April Austen squirmed in the overcrowded confines of the bus. Her route was standing room only, and she was sure someone had tried to grope her, but when she
looked around, no one seemed to look guilty.
The bus let April out almost in front of her house, and the teenager sighed in relief. She felt filthy, and her dress seemed too tight, even for the boy-attracting
number it was.
April ran for the bathroom, shucked her clothes, and stepped into the shower. It felt soo nice to lather up and let the warm water sluice away her cares.
As she shampooed, April noticed that her normally straight hair was frizzing a bit at the ends. "Must be this cheap conditioner," she decided. "I gotta tell Mom
never to buy this brand again."
April was toweling herself off when she noticed her stomach growling. "Huh. That lo-fat yogurt bar at the mall must not have been enough." Knowing that no one
would be home for hours yet, April decided to just wrap a towel around herself and head for the kitchen.
"Let's see what's in the fridge...." Not wanting to spoil her appetite for dinner, April grabbed an orange. It went down quickly, but she was still famished. So she
had another. And another.
"Huh. Bag's empty. What else is there?" There was some leftover Chinese takeout--April could have heated it in the microwave, but she was too hungry to wait
forty-five seconds.
Time seemed to blur for April, as food and drink passed through her lips like water through a burst dam. At last she began to focus again, as she drained the final
drop of Tabasco sauce from the bottle.
She eyed it distastefully. "Eww...I drank this stuff straight? What was I thinking?" She tossed it onto the pile of empty containers, then blinked as she realized what
it was.
April looked into the refrigerator. It was bare. She'd even scraped the frost from the freezer compartment and eaten that.
"Hey Sis, I'm home!" came a voice from the living room.
April groaned. "Oh no, it's Julius! I've spent three hours eating everything in the refrigerator. Think, April! How are you going to explain this?"
April's little brother, just turned thirteen, walked into the kitchen. His jaw dropped.
"Oh, man, are you going to be in trouble," he said.
The towel around April's torso chose this moment to stop trying to hold in all the extra weight the food had added to her body, and popped off, floating gently to
the floor.