“Losing twenty-seven pounds since the surgery is pretty amazing,” Rat says, clearly still disappointed in my song choices. He only records the weight once a week, even though he and I both know I’m secretly weighing myself every single day. Sometimes more than once a day. Everyday the number on the scale is a little lower than the day before. I try not to hope too much but I feel a little spark growing somewhere deep inside me every time I see that little marker go down another couple of pounds. I know the weight loss will slow down now, but what if it stops entirely? What if I fail at this, too? This is my last chance.
“Why American Idiot? It’s not your usual choice for musicals,” Rat asks, after he finishes writing down my song for the week on the chart. He flops down on the bedroom floor beside me and pulls out his laptop to update the results.
“Billie Joe Armstrong is the lead singer for Green Day and he also wrote American Idiot. I read on his website that he wrote that song for his father, a jazz musician and truck driver, who died of cancer when he was only ten years old.” I lean back against my headboard and stretch my legs out on the bedspread in front of me.
“But why is it your song for this week?” Rat sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the chart.
“I’m hoping by September every thing will be different. School will start. I’ll be thinner. Maybe I’ll be used to this by then,” I say. “Maybe it won’t be so hard.”
Rat nods, but I know he doesn’t understand. Because it is hard. Harder than I ever imagined. I knew food is . . . was . . . the center of my world. Now, there is no public or private eating. I can’t eat anywhere anymore, and I don’t know what to do in its place.
Rat shuts his laptop. “If you’re going to be in that musical next year, you’re going to have to get out there and exercise. You saw how they performed Oklahoma, right? Even high school actors have to move.”
“Next week . . .” My voice trails off as his eyes meet mine.
“Right. Like that’s going to happen,” Skinny says sarcastically in my right ear.
I finish writing the song for the week on the chart and try to ignore the words written in the next column under “Exercise.”
“The song is about time passing,” I say to Rat, “and about all the things that can change in a year.”
“You can’t spend all your time waiting,” Rat says. “This is the week we get serious about exercise.”
I feel a little sweaty and lightheaded when I look at that entry “Walk/Run” on the chart. I’m supposed to run? Really? I don’t know what’s bothering me more — that I’m going to be expected to go outside and exercise in front of the whole neighborhood or the fact that I only lost four pounds this week. And that feels crazy, since before the surgery I would have been thrilled to lose four pounds in a week. But now it’s different. I’m getting used to the big numbers and if it takes exercise to get them again, then that’s what I’ll do. I’ve come this far. I’m not going to stop now.
“Let’s go eat some lunch and then we’ll go for a run,” Rat says, like that is the most normal thing in the world. He puts a little smiley face beside the number of pounds I’ve lost — thirty-nine since the surgery — with a bright green Sharpie marker.
“But, first an experiment.” He rubs his hands together and leers like a mad scientist.
“On me?” I ask.
“Not on you, for you. Totally different.”
“Okay,” I say, cautiously.
“Really I guess you would call it a demonstration. About the rules.” He bends down to tie his tennis shoe and misses the big grimace on my face.
“I hate all these rules,” I say.
“There’s a reason for the rules.” He stands back up and heads out the door. “You’ll see,” he says over his shoulder.
I look at the perky little smiley face on the chart, and the number beside it, but I don’t feel like smiling about the lunch, the demonstration, or the run. I slowly follow Rat downstairs to the kitchen.
“Come here,” he says, from the sink. “What’s the worst rule to follow while you’re eating? The one you’re determined to ignore.”
I don’t hesitate. “Not drinking anything while I eat,” I say.
“Right.” He has a paper cup in his hand and, while I watch, he pokes a hole in the bottom with an ink pen. “I’m leaving about an inch hole, which is about the size of the outlet out of your stomach,” he says. He pours some water in the cup slowly and it goes right through the hole almost as fast as it went in.