GOLDEN AVERY

Avery held the panties at arm’s length and stretched them wide. “Whose are these?” she asked. And every face turned to her, just like they always did. Her strawberry-gold hair and cold blue eyes turned every head at camp, including mine, and when I turned this time, I saw my underwear pinched in her fingers in not at all the way I had dreamed it.

The elastic strained between her fists. Her gloss-slick lip curled, then slid into a smile as stifled laughter echoed around the room.

It was a stupid question. Everyone knew they were mine. But stupid questions were just another tool in her makeup kit.

I stomped over to her, feet splashing on the tiles, my face as red as my sunburned shoulders, and I gripped the elastic waistband in my fist and pulled.

She pulled harder. “Keep stretching, they’ll fit in no time!”

If my ears hadn’t been full of lake water, the laughter might have ruptured them. A small miracle, I guess.

She let go and I fell back into a rank puddle on the locker room floor.

Avery steadied herself as if the ground shook. Girls laughed and ran out of the tiled shack.

The clammy water soaked the back of my skirt. The fabric clung to my ass as I hiked up the hill to the cabins. I was running out of clothes to change into—I hadn’t figured I’d need three outfits every day. I’d have to check in at the office and rent more uniforms. They had plenty more, in the largest size.

Avery and her groupies were already at the activity tent, so I changed in peace instead of trying to squeeze into the shadowed alcove between the bunk beds and the desk. There were no fingers pinching my rolled waist, no snapping of bra straps. I rubbed my hip where I’d landed, wondered if I’d get an ugly bruise—a target for their bony fingertips.

A wolf spider skittered from behind the trashcan. I scooped her up and slipped her between Avery’s sheets.

***

The activity tent was quiet—rows of plucked brows drawn down in concentration as teens scraped pocket knives across the bark of long branches.

“Carve a walking stick for tomorrow’s hike,” instructed the paper placed at each setting. Atop the paper sat a thin Swiss army knife. Leaning against each chair, a rough branch.

There were no counselors in sight. There often weren’t. Still, arming fifty fifteen-year-olds with knives and sharp sticks seemed like poor planning. But they were all intent on their task, and hardly anyone noticed when I walked in and took my seat.

If I had carved more quickly, I might have made it out without ever having been seen—but the scrape of the knife on the wood, the smell of the fresh pulp—it was so hypnotic I remained still much longer than I should have.

“We could hunt pigs with these spears,” Avery said, her voice like fairy bells and river music. Every face spun to her, then to me. “Want to practice, piggy?” She snorted through her upturned, freckled nose and thrust the stick at me.

It jabbed me in the shoulder. I yelled and my knife slipped, sinking into the palm of my hand.

I leapt from my chair and ran at her, around the table, trailing blood—chasing her across the tent.

She danced out of reach. I panted after her, reaching for the flapping hem of her skirt. She spun in the air, hair spreading in a rose-gold arch around the vortex of her laughter.

Her eyes sparkled when she laughed.

That was Avery, then.

***

Avery now struggles a bit with her boyfriend, her college classes, her share of our rent. Her weight.

Mostly she struggles with the fact that, while she played beer pong, I nibbled celery, and now I’m the one turning heads.

But I love her. Always have. Small miracle.

And she loves me, and has loved me since I sucked the venom from her spider bite. Never mind that the spider wasn’t venomous and no amount of sucking could draw all the poison out of Avery. I know, I tried—sucked long and hard.

I give her my expensive fat jeans as I shrink out of them and slip into something slimmer.

She’ll pretend like she likes it—says it’s good to have curves—but the tall stack of fad diet books at her bedside is as straight as a column.

Six months ago, she brought home a sack of expensive creams. I rubbed them over her till I couldn’t tell where the cream ended and her soft skin began. I cupped the puckered speck of her spider-bite scar in the pale crescent knife scar on my palm.

Still, her thighs dimpled. I like them that way, but she cried an ugly cry, face twisted, and reached under my skirt and pinched me—hard—on my smooth, firm thigh.

It bruised, but it was lovely.

Three months ago, I handed her an old dress. She held me and wept and asked for help.

I taught her how to sit down to a healthy meal. How to then excuse herself discreetly. And how to bring it all back up—every crumb and calorie in accelerated reverse.

