Resin

by Liana Caulfield

“As the zombies approached, Bethany drew the chainsaw to her shoulder...blood splattered around her as her severed arm hit the pavement with a thump.”

In my defense, it was particularly gruesome yogurt.

The goop in the bowl had congealed into a foul sludge, maggoty lumps in the surface wriggling as they oozed a sort of nauseating liquid. Miss Kelly had insisted on plating it herself—she hadn’t wanted me to see the label.

It’s important for you to know, in this moment, that I’m crying out of sheer disgust from the thing, and not for any other reason that may occur to you, or Kelly, or the others. I’ve been here exactly a week today, and they still look at me like I’m some sort of extraterrestrial reject. At least I’m a distraction. That’s a good thing during compulsory snacktime, I think.

Miss Kelly forces a frozen orange into my hands. She says it will calm me down. It doesn’t. She gives me a meal replacement shake. The carton says vanilla, but I know from experience that it’s closer to drain cleaner mixed with whatever chemicals they put into the Warm Vanilla Sugar hand sanitizer at Bath & Body Works. I have to pinch my nose to get it down. It’s chalky and mucilaginous and overall horrid, but at least I won’t have to eat the yogurt.

***

Mr. Abramson yells cut for the seventeenth time this scene. If you know anything about television, you’ll know that’s an abhorrent amount of takes.

“You’re upset,” he tells me.

I understand the scene, I want to tell him. I just nod.

“Can we sub in Sydney?” he asks a crew member.

Syd’s already worked eight hours, someone informs him. He grumbles something about labor laws impeding his ability to make art.

I wonder if Season 3, Episode 4 of Athena B, Warrior Queen was the art he was dreaming about when he went to film school.

“This man just burned down your village. You’re upset,” he repeats.

I just feel numb.

***

“Jean-Henri unclasped his fingers, releasing his grip on the rope. The blade suspended above his neck fell with a swift force.”

I think my clothes are melting into my skin. It’s a hundred-something degrees this week, but we’re not allowed to wear short sleeves or tight clothes in case it upsets someone. I’m in sweats. I feel sticky.

There’s a small package on my bed when I return to my room. Mail day, they’d said. I hadn’t been paying attention.

It’s from my mother. I sit next to it.

The wiry frame of my cot presses through the thin foam pad serving as a mattress. The springs groan.

Lily enters our room.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

Lily’s hair is the color and texture of straw. Her roots have grown out a couple inches. I wonder how long she’s been here. She’s only gained half a pound, she tells me. I know she puts rocks in her pockets during weigh-ins. She offered me some when we became roommates.

Placing the box on my lap, I rip through the tape with a fingernail. There’s an orange stone inside, a fossil. Amber.

It’s about the size of a golfball. Translucent and glassy—the color of honey. A beetle is trapped inside, legs outstretched, frozen in motion.

There’s a note, too:

Hope you’re okay.

—Mom

You like minerals, don’t you? That’s what it means. I got you something you like.

I liked them when I was seven. And amber isn’t a mineral.

It amuses me, almost. How laughably wrong she is. I’ll bet she bought it with my money, too. Mine and Syd’s. In three years, I’ll get access to the 15% of it she hasn’t been allowed to spend. I think about that a lot, what I’ll do with it when I legally become a full person.

I pocket the amber.

***

They’ve named my disorder Ed. They tell me to pretend he’s my abusive ex-boyfriend.

I’m fifteen years old and I’ve never had a boyfriend. A lot of people tell me I look twelve. I wonder if Ed is supposed to be a pedophile or a fellow child. Because the last thing I need is a fictional pedophile invented by healthcare professionals on my back. I suppose a murderous high school boy wouldn’t be much of an improvement.

I don’t know why Ed has to be a boy in the first place. It’s a weird assumption of them to make. I’m not sure whose idea it was to sexualize the thing that’s supposedly killing me. By all accounts, sexualizing a child’s mental illness is weird to begin with. I’ve never had a crush on a boy, anyhow.

***

My first kiss is scheduled for today. They would have given it to Syd, but she already did the crying scenes.

Syd was always the prodigy. She can make tears flow from her eyes like syrup—slow and sweet and beautiful. I’m not pretty when I cry.

They use her as much as they can. I barely see her anymore.

The boy in front of me scares me a bit. He’s fourteen years old and he’s in high school. I’m still in middle school, if you can call the makeshift classroom they’ve confined us in that. I’m only twelve. A lot of people tell me I look nine.

They’ve dressed him in a fur coat. He plays a barbarian leader or something. I’ve stopped trying to understand the plot of this show. He watches me.

I think he’s disappointed I’m not Syd.

***

“Roland landed softly on the slab of stone in the middle of the courtyard. He drew his sword for battle. Then, without thinking, he sliced off his leg. Then the other. Then both his arms.”

