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motor, electronic programming, and heart-rate monitor. Jog to fitness in the comfort of your own home! ”
    “And forget about a stove or refrigerator. We’ll just have a wheelbarrow filled with my go-to M&M’s. Digital scales strewn across the carpet, stepping stones of accomplishment.”
    Lard snorted. “Your bathroom will be stocked with over-the-counter laxatives. Liquids, tablets, wafers, gums, chocolate, herbal. Powders that dissolve instantly in water.”
    Bones laughed then turned serious. “Eve told me she’s leaving.”
    “Yep.”
    “You don’t sound very upset.”
    “I hope she never comes back,” Lard said simply. “If that means she’s getting better.”
    “It has to mean that, right? Otherwise why would she be going home?”
    “She’s over twenty-one, man,” Lard said. “She can check out anytime she wants—”
    “But she can never leave.”
    “Very funny.”
    Even though Bones had just met Eve, he knew he’d miss her.
    Lard made a noise and Bones figured he was about to impart additional words of wisdom when the walls began to shake in a cacophony of snores. Bones sat up, felt under his pillow for his flashlight, and aimed the light on a blank page in his journal, thinking about his family and everything he’d put them through.
    He saw himself in the hall when he first got here—watching himself as he dragged his duffel over the highly polished linoleum—watching his mom as she leaned unsteadily against the reception desk—seeing his cowardly self too chickenshit to look back for one last good-bye.
    He was terrified to tell his family how not eating made him feel. How many hours he’d spent lying on his back with a ruler balanced on his hipbones. How he pictured a battalion of Pacmen marching inside his body, chomping away. How he’d awake to the sound of his stomach growling, ecstatic because it meant his body was eating itself.
    If Bones’s parents knew the whole disgusting truth about his relationship with his body, he’d be locked up longer than six weeks. And it’d be a different kind of hospital. Lard droned on, a head-splitting buzz saw. The entire hospital could barf its guts out in the ward and no one would hear them.
    God, Bones needed a scale. Bad . He dropped to the floor and alternated crunches with push-ups. Within twenty minutes he was drowning in a pool of sweat. His body was doing what it did best—dissolving itself. The ultimate liquidation.
    Then he crawled into bed and passed out.
    The next day Bones rolled over in the too bright, too loud morning. He got dressed and sauntered down the too bright hallway. He was setting up a card table when he noticed a piece of paper taped to the table’s underside. The lined paper appeared torn from someone’s journal. The note itself was partially printed in pen and more hurriedly scribbled in smudged pencil, like it had been written at different times.
    Bones undid the tape, careful not to rip the paper.
It was Calvin Webb who saved specie homo sapiens. All by strumming his guitar. No electric cords. No amplifiers. No distortion peddles. Just the sweet hum of calluses skimming steel strings.
    He lost himself in solo rehearsals for a band he’d heard about—a gang called CRAP (Criminally Rebellious Adolescent Population), kids about his age rumored to have run away, setting up camp in some crumbling 20th century hospital. Supposedly, like him, they played illegal instruments ripped off from the state depository: assorted brass and drums, a piano with non-synthetic keys.
    Calvin longed to join them.
    Bones put the paper in his pocket, wondering who’d written it.
    People wandered in slowly while Unibrow delivered breakfast trays. Bones wondered if Eve’s absence meant she’d overslept. Or if she’d been discharged like she’d said. Then he wondered what part of the hospital Alice was in and wished he’d paid more attention to the map in the lobby.
    Teresa and the new girl, another bulimic named Mary-Jane, mumbled