Starvation by Molly Fennig

Author:Molly Fennig [Fennig, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Immortal Works via Indie Author Project
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A younger nurse, short, with dark skin and a permanent smile, wheels me out of the hospital to the van where my parents are waiting. He gives me a few packets of instant applesauce and a box of noodles, my dinner, and tells my parents to make me eat both, at least. Enough to tamp down the hunger I am so used to but not enough to anger my stomach into forcing out what they had forced in.

The car weaves its way down Carolina Street, past the Craftsman house with white trim and a gray roof that would’ve looked better in black. Past the one-story rambler, its red shutters almost hidden behind the large plants in the window boxes.

I close my eyes because I know this street, these houses. I imagine knocking down the crooked bungalow and replacing it with a large house, four stories including the basement, sucking up all the empty space between it and its neighbors. Five bedrooms. Four bathrooms. Large kitchen full of food. Two ovens, one always baking cookies, the scent wafting through the house.

The van lurches to a halt, jerking my eyes open. Mom and Dad find me in the rearview mirror. I feel their gaze, the heaviness of the words left unsaid, even as we get out of the car, walk down the cracked driveway, and open the door to the dirt-colored split level we call home.

Dad puts a pot on the stained stovetop to boil water for dinner. His eyes leap from the water, to me, and back until I push away from the table, run up the stairs, and flop on my bed. My feet hang off the end like they always do unless I curl my knees up to my chest, hugging them. The walls are still a sad gray, cracks reaching down from the ceiling like fingertips toward the peeling laminate floors, the bedspread decorated with mouse-chewed holes, and nothing else, because there isn’t room for more than a bed. I press my back up against the wall with the small window, closing my eyes and pretending its Jason right behind me and that the wind outside is really his breath and that my heartbeat is his, too.

I try not to go into his room since he left because there is too much I don’t want to see. The Jason-shaped indent in the unmade twin bed. The piles of shorts and uniforms, gold and black for our school colors, underneath newspaper magazines. J. McCoy Advances in Wrestling Tournament. J. McCoy Wins State. J. McCoy Carries on Family Legacy.

“Dinner!” Mom calls. I close the door partially and descend the stairs.

The table is crammed into the corner of the kitchen that still has four chairs when we all know it should only have three. The only sounds are of the scraping of the metal spoon in the pot as Dad scoops the noodles into three red-rimmed bowls, and the screeching of my chair as I pull it out. Mom and Dad

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