Food was real, food was proof of life, of how your body was still yours, of how it still could and still would respond to whatever you put inside it, of how it could be made to work. To be hungry was to be alive, and to be alive was to need food. Over the months, Ezra gained weight, at first slowly and then quickly, and now he was fat. But as long as he was fat, he wasn’t sick, and no one would ever think he was: His cheeks were hot and pink; his lips and fingertips were often slicked with grease—wherever he went, he left evidence of his existence. Even his new grossness was a kind of shout, a
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