Disclaimer: If you think I own any of these characters, you flatter me!
Author's Note: I use my rudimentary French in this piece. If I've said/translated something incorrectly, apologies, and (please do!) let me know in a review or PM. Also, if you didn't catch it in the summary, some serious issues regarding body image occur here, so if that's going to get to you, hang on tight if you still want to keep reading. Thanks.
November, 2003
Gold had just settled at $350 per troy ounce, Sam's English teacher was saying, and since this week they were doing cross-curriculum connections the class was asked to figure out how much money they would be worth if King Midas had turned them into gold. Sam fidgeted as he etched the symbols into his notebook.
Each pound gave $350, but gold wasn't measured in pounds—something called troy ounces, instead. So they had to convert (one of their vocabulary words, quiz on Friday) troy ounces into pounds. His teacher had told them to use 14.583 ounces for every pound, so...algebra. Great. His two favorite (read: not) subjects were combining into a living cauchemar.
He'd learned that in French class, and it meant "nightmare". He liked French class. Sure, more words, but he could put his big mouth to use in the speaking part. Plus, his teacher actually wanted them to hack stuff up so they could make the guttural 'r' sound.
The numbers kept exchanging places on the paper but Sam focused like his speech therapist had taught him to. She wasn't exactly the kind of person he needed for dyslexia, but public schools were public schools (even if they were the all-boy kind) and his parents took what they could get for free.
"Who's got the answer?" Sam's teacher asked. He started with the buttkisser at the front of the room. Sam knew this old trick; he was going to snake his way through the desks. Sam had fifteen people to figure this out before he was caught without the right answer, or at least one in the ballpark. Again.
14.583 troy ounces times $350 equaled...ten desks left...$5,104.05 per pound. And then he had to write the number on the paper, had to make it so ponderously real. Seven desks left. Multiply...and...two desks left. Double-check? No time, no time, here he came...
"Sam? How about you?"
The basketball center and the kickball ringleader snickered as they craned their necks toward Sam, waiting for his answer. The whole room was staring at him.
Oh, God.
"If I were made of gold," Sam started, his voice scratchy. He swallowed a glob of spit. "I would be worth 740,087 dollars. And twenty-five cents."
His teacher's eyebrows sprouted up and Sam knew what was coming—he'd say that was wrong, clearly that was wrong and like Miss Honey in Matilda he'd do the math on his calculator and discover the figure Sam had wanted to stay unknown to him, to the class, to himself:
X equaled 145. About to be ten years old in April and 145 pounds.
It took forty seconds for his teacher to shut the class up. The others who hadn't given their figures were ignored in favor of discussing whether or not the reader was supposed to like King Midas, and why or why not. Sam pushed his head onto his crossed arms on his desk and didn't say another word.
October, 2010
Strawberry sauce, dark chocolate chips, cinnamon whipped cream, two full cans of Dr. Pepper, four crèpes. It all swirled in the water, a fractal of yellow and brown. Sam forced himself to stare into them, splutter and cough out the last remnants. Some dripped, burning, from his nose. The dry heaving speared his abdominals like a helmet attached to a huge inside linebacker.
This is what you get for not thinking, the mess said. Sam reached out a shaky hand and flushed it away.
Sam put two hands to each side of the McKinley High bathroom stall and pushed himself to his feet. He tinkered open the latch and staggered to the sinks. The cracked mirror tossed a scared little boy back at him.
"Ce n'est pas parfait. Mais ça va l'être," Sam whispered. It—he was not perfect—but it was going to be.
"Tu es stupide, garçon," a prim voice echoed. Sam whirled to the door, where Kurt stood in a purple scarf, lime green button-up with ruffles where the buttons closed up the shirt, and canary yellow skinny jeans.
"Kurt," Sam said. He cringed as his voice swept up two guilty octaves. Kurt regarded him with seeming indifference, still leaning against the wall in between the paper towel dispenser and the door.
"I...I'm feelin' kinda sick," Sam explained. "Somethin' didn't go down right, I guess."
Kurt stared.
"Right. Well. Uh. See you in glee," Sam said, faltered a little on the first step but otherwise made it to the door just fine. Kurt reached for his hand on the handle, handed him a paper towel.
"Your face is a mess. Clean up before you come back or Madame will use you to explain the differences in conjugating pleuvoir and pleurer," Kurt said.
Sam took the gruff, recycled brown sheet in his sweaty rough hands—Kurt's were soft like dough—and he trundled over to the sinks again. He looked over at Kurt. Kurt gave the stare right back, even, blank.
Then he turned away; a step, then the bathroom door screeched and slumped shut. Now alone, Sam could see the tear tracks he'd missed, the spot of vomit on his chin. So disgusting.
He really didn't purge often, he didn't, but Madame's crèpes had been so good and she was so happy they all liked them and he'd brought the chocolate chips after all so he had to use them but then after number three he knew he was doing it again and after the fourth he barely got the words out to ask for a sky blue sheet of hall pass before the roiling started and he'd made it just in time.
But his diet was fine. His mouth was nasty, but he had toothpaste and a toothbrush in his locker—just in case he had to do this. He'd be fine by glee; by the time he went to the gym, certainly.
He stared back at the little boy with a double chin and nearly three. He wanted to punch the mirror into even more splintered tiny pieces, but he caressed the crack instead, careful not to cut himself on the sharp edges.
"Makin' you happy, little buddy. You never thought you'd be hot, now look at you," Sam whispered. Then, the tiniest of smiles, the lightest of laughs. "'Course, you're still weird. Hell, ya talk to mirrors and spend most your day tryin' to remember godawful dance steps to old rock songs."
Sam traced the boy's lips in the mirror.
"Still got a ways to go—" Sam remembered his conversation with Mr. Schue, how he knew, knew he wasn't there yet and there was the proof when he got his role swiped from him. He should've known that he wouldn't be able to be a man of gold—lemon-gold hair, perfect bronze tan, even gold shorts—he could never be that worthy.
"But you're gettin' there, little dude," he said. Someday, he thought, someday you'll be parfait.
He crumpled the paper up into a ball, shot a two-pointer into the tall thin garbage can—swoosh—and left the kid in the mirror behind to haunt him until the next time, red-eyed and shaking, he found him again to confess yet another misstep, the sin offering festering as it sloshed its way through the pipes.
Translations: un cauchemar - a nightmare
Ce n'est pas parfait. Mais ça va l'être - It is not perfect. But it is going to be.
Tu es stupide, garçon - You're stupid, boy.
Pleuvoir - to rain; pleurer - to cry; parfait - perfect