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One hundred and seven.
Malcolm looks down at the scale beneath his feet, standing naked in the bathroom, and thinks that's a nearly normal number for thirteen.
And yet, he's wrong. He has to be.
‘You need to drop a few pounds if you want to make it to the next class up,’ his teacher told him today. 'You're too heavy.'
He likes ballet. He’s good at ballet. It’s the only talent he has.
‘Basically,’ one of the other children had said, ‘you’re the fattest one here.’
The rest of them had laughed. One of them had pinched his side, and he held it now, two fingers of fat on either side of his hips.
They laughed at him for everything, for his father, for things that weren’t his fault.
But he can fix this. Rather easily, rather quickly.
In the two years since the arrest he's just managed to start eating rather normally again.
Now, he simply doesn’t eat for a day, and drops to one hundred and six by the next morning.
Easy. Quick. Better in no time at all.
He’s good at ballet, and he’s simply not going to ruin it for himself.
x
Though his mother was the one to force him into classes in the first place, Malcolm finds she’s not interested in it, or seemingly in him. She came to his first recital, and his third, but then no others. She drinks more, and speaks to him less. He goes to Gil’s more often than not, because he feels more at home with them than there.
“How was class?” Gil asks, his warm, safe arms wrapped around him as Malcolm sits on his lap, Jackie leaned against Gil’s other side, a movie playing on the television.
“Fine,” Malcolm says, and his stomach betrays him with a growl.
“Hungry again?” Jackie laughs. Malcolm doesn’t tell her—would never tell her—that the walks he’s started taking after dinner are something he comes back from empty again. “Did you want some more, sweetheart?”
“No, thank you,” Malcolm says. “I’m full.”
One hundred and one.
One hundred.
His teacher praises him. He needs a smaller leotard. He’s lighter on his feet, easier to move. He starts to dance better than the rest of them, and they side-eye him in jealousy.
They shouldn't have doubted him.
“Look at me, Mother,” he says, showing off a perfect pirouette in the kitchen. “Look what I can do!”
His mother drinks another glass down, and she doesn’t.
He sighs, grabs his things, and goes to Gil’s for the night.
x
Ninety-eight.
Ninety-seven.
It’s when Gil gets suspicious that Malcolm starts better trying to hide his new habits. The way he chugs water and tea to fill his stomach, to get rid of the pangs. The absences after he loses himself to the hunger and stuffs his face with whatever the Arroyos’ make.
At three in the morning one night, he eats an entire package of cookies from their cabinets in a ravenous weakness, and after throwing it up cuts down his wrist as punishment, sobs in the bathroom for two hours as he realizes he's not as mastered in something so simple as self-control as he thought.
Ninety-six and he stares at himself in the mirror without a doubt in the world that he’s grown bigger.
Gil asks him if he’s getting smaller, and Malcolm's never felt happier. His father laughs at him when he shows up to their visits in a coat far too big for him, and Malcolm smiles at his success in hiding the damage.
“Look, Mother,” he says, ninety-five pounds and doing perfected pique turns. “Look!”
His mother doesn’t. Her head is lowered back on the couch, blissed out on one of her pills. It's nothing unusual.
He keeps going. Spins until he’s so dizzy he falls down, and then he lays there on the carpet on his back until his heart stops pounding so hard and his body stops shaking and the tears stop wetting his hair.
“Mommy,” he whimpers. “Mommy, why don’t you love me anymore?”
She doesn’t answer him.
It’s nothing unusual.
x
The fight is particularly bad this time.
Malcolm wants to go to Gil’s. His mother wants him to stay.
He never understands why. Not ever. She seems like she'd be happier just to have Ainsley, and not him. The Arroyos' could adopt him, Malcolm's life would improve infinitely.
But would they want the burden? He doesn't think so. They like him because he isn't theirs.
“I don’t want to stay,” Malcolm tells her.
And she tells him, “You have to. I’m your mother.”
He’s ninety-two pounds and trembles more often than not anymore, and he isn’t going to take the lies anymore.
“You’re not my mother!” he shouts. “Jackie is! She loves me! You don’t even like me!”
He doesn’t see her hand move. He just feels the sharp sting of a slap across his face, snapping his head to the side, and he staggers then collapses down to the floor.
“Malcolm…” his mother says quietly. She stumbles forward, but doesn’t move to comfort him. Malcolm thinks the problem is that she’s afraid to touch him.
“Why do you hate me?” he asks. There’s something in him that’s broken, now, and it won’t ever recover.
“I don’t hate you,” she says.
Ninety-two pounds and he doesn’t believe her. “Why don’t you look at me, then?”
She does now.
She looks at him, and says, “You look like him.”
He freezes. The something breaks further, shatters to pieces.
