Chomp
Chapter 1: Red

“Hi, my name is Sam.”

“Hi, Sam,” the room chanted back at me. Suddenly, it seemed a lot bigger. My hands went cold; I had no clue where to go from there. I mean, I’d seen groups like this on TV and stuff, but I’d never been to one, mainly because I don’t have a problem.

The coordinator must have guessed how awkward this was, because she caught my eye and gave me an encouraging smile.

“You’re new to the city, Sam?” Her voice was soft and comforting.

I took a deep breath before nodding. “Y-Yeah. I moved here from Pelican Narrows two weeks ago.”

“Where the fuck is Pelican Narrows...?” someone in the back whispered rather loudly.

My face felt hot, and I could tell everyone staring up at the little farm boy at the podium was very unimpressed. Bored, even. The coordinator shot a dirty look over her shoulder.

“It’s… Northern Saskatchewan,” I squeaked out. Might as well tell them something instead of standing up here like an idiot. Their confused faces told me the comment didn’t help much. “…C-Canada.”

There was a collective ’Ohh’ throughout the room.

“I tried moose once there,” someone murmured. “It was pretty gamey.”

“I tried Mountie. You know, it was good, but I felt really bad after. Like cheating on a diet.”

The coordinator stood up rapidly, her chair scraping angrily across the auditorium floor; it echoed and rang in my ears.

“Duke!” she barked, holding up a finger to a rather hefty-looking ginger man sitting in the back row. He froze in his spot; it was a little amusing to see such a large man cower under the glare of a woman who couldn’t have been more than five feet.

“Yes?”

“Why am I mad?”

“Because… Because I hijacked the session?”

“Because you hijacked the session, yes. Good. It’s Sam’s turn to share, and then we can talk about your affinity for eating members of law enforcement. Okay?”

“Okay…”

If it were up to me, I would have liked to hear from him right then and there. Anything to get me out of the harsh lights aimed at the stage that made my palms sweat.

The coordinator turned back to me, encouragement painting her softened features. “Sorry, Sam. You were saying?”

“I…”

A quick scan of the room told me I was the youngest one here, which didn’t help my nerves. The man that had the law enforcement problem—Duke—looked like he was the closest to my age, though he must have been in his thirties at the very least.

“Well, I lived on a farm…” I tried again. “There weren’t many people like us out there. Including me, there were… three. So that’s… something I’m getting used to.”

There was a barking laugh from a small, elderly woman. I couldn’t be sure because she was sitting, but she looked even shorter than the coordinator.

“You better get used to territories then, boy. There are a lot of people out there who’d have your throat if you step foot out of line,” she growled, her lips twisted in a snarl. “Not everyone is a corn-sharing lovebird.”

I blinked. “Actually… Lovebirds don’t really eat corn, they—”

“Does it look like I give a damn what birds eat? I eat birds, and that’s all I care about when it comes to them. Just keep yourself off of other people’s property and your nose in your own business.”

“Doris, please. He’s new.”

“Then it’s best he knows we’re not like back home.”

When the session was over, everyone cleared out of the auditorium. I poked my head out of the door into the foyer, but save for a few stragglers, it was empty. Tanya and Brian must have still been at their couples yoga class.

I sighed and returned to the auditorium. The coordinator had started stacking the metal chairs in the corner of the room, so I started doing the same to pass the time.

“Sorry about earlier,” she said, grabbing the chair next to my stack. “They’re a great bunch, but we’re still working out a few kinks.”

“It’s okay. I got nervous at the podium anyway. I’ve never seen so many… So many people like us before,” I admitted quietly, looking at the ground. “It was kind of… nice.”

The coordinator let out a large breath. “Three in your town, huh? That must have been brutal. Was it just a free-for-all?”

“Basically.”

She shook her head, clearly in awe.

“So how was it, Baby?”

I looked over my shoulder to see Tanya waving furiously at me from the door. She was still wearing her bright yellow yoga pants and cartoon banana shirt. She bounced into the room, her full cheeks rouged as usual.

“Uhh…”

“He did really well,” the coordinator interjected, sensing my insecurity once again. She offered a hand out to my mom. “Jess Watanabe, facility coordinator. I think I spoke to your husband on the phone the other day…?”

Tanya nodded. “Yes, I remember. You know, he was almost nervous about letting Sammy go here. He thought it was…” She looked around and leaned in closer to Jess before continuing in a whisper. “He thought it was a group that taught them how to kill people. You know, like in Dracula or something.”

I felt like my face should have been the first thing someone saw when they looked up the word humiliation in the dictionary. Jess stared at her, blinking. Finally, her expression changed to a more enlightened one.

“Oh… you’re—?”

Tanya pulled away, with a sigh. “Oh my goodness, yes. Sorry for the confusion!” She clapped a meaty hand onto my shoulder, her large smile cracking into a beam. “We get told he looks like me, but with Brian’s personality all the time. He might not be ours biologically, but he’s still ours. Always will be. But yes, Brian and I are both not—”

“Gotcha,” Jess said, nodding. She still looked a little uncomfortable, but I could have easily given her a run for her money. “I just thought… I mean, most of the time when it’s the kid, it’s because the parents changed them. But that’s… sweet.”

