Maria was the fourth girl to get sick. You can sort of see it in the feverish sheen of their eyes and how the shape of her ribs poked through her thin skin.
My eyes follow her, along with the eyes of almost everybody else in this class. It’s not like they could help it, Maria is growing beautiful just as much as she’s growing sick – Maybe she’s growing beautiful because she’s sick. Pallid skin and the curve of delicate collarbones. Her usual, chubby figure has withered away into a dainty little thing. Her face looked tiny under that mane of glossy curls, like the hair was sapping nutrients from her body in order to grow lush and dark.
Maria finished whatever conversation she was having with the girl behind her and turned back to face the front. My gaze followed her until I’m only staring at the back of her head.
Absentmindedly, I slipped the beaded bracelet off of my wrist and brought it to my lips. My teeth clicked against the black orbs that were strung into the bracelet.
Mrs. Farrow was saying something. And then everyone started moving about, suddenly the quiet classroom became the rustling of papers, the hum of conversation, and the sound of chairs sliding on the floor as they were pushed back. With a start, I realize the bell has been ringing for a while now. Everyone was already moving, standing up, gathering their collection of notebooks and pencil bags from the table as they got ready to leave the classroom. The ringing of the bell stops, and the hum of conversation fills the space. I quickly scoot my chair back and gather my things to head off to my next class.
…
There must’ve been something special about my lunch, because they’re staring at me like it was feeding time at the zoo.
An incoming headache made itself known in the form of a dull throb right in the back of my right eye socket. I signed and prodded at my food with the white plastic spork.
Look, that’s May, the freak without a tongue.
Really? What happened to her?
I heard that it was an accident, something about playing with scissors as a kid.
Seriously? I heard it was her mom that did it, y’know, her real one, the one that went crazy.
Every single year a new wave of students arrive and the rumors start afresh. It’s always hard at the beginning of the year when morbid curiosity runs like static electricity through the population of new students. But this year, they have something else to talk about.
Soon, Maria entered the cafeteria, surrounded by her usual group of girls, with a new boy toy of the week trailing behind her like a lovesick puppy. The heavy metal doors shut behind them with a heavy thud before bouncing against its frame. The buzz of conversation stuttered, before picking up again with greater intensity. All eyes were on Maria as she strutted down the center isle between two lunch tables like she owned the place, because in a way, she did.
She wore a sundress today. A flimsy thing in orange and peach that flowed around her knees. The knobs of her kneecaps were growing too big for her body. Everybody else might’ve been charmed by how beautiful she looked but I could see how sharply defined the tendons on the back of her knees have become. For a second the image of that sundress waving in the wind of her stride faded and became another picture entirely. The same knobby knees on a pair of legs so thin that they’re basically cords of muscle wrapped in a layer of skin. Tendons stretched visibly with every stride. A pair of pink heels that matched the dress. Mama. I thought. I recognized those heels from the pictures that my brain was showing me. They were her favorite ones.
Look, she’s spacing out again.
Why does she do that? It’s kinda creepy.
Uhhh, kind of creepy? How about VERY. My cousin said …
Yo why doesn’t she EAT? I’ve honestly never seen her eat ANYTHING. Like why does she even sit in the cafeteria if she’s not gonna eat.
You think she’s got an eating disorder or something? Or is it because, y’know…
The buzz of conversation faded in and out as my gaze grew vacant. The rustling of oily wrapping paper and the zip zip zip of lunch bags was replaced by the dull throb of my heartbeat at my ears. I stared at that sundress until the colors blurred and my memory dipped back into its kaleidoscope of broke pieces. my mind has a strange way of finding these bits and baubles every now and then. Ever since Maria and the girls have been getting sick, these moments where memory seizes me has become more and more frequent.
Even as I sat there, chewing absentmindedly on my bracelet, the sound of mama’s shrill voice filled my head until my skull felt like it would crack.
Why are you doing this to me?
Am I not good enough?
Please, mama’s voice sobbed. I stared out at the bright color of her pink stiletto heels as she tottered like a distressed damsel. But nobody came to save her.
Somewhere, a door shut with a final snap. Mama kept on screeching and throwing stuff. I felt the warmth of small arms around my middle, and the fuzzy toddler curls under my hands. That must be my sister.
I knew that my mama wasn’t a happy woman before she passed away, but I haven’t had a trip this bad for as long as I could remember. I schooled my expression and forced myself to look down.
If memory is a moving picture, then mine was scattered by a messy hand that sent bits and pieces flying out in every direction. And now the pieces float back, bubbling to the surface to show their hideous faces before finally settling into the picture I’m trying to construct.
I could feel the presence of the pill bottle sitting in the side pocket of my backpack, taunting me with the relief that they offered. I was about to reach for them when I felt a gaze boring my upper back.