"Daddy?" he asks.
"Yes," she whispers, and closes her eyes. "My God, yes."
So it is his fault.
It's his fault for ever being born to this cursed family.
Malcolm picks himself up off the floor, leaves without further protest from her, and stays the weekend at Gil’s without ever telling them a thing.
x
Eighty-nine, and his weight refuses to go down anymore. He does his research, and thus starts eating again, but only keeps down the things he counted the calories of, gets rid of the rest.
It's simple.
Eighty-eight, though it takes two weeks.
Simple.
Gil has been watching him. Following him around, trying to be subtle about it, but Malcolm notices everything.
He finally corners Malcolm one night after dinner, and asks where he’s going.
“The bathroom,” Malcolm says.
So simple. Nothing bad could happen there.
“You went before dinner,” Gil says. “I saw you.”
“What are you, stalking me? So I have to go again. Am I allowed to do that, Gil?”
Gil glances him over. Then he steps aside and gestures him past.
“Don’t run the sink so long, hmm?” He smiles a smile so forced it makes Malcolm cringe. “Our water bill’s already through the roof.”
“Yeah,” Malcolm says. And he knows Gil’s listening outside, he knows, so instead of doing what he wants he sits on the side of the tub and slices into his body and feels his stomach digesting what shouldn’t even be there anymore.
Eighty-eight point five pounds.
Fat.
Disgusting.
So he finds new ways to avoid it. He leaves Gil’s house at dinner time, comes back after. Eats at home, as far as Gil knows. He wears baggy clothes, hides the bones that are jutting from his skin.
They’re so pretty. He touches his collarbone in the mirror and marvels at it. He lays on his back and rubs his hands over his hip bones, his ribs.
Soon, Malcolm won’t look like his father. He’ll look like one of his father’s drawings, a pristine and beautiful skeleton. He’ll launch himself onto stage and no one will be able to take their eyes off of him.
He’ll be the most beautiful dancer there, and his mother will finally be in the crowd, watching, proud of him.
x
Malcolm takes a liking to peaches. They’re his favorite, those and apples. They’re all he eats, along with one bar of granola or a yogurt when he feels like he’s going to pass out.
Sometimes he does anyways, but those times don't matter. Those times just mean he's succeeding.
He dances better than ever, he thinks. Starving gives him what feels like superpowers, a delicious control he’s never had before. It feels good. He’s good at ballet, it's the only thing he thinks about, and he’s good at hiding what they would consider a problem.
His vision starts to black out when he stands up. His legs shake with the effort of holding his body upright. He shivers through the summer months in coats, and bundles up so thickly he can hardly move during the winter.
It’s not enough. He’s still cold.
It’s not enough. His mother still won’t look at him.
It’s not enough.
It won’t ever be enough.
Even his father notices. He asks what's stressing Malcolm out, what's causing him to drop weight, and Malcolm tells him if he ever mentions it again, he'll never come back, and that ends it there.
He takes apples out of his diet, too.
Over eighty calories is too many.
Over eighty pounds is too much.
Not there yet. But he will be. He will be. It takes so long to drop, now, but it drops. It does. Sometimes he gives in, relapses back into normality in desperation to stop the hunger, but he always manages to reign himself back in.
Peaches. He eats peaches. Fifty-nine calories. One saltine cracker, broken up into four pieces to make it last longer. Forty-two calories. Two carrots, munched on throughout the day. Twenty-five calories each.
He wants to be twenty-five pounds.
He wants to be nothing.
Weightless.
The thought of nearly flying across the stage makes him smile.
He practices, dances, even when the spins make him fall over from dizziness. Even when he feels so weak he has to sit down. Even when he faints and bashes his nose against the hardwood.
He gets up, blood dripping down on his leotard, and he practices.
“Look, Mother,” he begs, doing a perfect développé. “Look at what I can do.”
She glances. She looks, even for the slightest of seconds, and everything he’s ever done has been worth it.
And then she says, “Very nice, Malcolm.”
He smiles, tears running down his face, and dances around the living room long after she’s passed out from her drinks.
x
Ainsley starts to gain other interests, as she gets a little older. She likes to ride horses, and their mother pays attention. She starts taking Ainsley to lessons.
Malcolm goes once. Ainsley begs for him to, and their mother says he can.
He watches from the sidelines as their mother laughs, watching Ainsley ride, taking pictures.
He watches as she cheers her on, congratulates her on her first hurdle.
He watches her love Ainsley thoroughly, support her, when she still doesn't come to his recitals.
"Look at me, Mommy!" she calls.
Their mother does.
She looks, and doesn't look away.
Malcolm goes once, and he doesn’t go again.
x
Eighty-two pounds, and Malcolm can’t do this much longer.