Tanya beamed.

The car ride home was hard. We had moved during the summer, so I hadn’t really had much of a reason to get out and leave the house like I would have during school. The strong smells of the city hit me, each and every one of them stinging my nostrils despite the window being closed.

The scent of the fresh—or not so much—fish at the meat market. The oozing hot stench of the sewage running below us. Even the usually pleasant soft smells of hundreds of fresh fruits and flowers were overbearing. My eyes started to water and I had to pull my sweater up to cover my nose.

“You okay, Baby?” Tanya was turned around in the passenger seat to take a peek at me.

“Oh god, do I need to pull over?” Brian asked suddenly, his voice jumping to its high, worried pitch. “Are you okay? Did anyone sneeze near you? Oh god, Tanya. We need to get to the hospital, A.S.A.P.”

“I’m fine…” I muttered into the fabric of my sweater.

“Are you sure?” Brian asked. “Look, I know everyone says SARS is dead and that it’s over. But I couldn’t help but notice on some forums…” His usual panicked grip on the steering wheel caused his words to fall short and his knuckles to turn white.

This was the personality people thought I had?

“Honey!” Tanya scolded, smacking his right arm. He yelped and swerved into the next lane before twisting the wheel back to where it needed to be. “Don’t scare us like that! He doesn’t have SARS; he’s just upset because he’s no longer the only—”

“SARS is a serious threat! Do you know how many people died because of—”

I glanced out the window, reading the road signs. “Guys…”

“Not as many people as AIDS, the plague, or Covid. Are we going to assign your son just any random disease now?”

“Pookie-Bean, I look out for this family because—”

“Guys!”

My dad slammed his foot on the brakes in the middle of the road. The resounding screech rang harshly in my ears and vibrated through my core. The cleanliness pack he kept in the back—accessible for everyone—popped open, causing bottles of hand sanitizer, pre-packaged rubber gloves, and rubbing alcohol to fly down from the back window toward the windshield.

Thankfully, no one was behind us, or whiplash wouldn’t have been our only concern.

Brian turned around to look at me, his watery blue eyes even more filled with terror than usual. “W-What? What is it?” he whispered.

“Speaking of people almost dying…” Tanya groaned, holding a hand to her head. She must have hit it; there was an angry red splotch, and I could smell the familiar salty scent move toward the surface.

“You okay, Baby?” she asked, turning back at me.

Brian rolled his wrists in an attempt to relax and recover from the sudden stop. It filled the car with many odd popping sounds, though I doubt my parents could really hear it.

“Sorry…” he mumbled. “Everything’s good? You’re not hurt?”

“No… You missed the exit.”

* * * * *

There was very little I appreciated about this new house.

For starters, it smelled nothing like our old one, and that in and of itself was enough to put me off. It was a strange feeling, waking up in what you felt was someone else’s home. Their scent was still heavily imbued into the walls, carpet, doors—everything. I hadn’t known them, met them, or seen them, but I could tell they were in shape from the amount of healthy salt levels in their sweat, and that they had at least two young children.

They were details I couldn’t bring myself to share with my parents. Like the fact that some rooms were more surprising than others to have a strong scent of ejaculate. Gone were the days they had said ’the smell is just in your head,’ and of that I was glad. But I was sure they were going to pull the ’you’re just homesick’ card.

They were right, of course.

The old house had required far more TLC than my parents were able to give it. The rickety stairs were too big of an adventure, and as Brian pointed out, too dangerous if he was going to be bringing laundry baskets up and down without breaking yet another leg.

Last spring had left the house sunken even further into the ground than usual. I think the final straw was Tanya being unable to open the front door for the girl scout selling thin mints.

So, in a way, I could understand why they’d want to move. But not here, not to a city, and most certainly not to another country.

Maybe that was it. Maybe this new house smelled so unfamiliar because it was so drastically different from Saskatchewan. The comfortable smell of sweet hay and the sound of knickering horses was replaced with smog and yelling of angry NYC taxi drivers.

One thing this new place did offer, though, was better acoustics. I could be in my room, snuggled into bed, and still hear my parents speaking in the kitchen two floors down. It was odd to have four floors—including the basement—in a house, but I supposed that’s what people did when space was limited. Regardless, their voices carried, no matter how quiet they were trying to be.

“You saw him in the car. He’s clearly still stressed out from the move. Maybe for the first year we could homeschool him again, hmm? Just while he’s still getting a feel for the city.”

Brian’s voice sounded concerned as usual. There was a small scraping sound which I could only imagine as him stirring something in the large glass bowl we had. Whatever it was, it was very plain-smelling. Potatoes, maybe?

Tanya snorted. “And what, have it be just as much of a shock after? We haven’t had to homeschool him since he was twelve. He’s a big boy now. He can handle himself, just like he did at the other school.”

I was grateful for Brian always looking out for me, but it had always been a touch too suffocating. Thankfully he had found a wife who was able to counteract his panophobic tendencies with her thirst for nurturing the growth of others.

Or something like that, anyway.

Regardless, I was happy to hear my life wasn’t going to be a complete train wreck after this move. School provided a sense of normalcy in my life, something I greatly needed at this point.

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