{ 1 }
the crushing of the light
It started gradually, like most things in life did. Like rips forming in the back of Matt’s favorite Reebok’s. Like dead, brown leaves falling under chilling late-November clouds. Like his grades, slipping for months into his sophom*ore year.
Then it occurred to Matt, when he was fifteen and unable to get out of bed, that the only thing he could control in all his supposed free will was his own body. The thought was the root of all his thoughts—the root of all evil, probably. It was the thought that stayed buried in him the entire third week of November, tucked under thick coats, under thinner shirts, inside his chest. Sometimes, he would check the reflection of his chest and stomach in the mirror and hold a hand against it, pressing down real hard onto his ribs.
Chris sat down at the end of Matt’s bed. Right. He was there too. And Nick, digging through his clothes. “Are you coming to school?”
He waited for Matt patiently, while Matt pretended to think about the long-awaited answer. “I don’t know,” was the response he eventually gave his brother. He watched in the dark of their room as Chris furrowed his brows like he did when he was upset. But Matt didn’t really care anymore—the last time he’d cared about something had been last week, when he’d sweat through his bedsheets and thought of it for the very first time. He just had to figure out exactly what it was.
Matt rolled over to face the window.
.::.
In the next hour, Matt went for a run around the block. He said goodbyes to Chris and Nick and searched through their closet for something to wear.
He made it twenty minutes before his body forced him to sit on a curb, head in his knees. He was out of breath, and his anxiety wasn’t making breathing all the much easier. He kept on thinking, one of our neighbors is going to see me. Or, my mom might happen to drive by. But then he reminded himself of it, and continued to run home.
.::.
“Matt! We’re home!”
He shifted his gaze towards the door, where Chris snagged it open and threw himself onto him. Matt sucked in a breath when Chris landed on his sore stomach. “Chris, knock it off.”
He shrugged his brother off him, and Chris successfully landed to his right, swinging his arm so it lay behind Matt’s head instead of the pillow. “So, you’re never gonna guess what you missed. Ms. C was just teaching, minding her own business, right?”
“Mhm.”
“And all of a sudden—boom—Doritos fly everywhere! Caleb f*cking exploded it!”
“Did she lose her mind?” Matt asked, though he wasn’t all that interested. All he could wrap his head around was his empty stomach.
“Sort of. She sent him to the office for it. We were all f*cking dying!”
“The principal’s office for a bag of chips?”
“I mean, he does try to make her go insane every day. I swear by December he’s gonna land her in the f*cking psych ward.”
“Poor Ms. C.”
Nick made his way in, bag of chips in hand. “Did you already tell him?”
Chris grimaced. “Maybe.”
“Chris!”
“What? You were taking your sweet old time downstairs!”
Nick rolled his eyes and sat at the end of Matt’s bed. Whose mouth was watering from the smell of the Cape Cod chips. “You’re a buzzkill, actually,” Nick said. “How’re you feeling?”
Matt shrugged. “Fine.”
He knew he probably wasn’t, and he felt justified in that. He wasn’t a good person in heart, he’d been skipping school for his anxiety and for going on runs, and he’d been lying to his family. If he felt okay, if he felt happy, it wouldn’t be right.
As if understanding his internal turmoil, Chris tightened the arm around Matt. “Wanna go to the park?”
“It’s cold,” was Matt’s lame excuse. When was it not cold in New England?
Nick hated the park more than anyone, but he seemed to be on Chris’s side, pleading with Matt to come along. So Matt did.
Matt was still wearing his PJs. He’d put on his running clothes that morning (an oversized sweatshirt and shorts), took a shower, and hid them at the bottom of their hamper. It wouldn’t matter anyway—Matt always did the laundry—but if he wanted to do this then he had to be precise and careful.
So, they walked to the park. The air was cold, a typical November in Boston, and Matt bundled himself up in his coat. Chris and Nick were running around, and Matt tried to warm up, pressing his palms to his cold face. He needed a hot shower.
“Matty. Question,” Nick said, all too casually. The two of them lay in the mulch of the playground, side by side, as Chris attempted to go down the slide headfirst.
“Yeah?”
“You missing school—that’s not anything to do with the people there, right?”
It was the people there. It was the anxiety of walking in, being stared at, being talked about. But Matt got what he was putting down.
“If someone’s messing with me, you’ll be the first to know, Nick,” he said with an airy laugh, and Nick pushed a hand against Matt’s face.
“I’m just looking out for you.”
“I know.”
Somehow, Chris made it down in one piece. The air was so dry in the park that it must’ve slowed down the slide.
And when Matt sat absentmindedly on the swings, he placed his hand against his stomach. Though the emptiness and ache of it was new, he knew the feeling wouldn’t be unfamiliar for much longer.
.::.
Winter break was both a blessing and a curse. He could run long distances in heavy clothes without having to miss school, but Chris and Nick were a nagging force. He should have felt bad, but he also didn’t care.
He bought a scale at his local Walgreens and hid it in the back of the bathroom cabinet. He skipped every meal of every day, with the exception of the nights they had family dinners. Family dinners were his worst enemy—one of those enemies that had once been his friend. Now he had dreaded them the same way he dreaded school and the public and talking to strangers. He sat at his designated seat and played with his food until it looked like he had put in an attempt to eat it.
Winter break also meant it became real. It hadn’t been a sick cover-up for his anxiety over school or his seasonal depression—restricting his eating had been a part of him, and a way to control every other part of himself that he once could not. It meant that he wasn’t naive anymore. Not like before. (It also didn’t yet have a solidified name.)
As much as he hated to admit it—he had been lying about eating. About the amount he had been running. And all these things piled up weren’t little white lies anymore, they weren’t half-truths. They couldn’t be covered up with a silver lining. They were just lies.
Every morning, Matt slipped out the front door to go on his run, and every morning, he told his family he had eaten earlier before it. After one particularly long run, on a particularly bad day, Nate’s dad’s truck Nate had the illegal tendency to drive was pulled up on their driveway. It touched a nerve of his. Three brothers to lie to had been enough—Nate added on was too much.
