Lakewood - Megan Giddings Page 0,72

starting again.

Throughout the morning, Judy sent me six emails. A forward about the dangerous chemicals in the food we eat. Each bite takes us one step closer to cancer. There is only so much yoga mat a girl can swallow before there are consequences. A short email written with no punctuation that told me to eat more fish, but not the salmon, because there was a disease in it. People who ate the salmon sometimes found worms growing in their arms and legs. The salmon wasn’t heart-healthy, as people wanted you to believe. Sales of the salmon were funding foreign governments.

Judy linked me to an article that was on a website I had never heard of called GreatHealthVibes.net. There was a picture of a man who had to have 17 worms pulled out of his forearms and a close-up image of one of the worms. Shiny, black. I turned slightly, so I could watch her emailing me. Judy was so intent on finding all the ways to fix me. She was reading a site about drinking a special kind of ground-up grass every night before bed, muttering some of the points out loud to herself.

After the sixth email, I knocked a pencil off my desk, and as I leaned down, I checked to see which observer was watching us. But the only one in the office was Haircut. He was eating a power bar and looking at his phone. This Judy turned to me, looked at my face, pursed her lips. Her eyes on my skin tone. I could feel her noticing the puffiness of my eyelids from lack of sleep. Cut all fermented foods out of your life, she said loud enough that her voice startled Haircut and he dropped his phone. They’re super death foods.

Later, Haircut handed me a pill and a glass of water. He said it would cut down the stress I was feeling. Another email from Judy popped up. It began, Per my last email that you have not bothered to respond to. I took the pill, drank the water down. I almost spit it out. The water tasted worse than I remembered.

24

Day 63: One of the warehouse employees was caught smoking a joint in the parking lot. You spent the rest of the day taking Great Lakes Shipping required online training about drug use in the workplace.

Tanya, Charlie’s still not here. Every morning since I’ve come back, I’ve been worrying that sitting at his desk would be a man who kind of looked like him. The man would tell me he was Charlie. The observers would watch and see if I was willing to argue that he was not the Charlie I knew. At lunch, I stole a yogurt in his honor, and asked Mariah and Tom if they knew what was going on.

Mariah stepped on my foot, gently, said he was on vacation. Tom looked around and started talking about sourdough bread. How you had to keep it alive, like it was a goldfish. They spoke to each other with growing excitement about yeast and starters. Bread bowls. Pancakes. I ate my yogurt, hearing the message that I should just shut up, behave.

After work, I went for another run. One of the most striking things about Lakewood is how clean it is. No graffiti, no pop cans or cigarette butts lingering on the grass. The sidewalks are uncomfortably clean. No birds or dogs have dared to poop on it, not a stray piece of spat-out gum. It was hot out. The humidity and the past weeks of not-enough sleep made me heavy. As I ran, my feet argued with my brain. They kept trying to turn in. It had never taken effort like this before to get my body to obey me. My left leg was going limp, and I had to stop. I flopped on a bench. The flyers were gone. Not a scrap of hot-pink paper on any tree trunks or lampposts. I was on the verge of panicking but was telling myself over and over: my legs were just tired, it was normal, it was fine. How long does it take for lying to yourself to work? I held my sides. I walked down the street. Turned the corner and went back to the donut shop.

The biggest table in the restaurant was filled with old-timers. In the middle was the woman who might be a reporter. She was taking notes as the old men argued about Lakewood’s history. They started