Chapter Text
The thing about college is that no one knows you. Conrad finds this useful.
At Brown, he's just another freshman in intro lectures, anonymous in rooms of two hundred students. No one knows about his mom. No one knows about the summer house, about Belly, about how he spent most of July watching his mother die and most of August watching the girl he loved fall for his brother. No one asks why he's quiet or why he sometimes spaces out mid-conversation, staring at nothing.
He likes it that way.
The dining hall is the worst part. It's too bright, too loud, trays clattering and chairs scraping and everyone talking at once. The food is heavy, institutional - pasta drowning in alfredo sauce, pizza glistening with grease, burgers the size of his fist. His roommate, Dev, loads up his plate every night like he's preparing for hibernation.
Conrad takes a salad. Sometimes a sandwich. He tells people he's not that hungry, that he ate earlier, that he's still full from lunch.
It's not entirely a lie. He's never that hungry anymore. Food feels like an obligation, something his body demands but his mind resists. When he does eat, it sits wrong in his stomach, a foreign weight that doesn't belong.
His mom used to make him breakfast every summer morning at Cousins. Blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon that wasn't quite crispy enough. She'd stand at the stove in her bathrobe, spatula in hand, and he'd pretend to be annoyed when she asked if he wanted seconds.
He'd give anything for those pancakes now. He'd eat every bite and ask for more.
But she's gone, and there's just the dining hall, and the food here doesn't taste like anything except vaguely of salt and regret.
It starts small.
Too much pizza one night in late September. He and Dev and some guys from their floor go out after a study session, and Conrad eats seven slices without thinking, distracted by the conversation, by the beer someone's older brother bought them. When they get back to the dorm, his stomach hurts. Not just full - bloated, stretched, uncomfortable in a way that makes his skin feel too tight.
He thinks about his mom. How she got so thin at the end. How she couldn't keep anything down.
He thinks about Belly. How she looked at him that last night, like she was disappointed. Like he wasn't enough.
He goes to the bathroom down the hall. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Someone's left a calculus textbook on the counter. Conrad locks himself in the furthest stall and kneels on the tile floor, which is slightly damp and smells like industrial cleaner.
He doesn't really decide to do it. It just happens. Two fingers down his throat, a gag, and then it's coming up - pizza and beer and stomach acid. His eyes water. His throat burns.
When he's done, he feels empty. Lighter. Clean.
He tells himself it's just this once. Just because he overdid it. Just because his stomach hurt.
He's always been good at lying to himself.