Chris and Nick, who’d grown closer in the last month, were attempting to teach Trevor to roll over in the grass of their backyard. Nate was standing on their back porch, while Matt sat. He wanted to stand next to Nate, but his stomach ached the painful way, and he was afraid he might pass out if he tried. He ran too hard that morning, but the Annual Mandatory Sturniolo Christmas Eve Dinner Party was in three days.
Nate sat down next to him eventually.
“Nick told me you’ve been runnin’ too much.”
Matt shrugged, but his heart was beating. He didn’t like that his brother talked about him behind closed doors. “He exaggerates.”
“Right,” Nate replied. Because he didn’t believe him, and he wasn’t the type of guy to press him on something he didn’t want to talk about.
Matt chewed down on his nail. “It’s because it’s winter break. I’ve got nothing else to do.”
“Mhm.”
His stomach was goddamn killing him. “What?”
“I didn’t say nothing.”
“You’re f*cking looking at me like I’m crazy.”
Nate didn’t reply, and Matt would’ve thought he’d caused a rift if he didn’t speak up minutes later, playing with a piece of grass between his fingers. “I won’t say anything, you know that,” Nate said. “I love you, man, but you gotta get your sh*t together. You’re gonna hurt a lot more than yourself if you go down this road.”
Matt glared at him. “I’m allowed to have hobbies.”
“Alright,” Nate replied, dropping it.
.::.
Matt was looking up the bodily effects of “running too much” in Walgreens, his new favorite mid-run pit stop, when Elle Fisher leaned against the aisle he looked through. All he knew about the girl was that she was a senior, she had about a million different hairstyles nobody could keep up with, and her father apparently had an affair with his boss last year. Brought her home for a family dinner and everything.
“Matt Sturniolo,” she said, pointing at him with a Cheetos Puff. Matt had spent so much of his time alone over this winter break that he was beginning to forget how to keep up with simple conversations.
Instead of answering her, he glanced down at her bag of Cheetos Puffs, and nearly cursed himself for his next words. “Can I have one?”
She laughed and held out the bag. He took one, and held it in between two fingers, hoping to God he’d accidentally drop it on the dirty floor. Then, he thought it would be weird if he didn’t eat it, so he did. It was dry and felt like a rock sinking in his empty stomach. And Matt had learned after a few short weeks of taking back control of the one thing he could really control, that having a bite of something edible after not eating for an entire thirty hours would open up the hunger pains in his stomach. He hated that feeling.
“I bumped into your brother before,” Elle said, popping another in her mouth. “The one with the long hair.”
“Chris,” he answered, wondering why she knew his name, and not Chris’s. He was much more social and friendly. Maybe she was pretending she didn’t know it.
“Yeah, Chris. I was walking my dog, Prairie, and he was driving by with… your dad, I hope. Does he have his permit?”
“I guess so,” Matt said, though he knew Chris didn’t. They wouldn’t be sixteen until the end of next summer.
“Anyway, he slowed down and we talked for a minute with your dad. He’s really nice.”
Matt picked up a bag of chips, and then put it back. It was something he sometimes did, playing pretend with the Walgreens snacks. It kept him sane.
“Did you run here?”
Matt looked down at himself. A sweatshirt, joggers, and sneakers. “Yup.”
“Do you want a ride back home? sh*t, Matt, we’re like fifteen minutes outside our school zone.”
He was feeling a bit stiff and tired. He could probably run back, but the Google search was buzzing in his pocket, and he was honestly a bit afraid Nate had been right. “Running too much” was an issue for later; however, still an issue.
“Sure.”
So, he bought a pack of zero-calorie gum and Elle’s Cheetos Puffs, and hopped into the passenger seat of her navy Ford Fusion. “Nice car.”
“Thanks, it’s my mom’s,” she said.
He hummed in response, and she turned up the heat all the way up. He wasn’t that cold, since he’d run the entire way here, but it was thirty-five degrees outside. If it started to rain, it could’ve snowed on them.
She pulled up to his house with the help of his direction and put her car in park. Lauryn Hill played from a CD jammed in.
“So, Matt,” she said. “I’m having a get-together type thing on New Year’s Eve. It starts at ten. You should come and invite your brothers and friends, or whatever,” she said. Her hair was in a Princess Jasmine kind of ponytail, and somehow every hairstyle she tried out seemed to fit her.
“Sure, maybe,” he said. He’d already gotten out of the car, but he leaned back in to ask, “where do you live?”
“Here, give me your number and I’ll text you,” she said, handing over her phone. Bold.
He did and handed it back. “Thanks for the ride,” he said. She smiled back, instead of saying something like you’re welcome or anytime.
Chris was up the driveway, playing basketball with Nate. “Who was that?”
Matt shrugged. “Elle Fisher.”
“The senior Elle Fisher? The one whose dad—”
“Cheated on her mom with his ugly ass boss?” Nate chipped in.
“Yeah, that Elle Fisher,” Matt said, amused. “She invited us to her New Years thing.”
“When’s that?”
“New Year’s Eve, obviously. At ten. She’s gonna text me the address if you guys wanna go,” he said, though he was regretting telling them at all. He would rather stay home than spend New Year’s with stupid, drunk high schoolers.
“Yeah, alright,” Chris replied, throwing up the basketball. It hit the backboard and made it in. “Nate?”
“Yeah, unless Gavin’s throwing.”
“Nah, his parents are still pissed about the weed.”
Matt sat down on the sidewalk, watching them play. In all honesty, he wanted to join, but his legs were beginning to shake. He was telling himself it was from the cold.
“That was a whole three months ago,” Nate said.
“Well, he was selling it too.”
“Only to like… ten people max. And his parents don’t know about that.”
Matt scoffed. “Maybe he’s grounded one month for each high schooler? Two months for each middle schooler?”
Nick popped open the kitchen window, looking down on them. “What the hell are guys doing? It’s f*cking freezing out.”
“Nick! Wanna go to Elle Fisher’s for New Years?” Chris asked.
Nate rolled his eyes. “Dumbass. Peyton invited me to Elle’s like a month ago.”
.::.
