The Hunger Read Online Free PDF Page B

carefully twisted her long hair into a knot at the nape of her neck so it wouldn’t get in the way. She leaned over the toilet and jammed the fingers of her right hand down her throat. The sensation of her teeth grazing her scabbed knuckles brought her up short. What am I doing? She thought desperately. The doctor will know!
    She ran back to the kitchen and grabbed the wooden spoon that was still sticky with ice cream, and took it back to the bathroom. Crouching over the toilet again, she shoved the spoon down her throat until she gagged. Her stomach convulsed, and with a lurch forward, huge chunks of undigested food hit the toilet water with such a force that it splashed back in her face. Shoving the spoon even deeper down her throat, she gagged again, this time splashing chunks of undigested food into her hair and down her shirt. Some of the mess landed on the floor around the base of the toilet, and some of it landed all over the space-heater against the wall. The effort sent shivers of exhaustion through Paula’s body. She sat on the bathroom floor and hugged her vomit-covered knees tight until her breathing settled down and her heart’s staccato beat subsided. She dragged herself to a standing position and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot. Mucus hung from her nose. Her throat was raw from the wooden spoon. Her hair and face were wetwith toilet water and worse. “You are so disgusting.”
    Paula tore off her filthy jeans and shirt and climbed into the shower, turning the stream of water on as hot as she could stand it. It was as if she thought she could wash the past hour away. As her guilt swirled down the drain, she dried herself and wrapped her hair into a towel. She pulled on a terry robe and gathered the pile of clothing from the floor and tossed it into the washing machine. To make it less obvious, she prodded around the laundry shute and found a few other items to throw in the wash and make it look like she was just helping out with the laundry. With bathroom cleaner and a rag, she meticulously cleaned the sink, the floor and the toilet. The space heater took more time to clean, because fragments of food had lodged within the grille and between the wall and the heater. By the time she finished, the bathroom was cleaner than before she had purged. Next, she grabbed a garbage bag from the garage and headed back to the kitchen to clean up that mess. She shoveled all the signs of her last meal into the bag and out of sight. She scrubbed the floor and table clean, and placed the bulging bag in between the other garbage bags in the garage. Just as she reached for the handle of the door that led from the garage into the kitchen, Paula was startled to hear the sound of the front door slamming shut. God, is it 4:30 already? She smoothed the front of her robe and took a deep breath, hoping her brother wouldn’t notice anything amiss.

    “Paula! What happened?” Erik dropped his knapsack in the front hallway and stared at his sister. “Your eyes are all red. Have you been crying?”
    Great, thought Paula. So much for not noticing. “I’ve got a cold,” replied Paula, scooting past her brother.
    In her top drawer Paula kept a bottle of Visine and a container of matte face powder. The drops stung as they went in, but her eyes quickly lost their redness. Next, she patted powder over the blotchy spots on her face. Paula then changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
    “Never again,” she swore to herself. “Never again will I lose control like that!”
    Thursday, October 1
    It was early morning, and Doctor Tavish sat in the basement office that he shared with two other clinic colleagues. A stack of charts were piled on his desk, a cold cup of coffee on the side. Halfway through the charts, he happened upon Paula Romaniuks. “Where has she been?” He wrote her phone number on a scrap of paper and stuck it in his shirt pocket. Sipping the cold coffee, he continued working his way