How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann

Author:Maria Adelmann
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2022-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

According to Payton, the mansion look was like an Olive Garden–Pottery Barn mash-up. I said it was like a Stone Age Sorority House—no electronics, but we did have an open bar. We were bored. We perfected the fishtail braid, sang a cappella, biceps-curled wine bottles, played Don’t Touch the Floor. I made it to the top of the stairs on a pair of throw pillows. I was still standing on them when I shouted down, “How long have we been doing this?”

“We all quit, like, an hour ago,” said Payton from the bottom of the stairs.

“How do you know?” I said. “Do you have a watch?”

“Jesus,” said Payton. “Just come back down here. On your feet, how about?”

After a while, like a short while, the mansion seemed pretty small for a mansion. We staked out the taped-off edges, wondering what lay beyond, wondering what might happen if we crossed into forbidden territory, though we didn’t dare try. There were cameras everywhere: in corners, on shelves, tucked inside cabinets. Camera people wandered around like ghosts. We measured time with mimosa pours and my red lipstick tally marks on the bathroom mirror, which counted the days.

We pooled our polishes, painted our nails, watched the soft liquid sheen slowly harden. Then we chipped off the polish, did it again. I organized the bottles by color across the mansion floor so they stretched in a rainbow from the fireplace we couldn’t use to the grand piano we couldn’t use either. I kicked them over one by one. With each crack of glass bottle on hard tile, Ashley Y winced. Ashley Y was getting a lot of time with Brandon, though Hana said I shouldn’t be worried. “Please,” she said. Crack. I waited for the wince, then did it again. Crack. “Do you hate this?” I asked. Crack. The bottles rocked in semicircles.

“Idle hands are the devil’s playthings,” said Ashley Y, like some weirdo preacher.

Ashley Y left me there to finish the task without her. After a while, it was just me and some camera guys and, like, a hundred bottles of nail polish rolling around on the floor.

I squatted down to inspect the reds. They had names like First Sight, Heart Break, Kiss Kiss. I chose a blood-red color called True Love. I took a long sniff, sat on the floor, painted my nails, waited for them to dry. Time passed or it didn’t. It was actually pretty weird. It was like time had once been a stack of cheese cubes, and now all the cubes had melted together. I didn’t know if the polish was still very wet or had been dry for a long time. I thought I knew when it changed over, wet to dry, but I couldn’t tell anymore. I tested my thumb with my pointer finger. Still wet. “What time is it?” I asked, but nobody was there who was allowed to tell me the time.

They don’t show you this stuff on TV, obvi. What you see on TV

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