Skin and Bones Read Online Free

from piling on more calories. He buffed his buzzed head. He’d first shaved it in middle school after reading about a mathematician who’d figured Rapunzel’s fourteen-inch locks weighed fourteen ounces.
    He’d once shaved his body too, even his eyebrows, which his friends said made him look like a hundred-year-old baby. He gave it up because the outgrowth drove him nuts.
    Bones folded the menus and shoved them into his journal.
    He had to find Dr. Chu.
    Bones found his office down a long hall past the dayroom. He knocked and waited. Knocked again, waited some more.
    Where’s the friggin’ doctor?
    Cell phones and laptops weren’t allowed in the program. Except for letters and occasional family therapy nights, any contact with the outside world was highly discouraged, according to the thick paperwork the hospital had had him and his parents sign.
    Bones should have at least tried to smuggle his cell phone in so he could text his mom and tell her he was being poisoned or tortured or something. She’d realize the program was a mistake and come and take him home. He knew she would.
    Where is he?
    Bones didn’t know he’d fallen asleep, sitting on the floor, until he heard Lard’s voice. “You missed breakfast, man,” he said. “You are so screwed.”

5
    Bones stared across a cluttered desk at a silent Dr. Chu who’d formed a steeple with his fingers while waiting to hear the reason for Bones’s visit.
    “Can I call my mom?” he asked, sliding lower in the fake leather chair.
    Dr. Chu didn’t answer. It was like he’d manipulated the second hand on his clock so it wouldn’t move. Even the miniature ivy on his desk was dying under the strain of stopped time.
    Finally Dr. Chu picked up the phone and dialed. “Nancy, please bring Mr. Plumb’s breakfast to my office. He’ll be dining with me this morning.”
    “But I’ve always been able to call home.” Bones hated the desperate sound of his voice. “Anytime, any place.”
    “Sorry, Jack,” he said. “Not from this place.”
    There was only one way to make it through this. “Can I…? I mean, is it okay…? Do you have…rubber gloves?”
    Dr. Chu frowned over a drawer, pulling out checkers, jacks, cards, and a pair of latex gloves. “You may think I don’t understand, but I do. Just give yourself time. It’ll get easier.”
    Bones took the gloves, rolling them onto his fingers, exhausted all over again from the strain of the program. At least the calories from the impending feast wouldn’t be absorbed through his fingers and stomach.
    Nancy walked in holding the same type of cafeteria tray used at his high school. “Here you go, Jack.” She smiled at him and left.
    Bones stared at a cheap melamine plate with an omelet, fruit bowl, and dry toast.
    “Is something wrong?” Dr. Chu asked.
    I have the stomach flu, sore throat, tooth abscess, migraine, allergy to gluten…I never eat breakfast on Wednesdays or in closed rooms or during a lunar eclipse, especially in July or when I’m out of deodorant…
    “I’m just not hungry.”
    “Take your time.”
    Bones cut the omelet in half, turned it, cut it in half again, and then once more. He couldn’t breathe, dying the slow death of a bug on a fly strip. Fifty-three minutes and seventy-two bites later nothing was left on the plate except years of scratches.
    Back in his room, Bones paced from the window to the door and back. He counted thirty twelve-by-twelve linoleum tiles, slapping the windowsill before turning around, petrified that fifteen minutes of speed walking wouldn’t burn off breakfast.
    Lard looked up from a celebrity chef cookbook. “You’re driving me nuts!”
    Bones hit the deck. First sit-ups, then he rolled over for push-ups. The tip of his nose grazed the towel he’d thrown on the floor. He blinked salt from his eyes, then felt a heavy weight on his butt, knocking the air out of him. “Get your skinny ass up,” Lard said, releasing his boot. “I need a smoke.”
    Bones