in one of the old faded-orange chairs in the middle of the room. “Once you’re a student, you’ll relax your standards on what you eat and when you eat it.”
Man, I really doubt that.
Cara involuntarily sucked her stomach in, fearful of the rolls of flab that could accumulate there if she weren’t careful.