I got nothing for this one.
DAY: 37
TOTAL CALORIES: 0
Mom got fired. She got one week’s pay as severance, which is half of our rent, which was already past due. She came in full of false cheer, knowing we were doomed, determined not to let me see it.
“There are lots of layoffs,” she said, her voice heavy with wanting a drink. “I’m certainly not taking it personally!”
“But what about that transition job?” I asked when I got my head around what she’d said, which was a while.
“Turns out the transition is going to happen on a much faster timeline, so they won’t need any managers for it. Ended up going to someone else,” she said. Her smile was so fake it hurt us both.
“But you said your boss said—”
“Said it was out of his hands. Decision from upstairs. What do you want for dinner?”
I gaped at her, and she turned without another word and walked away.
I sat at the edge of my bed. Turned up my music so I wouldn’t hear her pouring out another drink. But I heard her anyway. I heard everything.
I could do so many things. Teleport, read minds, stop time. Why couldn’t I help her? Why couldn’t I help anyone? Why couldn’t I take away everything that made her life so hard?
I stared at my hands. Starving myself gave me powers. But what good were they? I was sick. I was destroying myself.
I went down the hall. Mom sat at the table, glass of scotch beside her mug of coffee. Her head hung. It wasn’t hunger or superpowers that told me how sad she was. It was being a person. Being open to the needs of someone other than myself.
Love could heal. Love could change people. Love was the thing that made me want to die when I saw her, when I saw how much she was hurting. Everything else, all the imaginary abilities my sick mind had conjured up, all of that was meaningless.
“Hey,” I said, heart hammering.
“Hey.”
I put a hand on her shoulder, and she leaned her cheek against it. I almost lost it right there, the courage I’d somehow mustered, so I reached out with the other hand and picked up the bottle.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Whiskey,” she said.
“Why are you drinking it?”
She sighed.
“I love you, honey,” she said. “But you’re my son and I’m your mother and I don’t want to have this conversation with you.”
Hunger and sadness made me brave, let me say the words I wasn’t strong enough to say. “I think you do,” I said.
“Well. I also think a lot of things that aren’t true.”
I kept on, undeterred. “But seeing you like this. It hurts. It makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I can’t do anything about that.”
She looked up at me for the first time.
I whispered. “We should get help.”
Mom clinked her coffee mug against mine.
“I’ll make some calls in the morning,” she said, the emptiness of the promise echoing in the kitchen.