Love & Other Carnivorous Plants Read online

  “Enough about me,” Sara says at last. She pulls into the beach too fast and we almost squash a dumb seagull with shitty reflexes. “I can’t believe you turned your phone off for two months. I know you said you were turning it off to focus on school, but were classes really that intense? Or were you still mad about our fight? Maybe we should talk it out.”

  “You know how much I love to talk about feelings,” I say sarcastically. I almost wish we had hit the seagull so we’d have something else to talk about, something actually dramatic to distract us from our own dramatics. Just kidding, I mouth to the seagull through the side mirror.

  “Same, but I was reading this article that said married couples all end up having the same fight, like, their whole lives,” she says, parking the car. “It might seem like a different fight, but if you boil it down, it’s probably the exact same fight as last week and the week before that. They just keep having that one fight until they die. Or get divorced.”

  I peel a large strip of polish off my toenail. “Are you saying the college fight is going to be our fight?”

  “It could be. But I don’t want it to be. So I think we should nip it in the butt.”

  “Bud.”

  “Whatever.”

  I could mention that she’s the one who brought up the fight that happened on my birthday this April, when she got the drunkest I’ve ever seen her, then slapped me in the face with a piece of pizza, forcing me to hide out in the bathroom stall like that girl about to have a breakdown. But I’m trying to be a better person, so instead I say: “I said I’m sorry. You said you’re sorry. It’s been over two months. I think we can skip down the yellow brick road anytime now.”

  She looks over at me, but I can’t read her expression due to the enormity of her sunglasses. Besides, it’s starting to feel like global warming in the car, so I open the door and breathe in the fresh beach air. I link my arm in hers as we walk from the parking lot to the shore, and she gives it a little squeeze. The thing about not having any siblings is that you have to be strategic about who you get in sibling-fights with. The most crucial factor is that they love you unconditionally. Otherwise you start saying ruthless shit to people and they think the devil lives in your asshole and you end up friendless and alone until your cats stage a coup and murder you. So really Sara and I don’t ever need to apologize to each other. Sometimes it’s good to say sorry, though, just as a formality.

  “You still haven’t told me anything about second semester,” Sara prods. I know I should tell her about treatment, but honestly it’s too nice of a day out.

  “Classes were intense,” I lie, picking up a flattish stone and feeling its weight in my hand. “Studying all hours of the day and night. At one point I thought about hiring a high schooler to pinch me every forty-five seconds to keep me awake in the library.” I throw the rock at the ocean and pray for a smooth surface skim. “Finals were even more brutal. I had to keep a gallon jug of iced coffee by my bed and I grew, like, grocery bags under my eyes.” Instead of skipping, the stone plunks anticlimactically into the water and I curse my parents for not giving me a single strand of athletic DNA. “Can we talk about something else?” I ask. “This is giving me PTSD.”

  “Oh my God, of course,” she says, and it’s the exact tone of Sara’s I missed, the Everything Is Okay tone, regardless of what “everything” is. I breathe a sigh of relief knowing I can say anything to her because even though PTSD isn’t technically a joking matter, she’s about as politically correct as a drunk pirate.

  “What about your friend? What’s his name?” She picks up a flat rock too, and hers skips like an Olympian six times before disappearing under the water.

  “Stephen.” I undo my ponytail and try not to let on how absurd it is that she can’t remember his name, even though we hung out with him my whole terrible birthday night.

  “How is he? Have you two hooked up yet?”

  “Ew. It’s Stephen. Combined, we’re about as sexual as a Styrofoam peanut.” But I’m speaking for myself. Of the three times I’ve masturbated in my life, once was an accident. “We literally study together, eat too many snacks, then fall asleep drooling on each other.”

  “Oh, please. When I came up to visit I could tell he was totally in love with you.”

  “Yuck.”

  But then we’re both silent. Sara’s spring visit to Harvard for my birthday was bad, even before the big blowup. It’s not that I was embarrassed to have my roommates meet Sara, but how could I have known she was going to become a vodka-guzzling sorority doll?

