Every superhero, every Chosen One, goes through a painful and difficult process of Becoming. On this, all the relevant literature is in agreement. Ask any comic book aficionado, any movie buff. The heroes doubt themselves, even when confronted with irrefutable evidence. They’ve spent their whole lives listening to weak and powerless people who hate and fear anything that is different, who say that superhuman abilities simply don’t exist, and they believe it.
The warrior studying the Art of Starving will pass through a period of pain and confusion. Doubt. Fear. This is normal. You are learning that a different set of rules applies to you.
DAY: 3
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 500
The walk to school was one thing. Cold morning, no wind—maybe the stink of the slaughterhouse was a little bit worse than normal, but not so bad that I stopped to wonder.
As soon as I stepped foot inside Hudson High, though, I knew something was different.
The place stunk. Like: way worse than normal. Mold and rotten meat seemed to fill the lockers; the seats in every classroom stunk of decades of ill-washed ass. Even from across the school I could smell the gym, an inanimate object brought to screaming life by dripping sweat and the grimy festering smell of fear. The cafeteria throbbed with waterlogged broccoli, clots of hamburger meat, dirty hairnets.
First-period math class, I looked around the room in shock, to smell all the stinks these smiling catalog-model boys and girls carried around with them. Boys whose boxer shorts were walking atrocities. Girls reeking of cigarette smoke. I could tell who wore hand-me-downs; how many times they’d been handed down.
A flood of smells everywhere I went, and I felt certain I would drown in it. Between classes, I ran for the bathroom, knowing I was about to puke, but the smell in there was so bad it stopped me at the door. The digested dinners of a hundred sallow boys. The pungent boutique of bottom-grade swamp-rot marijuana.
Stumbling back to class, nose buried in the crook of my elbow, I almost collided with two girls, Regan and Jeanine, best friends since forever, and knew at once that Jeanine had been orally intimate with Regan’s boyfriend that very morning.
Fear had me off-balance, made me desperate to know what the hell was going on, frantic for proof that either I was right, or that I was merely going insane. I had to test the validity of what my nose told me was true.
“Oh, hey, Jeanine, didn’t see you on the bus this morning.”
“No,” she said, panic surging through her, panic that had a smell like wet dog, “I got a ride.”
“From who?” Regan asked, and that was all I needed to hear. I pretended to get a call on my cell, held it to my ear and said, “Hello?” as I hurried off, wailing inside. In that moment, insanity or delusion would have been so much easier to handle. Was this happening? Was I able to perceive things by . . . smelling them?
“I want this to stop,” I whispered out loud.
But no one was listening. No one could help me.