Skin and Bones Read Online Free PDF

asked Teresa. “Look at him, he’s thin as a toothpick.”
    “I am looking at him.” Eve smiled. “He’s perfect the way he is.”
    Lard leaned back dejected, as if everything he’d learned in life was dissolving before his eyes.
    Bones sat there equally uncomfortable. There was nothing worse than having someone talk about you behind your back in front of your face. In the awkward silence that followed, Bones put on his gloves, letting the rubber snap his wrists. Eve looked at him sympathetically. “I feel your pain.”
    Another table filled up. Unibrow came in. His mustache bristled when he set down their trays, but he didn’t say anything. He never did. Sometimes, if it weren’t for his fingers gripping a mop handle or dinner trays, you wouldn’t know he was alive.
    Bones closed his eyes against the smell of decaying flesh on his plate—fear and despair for both the diner and the about-to-be dined. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. He was dying inside, slipping into the outer edge of a bottomless chasm. Any rush about being at the “in” table had taken leave.
    “They only gave you eight peas?” Lard eyed Bones’s plate. “I could mainline those.”
    “It’s not that I’m paranoid,” Bones said, mashing the peas into his chicken. “But I’m pretty sure the peas have been talking about me behind my back.”
    Lard snorted.
    Eve changed positions and two bumps strained against her T-shirt. She called Nancy over. “Can I have a saltshaker and some lemon wedges?”
    Nancy came back with silverware, saltshakers, and lemon wedges.
    Eve drenched her food in salt.
    Bones did the same. It was the only thing that made food remotely palatable.
    Then Eve squeezed lemon juice (1 calorie) into her water. “Lemon is a natural diuretic.” She was so smooth, so smart.
    Bones gagged down his dinner, then stormed the bathroom, flung off his clothes, and climbed on the overturned trashcan. He stared into the mirror, shrinking back. Flab, a vile four-letter word. Not part of the plan!
    His strategy was to use the shower like a sauna, cranking the handle full-force to the left. His skin burned but it wasn’t hot enough. Water should be boiling to melt fat. The stupid hospital probably controlled the thermostat.
    Bones thought he heard his sister’s voice, in the distance and fading fast. I hope you get better in there.

8
    Lard stuck his head in the doorway. “Hang in there, man.” Bones slumped on the toilet lid, a towel tied around his waist. “They’re going to turn me into a raging Vomitus Interruptus,” he said. “I love my white teeth!”
    “No, man. You done good.”
    “Why don’t I believe you!”
    “No pain, no gain.”
    “I’ll never make it another day,” Bones said. “Not without knowing exactly how many layers of fat I’m putting on.”
    Lard shook his head. “I give up.”
    Bones stayed in the bathroom until he was so cold he had to get dressed.
    Sometime after nine thirty he and Lard settled onto their prospective concrete slabs of beds. Lard was into Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners . Bones flipped through a Weight Watchers article, “Weight Loss Dos and Don’ts.”
    The biscuit from dinner felt like a depth charge in his stomach. “How long have you known Alice?” he asked.
    “We hung out last summer,” Lard said. “Her parents check her in, she puts on a few pounds, almost looks normal. I mean normal for her, but then she goes home and bakes laxative brownies. I love her like a sister, man, but I sure don’t understand her.”
    “Does she have a boyf—” Bones couldn’t get the word out.
    “It figures you’d like her skinny ass.” Lard snorted. “Better take a cold shower because you won’t see her for a while. Not until she’s stable enough to be taken off the IV. Then you’ll see her plenty. She likes the roof.”
    “But does she—”
    “I don’t think she has a boyfriend, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    Bones