  “So how come you didn’t put on the freshman anything but I became the Pillsbury Doughgirl?” I say abruptly.

  Sara laughs and we keep walking. “Danny, shut up. You’re not even fat. You’ve gained, what, ten pounds since I saw you?”

  “Twenty-five,” I mumble, but I don’t know the number now. Scales were forbidden in treatment due to my vague diagnosis: Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified, plus Bulimia, plus a dollop of General Anxiety Disorder, just for good measure. Still, any mention of numbers makes it feel like my thighs are rubbing together, which makes me seriously regret agreeing to this walk on the beach.

  “Twenty-five pounds is nothing. Everyone gains weight in college, and now you have even better curves. But if you want, we’ll play tennis every day this summer and it’ll be gone in a month.” Sara takes off her sandals and walks with a lightness I want to steal from her—not so that she can’t have it, but so that we both can.

  “Yeah, but I’m short so you notice it more,” I whine. “Plus, some of it went to my nose or something and now my face is distorted. Do I look like a Teletubby? Be honest.”

  “Why don’t you see a nutritionist?” she asks, as if I didn’t think to see every possible specialist when I quickly surpassed the legendary freshman fifteen. I’d hoped to have a thyroid issue, but every blood test came back negative. Apparently I got this way purely of my own volition, which didn’t concern the doctors at all. They called it “normal.” It wasn’t until I developed my own methods to treat the weight gain that the doctors got concerned and ordered me to treatment. Even now they don’t seem to know what’s wrong, and they won’t know until we’ve spent a good many hours together with my feelings. I don’t know how we’re going to find enough of my feelings to fit into the hours of appointments I have scheduled with Leslie, the robot therapist, but I guess I’ll worry about that later.

  “Obviously, I’ve seen a nutritionist,” I say, and Sara stops walking to pick up a piece of sea glass. I could tell her that the big accomplishment of the last two months is that I don’t skip off to the little girls’ room after every meal anymore, so we shouldn’t be worried about a few “vanity pounds.” But watching her turn over the piece of glass I decide she doesn’t need all this information, at least not right now. I settle it all by saying, “All the nutritionists want me to do is write down my food and why I’m eating, blah blah blah. It squashes the fun out of everything.”

  “Ew, yeah. That sounds so boring.”

  I pick up a piece of sea glass to add to the collection Sara’s started in her hand, but it turns out to be regular glass that scrapes my finger when I touch it. “Dammit,” I mumble. Going to treatment would’ve been a lot less unsettling if I knew why it all happened. The therapists say stress and needing an outlet for control and yadda yadda yadda, but it’s unsettling how illogical and arbitrary it is.

  “Don’t worry,” Sara says, closing her hand and seeming content with her findings. “I’ll show you the workout my mom’s trainer does with her and you’ll get your confidence back in no time.” I don’t point out that Sara’s mother is at least fifty pounds overweight. “And I’ll set you up with one of Ethan’s friends. I think you’d like John.” She describes John: tall, loves dogs, sort of looks and acts like one.

  We sit by the water and she picks up handfuls of sand. “God, I missed this,” she says.

  “Me too.” The wind blows my hair into my mouth and it tastes a lit
tle salty as I brush it back behind my ear. “I just wish someone warned me how hard college would be. I thought it would be like American Pie—beer pong and sex in every room.”

  Sara’s eyes light up and she grabs me by the shoulders. “Wait, have you finally had sex?”

  I glare at her. “You say ‘finally’ like I’m forty and not nineteen. I have other priorities, okay?” There’s a cracking sound near us as a shell breaks against a rock. When it opens, the seagull that dropped it eats it mercilessly, one large peck at a time. “To answer your question, no, I have not had The Sex yet. Even getting laid is hard. Classes are one thing, but c’mon. Sex was supposed to be easy.”

  “I know it’s hard, Danny,” Sara says, and I just know she doesn’t know at all. “But we’re back in action now. The Plan is right on track.” She clears her throat and I wish the waves would drown out the sound of her trying to act like nothing has changed. “They reunite after college, marry two brothers, lawyers, who love them stupidly. And you know the rest.” She puts her arm around me. “Oh, I meant to tell you, I’m having a party tonight. You’re invited.”

