Free Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn by Sarah Miller Page A

pair of shorts and a faded yellow T-shirt advertising a corporate 5k race in Central Park. He throws them onto Gid's (sunken, skinny-fat) chest.
    "Get up," he says, "or I will pull you up again."
    "No, no," Gid protests, suddenly all obedient. "That hurt."
    "It hurt because you're sk —"
    "I know, I'm skinny fat. I heard you."
    Five minutes later, they're running around the track. Or rather Nicholas is running and Gideon's propelling himself forward on desperate exhalations and sheer force of will.
    Passing the reflective windows of a spanking-new field house, he gets a glimpse of himself. Sure enough, a pale lip of flesh dangles from his arm, like turkey wattle. He is skinny fat!
    "I know I'm not supposed to talk, but I gotta know," he says. "Do girls really care if you're out of shape?"
    "Girls," Nicholas says, "are even worse than guys about that stuff."
    I'm not sure that's true. I feel like a guy would go out with a girl with no brain and, like, a totally ugly face if she had a nice body. Or even a nice body part. But Gid would do well to believe him. Because the whole skinny-fat thing —it's real.
    Gid's lungs feel like two charred steaks. "It's incredible how much legs weigh," he says. A commuter train whistles from somewhere off beyond a wall of trees. He wonders if he could sneak off and get on it and find his way back home. Or maybe he could just fall down in a heap of girlish tears and simply refuse to go on.
    "Your fight-or-flight mechanism is probably kicking in about now," says Nicholas, not even panting. "I'd bet you've chosen to fixate on escape."
    Gideon wants to say that he's doing fine, but he can't breathe well enough to speak. He stifles the urge to vomit. He tries to turn off his mind. It doesn't work. So he tries to imagine that he's watching himself from outer space, that he weighs nothing, and finally, that he is in a movie about someone who has to run two miles. He finally concludes that there's no substitute for willpower. Each step of the last four laps is a distinct and memorable slice of hell. But he makes it. The moment he's done, he collapses into the grass.
    "You're in horrible shape," Nicholas says casually. "I have you running to build confidence. In three weeks, it's going to be a whole different feeling. You'll have less fat, more muscle. You'll have a lot more respect for yourself."
    I don't think that's fair. Just because Gideon is scared sometimes, or unsure, or even ashamed of himself doesn't mean he doesn't respect himself. But I guess it just depends on what kind of beast you're trying to build.
    And, more important, what kind of beast does Gid want to become? As miserable as running was, Gid knows he will do it every day. Yesterday, he looked at Nicholas and Cullen and felt nothing but hopeless envy. He still feels envy, but it is a distinctly hopeful envy. He is not powerless over his own hotness. He has a destiny. One of those girls on the quad will be a part of it. Skinny fat will not.
    Per Nicholas's instructions, Gideon is to do fifty push-ups —he can manage twenty, done naked on the cold tile—then shower for approximately seven minutes in a hot, hard spray and two minutes in a cold, soft one. During the hot part, he thinks about Madison and her perverted belt buckle and wide upper lip, like Julia Roberts. Gid imagines his body with large lats and biceps, and Madison lacing her fingers around them admiringly.
    I don't like Gid thinking of her. Because no matter how pretty I am, I could never be pretty exactly like her. And it makes me a little sad that he thinks she is the apex of what he could achieve in life. I don't think he even noticed how she had so much base on, and that the iPod on her dresser was pink. Any girl who buys a pink iPod is, well, the kind of girl who probably gets a lot of attention and doesn't care how gay she is.
    Afterward Gideon wraps his towel around his waist and stands in the window, letting the fresh air dry him off —he read (so did I!) that