The Annual Mandatory Sturniolo Christmas Eve Dinner Party began at four in the afternoon, and would usually continue until late that night. And usually, Matt would spend his time with his family in the living room, talking amongst them, eating dinner around the sofa and the television, and eventually end the night in their gaming bedroom with their cousins.
“Gaming bedroom” because they had two bedrooms. One for sleeping, two for games and storage. Chris’s seventh-grade idea that somehow stuck.
Now, Matt was handed his dinner plate and wanted to run for the hills. But he quietly followed Nick and Chris around the kitchen counter, picking up a few things his mom and Aunt Marie had made earlier that day.
This dinner had been on his mind for days. Because not only was his immediate family watching, the people who saw him every day and wouldn’t think much of it, but his in-laws were here to watch as well. All the eyes made him feel uneasy.
Chris glanced down at Matt’s plate and scooped up some mac and cheese, dropping it next to his chicken. “You can’t celebrate Christmas without mac and cheese,” he said as an explanation. Matt wanted to curse him out, dump the entire container of mac and cheese over his head, but he did nothing but half-smile and nudge his shoulder to keep it moving.
They settled in the living room, and time blurred for Matt. The television was a good distraction from the food and from his questions of why he was having such a hard time trying to stomach the grilled chicken. He just. Couldn’t.
And he was sure it was more complex than that, but for the time being, that reasoning was all he had.
So, for the first time in Annual Mandatory Sturniolo Christmas Eve Dinner Party history, Matt snuck upstairs to his bedroom and rolled himself deep under his covers. The rest of his dinner sat in the garbage can, and he was certain nobody had noticed him barely touch his plate. It was Christmas, and a party, and not one person here would be focused on whatever was going on with Matt if they didn’t know what they were looking for in the first place.
He shrunk further under his covers, and it somewhat wasn’t hot enough under them. His feet were always cold. His hands. And he learned weeks ago that the only way he could keep warm was to take too many showers and hope for the best.
For now, he wore fuzzy socks.
“Matt?”
The door creaked open, and Matt popped his head out from where he hid under his comforter. Nick.
“Are you sick?”
Matt shrugged.
“What’s that mean?” Chris asked from behind Nick. Matt said nothing. Of course, out of the thirty-something people occupying the first floor of their house, his triplet brothers were the ones who had noticed him slipping away.
“I’m just tired,” he said, though his attempts at an answer were futile. He’d overused the excuse. Either way, Chris smushed himself next to Matt on the bed, and Nick sat down on Chris’s bed next to them, eating through the rest of his dinner.
“Low iron?” Chris asked.
“I’m pretty sure if you rub a silver ring on your forehead and it turns it brown or something, that means you have low iron,” Nick said.
“I thought it was gold?”
“Nah, definitely silver.”
“It’s gold,” Matt said. “But it doesn’t really test if you’re iron deficient. And I’m not iron deficient, I just can’t listen to Aunt Vicky’s high-pitched laugh anymore.”
Chris snorted. “I think my ears went numb an hour ago.”
Nick and Chris continued to bicker, and Matt set a hand on his stomach. The chicken was settling in weird. He was sure of it.
“I don’t feel good,” he said, probably interrupting one of them, but if he didn’t get his words out, he was convinced the chicken was coming right back up.
“What’s wrong?”
Matt shrugged. “I dunno. I’m like… I can’t explain it. My stomach hurts.”
Chris squinted his eyes at Matt, then at Nick. “Do you think Aunt Marie poisoned the chicken?”
“If she was gonna poison something, it would be that nasty punch nobody ever asks her to bring.”
“The punch is good,” Matt argued, and it must’ve reminded Chris and Nick he was there, because they didn’t bring up any more in-laws after that.
Instead, Nick pushed himself on the other side of Matt on the twin-sized bed, and when Matt couldn’t move an inch from each of them, they talked until Matt and all his sickness fell asleep.
.::.
For the next week, he was dizzy and nauseous like nothing he had ever felt before. He’d wake up in pain, stumble towards the bathroom, and lean over the toilet like he had to puke. But nothing would come out, and eventually, the sensation of him sitting on a rocking boat would subside. The black dots wouldn’t.
Every time he sat up, the black dots would crowd his vision. Every time he would co*ck his head one way or another, a few showed up. Standing up was the worst, where he would have to stay in one spot for an entire ten seconds, squeezing his eyes shut and wishing the black vision away. One day his legs wobbled over, and he ended up right back on his bed.
He felt like he was standing far outside his body watching it slowly die, and there was nothing he could do but watch it happen.
“With or without?” Chris asked, holding up his 2019 New Year’s Eve glasses.
Nick gagged from the front. “Get rid of them altogether.”
Chris shrugged before putting them over his eyes. Matt was smushed between Nate and Chris in the back, Nick in the passenger seat, and Peyton in the driver’s seat of her too-small-to-fit-three-boys-in-the-back car.
Nate turned to him, messing with his festive top hat. He took off one of his beaded necklaces, tossing it over Matt’s head. “Our first high school party,” he said, quieter than Chris’s rant about Peyton’s awful taste in pop music. “You think you’re ready?”
Matt pursed his lips. “I don’t think I’m gonna drink,” he said. It was sort of a unanimous thing for the triplets. Never talked about. It went unsaid. However, a more groundbreaking reason popped up for Matt this holiday season, and that was how full alcohol seemed to make his family members who had visited. His uncle’s beer belly. His aunt, too drunk on red wine to finish her dinner.
“Want me to tap out too?” Nate asked, like he could see the anxiety right on Matt’s face, despite the darkness in the car.
“Nah, Chris and Nick won’t drink either. It’s fine. Maybe I’ll hold a Liquid Death can and nobody will blink an eye.”
The car pulled up, and Matt questioned why Nate never brought up his running issue after that one day three days before Christmas Eve. Or the underlying reason for Matt “running too much” in the first place. For a couple of long seconds there, hopping out of Peyton’s car and stepping up to the front door of Elle Fisher’s house, Matt thought that maybe he could really confide in Nate. After all, he was family. Just last year, when Nick had come out to them, he’d come out to them with Nate in the room.