  “Thanks for the last-minute invite.” I semipush her into the sand.

  “Come on, you didn’t have a phone!” She semipushes me back. “No more sulking. Finals are over, it’s summer, and we have party things to tend to. Okay?” She stands up and offers me her hand, but I almost prefer to lie with my nose in the seaweed, taking in its faint dead-fish smell.

  “Okay?” she says again, and in spite of myself, I take her hand and let her help me up. She does have a point—I’ve been waiting for it to be summer since the last time it was summer. And I can’t say no to Sara. I’ve only said no to Sara once, and we’re still working out the politics of that decision.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You’re leaving again?” my dad asks when I come into the kitchen. They remodeled it while I was at college, and the steel accents give the whole place a hostile feel. “You just got here! We should hang out now that you’re out of…” His face twitches, but I’m very perceptive. “…treatment.”

  I open the dark metal refrigerator for a diet any-beverage to avoid looking at him. He doesn’t have to stumble over the T-word every time he says it, as if it’s as hard for him to talk about as it was for me to go through.

  “I’m surprised you even knew I was in treatment,” I say, accentuating the word even though I never say it in front of my mom, who insists on saying it all the time. “Considering you never stopped by.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  I open the can of Diet Coke on the cold marble counter and a carpenter ant scuttles by. I wait for my dad to squish it, but he looks at me like I’m supposed to squish it. Obviously, the carpenter ant will die another day, when my mother is in the kitchen.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he finally says, and his voice is so strained I want to punch him. Instead I stomp out of the kitchen and grab his keys.

  “I’m taking your car, okay,” I say, because it sounds nicer than “forget it.” I get that it must have sucked to watch me go from valedictorian to Occupy Depression all in the course of ten months, but the least you could do is kill the stupid ant for me, Dad.

  Sara’s house is always unlocked because her mother is always there, so I let myself in and up the stairs to Sara’s room. I can smell alcohol in the hallway, and sure enough when I open the door she’s standing over her desk, pouring two generous shots from a handle of vodka.

  “I guess we’re not frinking tonight?” I ask. I pull the sleeves of my smock away from the puddle of my armpits and notice how little has changed in Sara’s room: same pink walls and white furniture and gingerbread candle no matter what season it is.

  “No, I never frink anymore. I can’t believe you still do.” Her tone reduces me to something even less cool than head lice, which is totally unfair. Frinking, i.e., fake-drinking, is what Sara and I used to do in high school. It’s stupid easy. You hold a red cup and dance aggressively and don’t consume calories or ruin your chances of, like, becoming someone important in the future. I’d planned on frinking tonight, but I guess I can deal with being fat and unsuccessful tomorrow. Besides, I deserve a little fun on my first night out of captivity. “The most important thing I learned in college, well really it was in my sorority, is that it’s way more fun to actually drink.” Sara adjusts her boobs so they sit up higher in her push-up bra and then grabs one of the glasses. “Here, this one is for you.”

  “It’s only more fun until tomorrow rolls around,” I correct her, taking the glass from her hand and wondering why it is that Sara got fat boobs and I got fat everything else except boobs. “What should we cheers to?”

  “To the two of us,” she says, sitting under the white-frilled canopy of her bed and gesturing that I do the same.

  “Okay. To the two of us.” We sit facing each other and I cross my arm around hers.

  “Going strong since the era of diapers,” Sara says regally.

  “You wore diapers in kindergarten?”

  “Don’t ruin my cheers with the facts, Danny.”

  We put the shot glasses to our lips and I cringe a little. The shot smells like pineapple and nail polish remover but I swallow anyway. As I start to feel like I might throw up, a singsong voice says, “Knocky-knock,” but without physically knocking on the door.

  “Come in,” Sara says, and rolls her eyes in my direction. There’s no way to prepare for Janet, who’s one of those large women who gives generous hugs that leave you smelling like Chanel and not necessarily happy about it.