I turned, with great difficulty and swearing under my breath at the sudden bought of dizziness, and my eyes met Maria’s.
It was just a quick glance on her part, but there was something in her expression that I couldn’t read.
Her gaze flicked to my bracelet, before flitting away and back to her boy toy.
I looked down at my bracelet. It sat there, hanging innocently from my wrist as I once again wondered about what is wrong with Maria.
…
I saw the other four in English class.
They all walked in at the final ring of the bell, so light on their feet that I had the urge to see if they’re actually standing on the ground as they passed my desk.
They look even worse than Maria in my opinion. Sara, Lianne, Jody, and Paige. The four of them were an absolute nightmare to me when we started highschool together. They wanted to be interesting, so they created a performance where I was the animal and they were the ringmasters.
This continued for years, until last month, when they just … stopped.
It wasn’t even just that: it’s as if they’ve lost all interest in everything they cared about before. And now they just huddle in their depressing group of four. I don’t think they speak much nowadays either. In a way, they’ve become as much of an outcast as me.
And like Maria, they’ve become frightfully thin but also horribly beautiful as they withered away. The skin pulled taught over their bone frame – it’s as if they only lost weight where they wanted to lose it. They look like the human figures on fashion sketches. The ones with exaggerated hips and legs that stretched out for miles over a tiny ankle. With each passing day, they appear less and less … natural. As if some unseen hand has been pinching away pieces of them that are imperfect.
I glanced at Sara’s sunken cheeks before returning my gaze to the blackboard. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Lianne slumped over like a rag doll that someone just slammed down onto her desk. Her arm flopped lifelessly onto the table. The skin on her arms seems almost translucent.
Is she okay?
But nobody said or did anything so I just looked at the white chalk letters on the black board and tried to tune out the faint sounds of Mama’s screaming.
Our English teacher Mr. Brook is really young. So he still tries to remain ‘relevant’ as he likes to put it. That meant participation in ‘controversial debates’ whether we liked it or not. Today, it’s Macbeth and the nature of greed. I sat there dumbly and only let half of what I hear filter through my brain.
Halfway through the class, Maria came in. She didn’t have anything with her: no books, no binders, not even the small, black purse that she carried with her everywhere.
I guess she must’ve looked really awful, because Mr. Brook didn’t even say anything. He just waved her in and gestured to her empty spot, right besides the other four.
I looked over just in time to meet Maria’s eyes. There was something simultaneously hungry and vulnerable sitting in the dark pools of her eyes. There might’ve been a pleading expression in the tilt of her thin brows, but I can’t tell for sure.
Maria opened her blood red lips as if to speak, but Sara pulled her down to her chair.
I turned away. All of a sudden I don’t want to find out what Maria had to say after all.
The chiming hiss of voices threatened to take over. I slipped my hand inside my bag and unscrewed the pill bottle.
…
The rest of English class passed like a blur. As everything seem to be nowadays.
As we were packing up for the bell, a sudden commotion at the back of the room drew my attention.
It was Maria.
She had collapsed on the ground in a heap of loose limbs, laying on the floor like a life-sized ventriloquist dummy with all its strings cut.
She wasn’t unconscious though. Her eyeballs were rolling wildly in their sockets, and for a moment I thought she was going to foam at her mouth from how rabid she looked.
Mr. Brook was nowhere to be found.
A dull stab of pain invaded the back of my eye socket. It’s probably the pills. I always got a headache after taking them.
Sara and the rest of the four girls hoisted her up like she weighed nothing. She probably didn’t, to be honest. And with whispers of ‘well take her to the nurse’s office’, they left, dragging Maria with them.
As they passed my seat though, Maria met my eyes for a final time.
I snapped my eyes down and started stuffing my things into my bag.
“Help me.” Was what she mouthed, as she was being carried out.
…
It wasn’t the first time she had asked for help either.
Please, you have to help, you did this to me. Maria’s voice echoed in my mind. I had no idea what she meant. How was I responsible for whatever decisions she’s made? She was the one that left me. She saw her chance and took it and didn’t even think of me once until something went wrong.
The group of four plus Maria had just turned the corner and I had to duck behind a row of lockers to avoid being seen.
At least now I know where they’re going. The only thing down the hallway they went into was the girl’s locker room, which connected to the gym. There’s also a tiny, dusty broom closet down there, hidden among the rows of lockers. Either way, it was not the nurse’s office.
…
The dull thud of the heavy wooden door returning to its door frame made me wince. But too late to regret that now, as I slipped along the wall like a thief. Over ahead there was the crinkling sound of foil wrappers, intermixed with the grunts and throaty sounds, like a pack of ravenous animals.
