paula bomer
6
Not me. I’ve never lost power. In high school, I got straight As. I ran on the cross-country track team. I had the lead in every play, I ran the student council, I tutored the learning disabled, I did everything and then some. At home, I came in when I wanted, I bought all the clothes I wanted, I wore all the makeup I wanted. And I fucked any guy that I wanted. I fucked the quarterback, the editor of the school paper, and the richest guy in the entire school. I count every bite of every thing I eat. I had a notebook for awhile, where I wrote it all down. Half an apple. Two bites of toast. What can I say? Self-control doesn’t begin to describe my power. Oh, here they come again to go check on the new girl. Cute thing. All the nurses have sober, professional expressions. The doctor’s in a hurry. The bitchier the face they make, the worse off the girl is. They’re close to smiling when they come by my bed. I’m fit as fiddle. I’m nearing release day. This girl—they all have post-enema expressions when they return from visiting her. I know what they’re thinking. They think, she has everything in the world and she starves herself like a third-world victim. She has gold jewelry and a dad on the stock market and this is her thanks. Fool, they think. She deserves to die. As soon as she gets better, I’ll befriend her. As soon as she starts getting weighed regularly, they’ll have to pull her and her IV along, right past my bed. We all look at each other here. She’ll notice me. She’ll notice my age. I’m twenty, but