Dietland

by Sarai Walker

He wasn’t Mason anymore; he was them. Looking at him, looking at them, the behavior of my whole life was suddenly inexplicable. The years of Waist Watchers, Baptist Weight Loss and plans for surgery, the hours and hours that added up to years of my life spent sitting at home afraid to go outside, afraid to be laughed at and shunned and rejected and stared at by faces like the one looking up at me now, one of the generic, mass-produced, ordinary, follow-the-crowd, hateful faces. At another time, at home alone, I would have wept to think about it. I wished I could go back to the beginning of my life and start again. I removed my foot from his chest. I didn’t want to fight with him. He didn’t matter. I turned to leave, pushing my way through the onlookers. No one tried to stop me. The police hadn’t been called. Mason’s friends seemed to have disappeared. As I walked away from the bar, the sky above was clear and black. Somewhere up there was the laugh that had escaped from me, the long trail of light that was now part of the universe. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. I would only have to look up to remember it.

This.