She turned back toward her mattress. Every movement ached. Addie hadn’t gotten up from her mattress all day until now because of how much it hurt to lift herself. Zoey began laughing hysterically from the other side of the room. When Addie laid back down on the bed, she winced as her body met the rough fabric of the mattress and her vision blurred, the axis of the room tilting behind her closed eyelids. Addie forced her eyes open again and looked at Zoey, still laughing on her own bed. She was fingering her ribs that were jutting out from her sunken stomach. Her lips were dried and cracked, her eyes sunken into dark circles and her skin, an ashy grey. Addie grimaced, figuring she probably looked about the same. There was no mirror in the room but neither of them had eaten anything in four days and starvation was settling in. The man hadn’t come back one weekend. They’d assumed he’d be back the next, so they continued to eat the food he’d left for them. But by the following weekend he still hadn’t appeared. Sure that he would check on them soon, they kept eating to keep the hunger pains at bay. When they hit weekend number three with still no visit by the man, they began to ration the remaining food. Between the two of them, they’d only had one bag of trail mix and one sleeve of crackers left. For each meal over the next two weeks they’d each had one peanut, one almond, two raisins and a cracker. By the end of the week they were out of food completely.

Addie had been drinking water directly from the faucet to try and trick her stomach into thinking it was full, but she couldn’t remember if she’d drunk any today. The thought of getting back up was too painful, so instead she turned her attention to Zoey.

‘What are you laughing at?’ Addie croaked.

Zoey moved her head slowly back and forth. ‘I have no idea, but isn’t it funny?’