The Barsoom Project

Tears streamed down Trianna’s lovely face. Her shoulder-length blond hair seemed flat and lifeless. “What do you want from me? I love food. How can you say I don’t? How do you think I got this heavy if I didn’t?”

“Do you love it,” Gwen asked soberly, “or do you use it? You hide in your body, Trianna.”

Trianna was so upset that she was actually bawling now. “What do you want me to say? I–I… shit!”

Kevin took her shoulders. “Just slow down and notice your food.”

Her eyes raked him; they should have raised welts. “And you? You damn skeleton, when did you ever notice food? You look like nobody ever told you about that part.”

Those words had hurt: Kevin blinked his hollow eyes against the pain. “I’m here too,” he said quietly. “We’re pretty much the same, Trianna. Both of us need to be okay with not being perfect. I’m tired of being scared.” He smiled tentatively. “Aren’t you?”

Trianna swallowed hard. Gwen felt sympathy but bit it back. Trianna ate sedately enough around the group, but it was increasingly easy to picture her at home, alone in her apartment. A mindless Oreo cookie zombie, shoveling food into her mouth as if that gorgeous face and that lumpy body lived in different zip codes. Deli of the living dead.

Trianna said: “I swear I’ll try. I want to tell the truth about it.” Her voice was a little girl’s, barely a squeak. “I want to.” This time Gwen didn’t get a warning beep in her ear. Trianna tottered across the bridge and sat, snuffling quietly, and picked at her lunch.

Kevin watched her, licked his lips, and ran a thin hand across the parchment of his face. On the far side of that gap was health, self-respect. Salvation.

What war was it he fought? He spoke of perfection. What was his unattainable ideal, that he compensated by being perfect at self-denial? What was so spin-dizzy in his life that he made up for it by controlling every crumb he ate, would take perverse pride in his conquest of the physical hungers?

His anguish was almost too painful to watch.

“What do you want from me?” he asked finally.

Ollie’s voice was kind. “Just the truth, Kevin.”

“If I eat too much I’ll have to throw up.” He said it as if the admission had cost him skin.

Kevin was afraid, literally afraid to cross that gap to where the others sat eating, bathed in golden light.

Slowly, Trianna came to her feet. Tears still slicked her face. She held her arms out to Kevin, and Gwen could almost see lines of strange magnetism connecting the two of them. As if they were bizarre mirror-images of each other. The fat lady and the skeleton boy, prides of the side-show.

No one said a word. There was no sound, and then Kevin made a soft, wet, desperate sound, and stumbled across the gap, dancing on air, into Trianna’s comforting arms.

One by one they went through it. Gwen was relieved to note that nobody tried to test the boundaries. It might have been interesting to try keeping Max Sands from charging across that bridge. He could carry her and Ollie without much of a second thought. Carry, or dump them over the side.

But at last they were all seated, eating, actually enjoying the meal Dream Park had set for them. The pears were crisp and flavorful, and the cheddar cheese was so sharp it almost singed her tongue. Gwen herself loved pears. It was easy to respect a good pear, because a bad pear was so bad.

Johnny Welsh was drinking coffee from a paper cup thoughtfully provided by the Gods, and chewing on a makeshift cheese sandwich. He looked as if he had died and gone to heaven. Everyone ate more slowly than they had at breakfast. Maybe the excellence of the food and drink had something to do with that. Something, but not all.

Johnny belched contentedly. “Java blend,” he said. “Last coffee I had was on the tube out from Denver.” He made a face.

Hippogryph was willing. “That bad?”

“Let’s put it this way. I had the concierge send it out to a lab. Got a call back saying ‘Congratulations, your moose is pregnant.’”

Hippogryph sprayed a mouthful of grape juice, narrowly missing Kevin, who lunged out of the way. “Jeeze-will you watch your timing?” Kevin said plaintively.

Johnny smiled wickedly. “Sorry about that.”

Orson popped open one of the cans, drank, and made a face at Snow Goose. “You brought me all the way to Hell for sugar-free 7-Up?”

They sat in a circle on a stone bridge over the pit of infinity. Max looked a little distant, wistful, that massive, muscular body sagging somewhat in repose. Gwen wondered what he was thinking. There was no way for Dream Park magic to give her that piece of information.

Yet.

They were on the move again, and the trail began to lead gently downward. The air was chilling, and the wind plucked at Max’s face and hair more fiercely.

Part of it was his imagination. The howl of the wind had increased more than its velocity. The temperature had only dropped a few degrees.