I peered around the corner and was met with the sight of all five girls crawling about on all fours and… eating. Except they didn’t eat like humans, they were like hungry ghosts as they fell upon the heap of food. Cheap, oily wrappers lay strewn about the dirty floor. Greasy pizza, soggy fries, and crushed hamburgers scattered around in their feeding frenzy. But they didn’t care one bit as they shoveled food into their mouth frantically. They hunched over all that food like hyenas. The whites of their eyes flashed as their eyeballs rolled in their skulls like loose marbles. Their mouths seem to stretch impossibly wide as they devoured whatever their sticky fingers could reach. Five pairs of pearly whites gnashed together and crushed bread and meat into a fine pulp that slipped down their skinny throats.
Maria was among them, making this horrible, high pitched keen of a sob as she crammed her mouth with food. Miraculously, none of them had noticed me standing here watching them. But from such a close vantage point I could see that Maria was crying. Tears and mascara and snot ran down her face even as she filled her mouth with bite after bite of the sandwich that she clutched with both hands. Mayonnaise oozed through her fingers. She looked like she was being forced fed. Except it was her own hand cramming food into her mouth faster than she could chew.
My eyes found Sara, the pretty brunette bruising her knees on the tile floor of the girls changeroom, scrabbling and fighting with the other girls for fries that have been smeared on the ground. The corners of her lips have grown chapped and began to bleed from being stretched so wide. The skin over her jaw rippled, as if there were worms crawling along the flesh underneath.
My head felt like it was being split open by a stake. Reality blurred before my eyes and all of a sudden my nose was filled with the scent of mama’s flowery perfume and the sour smell of her sweat. It’s as if a switch has been flipped in my mind. The key to the Pandora’s box of my memories finally clicked into place, and the rush of it all coming back to me was followed by excruciating pain. I clutched my head in my hands as dark spots appeared in my vision.
Mama started fitting in her fancy dresses again. She was humming a song to my sister as she held a silver dress to her new, skinny body. I sat on the bed and watched the worm shapes slither from one shoulder blade to another. The skin of her back gave way to the funny shapes. In my mind I imagined a network of interconnected tunnels under her skin, the way the subway lies hidden just underneath our city. I was scared of what I was seeing, but I was more scared of ruining mama’s good mood. So I didn’t say anything.
Mama putting on perfume after brushing her hair. It’s her favorite one, so I know that she’s going out with Baba again. But before she left, she gave me and my sister both kisses on the forehead the way she used to. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her collar bones are sticking out like someone drew the shadows there.
Little pink pills that sat on mama’s palm like two little pearls. Like the little pink pearls in Maria’s tiny purse. The pink little candies that the four girls started eating before they started getting sick.
I stared at the candies and looked back up at mama. She smiled encouragingly down at me and my sister. The skin under her eye rippled as a worm slid by. I reached out and took some, and as mama watched, I put it in my mouth and tucked them under my tongue.
A heavy fever. I raised my arm and watched as worm shapes swam underneath my skin. In the bed besides mine, mama was feeling my sister some chicken soup. I watched the way her blouse swamped her skinny frame like a flower that’s grown large enough to snap the twig that it rested on.
Mama was eating too much food again. The whole kitchen table, which was large enough to seat a dozen people, was covered with takeout. Mama’s mouth was open so wide that I thought her face was going to flip inside out.
I stared at my tongue in the mirror and watched, with a morbid sort of fascination as my tongue woke up and started moving on its own. Small, beady eyes lined the sides of the fleshy, wrinkled bug that has taken place of my tongue. It has legs too. Chubby and segmented ones that curled up underneath its body when it slept. Sometimes I could feel those legs tickle the inside of my mouth when it moved. I stuck out my tongue a bit farther and pinched it with my teeth. The shriveled little bug reared back angrily between my teeth and hissed at my reflection in the mirror. Innumerable little legs waved frantically, clawing at the air. I let it go and it kind of calmed down somewhat, except its milky little eyes had turned black and shiny from fright. I concentrated on moving my tongue. Up and down, up and down. The little bug obeyed. I still talked like normal, so the only ones who knew that my tongue has been replaced was me and mama. I kind of liked how clever the little thing was. Whenever I tried to get Mama to take a look at it, the little bug somehow knew what I was trying to do. Its opalescent eyes remained tightly shut, and those buggy little legs tucked so neatly underneath its body that even I thought I had been dreaming about the bug. Over time, Mama stopped believing me, and I gave up on trying after that.
A bottle with a pretty pink cap. Mama’s shaking hands twisted open the small bottle and upended so many pink pearls onto the table. She crushed one with a wet squelch, and leaned down to peer at what was inside those pearls. Mama started screaming, and screaming. And then she started crying.
