Junebug • TWD

63. Familiar Face.

tw: a bit of discussion about eating disorders and vomit

I've been doing exactly what Ruby said. We both have. All week. At least, I think it's been a week. Somewhere around a week. I forgot to count. Not that time matters, anyway. Just as long as I get out of her soon-ish.

These scrubs are too big and baggy on me, and the food they've got here is unbearable. It's the same types of food they used to serve in the school lunchroom, and I never at school lunch because Daddy wasn't givin' me three bucks a day for food I wasn't ever gonna eat. He packed me lunches, and if I didn't eat them, he'd just send them back to school with me the next day. No wasting food in the Dixon household. Except for when you eat it and barf it back up again. No way of getting that back. That'd be gross. Not even Merle would stoop that low. Dogs do, though. My neighbor had a dog called Robert, which is a weird name for a dog, and he would eat his poop and his puke. It was so gross.

But that all doesn't matter one bit. I'm just rambling inside my own head, swirling my fork around this stupid plate of corn, wishing my daddy were here to eat it for me.

When I look up from my tray, I meet Ruby's eyes. She's chewing, chewing, chewing, and looking at me with a funny expression on her face. Sort of a judgemental one. I raise my eyebrows a little bit, like asking what's with the face? without actually saying it. Ruby swallows whatever she's chewing on, drops her fork on her tray, and leans her elbows on the table. "You know, you're not very hungry for someone who was scrounging the woods for food just a week ago," she says.

Back before... before I don't even know what—things just changed without me realizing it, and now everything is different. But, back before, I would have tried lying my way through this conversation. Maybe saying I'm allergic to canned corn or that I've just got a small stomach. But, with everything that's happening to me, I don't feel like there's much of a point in lying. These people kidnapped me. I don't care if they judge me for hating food. They're the bad ones.

And besides, maybe if I tell the truth about me, Ruby will tell the truth about her. She hasn't told me nothing about how she got here yet, and I'm dying to know.

So, I tell her the truth. "Well, for all my life, I hated pretty much all foods. Except for some. But, sometimes, I even can't stand eating the foods I do like. Just makes me feel nauseous and gross and miserable. And Hershel—you remember Hershel?"

Ruby nods. "Yeah. The nice guy from your old group."

"My real group," I correct, because they're not my old group. They're still my group. I'm just not with them all at the moment. I keep going anyway. "But, yeah. Hershel was a doctor. Or a veterinarian or something, but he knew lots about all sorts of doctor stuff. He said I've probably got an eating disorder, I guess."

"My cousin had one of those."

My eyes widen a bit. "Really?"

I don't know why it is, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the entire world who has had this problem. It feels real lonely. But I guess it might not have been just me, all this time. Maybe there are a hundred or even a thousand people like me.

"Yeah. Hers was different, though. She didn't want to eat because she was obsessed with how much she weighed. Not 'cause she didn't like any of the food. But, it's probably a little bit similar," Ruby explains to me. I've heard about that kind of eating disorder before at school, on the same day in fifth grade when they told us we'd have to start using deodorant and wearing bras sometime soon. Not long before the entire end of the world. Now there's no deodorant for anyone and everyone stinks, but it's not so bad because the walkers smell even worse. But, again, my mind is wandering. It's been doing that a lot lately.