Yolk(100)

It was Hill that finally pulled her back, blinking slowly, allowing for unalloyed disdain to slide off her nose and down at me. She told me I had a week to gather my things.

“Yeah, okay,” my sour mouth mumbled, heart reanimating as panic shot scratchy spidery impulses all over my skin.

This can’t be all there is. I’m finally here.

I envision June again. In the bath. The spatter of dark on white tile.

My sister died.

My sister died.

My sister died.

The supermarket doors slide open and I take a deep breath. The bright, glossy packages in the aisles call my name. My legs threaten to give, I’m so grateful. Relief is so close. I need donuts. I need the exact vanilla-glazed yeast donut that they had at the diner with Patrick. When it was raining, when we were matching, when it was safe. I also require an apple pie. A whole one. A happy family pie but my own. And real Parmesan. The kind that looks like a pink Himalayan salt lamp, the kind I’d never had before. I make a beeline for the refrigerated section of the grocery store. I don’t need a cheese grater; there are going to be teeth marks in mine.

I’m scandalized and impressed by how expensive real Parmigiano-Reggiano is. Nine bucks a hunk. It lands heavily in my basket. The anticipation in my salivary glands make my temples ache, and by the time I’m at the cookies and cakes, I’m drunk with options. I could get Entenmann’s. I peer into the windowed box, but their donuts are the wrong texture. The dry cakiness, the way you can pack them in your guts like a drug mule swallowing condoms isn’t what I want. I need the greasy, fluffy, bready ones. I need the exact one I had with Patrick or it won’t work.

Patrick.

The thought of what he’d think of me skitters across my mind. It dawns on me that I left his apartment just this morning.

I send him a heart emoji, and when he sends me one back, it feels like a blessing.

In the bakery section by the bread, I spot a six-pack of donuts. According to the plastic dome, they were packaged four days ago. The top one has kissed the inside of the box, leaving a smeared ring of glaze. It looks obscene. They’re the exact ones I want. There are half pies packaged in semicircles, but I get a whole one. Apple. It’ll go well with my cheese.

I select a sleeve of macarons. Not very nice ones. Not at all the kind you’d get for an aunt.

I grab a coconut water for health. A tub of mac and cheese from the hot bar, because why the fuck not.

I rove the walls of snacks. The metal basket handles pressing urgently at my forearms. I grab a box of Nilla Wafers and Wheat Thins because Triscuits by the box are too scratchy and pointy and because I want a snack I would never normally buy. One that feels as though it belongs to someone else. I also pick up an entire barrel of non-GMO cheese balls.

I pay for it all on my own debit card. Rent is due in three days and I haven’t checked my balance in weeks.

I hurtle myself to the apartment. Flying so I can’t change my mind. I shove my arm into the plastic bag twisting round and round my wrist and scratch the top of my right hand, trying to pry open the clamshell of donuts. I retrieve one and cram its cloying stickiness into my mouth. Press it in as I gnaw. Heaven. I lock eyes with a girl in a cheetah-print jacket talking on her phone. She has the decency to look away.

I lick my lips and grab another. Gorging. The streets are packed with commuters. Flocks of moms. Some are even jogging. Jerks. That’s what I both love and hate about Brooklyn. It’s so densely populated, I’m camouflaged. They barely see me. And if they did, they don’t care. By the time I’m back in my lobby, I realize my mistake. Six donuts is not enough. I should have gotten twelve.

I race up the stairs, pulling myself up with the banister handle, calves complaining at the fourth-floor walk-up.

Galloping.

Thundering.

I’m so, so close.

Cumbersome fingers fumble with my keys. Part of me wishes Jeremy were home when I crash through the door. I would vaporize him if he tried to obstruct my course in anyway.

I kick off my shoes. I lock the door even though I’m alone. I peel off my coat and my sweatshirt, dump them into the tub, tie my hair up, and sit on the floor in my bra. It’s dirty and it’s exactly what I deserve. I gather my companions around me as I eat and eat as fast as I can, before the rest of me notices and tries to stop.

Adrenaline is shunted straight into my heart.

Gratitude floods my nervous system as the sugar takes hold. I eat so fast that it doesn’t count. I eat as a velveteen curtain of serenity descends over me, the mechanics of my jaw hypnotizing me the way competitive marathon runners hit a rhythm. I swallow and swallow until my stomach is distended and my head aches from repeatedly grinding away at the mouth-fucking. I stack Wheat Thins three high and bite into them. I put the flattened part of the Nilla Wafers together and make little spaceships and destroy them and do it ten more times. Twenty.

Sweat gathers at the small of my back and seeps into the waistband of my jeans. At some point I’d undone the top button and unzippered them but at no point do I personally witness this occurring.

The macarons look like those cupcakes that are actually soap, but they’re pretty. Colorful and like jewels. I hold the glassine box to my nose and smell nothing. The pads of my fingers are impossibly sensitive, trembling, and I’m gripped by a singular purpose. I eat them in order. Begin too bright, tart, or even too dark and robust and you’ll deaden your taste buds for everything else. Green is pistachio, and pistachio is perfect. The sensation of my teeth piercing the delicately crispy outer layer, easing into the ganache, the viscid chewiness, makes me close my eyes—it’s too narcotic, too pleasurable, and still I can’t even tell if it tastes good. Orange. Brown. Lilac. I’m bludgeoned by sugar. I can’t discern perfume from texture.