Lena counted to 10 in her head. She cleared her throat and said, “I’ll call you later. I have to go back to work.”
She went to the vending machines, felt like she deserved a candy bar after that conversation. The vending machines were empty. Crooked Nose tapped her on the shoulder. “Remember, no outside food.”
Lena nodded. He wrote down: “Subject LJ craved outside food after only two hours.”
At her desk, she looked at the bags of pellets again. They would probably make her super-high or shed all her body hair or lose her teeth. Tinge her skin purple. Make her vagina smell like gasoline for the rest of her life. Could she go the next four days without eating? Lena pulled out one of the cream lunch pellets, worried it between her fingers. Smelled it. Like baby powder. She threw it in the trash, tossed some napkins over it so no one would notice.
At noon, Dr. Lisa told them to take a group lunch. They all grabbed a bag of cream pellets and went to the break room. Mariah’s stomach complained. Lena hated hearing other people’s stomachs. It made her think about intestines and stomach acid and the word duodenum, which made her think of butts dying and seeing unexpected vomit on a city sidewalk.
They sat at the long lunch table, everyone looking at their pellets. By the way they were all quiet, looking at the pellets, it was clear how much things had changed, how much they had all seen, and experienced. Week one, Lena would have popped a pellet in her mouth, no big deal.
“On the count of five,” Charlie said. “Five.”
Mariah shrugged. They all reached into their bags and pulled out a pellet. They counted down together. Lena winced as she popped it into her mouth. It tasted like burnt toast.
“Dirty spinach?” Charlie said, eating another.
“Kale?” Ian said.
Crooked Nose made an interested noise.
Lena rolled her three remaining pellets around in her hand. “What are you going to do if these make you pull a Bethany?”
“I guess get dentures.” Charlie opened his mouth. “Everything look good?”
His tongue was coated light white, but there was no blood. All his teeth were present. A large silver filling in one of his back molars. Lena nodded.
“How much money do you think they gave Bethany as a bonus for that?” Mariah asked. She had eaten only half a pellet and was still holding the other half between her thumb and forefinger.
“I bet $2,000 per tooth,” Ian said.
“It has to be higher,” Lena said. “Your teeth are so important.”
“I’m going to guess $50,000,” Tom said. He had already eaten three out of his five pellets. “Does anyone else taste tomato?”
“For that much money, I would gladly lose my teeth,” Ian said. “I meant total, not per tooth.”
As the rest started talking about how much money would make losing their teeth worth it and what they would do with the money—pay off loans and credit card bills and buy their mothers houses—Lena put another pellet in her mouth. She rolled it over her tongue. This one tasted like dirt. If Crooked Nose hadn’t been sitting there, Lena would have said, “I think having my teeth for as long as possible is more valuable than money.”
That night, she wrote Tanya a letter describing the pellets. The dinner ones had tasted like olive oil, pepper. But she was so hungry now she couldn’t sleep. Lena wrote about what it was like to change her eye color. Put the letter in an envelope and addressed it, as if she might send it. Then tucked it between her box spring and the frame.
The next morning, Dr. Lisa called Lena to her office. 8 A.M.–6 P.M. was written on the whiteboard. Beneath each hour were five hot-pink sticky notes with small cursive notes on them that were too far away for Lena to read. A line graph with six different colors was secured with magnets. Dr. Lisa handed Lena a survey about the pellets, questions about how satisfied she felt within an hour, two, three, of eating the pellets. Their taste. Did she have any cravings?
Dr. Lisa started talking about her sister, how she had been in assisted living for years. Their parents had died unexpectedly within three months of each other. She stopped talking and rubbed her forehead. The sunlight coming in through the window showed that there were freckles on her cheeks, peeking through the light concealer she was wearing. The doctor was slumped over, as if her personal life was pushing her shoulders forward.
Lena looked up from the sheet. Her natural, immediate inclination was to talk about her own mom, the last month of her grandmother’s illness. Form a connection. Here was someone who—as long as she wasn’t lying—seemed like she understood what it was like to always have to think about someone else. Down the hall, it sounded like someone was playing a movie that featured children—the sound of laughter, screams. Lena leaned back and shut the door. She thought about how Dr. Lisa’s fingers felt on her wrist. The way she had spoken about her mother, her interest not in Lena as a person, but as data: from sympathy to frustration to anger to sympathy. She forced her face blank before the doctor could look up.
“Sorry, I’m being inappropriate.” Dr. Lisa cleared her throat. She sat up straight and became the person Lena knew.
After work, Lena sat alone on a bench reading a book. She was so hungry she had to get out of the house. There was an apple she had thrown in the trash, coffee grounds with some dirty paper towels over it, but it would still be so easy to get it clean. Her neck and shoulders were stiff and painful; she couldn’t tell if it was from the office chairs or from repressing emotions, pushing herself away every day from wanting to go home.
A man crossed the park and sat next to her.
“I saw the most incredible thing in the woods near Long Lake,” he said, his voice high and excited. “I saw Bigfoot.”
Lena kept her eyes on her book as he spoke.
“I don’t mean like a big, detached human foot.” He spoke so quickly. “Although that would be gross and cool too. I mean Bigfoot. His fur was so clean. Holy shit, so clean.”
Lena looked up from her book and asked to see a photo. The man smiled—his teeth were straight, movie-star white. They were shocking next to his dirt-smeared cheeks. Leaves were stuck in his thick, wavy hair. He reached for his pockets, patted down his chest. Stood up, reached in his back pockets.
“No,” he said. “Stay here, okay? I’ll be right back.” He looked around and broke into a sprint.
“Talk to you later,” Lena yelled at his back. She picked up her phone and texted Tanya: People are nuts here.
By the end of the experiment, Lena was so hungry it was all she could think about. The pellets tasted like grains with no sugar, a generic nut taste, and seemed to make the hunger go away for only 30 minutes. Then her stomach would start complaining again. She had already lost seven pounds and felt like most of the weight had somehow come off her face.
“What is the point of this?” she asked Charlie, with only four more hours to go.
“To get us all bikini ready.”
Lena pulled a stack of yellow sticky notes out of her desk. “I’m so hungry these look delicious.”
Charlie laughed. Lena picked up one, stuffed it into her mouth. It was a pleasure to chew on it, just to feel something different that wasn’t water or pellet.
“If you swallow that,” Pancake Butt said, “you’ll have to start over.”