THINNER
by
Antigone
Chapter 18
The Chapters
Joe was amazed at how
easily he adapted.
He still limited his calories as much as he could, putting up a
fight at meals, cutting food into miniscule pieces to make it seem he had
eaten more than he had, taking his diet pills, and drinking his water,
but now he also visited the bathroom three times a day, feeding the
toilet his regurgitated meal. Although he hated throwing up, he found he
liked this new routine: he was still losing weight, but he didn’t have
to be as restrictive as he was before. Not only that, but his family and
friends backed off as the week went on, pleased that he seemed to be
trying, even more pleased when he told them he had gained two pounds.
Another lie.
Deprived of exercise, he felt he had very little choice. The voice
in his head insisted with renewed fury that the weight come off, come off
faster, that he should push harder, lie more, cut even farther back,
vomit again, lie lie lie…
But try as he may, he could not escape the wary eye of his
brother, could not escape Frank’s continuous presence, the looking over
his shoulder, the questioning what he ate, the fear and nervousness, the
nightly check-ins. Joe was beginning to feel desperate and cornered. It
was only a matter of time before his older brother saw through his lies
and told on him again, started it all over. Only a matter of time before
Joe was forced to see a doctor, to be told what he feared all along: that
he was fine, average, normal, nothing special, nothing unique, a brawn
who’d lost his strength. A nothing.
Thursday night the weeks of restricting, of starving and vomiting
and pills and exercise caused a coup of Joe’s body: he had his first
binge.
It happened after dinner. He had finished throwing up and, dizzy,
stood at the sink rinsing out his mouth when suddenly he was seized by a
desire, a biological need for
food: his mouth was desperate for something to chew, to bite on, to fill
his mouth, swallow and digest. Joe, longing to resist, stumbled out of
the bathroom and leaned against his wall taking deep breaths, only to
find himself racing out the door to the hall down the stairs to the
kitchen seeking needing desperate for food, throwing open the
refrigerator and finding a container of ice cream, barely opened,
grabbing a spoon and the container and racing back to his room, locking
his door and the bathroom one and eating, eating eating shoving it in
despite the cold and the massive headache, breaking down and sobbing
through it as he felt his stomach fill, lurching in protest to the
assault, chasing the last of the frozen dessert into the corners of the
carton and, upon finishing, racing to the bathroom, turning on the shower
to prevent his brother from hearing, and spending the next half-hour with
his finger down his throat, vomiting the contents back up, finally laying
on the floor and sobbing when it was done.
But this too, went unheard.
*
This can not go unpunished.
Joe lay curled in a fetal position on his bed, his body trembling
and weak after the terrible assault on his body, his throat sore, his
stomach still rolling, his mouth tasting of regurgitated vanilla.
You lost control, lost it
terribly, and it is not enough to vomit or take pills. You need something
more, something new, something more intense.
The younger Hardy, still unsteady, got to his feet and made his
way across the room to his computer, taking a deep breath and settling
himself before clicking the bright blue “e” and pulling up the
internet. He remembered the night he’d called the pharmacy about diet
pills, the pharmacy he now visited loyally to purchase the bottles he
kept hidden from his parents, friends, brother.
No matter. He needed something that would help him with these new
issues, with the vomiting. But what? Did anything like that exist?
Joe went to a search engine and paused, thinking, then typed in
“vomit+aid” and clicked ‘search,’ selecting the first link that
loaded on the screen, squinting at the odd name.
“Ipecac,” he murmured, and wrote it down on a piece of paper
to take to the pharmacy with him.
***
Author’s note: Never,
I repeat, NEVER use ipecac to aid you in throwing up (while we’re at
it, never, I repeat, NEVER force yourself to throw up!). Ipecac can KILL
you after ONE USE. It is used on children or adults who are poisoned to
induce vomiting, and then only if not
vomiting would kill them as easily as ipecac could. I wrote it in because
it is, on occasion, used by those with eating disorders, and those
fortunate enough to survive its effects often suffer heart or esophagus
damage. Take care of yourselves.
Let the author know what you think of this story
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Disclaimer
The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.