“Oh, just my father.” She smiled wickedly and then, with the hand not holding the phone, dangled the bracelet in front of me. “Hey, you really want this?” she asked. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed it into the pool. She mouthed the words: Go fetch.

I wanted to say something, anything, but I couldn’t find the words. My skin was buzzing. I could think only of the name on my back, the paint now dry and tight across my skin. Without warning, I got up and dove into the water. It was the exact temperature water should be. Cool, but not too cool. Warm, but not too warm. Manufactured for the optimal comfort of Paige and her family. I began clawing at the skin on my back, rubbing away the paint. When I opened my eyes, the water around me spun ribbons of red, then green, then black. It was just paint. Just a name. Just a boy in a room in a house that wasn’t mine. Below me, the bracelet made a squiggle against the floor of the pool. Fuck it, I thought, and swam hard toward the bottom.

Go On, Eat Your Heart Out

Patty stepped on the scale and the red needle arced forward: 188 pounds. How had this happened? How, to use Bryan’s words, had she let this happen? She assessed her nude profile in the bathroom mirror. Great White Whale, she thought. Was this even a real species of whale? Shark, sure. But whale?

“Patty, are you almost done in there?” It was her younger brother, Kurt.

“Just a second,” she said, and then grabbed her towel—meant for the beach, with cartoon martini glasses and conch shells—and covered her body. Living with Kurt was like being transported to their mother’s house, circa 1997. Back were the rituals of their adolescence: the endless up and down of the toilet seat, bickering over who deserved the last Oreo or whether to watch Cops or The Simpsons. Adding to the awkwardness was Kurt’s new girlfriend, Madeline. She was young—too young for Kurt, in Patty’s opinion—and seemed to subsist primarily on carrots and Swiss chard, foods that belonged to a larger category of semiedible fodder known as “clean foods.” The whole thing screamed eugenics to Patty, but she could never tell this to Madeline, who worked at one of those primeval gyms where people transported artificial boulders from point A to B or took sledgehammers to truck tires. More than once, Patty had come home to Madeline and Kurt making out on the living room sofa, Madeline’s lemon yellow JanSport fanny pack still fastened to her waist.

Patty opened the bathroom door to find that Kurt and Madeline were also in towels. Patty hated when they showered together, not only because she had to endure the audio, but also because it was one of the many small pleasures Bryan had denied her, along with foot massages, sleeping past ten o’clock, and eating food in bed. He said he never felt clean after sharing a shower, and that afterward he’d just have to shower all over again, by himself, which would be wasteful. Feeling self-conscious, Patty hoisted her towel but something went haywire and it came loose, revealing the entirety of her right breast.