Placebo 2 by Lacey Mitchell

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Nelson weighed himself before dinner, still just 108, and took his first pill. He drank milk instead of his usual water and ate a large helping of lasagna though he didn't ask for seconds.

"We've got ice cream for dessert," his mother suggested.

"Not right now, Momma," said Nelson. "May I be excused?"

"I suppose so," said Mrs. Frederick. "You and Carmody cooking something up?"

"Sort of," Nelson admitted. "Put the dishes in the sink and I'll do them before I go to bed."

"Well, aren't you sweet," said Mrs. Frederick to the boy's disappearing back. "Horace, did you hear that? Nelson offered to do the dishes."

"Vicky used to do the dishes all the time before she went away to college and got pregnant," said Mr. Frederick, referring to Victoria, their daughter, six years older than Nelson.

"Going away to college did not cause her to get pregnant," said Mrs. Frederick. It sounded like something she had said before.

"Well, she never got knocked up while she was living at home," he said. He stood up and helped his wife stack dishes for the trip to the kitchen sink.

"She had a scholarship," said Maggie.

"Lot of good that's going to do the kid," said Horace.

"We're going to be grandparents before Christmas," she said.

"Christmas! I won't be forty until January!"

Maggie stacked the dishes in the sink and ran water on them. "You knocked me up while we were away at college," she said.

"And I wouldn't have been able to do that if you'd been living with your folks."

Mrs. Frederick giggled, remembering.

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Carmody waited for his skinny friend on the sidewalk at the top of the first hill. Nelson trudged up, already regretting a little how much lasagna he had eaten. "Where are we going?" he asked.

"You'll see," Carmody promised. He didn't wait for Nelson to catch his breath but started off right away. "Hurry, it's going to be getting dark in an hour or so."

"Wait up," complained Nelson. "I ate too much."

That actually caused Carmody to pause. "You? What? You had a second carrot?"

"We had lasagna. I ate a big piece and some salad and a glass of milk."

"Your mom's lasagna is good unless she puts something weird in it like eggplant or spinach," said Carmody. He made a face to show what he thought of vegetable filler in lasagna.

"Nothing weird this time, meat and cheese and noodles."

"Mm-mm," said Carmody. "Maybe we can stop at your house on the way back and have some of it."

"You just ate!"

"Yeah? And in an hour or two, I'll be hungry. I'm a growing boy!"

"You're going to get fat like your uncle Roger," said Nelson.

Carmody didn't respond immediately, his uncle was fat. "Well, at least Uncle Roj still gets the babes."

"Oh? You mean your new Aunt Tan? What's she, number three?"

"Yeah and she's even prettier than Aunt Bev and Aunt Lor. And they were pretty. I still get cards from them, too."

"He keeps getting married 'cause he's rich, not 'cause he's fat. I mean...." Nelson tried to work out how to say it so it came out as an insult to Carmody. Not that he disliked his friend's uncle, Roger was kind of cool; he always had the neatest new video games and gave them to Carmody and sometimes even to Nelson.

"He keeps getting married 'cause these pretty women want to marry him," said Carmody.

"'Cause he's rich! It's not because he's fat."

"Ah, but how come he's rich?"

"That's not because he's fat either," said Nelson.

"No, it's 'cause he writes really neat video games," said Carmody. "And that's what made him fat."

"Huh?" said Nelson.

"How do you write video games?" Carmody asked. "Sitting down. And sitting down all the time makes you fat. So the same thing that made him rich and gets him all the babes is what makes him fat, too. Hipsy does it."

"That's just stupid."

"No, it's not. You have to be really smart to write video games."

"I meant you're stupid, and you're getting fat," said Nelson.

"Well, you're skinny and you're getting stupid," said Carmody.

They grinned at each other, a good insult fight always got them revved up.

"Well, we're here," said Carmody as they reached the top of another small hill.

"Where's here?" Nelson asked, looking around.

"Faith Springs Physical Culture Center."

"Huh?"

"The tennis club attached to that swanky religious college," explained Carmody. "Lookit." He gestured toward several tennis courts where lights had already been turned on in the deepening twilight.

"So?" said Nelson. "What are we doing here?"

"Babes," said Carmody settling down in a patch of grass with a good view of the lighted courts. "Babes in short dresses jumping around and making that squealing noise."

Nelson looked. Four pairs of young women in white tennis clothes did indeed seem to be running around the courts, swinging rackets, leaping and jumping, and squealing with excitement.

He looked back at his friend. Carmody had a blissed-out expression. "We could get closer," Nelson suggested. The grassy patch beside the sidewalk had a good view of the whole court area but some picnic tables closer to the fence would have offered a better vantage of the nearer pair of players.

