INTO IT (a novel) Chapter 6: Adam

At the beginning of the year there are the looks that say, He hasn’t lost any weight, he’s actually gained, but those looks quickly dissolve into indifference. Who wants to bother with the fat boy dressed by his mother? I wouldn’t. I don’t.

I’ve been a baby-fat all my life. There’s a line of baby-fat photos narrating their way down my mom’s mantlepiece, the fat kid to the fat kid to the fatter, older-looking kid. My fat came along with me fitted like a rubber suit. My puffy arms narrow down at my wrists. The tops of my hands, fat. Fat rings circle my neck. My belly fat against my shirt as I walk. My fat eats up the space in a doorway, in a room. It eats the oxygen.

And then, ta-da, here’s the trophy hall. Cheap, gold tennis and football figurines racked behind reflective glass. I want to avoid it, but it’s the only hall that leads to English class. I must walk by the trophy cases and see out of the corner of my eyes my form reflected in the glass as I move through space. There’s no mistaking me for any of the sheeple proceeding down the hall. I get a shot of my mounded profile for a second time every day, after using the narrow mirror in my mother’s room to line up the buttons of my shirts in the mornings.

I’m never less than certain that my form doesn’t belong in this hallway. The trophy cases need to get blown up with a fucking grenade.

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