Lizette was the first person on her feet when the presentation was over. “That was the most fucking
offensive, fatphobic sci-fi bullshit I’ve heard in a minute.” “Will you ke ep your voice down?” Emmett’s
gaze snapped to Dr. Saito at the front of the room. To his relief, she seemed not to have heard.
“You’re not actually thinking about—” “Can we talk about this in the car please?” He hurried out of the
room ahead of her. The elevator full, they took the stairs down to the parking garage in silence and got
into the car. “Please tell me you didn’t fall for that shit,” Lizette said, pulling the driver’s door shut.
“What do you mean, fall for it?” “You know what I mean.” Emmett belted himself in. “For fifteen
hundred bucks a month I don’t have much choice.” “This isn’t about money. I know you.”
“Then you should understand.” “What, that you’ve been brainwashed your whole life, made to think
you’re not worth shit? Fucking—” She thumped the steering wheel with a soft fist. “Emmettito!”
“Lizette!” “I just wish you could see how dope you are! You don’t need this boohoo, weight loss,
self-loathing shit. You’re better than that.” “No, you’re better than that. You have a business, a boyfriend
who loves you —”
“And so would you if you put yourself out there. I ke ep telling you to get on GROWLR. There are plenty
of guys who like it juicy.” “You know I hate that word.” “Whatever! You’re fuckable!”
Emmett shook his head. “I just wish that after being my friend for twenty years...” “What?” “Nothing.”
“No, say it.” “I’m done talking,” he said to the window. Lizette scowled. “Fine.” She prodded the LCD
screen, and music blasted from the speakers like a wall of sound risen between them. She backed out and
gunned it toward the exit.
Emmett sulked. Part of him wished he hadn’t lost his nerve, wished he’d just said what he was thinking.
He’d been wanting to for a while, found himself getting close whenever the topic of his pathetic
desperation to be normal came up.
Yes, “normal,” he thought. Because thin is normal, whether Lizette likes me fucking saying it or not. She
could be disappointed in him all she wanted; he was equally disappointed in her. Disappointed that
despite knowing how hard it was to live like this, she lacked any sympathy for his wanting out. That
despite how long they’d been friends, she didn’t seem to understand him, or what he’d been through, at
all.
She knew what his st epdad had done to him, had supported his writing about it in his blog, but she didn’t
like his talking about it. This was another weight she seemed adamant he go on carrying forever.
That night, Emmett tossed and turned for hours before sinking into fitful semiconsciousness. His mind
chattered r epetitively with the argument, Lizette’s words stuck like the lyrics of a scratched CD. I
understand you’ve been brainwashed your whole life, made to think you’re not worth shit.
Brainwashed your whole life. Not worth shit. Not worth shit. Not worth shit. The words enveloped him,
drawing him down into a lower state of restlessness. They remained even as the environment darkened
and reformed. “I just wish you could see how dope you are!” Lizette was saying, standing on tiptoes
behind the surgeons crowded around the operating table. “You don’t need this boohoo, weight loss shit.”
White masks grappled their faces. Eyes glinted under the glare of their headlamps. Panic clawed up
Emmett’s chest. He could feel their hands dully through the anesthetic: pulling, applying pressure,
carving him like a Thanksgiving turkey. Lifting away a trembling yellow slab, the bruised skin of his
belly still attached on one side.
It slapped the metal tray with a fwap. “I ke ep telling you, there are plenty of guys who like it juicy!”
“Shut up, Lizette!” Fwap. Fwap. Fwap. They were taking too much. There’d be nothing left of him. No,
the fat wasn’t him. It wasn’t him.
“W-what’s that for?” Emmett said when the surgeons hauled out a circular saw, triggering a memory of
one that his former st epdad used to ke ep in the garage. The gadget revved, the razor tips blurring into a
circle of screaming silver.
Emmett thrashed on the operating table, the restraints biting into his wrists and ankles. The spinning
blade descended. He screamed as it ripped a horizontal line through his forehead.
Finally the pressure broke. Something clacked against the floor. A chill invaded the open cavity of his
cranium: cold where it was never meant to be felt. Worse, the surgeons seemed not to like what they were
seeing—murmured darkly to themselves, shook their heads.
“What’s wrong?” he gasped. “W-what’re you going to—”
His words exploded again into screams. His body raged against the violation of latex fingers in his skull,
scrabbling for purchase on the slippery coils of his brain. A wet, sucking sound— Then Emmett
collapsed. Zonked. Literally lightheaded.
“Don’t worry, sport. You won’t miss it.” The surgeon dropped the brain into the metal tray with a fwap.
Lizette agreed, sneering. “Not worth shit.”