His body shakes constantly. He can’t sleep. He can’t concentrate.
He can’t dance. He’s called out sick three times in a row, because it takes too much effort to get out of bed.
He missed his last recital, because he fainted just before going out on stage.
But it's not even about dancing anymore. It's about control.
He lashes out at the only family he has, Gil and Jackie, but he's in control.
He feels, every second, like he's dying, but he's in control.
He's never sure, when he goes to sleep, that he's going to wake up the next morning, but he's in control.
His father had taken that.
He'd taken it back.
He’s resting on Gil’s couch, under one of their quilts, trying not to breathe too hard as to conserve his energy, when Gil approaches, holds a bowl of his favorite food out in front of him, and says, “Eat.”
Malcolm can’t. He can just imagine how fat he’ll get if he even takes a bite.
But his mouth is dry. He’s so, so hungry. He can’t remember the last time he wasn’t.
“Eat,” Gil says. It’s an order.
Malcolm doesn’t have to obey it, but he does. He loses his long-practiced self-control and eats until his stomach is swollen and aching.
“Fuck you,” he mutters through tears. He’s not sure if it’s at the Gil or the food or himself.
He gets up, and Gil grabs him, holds him against his chest.
“Stop, Malcolm,” he says.
“Let go—”
“No. Sit down. I want to talk to you.”
Malcolm starts to squirm. He's already getting fatter, he can feel it. “No...no, I have to—”
“You have to what?”
"You can't just—"
"What do you have to do, Malcolm?"
“I have to get it out!” Malcolm cries finally. It doesn't matter anymore. The only thing that matters is ridding it. “You have to let me! Please! Gil!”
Gil only holds him tighter.
“You’re killing yourself,” he whispers. “Malcolm, please. Please. I love you so much. You have to let me help you. You have to.”
Malcolm snarls, shoving at him, but it does nothing to budge either of them. His strength is nonexistent. “I don’t want help!”
“No? What do you want?”
“I want—I want to dance! I want—I want—” He sobs, going limp, and Gil lowers them to the couch.
“What do you want, Malcolm?” he asks again, softer.
“I want her to love me,” he whimpers. “I just want her to hold me.”
“I know, kid,” Gil says. He holds Malcolm close, and Malcolm buries his face in Gil’s shoulder, weeping.
“She said I look like him,” he says. “I don’t anymore. I don’t, and she still won’t look at me. What am I?”
“Sick, Malcolm,” Gil says. “You’re sick, but we’re going to get you help. I promise.”
Malcolm doesn’t want help. He slits his wrist on their bathroom floor that night because he'd rather die than give up the progress he's made.
But Gil saves him, because of course he does. Gil cradles him to his chest and sobs and stops the bleeding until the ambulance comes.
Gil forces him to get help, anyways, because he loves Malcolm like no father he's ever had.
"Don't tell Momma," he begs. She's already disappointed in him for things he can't fix. He can't make it worse.
His mother finds out anyways, because of course she does, and takes an entire week to visit him in her shame. She pets Malcolm's hair, sobs, tells him how sorry she is, but still only gives him the smallest squeeze of a hug on departure.
Jackie gives them better.
Gil gives them the best.
He's cradled between them most visiting hours, safe and warm in a way he never wants to stop.
Eighty-eight pounds.
He makes Jackie a beautiful painting during craft time, and she says she'll hang it up on their wall, shows him a picture of her phone of where it is next time.
He feels loved, and noticed.
Ninety pounds.
He practices dancing in his room, and finds he has more energy than before.
He feels fat, but stronger.
Ninety-four pounds.
He breaks down. He relapses. He decides ballet isn't what he wants to do anymore, because he'll never be thin or dainty enough for it.
Gil tells him that's okay.
Gil tells him everything's going to be okay, and Malcolm believes him.
Ninety-eight pounds and he's clutching onto Gil during visiting hours, laughing with him over a cup of ice cream he feels, for once, only minimal guilt consuming.
“You look like him again,” Gil tells him, and Malcolm goes still. His hand starts to shake.
Defeated, he says, “My dad.”
Gil smiles. It’s the one sight that’s gotten Malcolm through all this.
“No,” Gil replies. “Yourself."
Malcolm hadn't considered himself to not be one and the same with his father. He hadn't considered being an individual.
He looks down at himself, in hospital socks and joggers and a sweater, and he thinks, maybe, he's been misinterpreting things all along.
He has so far to go, but he knows they'll be there for him, even if others who should have been aren't.
No. They're all he needs.
"I missed you, kid," Gil says, kissing his forehead.
Malcolm bites his lip in an unsuccessful attempt at hiding a smile, fits another spoonful of ice cream in his mouth, and says,
“Yeah. Think I did, too.”