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There’s rules to this stuff, of course there is.
There’s rules to everything.
Don’t run in the corridors. Don’t be late. Don’t answer back.
Those rules are the same for everyone. Jack just happens to be good enough at following them that they’ve made him Head Boy. That means he gets to enforce them, too.
But he has rules for himself, too. His rules are as follows:
Don’t eat more than one slice of toast for breakfast. Marmalade may be permitted on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.
That one’s easy enough. Breakfast is self-serve at school, with plates of toast and boxes of cornflakes placed sporadically throughout the middle of the long tables for the boys to squabble over. Breakfast is usually filled with chatter, and Jack finds it easy enough to get through with no questions asked so long as he laughs loudly at Roger’s jokes and snaps at the younger boys to fix their ties and do their top buttons up.
Today, a magazine one of the choir boys had somehow snuck in from home was being surreptitiously passed around under the table. Stuff like that is contraband, and if it were someone else he’d make a fuss, but he likes his friends. Really, he does. And he wouldn’t be so popular if he ruined their fun all the time. And if he wasn’t so popular, they wouldn’t do as he said. Besides, he wants to see the comic pages, too.
Maurice touches him with jam-sticky hands when he reaches over to take it from him.
His appetite is ruined.
He lets today’s piece of toast fall back to his plate half-eaten.
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At morning break, they get elevenses. It’s just a silly name for a snack, really. It’s almost always a biscuit.
It’s easy enough to get rid of. He just passes it onto whoever has best pleased him so far today. Whoever it is that has volunteered to carry his bag or his coat.
He doesn’t miss the taste of chocolate.
He doesn’t.
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Lunch, if he can help it, he valiantly skips by prioritising some terribly important Head Boy duty, running important errands for teachers that simply none of the other boys can be trusted with. Of course, that doesn’t work every day, so when he can’t miss it, he allows himself to eat half of what is served.
After all, he does know he needs to eat. Half is plenty. He’s not going to starve himself.
He doesn’t have a problem.
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The weather is steadily turning toward winter now, and Jack hates it.
He doesn’t have anything against the cold, per se. And the rain is perfectly fine when they’re all indoors.
It’s having to play rugger in the wet, squelching mud that’s the issue. Damned English weather. Even if you don’t get tackled, the ball gets covered in wet slime almost immediately, which gets onto your kit and your hands and no matter how much Jack scrubs them until the edges of his fingernails are red raw, he can never quite feel clean for the rest of the day.
Nowadays, he turns and faces the wall when they’re changing. He doesn’t know why.
Well, he does.
He knows he’s lost weight. He knows that his ribs stick out and his collarbones are sharper than they were six months ago. But it’s not about that. It’s not about the way he looks.
That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t wrap his right hand around his left wrist a few times a day, thumb meeting fingers with room to spare. Just to make sure he can.
Despite being turned, he feels eyes on himself anyway.
Roger’s eyes meet his when he turns back around. He looks strange. Jack doesn’t know that look on his face. Certainly not from him, anyway.
He forces Roger to break eye contact first.
He tells himself they’re only looking because he’s always team captain. They’re just waiting for instructions.
They always are.
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At dinner afterward, everyone wolfs down their dinner. Rugger apparently builds quite the appetite.
Jack only eats the meat.
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The only problem is it comes back up.
His stomach revolts against textures that are increasingly unfamiliar to it, and he vomits into the rhododendron bush in the old quad.
Nobody sees.
And nobody asks why his voice is hoarse in choir.
The chapel is always freezing, but Jack’s always cold, these days, so it doesn’t make a jot of difference to him. He can pretend to be superior when the other boys complain, as if he isn’t shivering under his cloak.
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Maurice hugs him, properly, right before he’s being picked up by his parents for the long vac.
“I promise I’ll bring some of mum’s cake back with me. She likes you, thinks you’re a good influence. She won’t mind making extra.”
Jack laughs, and rolls his eyes. He’s met Maurice’s family before, he and Roger had been for Maurice’s birthday last summer. He hadn’t quite known what to do with himself. Where to put his hands. What to do when the world’s friendliest Labrador wanted his singular attention, or when Maurice’s father ruffled his hair and called him a “good chap.” Or what to say when someone asked what his favourite kind of cake was for his birthday, and he didn’t want to admit that he hasn’t had one in years.
Birthday parties are for children. That’s what his parents say. And Jack Merridew is not a child anymore.
Cake.
He pretends he isn’t thinking about how long he’s been pushing his desserts around his plate rather than digesting them.
“Just… look after yourself. I’ll miss you.”
Jack scoffs at Maurice’s phrase. “Christ, what are we, 40 year old women? Don’t talk like an old bag.”
Maurice smiles, strangely sadly, claps him on the shoulder, and leaves. Jack watches him all the way to the waiting car full of his happy, shiny family; his father who makes bad jokes, his mother who bakes cakes, his little sister who does nothing but giggle because for her, there’s nothing not to giggle about.
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The edges of his vision turn black when he stands nowadays, and his ears ring like the acoustics in the chapel, but it passes. It always passes.
And all’s well that ends well, so Jack Merridew keeps going.