Every story I write ends with the main character hacking off their own body parts. I don’t know why. They just do.

I write whenever we get free time. They make us keep our doors open so we don’t exercise in secret. I have no desire to exercise. I lose my breath just from climbing the stairs.

I think stories about girls with eating disorders are supposed to end with them eating something and being happy about it. That’s the natural ending, I suppose. It’s also rather boring, in my view.

***

They’ve written it into the show. I want to laugh, want to shriek at the clouds above until my voice is reduced to the crackling of a distant radio station.

The scene is today. Athena’s been captured by enemy soldiers who want to punish her for encroaching on their territory. Her hand’s gonna be out of the frame when they do it, so it’s still appropriate for kids.

Syd’s doing that scene, I think.

***

“Trapped under the rubble, Hayley knew her leg would have to go. She took out a knife from her backpack...”

Staring down at my own urine, I wonder if this process was intended to dehumanize us all as much as possible. Miss Ryner inspects the bowl and turns the handle.

I read once that if you flush a toilet with the lid open, it sprays a plume of fecal matter into the air. I try to forget that.

Lily’s outside the stall, brushing her hair.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.”

She runs the brush through once more. Strands of hair fall from her head like autumn leaves.

***

This place smells like rotting corpses. Maybe because it’s full of them.

The funny thing is that the staff here all have eating disorders too. There’s no one more obsessed with anorexic people than other anorexics. Obsessed with food, and meal plans, and nutrition, and control.

They just know how to do it more quietly. Miss Kelly has the boniest fingers you’ve ever seen. She likes to watch me eat, savors it. Relishes in every bite I take, every sip of fake-vanilla dishwater. It freaks me out a bit.

“Your brain will starve if you don’t eat,” she says. Her lunch is a banana. She doesn’t eat it in front of me.

They’re hypocrites, all of them. I think they know.

***

Mom’s taken us to a vineyard today. My dress is scratchy and I’ve already gotten in trouble for ripping the tag out of its stitches.

Everyone around me is dressed like they’ve flown out of my Birds-of-Paradise book. They talk different too.

A man my mom’s been conversing with for the better part of an hour presses a finger to his lips and offers me a sip of his wine. I shake my head no. I’m only eleven, and Mrs. Hansen said alcohol is bad for you.

Syd accepts it.

I don’t think she wants to either, but she’s smart enough to know when questions are actually commands.

***

“The venom traveled up Elliot’s wrist, blackening his veins. He had less than a minute to stop it from reaching his brain...”

They’re trying to treat this like some kind of summer camp.

They made us do yoga this morning, and they made us do it barefoot. I detest bare feet. Their odor lingers on my clothes.

The instructor said that if we eat more, our bodies will become more “womanly.” The word sends maggots tunneling under my skin. I don’t know why.

Now they’re making us list a food we like for every color of the rainbow.

It’s my turn. Blue.

There aren’t a lot of blue foods.

“Blueberries,” I say.

They don’t like that answer.

There aren’t many things you can do to pass the time between meals that don’t involve moving or going anywhere. I think they’re running out of ideas.

***

My therapist is a woman named Dr. Kauffman. She’s thinner than I am. I know I’m not supposed to pay attention to that, but she’s always wearing short dresses, heels that accentuate her sinewy calves.

Kauffman and the others tell me my being here means I’m out of control. What they don’t know is that I’ve been in control the whole time.

I can stop whenever I want. I just haven’t wanted to yet.

I like my bones, how they press up against each other and leave bruises on their own jagged edges. I like curling up at night with the warmth of this parasite. I like being in so much pain that I know they would never force her to go through with it. I like being ugly.

I like having something she can’t replicate.

***

Syd sits next to me in our treehouse.

Paint’s peeling from the walls, and half-filled-in coloring pages from when we were six are strewn across the floor. The wood’s rotting.

Syd’s hand is bandaged. She’s very quiet.

I don’t know why she agreed to it. Other than us, only Mom and Grandpa Freddie know the truth. He’s carved her a wooden bird. She presses it to her chest.

She’s angry with me. I understand it. I’m angry with her too, but I don’t think she’ll ever understand.

We sit for an hour in silence. Then she leaves. Neither of us have been back in the treehouse since.

***

“The hatchet sliced through Tyra’s seared flesh.”

I turn the amber over in my palm. The beetle’s legs stick out, suspended in frantic agony. Bugs become trapped in amber when they get caught in tree resin, I remember reading somewhere. I wonder what it was thinking as it died, if it knew its paralyzed corpse would be posed for an eternity, for an audience to gawk at and buy and sell and gift and trade.

I want to smash it on the ground, to crack it open, set it loose, set it free.

