Free Binary Star by Sarah Gerard

leave.
    Are you serious? That party sucked. Those people are idiots.
    He drinks the rest of his beer and tosses his cup in a trashcan, then asks me for a cigarette. I wonder if he’s right about my friends being idiots.
    What do you want to do now? he asks.
    Go home.
    Really? It’s early.
    I just don’t feel like being out.
    You’re such a baby. You’re just sad about having to leave the party.
    I don’t answer.
    I don’t know why you like those people.

    I stand at the back of the classroom drinking mate because it’s an appetite suppressant and has as much caffeine as coffee. At six in the morning, I drank eight ounces of rice milk with freeze-dried açai berry powder and followed it with a 24 ounce Starbucks Iced Americano. At ten o’clock, I ate a half-cup of grapes. Every two hours, I allow myself one half-stick of celery from the bag in my purse. At two o’clock, I can have one whole banana and my first sugar-free Red Bull, to burn it off. At five o’clock, I can have half a McDonald’s side salad with no dressing, cheese, or croutons, and a cup of ice water. If the hunger becomes overwhelming, I chew a stick of Orbit. If, by eight o’clock, I’m feeling weaker than usual, I allow myself an apple after doing two sets of twenty sit-ups. Throughout the day, I take Zantrex-3 as needed. This afternoon, I will lead a lesson on common envelopes. A common envelope is a short-lived phase in the evolution of a binary star. It begins when a binary orbit decays or when one star expands rapidly. Write this down.
    – The donor star will overflow its Roche lobe, initiating mass transfer onto its companion.
    – The Roche lobe is a teardrop shaped region around both stars in which material is gravitationally bound to the stars.
    – The apex of the teardrop points toward a binary star’s companion. Let me demonstrate.
    I tell my students to stand and we push their desks to the room’s perimeter. They pair off and face their partners and join hands. Right hands hold right hands and left hands hold left hands, so hands are crossed between them. They start to spin.
    Make a list of every way in which you’re imperfect, I say.
    Tell yourself that each item is correct.
    Make a list of fears.
    Tell yourself they’re present.
    Remember a childhood trauma.
    Tell yourself it will happen again.
    Think of your sexual inadequacies.
    Tell yourself your partner notices them, too.
    Think of your other inadequacies.
    Tell yourself they’re worse than you think.
    Tell yourself you’re ugly.
    Tell yourself you’re selfish.
    Tell yourself you will never be good enough to have whatever you want most.
    Tell yourself you don’t deserve it.
    Tell yourself you’re not strong enough to act rightly.
    Tell yourself you’re fat and unlovable.
    Tell yourself that the only way you will improve is through extreme discipline.
    And self-punishment.
    Tell yourself you’re lucky to have your partner, as flawed as he is.
    Tell yourself that these flaws are the very things that bind you.
    They are the only things that keep you from falling down.
    Because they are the only things keeping you together.
    Tell yourself your partner is too good for you.
    Squeeze your partner’s hands until it hurts.
    Get closer.
    Spin faster.
    Closer.
    Faster.
    Closer.
    Faster.
    Now spit on your partner.
    I tell them to stop and look their partners in the eyes. I tell them to remember what it felt like just now when their partner spit on them, and to imagine that their partner is the only person who could ever do them that favor. They hug and turn in rapid circles until they’re dizzy, then they fall to the floor.
    When everyone is eating lunch, I eat my banana and then throw it up in the handicapped bathroom, then look at myself in the mirror.
    I take a handful of water and rub it over my mouth and spit and wipe my face with a paper towel, turning my skin red.
    I drink a Red Bull to mask the taste of the vomit and burn off whatever banana remains inside me. Then I