“Hi guys, welcome in!” Said Elle, opening up the door to them, ushering them in. She sounded sober, looked sober, but Matt wasn’t at the point yet where he could differentiate that. “Everyone’s through here!”
Chris closed the door behind them, and Matt glanced around the living area. Her parents must have been away or downstairs. Probably away, considering the triplets were very underage and fifteen. And Nate was fourteen, though he wasn’t sure Elle knew that.
People were everywhere. There was a whole ass pool table sitting in the living room, set up accordingly with solo cups, and Matt got pushed against when he tried to get a good look at who was winning. He swerved around, but the kid was gone, and he got pushed again from the front.
He’d never been claustrophobic in his life, but life was both fluid and unpredictable. Things swept under a rug could come crawling back out to bite.
Luckily, Chris was his lifeline, and noticed his distress. He grabbed onto his wrist, dragging him to follow Nate to the kitchen.
“We can just take this?” Nate asked Chris, glancing down at the near-empty packs of cans lining the counters, the bottles of liquor, and a freezer door left open. Nate had an older sister in college and had more experience in this type of setting than all of them combined, but even he seemed out of his element.
“Yeah, go ahead,” said Chris. Sure, Chris could be loud and talkative and really f*cking annoying, but in larger gatherings he was completely subdued. Toned in on being dependable.
“You can drink, I don’t mind,” Matt said, suddenly, as Nate grabbed for an Ultra.
“I don’t drink,” was all Chris said back, and leaned against the counter when two girls stepped by and started talking to him.
So, the party went on. Teenagers got drunker than their parents thought possible, the smell of weed and cigarette smoke tainted Matt’s clothes by the end of the first hour, and he figured a quarter to midnight that this just wasn’t for him. That, or it was speaking to Matt again, telling him he was losing control. His legs itched to run and his brain itched for some time alone to rot in his bed.
Elle found him standing outside the upstairs bathroom—Nate had broken the seal and needed to piss every thirty minutes, and Chris had left to try to find Nick.
“What’re you drinking?” She asked, leaning up against the wall next to him. He couldn’t help it; he was nervous around her. She was eighteen and an inch taller than him and never said things like sorry or you’re welcome.
He glanced down at his solo cup of orange juice, and then back to her. “A screwdriver,” he lied. He’d never been embarrassed of his sobriety until tonight. “Are you having fun?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. I think Evan broke my dad’s favorite glass in the kitchen, but nothing I do anymore bothers him,” she said, joking, but also sort of solemn. Matt couldn’t help but wonder if she thought he was a senior like her, or maybe even a junior, considering he’d never even heard of an Evan before.
“You two aren’t close?”
She gave him a look.
“Anymore, I mean.”
“Not really. It’s just hard to understand. It kind of feels like I’m in between two crossroads in my own house, even though I haven’t even heard the word “divorce” yet. There’s just this tension. I dunno, it’s hard to explain.”
“Your parents shouldn’t be dragging you into their sh*t,” he said. Maybe it was the dim-lit hallway that was bringing the honesty out of him. He could hardly even see her expression.
“It does come with perks, though,” she shrugged, gesturing to the party. The end of the hallway where the stairs sat, where he could hear the bumming music.
People downstairs started to count down, and a sudden dizziness took over Matt’s vision and hearing in such a tight grip that for too long, he wondered why they were even counting. Then, he remembered where he stood. When he stood. New Year’s Eve. Elle. The dim hallway, orange juice in his hand. Nate—probably really throwing up—through the bathroom door behind him.
Three, two, one. Elle Fisher kissed him right on the lips.
.::.
Spring meant that Boston grew hotter outside. It meant flowers, pollen, allergies, lacrosse, and the upperclassmen’s prom. And the spring heat meant Matt sweat more, which meant he burnt more calories, which meant he wanted to run more to burn more calories.
At the beginning of it, back when it was probably too cold outside for him to be running, Matt just wanted to see how far he could run without stopping. Now, in the heat of the spring, time didn’t exist to him as he slid on his broken-down sneakers and snuck out the side door. He didn’t listen to music and wasn’t worried if any neighbors saw him. By now they must’ve known.
Lacrosse helped. Lacrosse meant he spent afternoons in the weight room of his high school and ran laps around the track outside. It meant that nobody could see how f*cked up he felt under the thick helmet and the bars of his face mask.
And Elle Fisher was a new addition to the spring. Though, Chris and Nick weren’t quite on board.
“It’s just that she’s a bit old for you,” Nick reminded him for the millionth time, eating a cherry tomato off Matt’s salad. (He’d asked for it without tomatoes and without dressing.)
Matt put his chin in his hand, saying nothing. They sat in Denny’s on a late Saturday night, as they usually did most Saturday nights. Except this Saturday night, he had plans to see Elle after.
“Does she even know you’re fifteen?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked,” Matt said, feeling slightly cornered. He was fifteen and a half. “It’s not a big deal. We’re both in high school. And seniors and freshman date all the time—”
“Which should be illegal, by the way,” Nick said. “And you’re not much better. We’re young for our grade. You don’t even have your permit yet.”
“I can… bike to her house,” Matt said, quieter. He played around with his salad more, hoping if asked he could blame his hunger strike on the uncomfortable interrogation.
A few minutes later, the conversation only got worse. “Why’re you so healthy nowadays?” Chris asked, nudging his shoulder.
Matt froze for a second too long. “Uh—I don’t know. Maybe I don’t wanna die in my 50s to processed food like you.”
Nick snorted. “You’re not gonna die either way. Have you looked at yourself? You’ve always been skinny.”
Time blurred for a minute there, even after Chris replied with a, “knock it off,” to Nick. And Nick shut up because he seemed to look back on his words and figure out exactly why what he said wasn’t right.
It had started in February. Matt had been walking to second period—Biology—when Henri Miller whispered something funny in her friend’s ear, and Matt only caught the end of it. Stickman.
He made his left leg take a step, his right leg take a step, and refused to stop and figure out if she was talking about him. She was.