The beetle is already dead.

***

A camera flashes in rapid pulses.

I wanted to wear my green hoodie for headshots today. Mom chose a stuffy purple sweater for us instead.

“It’s Syd’s favorite,” she says.

Syd wears it first. Her teeth sparkle in front of the camera. Her eyes glimmer. Her hair shines.

She passes it to me when she’s done. In the studio lights, I feel like a small animal about to get run over. I try my best. My teeth don’t sparkle. My eyes don’t glimmer. My hair is dull.

“Stand up straighter,” Mom says. “Try to look like this.” She holds up Syd’s new picture.

“They have to match.”

***

“The ice cream scoop slides cleanly into Morris’s eye socket.”

I think the others might be scared of me.

My hair’s still short from when I shaved it, and my face is scarred up from where I’ve cut it.

“You look like you’ve walked out of a goddamn death camp,” my mom said.

It can all be fixed with a wig and foundation, I’ve learned.

***

On Fridays, they let us out of this prison-house for a meal at a restaurant. It’s my first time. Today’s is pizza.

We sit packed into a small booth, the six of us. Miss Kelly and the others watch from a nearby table.

“I finished that one at 1:39.26,” Tomás says. “Best time in the state.” He’s the only boy here. He used to swim competitively, was about to get recruited for it. He talks about it like he still is.

We all nod politely—congratulate him for muscles that have long since atrophied.

I look down at my slice. Waxy grease exudes from the cheese, soaking my plate with an orange film. I’m not allowed to dab it off with a napkin.

“Y’know who you kinda look like?” he says between mouthfuls.

I look up. He’s examining my face.

Tomás has never spoken to me before. None of them really have, aside from Lily.

“That girl from the—Queen Athena!” he says, finding it. “Sydney Whats-Her-Face. I never watched the show, but if I squint you could totally be her.”

I force a chuckle. “Yeah.”

“—Sydney Waterlynn,” another girl interjects. Anna. She smiles at me sometimes during group. “She and her sister Elsie used to play the role together. I only saw a few episodes. It was cute.”

“What’s your name, by the way?” he asks.

“Amber,” I lie.

It’s almost nice being included. I want to sink between the cushions and die.

Tomás reaches a hand across the table. “Tomás,” he says. I think I’m supposed to shake it.

I offer mine in return. He clamps down on it, squeezes it between sweaty fingers. Suddenly he drops it.

“Dude, what happened to your hand? Your fi—”

Lily jabs an elbow into his side. He goes quiet.

***

I have therapy with Dr. Kauffman in the morning.

Today her dress is pink with white flowers. She looks like an aged Barbie doll.

“How was your week?” she asks.

“Fine.”

“You’ve gained weight.”

“Cool.”

“How does that make you feel?”

Her leg bounces slightly, heel making microscopic taps against the hardwood. I realize that she doesn’t know how to be still. That or she’s afraid.

“Nothing.”

Kauffman purses her lips. She’s looking to get a rise out of me, waiting for a response I’ll never give.

There’s a picture on her desk from maybe twenty years ago. I’ve never noticed it before. Kauffman stands by a lake with a group of friends. She’s wearing the same pink dress as today. Twenty-years younger. Equally skeletal.

I suddenly feel very nauseous.

***

I don’t close the door on my way out. I think I hear her call out to me.

I don’t care.

I run as fast as my legs will carry me. Slam the door shut once I’m inside.

Kneeling by my cot, I pull the hunk of amber out from my pocket. The beetle stares at me from inside.

Entombed. Frozen in time.

Lily, bleach-blonde at the same weight she started at.

Tomás, about to get recruited to Stanford.

Miss Kelly eating her lunch banana.

Mom, knowing about my love for minerals.

Dr. Kauffman, standing in a pink dress on a dock with her collarbone bursting out of her skin.

The beetle, scampering away from a fate it could never escape.

I raise it above my head, and strike it against the tile.

Cracks form, snaking their way around the stone, clouding the inside. Another hit, and it shatters.

The beetle rolls out from the pieces.

***

I’m in Grandpa Freddie’s carpentry shop. He’s teaching me how to make a birdhouse. He leaves for a moment, muttering something about nail sizes.

The table saw is a few feet away from me.

Its blade glitters in the midafternoon light.

***

I rip each leg from the beetle’s body. They’re brittle, delicate, break with a soft snap.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

***

I’ll insist, for the rest of my life, that it was an accident.

An accident bad enough that it was impossible to reattach.

I flip on the switch, and extend my index finger.

***

I cradle the beetle’s body in my hand. Pick it up between two fingers.

Pressing it through my lips, I begin to chew. The pieces crunch between my teeth.

Syrup flows from my eyes.

I smile.