Searing pain, and the taste of iron filled my mouth as blood overflowed and dripped down my chin. Mama was crying and saying “I’m sorry” over and over again as she cut off the bug from my mouth. The squishy bug fell to the floor with a wet plop, and the little worms started swimming frantically under my skin. They poured out of my throat, my ears, my nostrils, my eyes, and slithered down my body to reach the bug that lay writhing on the ground. The worms were dark red, the color of old blood, even though I always imagined them to be pale, tongue-pink like the one I saw in my mouth. The dark red worms dried up before they could reach the severed bug on the ground. The flaked away like black ash and dissolved into the pool of my blood. After mama was done with me, she went to my sister. I tried to tell her that I only pretended to feed the pink pills to my sister, but I didn’t have a tongue anymore.
A whole bunch of people were yelling. I heard Baba screaming in the distance. The shrill sound of a siren and the smell of disinfectant. By the time they got the three of us to the hospital, it was already too late for mama and my little sister.
When my vision finally cleared. I was sitting on the floor. I must’ve made a noise when I fell over, because the sound of feeding had stopped.
I got up and walked towards the group of startled girls.
…
The next few weeks passed in a blur.
In all honesty I’m amazed they even lasted this long. With Mama, the worms killed her in the span of two months, but I guess that was because mama at a lot more of those pink pills than the girls did.
It took them a whole six months to die.
I counted because I’m hungry.
The first time I found out I could no longer eat normal food was at the hospital. They tried feeding me liquefied food through a tube, but I threw it all up every time they tried to feed me. They called it an eating disorder but deep down, I knew it was something else. I got so hungry that hunger began eating away at me.
Late one night I took out the two dead bugs and looked at them. They were the only ones that didn’t crumble into ash: the bug that replaced my tongue and the bug that became mama’s tongue. I took them because it was the last piece of mama that they’ll let me have. I didn’t tell anyone though, because I’ll sound so crazy that nobody would ever believe me.
But that night as I looked at the two dead parasites sitting on my palm, a strange idea began to surface.
I squeezed out each and every single one of those eyes and set the black beads aside for later. Then I closed my eyes and popped the bugs in my mouth and chewed.
It tasted disgusting. I moved the wad of rubbery meat in my mouth and chewed with great difficulty. Occasionally I felt the familiar brush of a segmented insect leg against the inside of my mouth. I made sure to chew extra well before swallowing, and unsurprisingly, I didn’t throw up.
Those two little bugs lasted me two years. And then the hunger came back.
I didn’t know how to make myself normal for good, but I did know where Mama hid the bottle with the pink cap.
It was easy work to convince girls to take them. My first victim was my first stepmother. I just put the pink little bottle back in its pretty box with fancy letters and put it where she could see it. Then all I had to do was wait. And sure enough several months later she was dead, and I had a new bug to collect.
It tasted gross and oddly fleshy, but it was the only thing that I could eat. When I looked at the artfully sunken cheeks of my dead, new stepmother, I didn’t feel a damn thing.
…
It made the headlines, unsurprisingly.
Five young girls dropping dead one after the other from eating disorders.
Abso-fuckin’-lutely sensational. The town was abuzz with gossip for months, which gave me a much needed break from all that among the freshmen about my severed tongue.
It had been Maria’s idea to give the bug eggs to Sara. She had a thing against Sara ever since Sara betrayed her way back at the beginning of high school blah blah blah. So I said yes because I was getting hungry.
Up until now, I only collected on bug at a time, but surprisingly Sara was one of those girls that liked to share with her friends. And then Maria got curious about those pills too, and now I have five little bugs sitting on my palm with their beady eyes all black from fear or death or a combination of both.
When I visited her grave last night, I looked at her beautiful, transformed face, and I didn’t feel a single thing.
…
I looked at the five wrinkled little bugs on my dresser.
What now?
It’ll be a waste of effort to plant more when I already have so many. So I pulled out my laptop and began to type. A long, lengthy letter to myself. About Mama, about the real reason she died, about my little sister. About Sara, Jody, Lianne, and Paige, and Maria. About my weird affliction, how normal food no longer nourishes my body, about how my memory disappears after I feed so that each and every time I do this I get to rediscover my past.
When I was done I ate the little bugs, one by one, picking out their eyes to save for later.
…
I woke up to the sound of Baba knocking on my door, asking me if I needed a ride to school.
I looked at my bedside table for the clock. There was no way I’ll be able to make it to the bus stop on time, so I said yes and started changing out of my dirty clothes and rushing into the bathroom to brush my teeth.
My wrist feels oddly empty, because the usual black bracelet I wore wasn’t there. I was just about to panic when I saw the new necklace around the neck of my reflection in the mirror. I reached up and pinched a shiny black bead. I guess I must’ve found more of them last night. It stills feels sort of weird to have nothing on my wrist, so I decided to put on a watch after.
Breakfast was waffles and syrup. The smell of it was objectively nice but it was greasy and nauseating to me.
There was a word file open on my computer, but I didn’t have time to look at it too closely before I closed it and stuffed it into my backpack.