I taught her she could have her cake and eat it too. Guys love a girl with a healthy appetite. If she’s thin.

She took to it rough at first—the godawful mess she made—but I told her it gets more dainty with practice. Ladylike.

She shed a few pounds, but not many. She tried to steal my jeans but put them back, with the ass cut out, when they didn’t fit her.

I told her she’d have to stop drinking her red wine—empty calories—if she wanted to turn heads again.

“Besides,” I said, “it isn’t healthy.”

She said she needed the buzz.

So I brought her some speed.

Three weeks of that and we had progress, and her eyes lit up just like I like them. But she couldn’t fit into her birthday present—that pretty camp-girl uniform—the polo and pleated skirt I’d taken from her trunk and saved, for a special occasion.

Two weeks ago, her boyfriend left her. He said it was because she was acting crazy, but we know better. We know what they like.

She said she’d try anything.

You can get anything online these days. To any company, a sale is a sale, and medical equipment is no different. Hell, we even got free two-day shipping.

The curved injectors and cannulas arrived last Friday. My ex hooked us up with a cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics. I stayed up all night on YouTube, becoming an expert.

On Saturday, I told her to get naked and lie down in the bathtub.

The drugs made her eyes dull and she puked in her hair, but she didn’t seem to feel the small incision. Or the narrow wand sliding in beneath her creamy skin.

I scraped at the layer of fibrous fat.

She went rigid—damn near bit her tongue in half—and passed out cold.

I took one of the clean towels from the stack on the toilet seat and tucked it under the corner of her mouth, to catch the mess. And I worked quickly.

Those tight little strands of cellulose that hold your layers together—stitching them like quilting—they’re what pull in the dimples. If you snap those like elastic, separate the layers, they’ll hang smooth.

It will all grow back, eventually—stitch itself back together. A small miracle. But, in the meantime, you suck out all the fat, every swollen cell, and the skin lies smooth as the surface of a lake.

I ripped every stitch under her skin. All over her stomach and butt and thighs. A few extra incisions, to get those hard-to-reach places. Bruises blossomed purple in the wake of my wand as I waved it through her, making her shame vanish into the bag at my knees.

Magic.

The bag swirled with fat and blood, rose gold.

When I finished, I stitched her up with super glue—like we learned at camp. I put my tools in the dishwasher. I crushed pain pills and stuffed the powder past her swollen tongue. I poured the contents of the bag into the toilet—a little at a time—and flushed it all away. I filled sandwich bags with ice and draped them over her.

She slept until Wednesday, but the pain pills were running low, and she’d see red if we ran out.

It’s all about portions.

The internet said swelling is normal. But try telling that to a girl with bright fever eyes who just sees herself getting fatter.

I kissed her and told her she was beautiful.

There’s hardly an ounce of fat left on her body, and if she’s still not happy with it, well. She’s got a problem.

By Friday, she could almost get out of the bathtub. The purple faded to yellow and the swelling had gone down.

On Tuesday, she leaned against my shoulder while I slid the camp skirt over her narrow hips. We turned, so she could see in the mirror. She beamed and her eyes sparkled.

She let go of my neck and smoothed the crisp pleats over the angles of her hip bones. Her eyes watered at the pressure of her palms against the tender flesh.

She lifted her skirt. Scars mottled her legs—a shiny network of pink and ivory. They rippled, just like the cellulite.

She moaned against the gauze packed around her tongue and threw herself toward the doorway, hobbling to the bathroom.

I followed, chasing after her swaying skirt.

She rummaged in the first aid kit and pulled out the little Swiss army knife. Her eyes burned brighter than I had ever seen them as she carved away her scars.

Long strokes, curling strips—like we learned at camp—falling around her in a pile like rough pine bark. Till her flesh flowed slick with blood and I couldn’t tell where her wounds ended and her soft skin began.

She lay back in the tub, shivering. Her eyes dimmed as all the drugs, the fever, the hate bled out of her. The drain gargled like laughter as it swallowed the swirling vortex of her red.

I kissed her and told her she was beautiful—my small miracle.

I slipped the knife from her shaking fist and carved a thin line—skinniest line you’ve ever seen—across her creamy throat.

And I ordered her an extra large coffin, with rose gold ornaments.