The Year I Didn't Eat by Pollen

Author:Pollen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: little bee books
Published: 2019-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

You go through an airlock, with sheets of plastic hanging down to stop the bats from getting out, and walk into a giant cave as high and wide as a football stadium, as dark as the woods on a new moon. There are bats everywhere: hanging from wires, circling the roof. You can see them when you look up, because there are little pinpricks of light, like stars I guess. But at eye level, you can’t really see anything.

Here’s the thing: I’m never not thinking about people looking at my body. Even when I’m just with my parents. Even when I’m totally alone. It starts with Ana asking a question, like,

Hey, remember that bottle of water you drank at lunchtime?

And it’s like a snowball at the top of a hill: Once it’s started, I can’t stop it. I can’t shut her up.

It makes your belly stick out. You look totally bloated—like Santa Claus. Someone’s probably looking at you, right now, and thinking, What a lard-ass.

That’s why hanging out in pitch-black caves seems like a pretty good idea. Maybe I should become a troglodyte.

“Cooooooool!” Evie says as we shuffle inside.

There’s a single walkway that loops through the cave. There are tons of people, but you can only see them when they are right in front of you. A slightly darker patch in the inky blackness.

“Yeah,” agrees Ram. “Turns out this was a pretty good idea, Packham. Though it does smell a bit.”

“You get used to it,” I tell him. Then play it back to myself. Oh God. Cringe cringe cringe. I managed to make it sound like I spend every weekend in a bat cave. Covered in bat poo.

“Um, if you say so.”

“Tell us about the bats, Packham,” says Evie.

I shrug, like, What do you want to know? Then I remember that no one can see me. “Um, there are two types of bats in here. The big ones up there are fruit bats, from Madagascar.”

“So they don’t drink your blood?” Ram asks. He sounds really disappointed.

“That’s vampire bats. And they don’t actually drink people’s blood, you know.”

“Lame,” Ram says. Then he shrieks. “Oh my God! I swear that one almost hit me.”

“They won’t hit you,” I tell him. “The little ones that are flying around are, um …” I can’t think of the name. I experience some internal turbulence, like inside me there’s a pot of water with a lid on it, and as the water comes to the boil, it rattles away.

Two seconds later, Evie’s phone screen lights up her face. She looks like she’s about to tell a ghost story.

“Evie,” I hiss. “You can’t—”

“Seba’s bat?” she suggests. Before I can answer, her thumb twitches, and the screen flicks off, plunging us back into darkness.

“Right. Seba’s bat. Anyway, they echolocate. Even if it’s pitch-black, they know exactly where you are.”

“So it flew right past my ear for the kicks? Little bastard,” Ram grumbles.

“You mean they can see us?” Evie asks.

“Kind of,” I tell her. I’d never thought of it like that.

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