The nickname of his was heard at lunch the next day. Stickman, Nancy… Johnson or Smith or something basic said, stepping by him in line. He settled for bringing his own lunch to school after that.
And when he got shoved over in lacrosse practice, landing hard on the turf, he heard it again from midfielder Richard “Richie” Burke. It was only a side comment, really, but Matt missed school and lacrosse practice the next day. In fact, he missed his morning run as well, opting to spend the entire day wallowing in his bed.
He couldn’t understand why it was bothering him. Wasn’t this exactly what he wanted—exactly what he planned? And it took the comment from Nick in the restaurant for him to understand that it wasn’t about the name-calling in school or about his social anxiety. It was that he couldn’t control what people were saying about his body. He couldn’t control his body anymore.
“Hey. I’m sorry,” Nick said, softly. Matt blinked a few times before remembered where he was, sitting in Denny’s, Chris next to him and Nick across from him.
“Forget it,” he replied, waving Nick off.
“I don’t mean it like that. You just… hardly eat, y’know? Mom’s always saying you eat like a baby bird. And you run a lot, and work out a lot, and you have gotten more skinny, even if you’ve always been skinny—”
Matt stood up, taking the napkin that had been sitting on his lap with him and to the floor. “I’m gonna head to Elle’s,” he said, and walked out the restaurant. He grabbed his bike, took it off the bike rack, and watched Chris run out the door towards him.
“C’mon, don’t leave,” he said. “Nick’s not trying to be mean. He’s just too honest sometimes.”
“I shouldn’t have to put up with it. If he wants to talk to me like the stupid kids at school talk to me, he should open up a f*cking diary and write about it instead.”
“Why’re you getting so defensive? It’s not the worst thing in the world to be skinny.”
“Chris,” he cut in, hopping up on his bike. “f*ck off.”
A feeling worse than feeling too much at once was feeling nothing at all. In all the months he’d been looking for control, the minute he lost control of his body, he found control in his mind. His thoughts were silent. He felt numb. Chris looked like he wanted to cry in front of him, and Matt couldn’t give two sh*ts about it. He biked off to Elle’s.
.::.
Denny’s could be blamed for creating the rift between the inseparable triplets. Before, sure, Matt held his distance. He held his little lies and running clothes shoved at the bottom of hampers and black spots and dizzy spells. But this was something entirely new.
He ran before school—if he went to school at all—and he spent most afternoons and evenings at Elle’s. Maybe he was using her to get space from his family, extra security so that he was always a few steps ahead with his secrets. Maybe she was using him. He didn’t care.
They spent their time sitting around her living room doing stupid sh*t like coloring and painting and watching TV. She never asked him about his nickname at school, never asked him why he didn’t eat, and why he hardly brought up his brothers. Though, sometimes, she would ask to kiss him when they stuck up to her bedroom, and he would always say “yes.” He didn’t particularly want to—he liked Elle, but he didn’t think he liked her like that. The kisses were always cut short anyway.
March ran to April, and April nearly ran to May when Elle popped the question.
“So, prom,” she said. They were in the living room, Matt sitting on the floor and Elle on the couch, playing Sorry.
“Prom,” he said, keeping his voice even. She must’ve known parties and proms weren’t exactly his scene.
“Will you go with me?”
He thought about it. Maybe for too long. “I won’t be the best date.”
“I’m not looking for the best date. I just want to hang out like we’re hanging out now, but with a long dress on and high heels. Hell, we can sneak out in fifteen minutes if the whole thing’s a bust.”
He found himself smiling, despite the anxiety of the seniors at school—Henri and Richie included—seeing him at prom.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll go.”
.::.
He hadn’t noticed how much weight he actually lost until he was forced into trying on his dad’s old suits. They hung on him like he was a coat rack himself.
“Sweetie,” his mom said, and Matt tried not to lose his temper with her tone. He was feeling extra sick today. He had a headache that wouldn’t go away, so bad he had to miss his morning run. That and his hunger pains were back thanks to a forced family dinner of f*cking spaghetti and meatballs.
“Dad’s taller than me,” he forced out, after taking a few deep breaths.
Nick popped his head in his parents’ bedroom to ask their mom a question, and Matt couldn’t help but notice Nick staring at him in the black suit. Matt folded his arms over his stomach, avoiding his gaze. He hadn’t spoken to Nick in days, probably.
“Planning on attending a funeral?”
Matt tried his best not to smile. “Prom.”
“Elle?”
“Mhm.”
“Oh, cool.”
Nick left, and his mom shook his head at him wearing the best fitted suit they could find. “It’s fine, honey, I’ll hem it.”
.::.
Summer rolled around, and Elle graduated. She also would spend the summer with her mother, who decided to move to Greenwich, Connecticut, where her family was from originally. So, Elle packed up her things and stopped by Matt’s before she left. In the fall, she was attending Fairfield University—Go Stags, taking the one person in his life he really felt he could breathe around.
They both knew it wasn’t a “see you later,” but that’s what was said either way. She kissed him four different times, twice on the cheek, twice on the mouth.
“If you don’t visit me at college, I’ll kill you,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “It’s only a three-hour drive.”
A three-hour drive felt much more of a hike when Matt didn’t even have a permit yet, but he wasn’t about to argue his point. “I will.”
“Okay, see you.”
“See you later.”
He stepped back from her car from where he’d been leaning through the window, and she sped off before he could say much else.
Matt spent exactly seventeen minutes in his room before he craved and put on his running shoes.
The day was the hottest of the year so far. 97 degrees. He ran down his block, to the next block, to the next block, until finally, he reached a block he didn’t recognize and was able to relax his shoulders. Run a bit lighter on his feet.
The sun scorched down on his shoulders, on his back, on his head. It was so hot that his hair felt like it was actually burning when he went to smooth it off his sticky forehead.
He cut through a park, then. Nothing.
The sky was dark.
Matt squinted at it from behind a few branches of trees. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes, realizing with a great horror that he’d actually managed to pass out on his run. Actually tumbled over and woke up hours later in dry, dead grass.