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The next day is a plain toast day, but he can’t seem to get himself to eat it. He just tears the crusts off in strips, then picks the middle to crumbs.
It’s just him and Simon now. Usually, he looks forward to this. Simon is surprisingly good fun, provided there’s nobody else around to compare him to. It’s not his fault he’s kind of creepy, like one of those old dolls that everyone’s grandmother has.
He’s good to talk to. He waits until Jack has finished his sentence, unlike the others who are so excitable that they all talk over one another. And he has a great imagination. They’re too old to play pretend games now, of course they are, they aren’t babies. But their new game, the mapping of their own Genesis, isn’t a game at all. It’s a… task. Yes, a task. And they’re not pretending, they’re… inventing.
Either way, Simon is good at it. Jack came up with the parameters, of course, but Simon suggested such great details. He’d even named the tree.
Jack suspects he’ll miss it, when everyone else comes back and his break times are taken up with watching Maurice and Roger roughhouse.
He wonders what Simon does at break. Maybe he hides somewhere indoors, away from all the noise, probably with a book. Yes, that fits. Simon curled up in one of the alcoves with something by Mark Twain, hiding from the others, but I’ll happen to come across him and there’s room for two so—
“Jack?”
“Hm?”
Simon’s staring at him.
Oh.
The toast in his hands is utterly pulverised by now. He dusts them off.
“You zoned out.”
“What? I— no I didn’t.” Jack splutters. Jack never splutters, even when he gives the reading in Mass.
“Then what was I saying?”
“Just because I wasn’t listening to you, it doesn’t mean I was zoned out. Maybe you’re just a bore, Simon.”
“You were away with the fairies!”
It’s nice when Simon isn’t afraid to push back. Jack likes it. Keeps things interesting.
“Shut up or I’ll do you one, you know I will.”
Simon puts his hands up placatingly. “Fine, fine. I believe you. I was asking if you’ve heard from your parents yet. Mine called last night after dinner. Well, mummy did. It’s only a few days until—“
Jack tackles him off the bench anyway.
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He’s sitting on the top step of the stairs to the chapel.
He can’t breathe.
Simon has pushed his head forward to rest between his knees, and is speaking softly, surely saying something that Jack is glad to not hear over the roar of his own heartbeat in his ears.
They’d been playing their game. Mapping. Re-naming things. Carving their boundaries.
They were having such a grand old time of it.
Then they’d set off up the stairs to the chapel.
Usually there was a strict rule of silence on these stairs, but with no teachers around, they were laughing all the way.
Until Jack got dizzy, and it didn’t go away this time.
He’s not really sure what’s going on for a moment. Everything far away. When did everything get so far away? He was just—
His chest feels tight. It feels like his head isn’t attatched properly anymore. He can’t tell whether it’s pressure in his skull or a lack thereof.
Oh.
He blinks, and he’s sitting down, Simon’s arms guiding him onto the stone. His eyes are huge, his mouth is moving; but sound is coming to Jack as if through deep water. Huh. Simon has pretty eyes. They’re greener than he thought. Jack never really noticed before.
“—hey, hey, can you hear me? Jack. Jack, you need to breathe— slow down, in and out.”
Breathing? He hadn’t realised he wasn’t. And then he realises he can’t. He claws at his throat.
Simon grabs his hands, holding them away from him, and pushes his head down so he’s leaning forward, rubbing a hand between his shoulder blades.
Jack has no idea where Simon learned all this, but he has to admit it helps a little.
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He gets about 5 minutes of peace before Simon picks it up again.
“Why do you do it?”
He’s helped him back to the dormitory, fetched him water, and is now sitting next to him on his bed. If Jack had the energy, he’d shove him off.
Pretty as Simon’s eyes are, or whatever it was that Jack had thought earlier, under their gaze it feels like he’s looking through you.
Well, it doesn’t just feel like it.
Jack plays stupid.
“Do what? Get dizzy? It’s not a choice, Simon, surely you faint enough to know that.”
“You don’t eat anymore.”
The four words hang in the air. They both stare forward, rather than at each other.
What right does Simon have to say that out loud, to think that just because Jack has some self-control he can speak a problem into existence.
“I eat.”
“Enough?”
“I’m alive, aren’t I? Unless you’re so batty you’re seeing ghosts.”
Simon acts as if he didn’t hear him. “All I’m doing is recognising a pattern.”
“Okay, Sherlock Holmes. Don’t give up the day job.”
“Jack.”
“For gods sake, I eat! Is that what you want to hear? Why are you watching me so closely anyway? What are you, funny as well as batty?”
That worked.
Simon recoils as if struck.
Oh.
Jack wonders if he should feel bad.
Another part of him wonders if he was right.
Simon stands up, backing away, hurt clear on his face, those huge eyes wounded.
“Simon—“
“Just stop it. Stop being stupid, Jack. Eat something. Or don’t. I don’t care.”
“Simon, wait, I—“
But he was already walking out of the dormitory and going God-knows-where, and Jack knew if he stood to follow him, he wouldn’t get very far.
And he doesn’t think this time, he deserves Simon’s help.
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