Turn 41 of 228

Reply to Diane's text honestly. Then pass out on the floor and see what the scale says in the morning.

The controller sits in her right hand and the phone sits in her left and the screen glows with Diane's unanswered question — *Are you okay?* — and Lena looks at it between rounds and the words don't get smaller. She wins another race. She checks the phone again. The question is still there. The cursor blinks in the text field. She starts typing and the words come out the way the vodka comes out of the bottle — steady, unhesitating, not quite under control.

*I don't know if I'm okay. I think I'm something else. I recorded myself doing everything in my office today and 171 people watched and I came six times and I didn't fake any of it. I shit on the carpet where I work and I didn't clean it up and I don't want to clean it up. I'm 271 pounds and I haven't showered in nine days and my teeth are yellow and I have more body hair than I've ever had and I don't want to stop any of it. I don't know what okay looks like anymore. This doesn't feel like okay. This feels like something past okay. Something that ate okay and kept going.*

She reads it once and sends it. The message sits on the screen — long, blue, delivered — and she sets the phone face-down on the hardwood beside the vodka bottle and the controller and the chip bags and the stains. She plays another race and wins. She plays another and wins. The phone buzzes at four in the morning and she doesn't check it. The phone buzzes again at five and she doesn't check it. The console hums and the television throws blue light across her body on the floor — 271 pounds spread across the hardwood, belly rising, thighs pressed together, arms thick and soft and resting at her sides — and the vodka bottle is empty and the chip bags are flat and the ashtray is full and everything is finished and she is not.

She passes out at five-thirty. Not asleep — gone. The controller slides from her hand and the television keeps running and her body sinks into the floor and the mess and the dark and the wish keeps working while she's unconscious. It works the way it has always worked — quiet, patient, beneath everything — and her body softens and expands in the dark and the hours pass and the apartment holds her.

Morning light finds her at seven. She wakes with a crick in her neck and a taste in her mouth that is vodka and stomach acid and the coated film on her tongue. She stands and her knees crack and her belly hangs lower than yesterday — she can feel it, the weight of it resting against the tops of her thighs, fuller, wider, heavier. The bathroom is eight steps. She walks them and steps on the scale and the display flickers and settles: 274. Three pounds overnight. She stares at the number and the wish hums beneath her ribs and she doesn't argue with it and she doesn't celebrate it. She just stands there, 274 pounds, stubble thickening toward hair, teeth yellow, skin unwashed, the taste in her mouth, the mess on the floor, the phone face-down on the hardwood with Diane's reply still unread.