  “Danny, darling, we missed you so much.” Janet swirls the wine in her goblet. “How are your pre-med classes? I ran into your mother at the grocery store and she told me you were studying so hard you turned off your phone.”

  I’m sure my parents didn’t want to tell people I was at school when I wasn’t at school, but the details of my treatment days aren’t their business to tell. I clear my throat. “Mhm, yeah, been studying very hard. Pre-med classes are really good.”

  Pre-med classes really blow. The first semester I spent four hours three times a week in massive lab goggles that left a red ring around my eyes, which took an additional four hours to go away. Midway through the term my dinoflagellates all died (first they rebelled and then they killed each other), and I was so frustrated with organic chemistry that I threw the little tinker-toy study kit into the toilet, which I later had to fish out.

  “Good for you, darling. We are so proud of you. Any boyfriends yet?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “Well, good. You have so much tiiiiiime.” She stretches out the last word to show the infinite nature of youth. “Did Sara tell you about her boyfriend? He’s adorable. I haven’t met him yet except on Instagram, but—”

  “Okay, Mom, good to see you.” Sara guides her back through the door.

  “Don’t you girls want me to help you get ready? I can do your makeup.” Janet’s tone makes me feel a little sad for her. “I want you to look good for Ethan, you may want to, you know.”

  She winks, but Sara says, “Absolutely not. Out with you, right now.”

  “Well, we’ve hardly talked about you and him at all.” Her mouth forms a pout. “What about the s-e-x?”

  “We can all spell, Mom.” Sara tries to close the door, but Janet’s face is in the way. “Thanks for the alcohol, though. You’re such a good friend,” Sara adds, and that pleases Janet much more than calling her Mom ever could.

  The doorbell rings a minute later, and we run downstairs to open the door for Kate and Liz. We all squeal and hug a lot, and I’m surprisingly glad for vodka. Sometimes I need a little liquid help in these sorts of situations.

  “Danny, we missed you so much. You disappeared off the face of the digital earth. How are you? You look great,” Kate says. Or maybe Liz said it? They’re such carbon copies of each other that I can hardly distinguish between them, let alone fathom how we used to be friends.

  “Did
your boobs get bigger?” the other asks.

  “I think my head just got smaller,” I say. “Which only makes it look like I went up a cup size due to the discrepancy in the usual ratio.” Of course they don’t get that I’m being an asshole.

  “I’m so glad the Gems are back together,” Liz says, and I wince internally. I thought we ditched that name in high school, but since it’s not worth getting called out for thinking I’m better than everyone else, I smile and do my best impersonation of a party-loving teenager.

  “More alcohol!” I say. Honestly, it’s the easiest way to get everyone on your side.

  We take the party into the backyard, where Janet has actualized every kid’s dream. The pool-house bar has two types of tequila, limes, salt, and a bowl of very strong-smelling punch. The lights are off on the tennis court, making it an ideal spot for a hookup. There’s wood for the bonfire, stuff to make s’mores, and a table with red cups for all the accompanying drinking games. Soon a lot of people Sara went to college with start showing up, and I try to count them all while she plays hostess, but it’s, like, a lot of people.

  “Jesus, how many friends did you make? ’Cause I’m pretty sure I only made one,” I say to myself, which goes to show you that I’m a pretty lousy version of myself when Sara isn’t around. Danny with Sara = Danny. Danny with Danny = chubby, insecure, and chock-full of self-destructive coping mechanisms. I indulge my pity party for ten more seconds, then join in the tequila charade with everyone else: lime, tequila, salt… shit, no… salt, tequila, then lime. See? I can’t even get the fun things right.

  Meeting new people is arguably better than reliving stories of the high school glory days with the Gems, but I’m not drunk enough yet to enjoy myself. I’m certainly not drunk enough for the big introduction which is closing in in three… two…

  “Ethan, this is Danny,” Sara says, approaching me while clutching the arm of a guy who is all muscle and all tan, with teeth so white you sort of don’t believe them.