He slipped out his phone from his pocket, hands shaking uncontrollably. 8:43pm. Luckily, he didn’t have any calls or texts, except one from Elle.
E: im already crying wtf
His family hadn’t noticed he’d gone. Maybe they assumed he was at Elle’s, since he hadn’t yet told them her summer or college plans.
He clicked Chris’s contact and it rang three times before he picked up.
“Hey, what’s up?”
Chris’s voice sounded guarded. Careful. Like he was afraid of saying the wrong thing and have Matt hanging up the phone. Matt didn’t know when things had gotten so out of control.
“Hi. What’re you up to?”
“Eh, nothing. Uh—me and Nick went out for some food. Nate too. You at Elle’s?”
Matt didn’t even think about telling Chris the truth before he was lying through his teeth. “Yeah. I think I’m heading home soon.”
He could hear Nick in the background of Chris’s line, in a piercing whisper, like he wanted in on the call. “So, uh. What’s up?”
Matt, sitting on the park’s grass, put his head right to his knees. He couldn’t even remember why else he wanted to call other than him being shaken up by the whole passing-out-thing and just wanting to hear his brother’s voice. Maybe he wanted to know that if he allowed himself to be comforted, he could be.
“Do you think we can watch a movie later or something?” He asked, wiping his wet cheeks. He muted the call a few times when he went to sniffle, waiting for Chris’s response.
“Yeah, ‘course. I’ll get a burger to-go for you,” Chris said, and Matt could hear more of Nick in the background. A burger—his mouth watered.
“Okay. See you at home.”
Chris hesitated before hanging up. “I love you,” he said, like he’d remembered Matt was capable of doing things that were both drastic and irreversible.
“Love you,” Matt replied, hanging up quickly. With the noise of Chris’s call gone, the park seemed too quiet. And dark. Very dark.
His headache was pretty bad, Matt could even admit to that, so he took his time and walked back home.
That night, Chris and Nick came back with a burger and fries, and Matt ate every last bite of it throughout two and a half hours of Transformers. The 2007 one, because Nick had a thing for Shia LaBeouf and Chris had a thing for Megan Fox.
He could tell that Chris and Nick could tell that something was really wrong. His headache was still bad, even after three Advil’s. His hands were still shaky from the shock of waking up outside, and not knowing where he was or when. His eyes were puffy and red and his legs were sore. His throat hurt.
The phone on his thigh buzzed. It was Nate.
N: you okay?
Matt turned down his brightness. Somehow, Nate was seeing what Chris and Nick weren’t.
M: I'm fine thx
When he finished his last fry, he looked down at his empty takeout box, and tried not to have a breakdown in between his brothers on the couch. Something as simple as having a small, fast-food meal was eating at him so bad that for the first time, he really thought hard about throwing his food back up in the bathroom.
But he stayed put. Optimus Prime was sending a signal to other surviving Autobots. Chris was chewing on Starbursts next to him, eating through the red first, then pink, then yellow, then orange. Nick had an arm loose around Matt’s shoulders, mostly because he wanted a Starburst from Chris every two minutes, but Matt suspected that maybe triplet telepathy was a real, existing thing, and he wanted to keep Matt on the couch. That or he was relieved to have him back just in time for summer break.
.::.
E: did you hear about the fight
M: Did u win
E: matt omg are u living under a rock
E: nick and henri
E: that one bitch whos a bitch to u
M: ???
E: how do u not know about it she literally posted her bloody nose like 5 hrs ago
M: ???????
E: give me like 30 secs im gonna take a pic off my freinds phone
Matt chewed on his nail, pacing around the living room of a house he had only become familiar with two weeks ago, when their neighbor asked around their block for anyone to babysit her two boys. Matt agreed, wanting time away from home, and wanting some extra cash without needing to worry about being sixteen.
The boys, eight and ten, were currently watching TV on the couch in front of him. Matt paced faster.
No texts from Nick. No texts from Chris, or Nate, or his parents. His phone buzzed.
It was a horribly grainy picture of a phone with Henri’s private story on it. Blood was f*cking oozing out of her nose with the Snapchat caption, this would happen to me.
“Hey, Johnny, Blake? I’m gonna be in the kitchen, okay?”
The boys said their “okay’s,” and Matt ran for the kitchen, swinging open the door and hitting call. It rang for an entire fifteen seconds.
“What the f*ck is wrong with you?”
He heard Nick sigh. “Elle?”
“Yeah, at least she told me. Were you even going to?”
“Well, you’re gonna see the evidence at some point.”
Matt squinted his eyes. “You got into a fight and didn’t win?”
Nick snorted. “Did you see her face? I won. And I didn’t get into a fight. She hit me first.”
“But you hit back. A girl.”
“An ugly bitch is what she is. And I’m gay, so I think there’s a rule book somewhere that allows me to hit girls that deserve it back.”
Matt sat down at the kitchen table, put the phone on speaker, and collapsed onto the wood. “What exactly happened?”
Nick hesitated. Usually he was proud of whatever fights he got into. A slap outside the side entrance of their middle school, a punch at recess, a kick in the groin after fourth period freshman year.
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Nick.”
“I gotta go, bye!”
“Nick!”
His brother hung up, and he was forced to spend the rest of his evening with Johnny and Blake O’Connor, avoiding any texts that came in from someone who wasn’t a Sturniolo. He wasn’t interested in hearing any skewed stories about what really happened, when he could tell from look alone if Nick was giving him half-truths or blatant lies.
So, he waited impatiently and made it home at ten o’clock on the dot, ripping open the side door and running up the stairs to their bedroom.
Nobody. He ran to their gaming room.
The two brothers were both lying on the couch, Nick against the left side and Chris against the right. And on the floor was a used ice pack, pooling with water.
Matt sat on both their legs that were sprawled out, and examined Nick’s face for himself. A reddening bruise was on the right side of the bridge of his nose.
“What happened?”
Nick pulled his face back. “I’m fine, by the way.”
Matt hardened his glare, ignoring Chris hooking his chin on Matt’s shoulder to get a look at the two of them.