"No, no," said Carmody. "This is fine. If we get closer, they might tell us to leave."

Nelson settled down, sitting with his knees up where he could rest his chin on them. Carmody had lain down, full-length on his stomach, holding his head in his hands. They watched the girls play tennis.

After a bit, Nelson commented. "I didn't know you liked tennis."

"I don't," said Carmody. "Stupid game. Hit the ball so someone can hit it back. Repeat until nauseous or someone misses and you have to chase the ball. Only game more stupid than golf."

"Well," said Nelson.

Carmody turned to look up at him. "We're here to watch the girls, not the game."

"Huh?" said Nelson. "I don't get it."

Carmody sighed and went back to watching the games being played. "Don't you think they're pretty?" he asked.

"Well, yeah, I guess so."

"And those shorts and skirts show off their legs so nice, and sometimes when one of them moves just right her skirt flips up and you can see how round her butt is."

Nelson blinked. "Yeah, I kind of like how the skirts sort of swish around their legs. It looks cute. Like they're having fun."

"There you go," said Carmody. He settled down, his blissful expression returning.

Nelson got comfortable, too, though he thought watching the girls and hoping one of them would flip her skirt up and show off her butt was sort of rude.

They watched for about half an hour, with Carmody making comments about the girls' looks and Nelson sometimes noting some detail of how a girl had accessorized her outfit or done her hair.

Neither of them said anything about how well or poorly any of the girls played tennis. It didn't look as if anyone were keeping score, anyway.

Finally, Carmody got up to go. "We got to get out of here," he said. "It's dark and they'll be turning off the lights at nine. We don't want to be here when that happens."

Nelson stood, too. He'd finally gotten into the activity and actually began to enjoy himself. "Why?" he asked.

"When they turn off the lights, all the bugs that have been flying around them start looking for dinner," Carmody explained. "Besides, with the lights off, the girls go home."

"Huh, yeah," agreed Nelson. They walked toward their homes, trading mild insults in their continuing game.

"Thought you were going to go down and ask that girl in the–what did you call it? fluted skirt?–if you could try it on," Carmody accused.

"Nah," said Nelson. "I might have asked if I could borrow her towel, though, so I could mop up all the drool you kept leaking."

"To add to your collection?"

"Oh, gross!" Nelson objected.

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Back at the Fredericks' house, Nelson's parents made an early night of it, heading up to their bedroom before nine o'clock. "I sent the paper Dr. Weiss signed off to the camp, dear," Maggie told Horace. "So in two weeks, Nelson will be able to leave on his summer vacation."

"And us on ours," he agreed. "Though we don't actually have to go anywhere–I think we had planned to visit your sister? That's not till the end of the month, though?"

"Monica, yeah," agreed Maggie. "Let's not spend too long there, huh? It's always so hot in the summer."

"We'll use the three-day-old fish rule," agreed her husband. "Then we can go up to Branson for a week and do some sightseeing on the way home. And still have several weeks alone before Nelson comes back from camp."

"Hmm," she said.

"Mm-mm," he replied.

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Carmody turned off toward his house on the way back from the tennis expedition after Nelson mentioned that he still needed to do dishes. "You're not roping me into helping with that, even for a slice of your mother's lasagna."

"I'm actually kind of hungry," commented Nelson, surprising himself.

"Well, good for you. Maybe you'll start putting on some weight and stop looking like toothpick. See you in the morning."

Nelson let himself in the back door. His parents seemed to have already gone to bed so he got a bowl from the cabinet and took two scoops of chocolate ice cream from the container in the freezer. He didn't really want lasagna that he would have to heat in the microwave.

He ate slowly, enjoying the richness and the slight bite of the double dutch cocoa flavor. "Maybe I'll have ice cream before going to bed more often," he thought. "That ought to help me gain some weight." Then he rinsed the dishes thoroughly, loaded the dishwasher and left it running as he went up to his bedroom.

He stripped off down to his underwear and paused in front of the long mirror in the bathroom to examine himself. Long skinny arms and legs with no more shape than a six-year-old had. A tubular body with a slightly indented area under his ribs, each of which he could almost count just by looking. Bony-looking shoulders and hips. Even his face looked thin.

He sighed. "I am too skinny, but maybe these pills will help. I did feel hungry tonight."

He decided to take his shower in the morning since his bathroom was right against his parents' bedroom wall. He didn't want to wake them up, so he trudged down the hall to his own bedroom.

"Carmody is just getting weird," he told himself as he put on his pajamas after brushing his teeth. "All he thinks about anymore is girls." He didn't want his friend's new fascination with females to affect their relationship but he felt sure that it would, sooner or later.

He went to bed and dreamed of playing tennis doubles with Carmody against teams of pretty girls in short skirts.