The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (digital ebook reader txt) 📕

He took his hand out, embarrassed. A tiny spot of blood colored his white T-shirt. He said nothing for the rest of the drive.

At the start of the Winter of Hunger, Dyson showed me his latest attribute: visible veins. Veins forking up his abdomen; veins crossing the undersides of his forearms; a single vein arcing over each bicep muscle when he flexed. Even his calves were beginning to vein—though of course they could be thinner, he told me.

I presented Dyson with a selection of samples: cleansers and face masks and creams. Plus a two-dose packet of green tea fat-burning pills. The products my mother and I never needed.

The Spring of Hunger was supplement season. To combat the fat on his body, Dyson invested in green tea fat-burning pills and all-natural fat-burning pills and acai fat-burning pills and synthetic caffeine pills and caffeine powder and nitrous powder and oxide powder and whey powder and powdered peanut butter and vitamin C and vitamin B and tummy tea and laxative tea and tea tree oil and coconut oil and olive oil on everything—though never too much—and garcinia cambogia extract and Hydroxycut and Alli and raspberry ketones and glucomannan and Meratrim and radiocut and deoxidized fermaldehyde root and CLA and TTY and seaglass fruit and bitter orange and birch and chipped rose petal and water and water and water. To combat his acne, he invested in topical creams, drying lotions, Proactiv, unguents, Accutane, blood pressure pills, snail slime, slug slime, clam intestines, face masks, spironolactone, black light clinics, charcoal, cryotherapy, colloidal sulfur, licorice powder, Icelandic antibacterial sulfur, primal screaming, acupuncture, fish oil, oregano oil, arachnid milk, salicylic acid, peroxide, cortisone shots, epidermal asphyxiation, and dozens of hundreds of rubs.

The acne solutions would work for a week before his face would break out even worse than before. The fat-burning supplements worked too well. They bunked the beat of his heart, made it irregular, heavy. Sometimes I feel my heart leaping out of my chest, he admitted. Even when I’m sitting. Not doing anything! He sounded as if he were bragging.

One afternoon that spring, Dyson came to my house after school to smoke weed. He brought three plastic bags fat with snacks: diet ice cream and chips and iced animal crackers and oatmeal sandwich cookies and reduced-sodium crackers and a barrel of party mix. We smoked out of a soda can in the kitchen, exhaling into the exhaust fan over the sink.

I nodded at the food. So you’re eating in front of people again.

It’s easier when I’m high, he said. He passed me the soda can, then performed a few cursory crunches on the kitchen floor. Ten minutes later, red-eyed and giggly, Dyson opened a box of Little Debbie oatmeal cookies. He fit a whole cookie in his mouth. I fit two in my mouth. He tried for three but couldn’t fit the second inside. He spit cookie shards in my face and curled over in laughter. I catapulted a full spoon of ice cream at his chest. He sucked the ice cream off his shirt, then scooped a full hand of party mix. I shrunk like he might fling the food at me. Instead, he brought the hand to his mouth.

I would have preferred to share a nice meal with Dyson, something with forks and napkins—rather than mountains of junk consumed standing up in my kitchen—but I was pleased to see him eating. I hadn’t seen him this reckless with food in months. This put me at ease. And I allowed myself ice cream and chips and cookies. Not nearly as much as Dyson, though, who ate as if angry at the food, like he couldn’t rest until it was not merely gone but obliterated.

Slow down, I said.

There’s not much time, he said.

My mom won’t be home until six.

He tossed an empty box of crackers behind him. Something feral flashed to his face. He dragged his arm across his lips. I need to go to the bathroom, he said.

He kept the fan running, but it was impossible not to hear him. I could have knocked on the door—I considered it; I even walked right up to the door, hovered my knuckle inches away—but I felt responsible, and embarrassed, and told myself if he did it again I would stop him.

We did it again the next week and the next and the next until it became a routine. Most of the girls I knew had thrown up at some point in their lives—it hadn’t killed them. They survived. Surely it wouldn’t hurt Dyson. On rare occasions, when I felt uncomfortably full after bingeing with him, I would slip into the upstairs bathroom as he threw up downstairs. It demanded too much of me, though. It seemed something people outgrew. I outgrew it by the end of the school year, and I assumed Dyson would, too.

That spring, I accepted a scholarship to attend the Fashion Institute in Manhattan. My mother and I fought about my decision. She wanted me closer to home—and at a very different kind of school—and we drifted apart once I left. She was right to accuse me of abandoning her. I wanted out of that house, away from her grievances and paranoia and rules. At college, however, I committed to the life she never could. I swore off makeup and lotions and rinses, half to honor my mother, half to compete with her. This made me interesting (annoying) among the other women at college. I treated my mother’s theories like doctrine—Chap Stick chapped your lips; anti-wrinkle creams thickened wrinkles; astringents pitted your skin—grumbled her grumblings to my suitemates as they tended their faces at night.

Dyson enrolled in a state school close to home. He visited me in the city every few weeks, thinner every time he returned, his head ballooning above his spectral, twiggy frame. We smoked weed in my suite and binged on delivery. My suitemates were all women like me,