“Fine, fine. I saw Henri outside the Jimmy John’s on Hallbrooke and she started talking sh*t, that’s it. I went to walk away—because I’m the bigger person, obviously—and she said some other sh*t—”
“Said what?”
“Nothing that concerns you. Anyway, I snapped back at her and she hit me.”
“What’d you say?”
He felt Chris’s chin shift on his shoulder. So Chris knew, and Nick refused to tell him. “Nick, seriously?”
“Nobody can talk sh*t better than me, that’s all I’m saying about it,” Nick replied, as a joke, but Matt could tell there was a hint of sincerity underneath. He could also tell that Nick wasn’t lying.
Matt slumped back on the couch, pushing Chris off him. His brother pouted.
“Henri’s a bitch,” Matt said, figuring that he was keeping secrets of his own. And he was bound to get it out of Chris eventually.
Nick snorted. “Yeah, she f*cking is.”
.::.
By the Fourth of July, Matt could say with absolute certainty that he spent more time with Johnny and Blake in the months of May and June than with Chris and Nick. And by two in the afternoon, when he got off his babysitting with the two boys, he used all his restraint not to run home. (He was doing that less—running. It was the fear of passing out that stopped him from putting on his sneakers in high temperatures or when he hadn’t eaten for too many hours before.)
The Fourth of July meant Justin was home from Vegas, and he was staying home until late August. Matt didn’t understand his professional poker schedule very well, but he knew it was a sort of hybrid work.
He found Justin in the kitchen, leaning over the island. “Hey, Matty.”
Justin threw Matt into a hug, and then, Matt could feel his brother stiffen. Even with all the weight Matt was certain he’d gained back since the incident in the park, Justin pulled away and glanced down at him like he was a stranger in their home.
He patted Matt’s cheek. “Has Mom been feeding you?”
Matt was stumped. He swore he gained the weight back. He swore he was eating now; sometimes breakfast and dinner, if he could stomach it. “Yeah, I—”
Nate and Chris came barrelling through the arch from the living room. “Matt, c’mon, we bought fire crackers!”
He’d been saved by the holiday spirit of the Fourth of July.
And that night, when Justin drove them out in his truck to an open field to watch the fireworks, Matt kept his distance from his brother whom he’d been counting down the days to see. It opened his eyes a bit in ways he didn’t think possible—Matt was letting it take things from him he didn’t want taken away. He missed his brothers, all of them. Spending every waking minute with them, eating sh*tty fast food on a curb in their go-to parking lot, surrounded by their bikes. Walking to the park and playing on the play-set, though they were getting too old for that already.
He was fifteen years old, and he felt fifty. His skin felt all wrong. His brain felt all wonky and ghostly and numb. It truly was the root of all evils, and Matt was letting him convince himself that it was an entirely new thing—an entirely different entity than himself, but. But he was just a boy, whose issues were a part of him.
Either way, he watched the fireworks, and for the first time in his life, he just wanted his supposed favorite holiday to come to an end. Right then and there.
.::.
Matt wished he could say things between the triplets were back to normal. That the separation between them the second semester of their sophom*ore year did nothing but bring the three of them back stronger than before. But he’d be lying, and he was trying his best to do that less nowadays.
Their birthday was a drag. They had a yellow cake that their mother picked up from Carvel, and sat around the living room eating their pieces. And Matt was as grateful as anyone that he could have the privilege to eat his birthday cake with his family, but he wasn’t feeling much these days.
If he wasn’t nannying the boys, he was sleeping. Or showering. Or running, slowly. Or forcing himself to spend time with his brothers until he felt good enough that they wouldn’t press him on his issues.
His mom had brought up the idea of therapy the week before his birthday, and still, he felt nothing. Just said “no” and left the laundry room with his full basket of dirty clothes.
Two days after he was forced into eating four bites of ice cream cake, he woke up to the smell of smoke and Chris scrambling up next to him.
Chris was saying something to him he was too tired to understand, too nauseous to catch, and his mother was yelling something from their bedroom door.
Matt must’ve been too slow, too confused why he was smelling smoke, because Chris just grabbed his wrist and pulled him out of bed and down the stairs.
When his senses caught up to him, he began to understand from the number of people standing around outside, from the smoke that rose from their house, that their house was on fire.
Their mother and Justin left them to talk with a police officer, so he and Chris sat on the curb.
“Are you okay?” Chris asked. Things were still weird, but the tension seemed bundled up because of the circ*mstances.
Matt nodded. His hands were shaking, and he pulled out his phone to call Nick. “Are you?”
“Yeah. Pretty sh*t that I’m stuck out here in my f*cking boxers though,” he said. Matt snorted. He was thankfully dressed in joggers and a long-sleeved shirt.
Nick answered on the third try.
“What? I’m at—”
“Hey, everything’s fine. The back of the house caught on fire, but they stopped it,” Matt said.
“What?”
“Seriously, it’s no big deal. They think it was from the kitchen. The firemen said we’d be back to normal in like two weeks.”
Nick paused. “Should I come home?”
“Nah, you’re fine. This isn’t a big deal.”
.::.
As it turned out, it was a big deal. Come September, and he was still out of his childhood home, and they moved from a friend’s house into a small townhouse. Smallwas an understatement for a family of six, and Matt did not truly comprehend the idea of claustrophobia until moving in. There were two bedrooms. The triplets got one, which was about the size of a shoe closet. Their parents got the other, and Justin got the pullout couch. (Though, they fought over it. The shoe closet bedroom was much worse in all their eyes.)
To make up for the lack of privacy, Matt started running again before school. He hardly missed school now, wanting to get out of the house. And most of his afternoons consisted of him babysitting Johnny and Blake O’Connor, and secretly looking around for a job since he was now sixteen.
He didn’t mean to avoid his brothers. It just sort of happened that way.
And because he was so busy with his days, he told himself he was too busy to sit down and eat. He told himself it wasn’t about control, about the name-calling, about his anxieties and depressions. It was a thing that happened. No big deal.
One week into September, he was itching to get out of the house. It was Saturday and Ms. O’Connor was home to look after her boys. So, sitting down on the shoe closet bedroom floor, he pulled on his running shoes. Nick kicked at them.
