chapter 1

Once the doorbell rang, my father amiably walked towards the door, and opened it. He tipped the delivery man and took the pizza boxes from his hands, shutting the door gently behind him. He set the boxes haphazardly on the coffee table, the area of the house Mom would never permit us to eat at. Mom was off in her room, probably crocheting or reading up on tabloids, while Dad and I were down here feasting on the pizza we ordered. We would spend most of our days like this together, watching TV, eating as much food as we wanted to, and chatting up about our days (I would talk about school, and he would talk about work and all the morons he had to deal with daily).
"Alright," Dad said, "Dig in, son."
"Don't have to tell me twice," I said. And manically, I began eating two slices at once, much to my father's alarment.
"'Till this day, I don't understand you. How can you eat like that and still be so thin?" He the grabbed a handful of his belly fat and began shaking it gently. "Meanwhile, here I am, with a gut like this."
"I dunno, maybe, cause you're getting old?" I said in an excessively snarky tone.
All Dad did was laugh at that. I wasn't wrong, and he knew I was only teasing.

Everything changed the day I got accepted to university. It was a pretty remarkable institution, with notable alumni, advanced courses, stellar internship positions, and so on. It's like it had it all! But it meant that I would have to leave home and be separated with my family for four years. This was obviously too much for the both of them to handle, especially Mom, since she tends to let her emotions get the best of her; Dad pretended he was fine, but I'd sometimes catch a slight tear roll down his cheek when he thought no one was looking.
I remember it just like any other day. Again, Dad and I were eating pizza without my mother's knowledge, when I suddenly got an email from the University of Michigan stating that my portal has been updated. I got in, much to my surprise! We called Mom down and the three of us all burst into excitement; we yelled, roared, and cried with jubilance. Mom didn't even care about the fact that the two of us were eating on the coffee table. In fact, it seemed that the she forgotten about that rule entirely.
From that point on, I was allowed to do most of the things she restricted both Dad and I from doing: eating on the coffee table, being able to eat snacks and junk food regularly, staying up late watching TV, and so much more. Granted, I obviously did all of this when she didn't notice, but now I didn't need to hide any of it. In fact, it seemed like she was encouraging all this behavior. When I'd get home from school, I'd find all sorts of delicious food awaiting me, like buckets of fried chicken, boxes of doughnuts, burgers, hot dogs, sometimes even cakes and eclairs, fries, pizzas, cupcakes from the local bakery, and much much more delicious foods. The first time this happened was the day after I was accepted to U Michigan. I came home from an amazing day at school, where I found out if my other friends were fortunate enough to get accepted into other universities or not. Right there on the coffee table was my favorite meal -- a burger with a side of fries (I know it's simple, but it's still my favorite), but there was four of them, instead of two there (which was my usual order) with a gargantuan side of fries.
"Mom, who's all this for?" I asked all the way from the hallway. I raised my voice so she could hear me.
"What do you mean?" I heard her voice from the kitchen.
"All this food. Who's it for?"
"You, sweetie!"
"Me? All of it? What are you-"
She finally showed herself in the living room and had an elated smile across her face. "Look, sweetie. If you don't wanna finish it all, it's totally fine. Your father or I will have the rest. But, you always spend your time at the gym, working out, or at your friends' houses playing sports with them and such. You already eat two burgers cause of it on average, so I thought I'd double your normal order!" And with that, she quickly left the room.
I decided not to question it because all I could think of was how awesome it'd be to eat all that food. And even though, I assured my mother that there was no way, I could finish all four of them, I easily did. And the fries were no daunting task either. After I wrapped up my feast in the living room, I headed toward my room, to do some homework before leaving the house to play some basketball with friends. I was completely stuffed.
When I opened the door to my room, I found a box of a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts with a sticky note attached to the top of the lid. The note said,
"For desert!
- Mom :)"
You'd best believe I had one of those before starting my homework, and another that I ate on the way to my friend's house.