Page 20 of Wicked Hungry

“Wait,” she rasps. “What? You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“You didn’t take the supplements, did you, Stanley? I told you not to take them. I told you before that if you did, you...”

“I what?”

“You wouldn’t be able to stop.”

“What’s the problem?” I ask her. “My knee feels great. Like it’s healing.”

“Yeah. Your knee feels great. But you solved one problem by creating another.”

“What do you mean, by creating another?”

“How do you think I got those headaches?”

“I thought they were migraines?”

“Then how come I can’t go outside in the sun? And how come my skin’s so sensitive that it burns in sunlight?”

She slams the door shut then and turns the bolt.

She’s crazy. She gets headaches, she gets sunburns because of vitamins? Now I’ve heard everything. Why doesn’t she just stop taking them?

But I don’t have time to stand there thinking it over. I walk home quickly, almost breaking into a run, my knee nothing more than a dull ache. I want to get home as quick as possible. Get off these streets. Get away from Karen.

It’s not that she’s upset me or anything.

It’s just time for my pill.

Chapter 8: PHYSICAL THERAPY

A week passes. High school is just around the corner, but I’m obsessed with other changes. I’m hungrier than usual, and the moon is still a week from full. My chest is hairier, and I smell... musky. Worst of all, three times a day my hands start to shake a little and I just feel this terrible...void.

Until I swallow one little bitter pill.

So Saturday my dad drives me to my monthly physical therapy. My knee starts itching as we drive toward the town center. That’s where Lauren works, in the chiropractor’s office right across from Town Hall.

“What’s the point of going to physical therapy?” I ask him. “I’m never going to run track again.”

He takes a moment before answering. “You know I went through that, too. Maybe a little later than you. In college. But there is more to life than running, I promise. It may take some more time, but eventually you’ll find something else that seems just as right.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think you even believe that.”

“Maybe I didn’t, at first. But I did once I met your mother.”

“Okay,” I say. “But would you have given her up for a second chance?”

“At running? Not your mother.”

“Then what? What would you have sacrificed for another chance?”

“What are we talking about here? Like selling your soul to the devil? Or hitting the juice?”

“Uh, either one, really.”

My dad sighs. “I don’t know, Stanley. You can have all the resolve in the world, and then there’s your moment of truth. Running was my life, just like for you, and then it was taken awa