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Michelle does not take Cassie out to dinners anymore. She can’t eat next to her. She can’t not eat next to her. But most of all, she can’t look at Cass pretending to eat. It’s like stage performance. A magic trick, smoke and mirrors, now you see me-now you don’t and all that shit. It took her long enough to figure out the tactics. She doesn’t let her force her into talking anymore. She doesn’t get distracted. But it’s too painful to watch, too. Maybe that’s why she’d allowed it to happen for so long. Or maybe she was just too bloody self-absorbed to notice. She notices now, though. She sees Cassie’s ribcage sticking from her shirt. She sees bitten down fingernails. A walking skeleton sunken city. She feels the hard material underneath when she holds her hand so tight she could count every little bone. And she does count.
After a party, still a mess in some unidentified bed, she finds herself hauntingly tracing Cassie’s cheekbones. She doesn’t know if it’s one bone, or two, or maybe more. But they are there, much more tangible than her own. She sighs and this wakes Cassie up. „Oh, what a lovely morning, Chelle”.
They are getting home by bus this one time, and they are dozing off in turns, holding hands and clutching to each other like orphans. Tony’s been a smart-ass arrogant dickhead per always, and Sid was just Sid. Useless. Michelle’s mascara is an abstract piece of art whereas Cassie’s red lipstick is all over her face. Michelle feels like a clown. Looks like one, too. Suddenly, Cassie curls up into her and sticks her knees into her side. Two. That’s two knees so it must be two bones, at least. She adds them to the list. The collection of regret.
Cassie does not love her body, not even her own bones, Michelle thinks. Her elbows always fashion themselves in purple bruises. No armor protects them. A cut too deep, too brash, would open her body and all the bones would fall out. Nothing’s really keeping them in place, but her brain. Her fucked up, sad crazy brain. She puts her hand on Cassie’s hipbone and it feels like a stone. Cold, hard and dead. She wonders what she’s like down there. Is she an empty bony cave.
„Michelle?”
„Shhh, don’t wake up.”
„10,30, two times 10 and maybe 70,..”
„What – Jesus - what are you doing, Cass?” Michelle slurs, half-awakened and increasingly alarmed by the heaviness on her stomach which turns out to be Cassie’s head. Out from all of the blonde’s body, her head is the heaviest. It must be, since this is where here heart hides.
„Oh, I’m counting.” Cassie shifts her head so she’s seeing Michelle upside down now. She’s looking funny, but still lovely, even if her hair is a mess and without her classic make-up. The bony fingers in the air signalize 5 and 2. She’s not done yet.
„Right then,” Michelle says as she puts a hand on Cassie’s cold arm. The dizziness is taking over, when she hears some numbers murmured again. With Cassie, it’s better to ask specifically. She knows she won’t sleep anymore and cannot help, but ask „Counting what?”
„Like, the calories.” Simple as that, count on Cassie to start the day with some math. Crazy bitch.
„I didn’t see you eat anything yesterday.” But she thinks she did, though. She saw her friend ravishing on whatever she could find. Whatever was within her reach. She was stuffing herself until she was a deformed bag. Loose, hanging, heavy. And she was so hungry that she bit her, too. But maybe it was just a dream.
„I’m not counting the calories I’ve ate, silly. The calories I’ve burned. And the numbers are, wow, lovely.”
Michelle remembers being told about it once. One kiss is 2-6 calories burned per minute. A make-out session would give around 50. A good sack up to 70. Cassie weighs her lovers’ value on the imaginative scale. Girls usually burn more, but that’s because they require more energy. Three girls and two boys a week should be good enough exercise.
„How many calories does friendship burn, Chelle, what you think?” She looks at her hand and examines it thoroughly. No bite marks, just a few scratches here and there.
She doesn’t know, so she doesn’t guess. But she figures how much it weights.
She remembers the day Cassie sprained her ankle. They were 13 or so and riding bikes a bit drunk after they stole some expensive wine from her parents’ cabinet. Of course, Cass was the one to gain speed and fuck off from her seat quite spectacularly. Flying blonde bitch. Strange thing is, she wasn’t even crying. Just casting that lunatic Cassie-smile. Michelle sobered up quite fast, a new record for sure. Momentarily, she noticed that the shape of the ankle was changing. She placed a soft kiss on it, careful not to make the pain worse. She believed that kisses could hurt someone then. She believes that, still. When she saw Cassie limping the next day, she took her to the hospital. Prompted why she hadn’t go there yesterday with her parents, she said „Nobody noticed.”
Now that she knows all of Cassie’s bones, she hates them too. Hates their rattling. Hates their obscenity. How dare they. She tries to cover them, with her hands, with her mouth. Make them disappear. Disappear. Disappear. Disappear. „Ouch Chelle, it like, hurts”. Michelle looks up at Cassie and sees the questioning look on her face. She gets out from between her legs and lying on top of her friend, hugs her body tight. Keeps her eyes closed. Maybe if she can’t see them… she would also stop feeling them. „Michelle, do you hurt?” She gives a mumble in reply and Cassie kisses her head chanting „lovely lovely, you’re so lovely”. Michelle wants so badly to reply, but can’t. Cassie’s stomach is wet from kisses or tears – probably both - swooned like a flood over a flat desert. She doesn’t want Cassie to disappear. She doesn’t want her to be Tony.
She could never be Tony. Can she still be Michelle?
They’re hiding from the world in the bathroom stall and Michelle’s crying her heart out, cause Tony’s such a dick and that posh bitch can go to hell and she does not have funny tits, not really, and if he doesn’t like them, well, then why does he touch them. Cassie just nods her head, repeating „wow”, „right, not lovely” and „fuck him” but Michelle doesn’t want to fuck him. Not anymore. She’s getting tipsy and falls straight into Cassie’s hug. At first it seems nice, having someone to lean on, but then she feels something digging into her stomach. A ribcage. If it’s a cage, what’s it locking inside? She wants to rip it open and see, let it out. Or hide there. Stay there forever. She holds her hand up to reach and-someone’s knocking impatiently on the door. „Just one more fucking minute, alright?” Michelle shouts through Cassie’s hair and wipes her tears. She ignores the swearing outside and glances at Cassie. „Want to sleep over?”
The next day she asks Cassie if she knows how many bones are there in human body.
„Oh, what a lovely question. I think, at first you’re born with 270. Then it drops to 206. Funny, like, the more the merrier, right?”
She does not answer. Instead she smiles sadly at her friend, moving to the counter to make coffee. Either for a hungover or the pulsing in the back of her head.
„Every bone has a story. This one’s yours” She says out of the blue pointing at the centre of her chest.
„Why’s it mine?” Why this one, in particular. And how it can be hers, if she can’t reach there. She doesn’t remember this one. Doesn’t even know its name.
„You claimed it. With a kiss.” Is every bone of Cassie’s claimed by someone? Is any bone really her own? Or is she just a collection of belongings? It doesn’t matter now. She could learn to love this bone, but just this one. It’s not scaring her anymore. Why not all of them? She hands the blonde a huge cap of coffee and whispers
„I love you, Cass. You know that?” The reply is not what she expects. „I mostly do.”
Now that she knows all of Cassie’s bones, she’s learning to love them. They have been hated for far too long.