“Hey,” his brother said.
Matt tried to keep himself calm. Nick hadn’t done anything wrong, and he was already losing his cool. He blamed the claustrophobia and the townhouse and the damn cigarette that burned down their home.
“Hi,” he said, standing up to face him. He loved Nick more than anything, but the simple act of even them looking at each other felt like a showdown to Matt.
“We were gonna go to the park if you wanted to come?”
“I’m going on a run.”
Nick furrowed his eyebrows. “Can I come?”
“Can you come?”
“That’s what I asked.”
Matt scoffed. “Nick, you hate running. You literally walked a 12-minute mile in gym class because you refused to run.”
Nick seemed frustrated about something, something Matt couldn’t pin down. “Well, maybe I changed my mind.”
“Since Tuesday?”
“Matt.”
But Matt was already grabbing his phone he’d left on his bed, heading out the bedroom door. “I’ll be back in an hour or two. Bye, Nick.”
He was fifteen minutes into his run when he realized Nick probably didn’t want to actually run with Matt. He wanted to keep an eye on him. Matt this year was sloppier with his secrets and lies, and Nick must’ve been closer to figuring him out.
Thirty minutes in, and he couldn’t keep his mind at bay. His anxieties were coming out in full force, but he refused to stop running. He closed his eyes and imagined all the anxieties in his head behind him on the narrow path, chasing him down the blocks of Boston. It made him run a bit faster, though his feet were coming down heavy against the cement.
He had followed all his rules. He did not have a headache when he left the townhouse, made sure to eat a granola bar and drink lots of water, stretched, and checked to make sure the temperature was under 90 degrees.
So, when the black dots showed up an hour in, he kept on running. He ran further down the sidewalk, further down the downhill of it, when suddenly, the black dots weren’t block dots anymore. He couldn’t f*cking see.
Matt breathed out quick, and back in. He put his hands over his face, rubbing his eyes, and felt his legs wobble beneath him. Right there on the side of the secluded stretch of road, he tripped over an elevated crack in the sidewalk and fell right on the cement.
Matt cursed as the pain shot up. He flipped around, cursing again, and took a minute to watch as the sky went from black to back to the blue he recognized. He wondered if he’d lost time like the incident in the park, and the thought of losing control of time as well as his body and his mind was enough for him to start a panic.
Matt sat up on the sidewalk, his vision blurry but manageable, and held his hands to his chest like he was having a panic attack. He probably wasn’t, but the habit of it did calm him down.
His hands and chin stung. His feet were dead, and his eyes weren’t working with him. The time had come; Matt was certain he was dying.
M: Can you pick me up
N: send me ur loc
N: u good?
M: Fine
Matt sent the pin. He sniffled, sucking in another harsh breath. Each one was a bit easier on his chest.
N: b there in 15
N: dont move
M: Ok
It took twenty minutes. Nate was used to driving his dad’s truck around even though he didn’t so much as have his permit, but he still needed to really focus on the road because of that. And Matt might’ve felt bad about making him drive out to him if his head didn’t ache so bad. If his hands weren’t shaking uncontrollably. If he didn’t feel like a dead man walking—sitting, whatever.
The truck pulled up next to the curb, and Nate put it in park before he made his way over to crouch in front of Matt. He grabbed a hold of his bleeding chin. “sh*t.”
“Is it bad?”
“Nah, you’re fine. It’s gonna scar, though,” he said, before holding out a hand for Matt to stand up. Matt took it, wincing as he did. Nate squinted down at his hands. “Did you pass out?”
“Tripped.”
Nate looked at him like he didn’t quite believe him. “C’mon, get in,” Nate said, and Matt had never heard Nate actually angry before, so he did.
Nate turned the A/C up all the way, and Matt leaned forward against the vent, feeling the cold air wash over him. He was handed a bottle of water.
“Thanks.”
Nate had started the car, but he didn’t move to put the gear into drive. “What happened?”
Matt shrugged, unable to look Nate in the eyes.
“C’mon, Matt. Actually look at me. Tell me what’s going on, or I’m gonna start telling you what’s going on. And I don’t think you wanna hear that.”
Matt swallowed. Nate looked… angry was the wrong word. Nick was the angry one. Guarded was Chris. Avoidant was Elle and his parents. Protective was Justin.
“What happened?” Nate asked, like he already knew the answer between Matt’s bloody hands and chin.
Matt opened his mouth before closing it again. The words were on the tip of his tongue, and his eyes were watering. “I—um. I have an eating disorder. I think,” Matt said, before realizing the weight of his words. Hearing it come out of his mouth was an entirely different feeling, and he couldn’t stop the regret that spread across his chest.
Nate nodded. Understanding was the word that fit Nate. He understood.
“My sister. She had one too,” he explained, sitting sideways to face Matt in the driver’s seat. “It’s how I clocked it with you back in December.”
Matt rubbed at his eyes. He hated this. Talking about it felt like gunk in his mouth.
“You should tell Chris and Nick. Or one of them, at least.”
Matt shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, before pausing. “They think I hate them.”
“They don’t think that. They’re worried about you. I’m worried about you.”
“You can’t tell them, okay? Promise me.”
“Then promise me you will.”
They were at a stalemate, Matt realized. There was no way out of this, except that if Matt had learned anything in the last year of his life, it was that he was a good f*cking liar.
“Okay, I promise.”
Nate’s gaze softened. “Wanna go back to mine? I can help clean up your chin.”
“Mhm. Yeah. Thanks,” Matt said, and Nate put the gear into drive.
Matt decided then and there that he didn’t regret telling Nate. It was nice having someone in his life who knew the it in his head as an eating disorder. But he sure as f*ck wasn’t telling his brothers.
.::.
Matt got his license at the ripe age of sixteen and a half. The first thing he did was drive his brothers to a McDonald’s an hour before closing and sit with them in the empty parking lot. They ate their burgers and nuggets, and Matt ordered apple slices for himself. It was a step into something better.
A step into something bigger, Matt thought, the same minute Nick picked up his phone, hit record, and placed it up on the dashboard.
