Poisoned Apples Read online

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  Advance Reader’s e-proof

  courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers

  This is an advance reader’s e-proof made from digital files of the uncorrected proofs. Readers are reminded that changes may be made prior to publication, including to the type, design, layout, or content, that are not reflected in this e-proof, and that this e-pub may not reflect the final edition. Any material to be quoted or excerpted in a review should be checked against the final published edition. Dates, prices, and manufacturing details are subject to change or cancellation without notice.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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  Dedication

  [dedication tk]

  Contents

  Cover

  Disclaimer

  Title

  Dedication

  The Woods

  The Never-ending Story

  The Wicked Queen’s Legacy

  Abercrombie Dressing Room

  Sleeping Beauty’s Wedding Day

  Photoshopped Poem

  Prince Charming

  A Brief History of Feminism

  Suburban Legends

  The First Anorexic

  A SHAPE MAGAZINE Fairy Tale

  Retelling

  BFF

  Blow Your House In

  “Mannequins Make Me Feel Like a Failure.” —Claudia, age 13

  If Tampons Were for Guys

  The Giant’s Daughter at Spring Formal

  The Anorexic Eats a Salad

  A Witch’s Disenchantment

  “Sweet Nothings”

  Weight Watchers

  To My Sheep, Wherever You Are

  First Semester Haiku

  Vindictive Punctuation

  The Elves and the Anorexic

  Runaway

  You Go, Girl!

  Thumbelina’s Get-Tiny Cleanse—Tested

  The Little Mermaid

  Health Class

  Ugly Stepsister

  Transformation

  Boy Toy Villanelle

  Rapunzel

  Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board

  Nature Lesson

  Red-handed

  Finders, Keepers

  Gingerbread

  What She Heard the Waitress Say

  Going Under

  Life Among the Swans

  Big Bad Spa Treatment

  Human Centipede Two

  Spotless

  The Beast

  Bird Girl

  Assassin

  View from the Balcony

  Pink Champagne

  Acknowledgements

  Index of First Lines

  Index of Photographs

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

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  POISONED

  APPLES

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  The Woods

  The action’s always there.

  Where are the fairy tales about gym class

  or the doctor’s office or the back of the bus

  where bad things also happen?

  Pigs can buy cheap building materials

  just as easily in the suburbs.

  Wolves stage invasions. Girls spit out

  cereal, break chairs, and curl beneath

  covers like pill bugs or selfish grannies

  avoiding the mess.

  No need for a bunch of trees.

  You can lose your way anywhere.

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  The Never-ending Story

  Once there was a girl who wore her bones outside of her body.

  Once there was a girl who thought bones looked nice.

  Once there was a girl who had limbs as blue as razors.

  Once there was a girl who sat by a pool in August

  wrapped in a quilt.

  Once there was a girl who even after she became a beast,

  soft fur blanketing her cheeks, belly, and back,

  still shaved her legs.

  Once there was a girl who peeled grapes, who picked at salads,

  who piled leaves on top of the cheese.

  Once there was a girl who dared not swallow anything but air,

  so she hid her saliva in plastic bags beneath her bed.

  Once there was a girl who wrote “BLOATED WHALE”

  inside the pocket of her skinny jeans.

  Once there was a girl whose little sister pretended

  all the dollies had feeding tubes.

  Once there was a girl whose father held her tight

  to stop her from doing crunches.

  Once there was a girl whose mother’s dreams

  all became nightmares.

  Once there was a girl who longed to be brave

  enough to stick her finger down her throat,

  to measure herself by the teaspoon,

  to shrink to the size of a serving.

  Once there was a girl who lay still for the doctor.

  Once there was a girl whose favorite nurse called her Sugar.

  Once there was a girl whose heart burrowed deep in the hollow of her chest

  and went to sleep.

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  The Wicked Queen’s Legacy

  It used to be just the one,

  but now all mirrors chatter.

  In fact, every reflective surface has opinions

  on the shape of my nose, the size

  of my chest, the hair I wash and brush

  until it’s so shiny I can see myself

  scribbling notes as each strand

  recommends improvements.

  I make sure to write them all down

  when all I really want is to stop

  at the market and flirt with the butcher,

  ignoring his critical knives,

  haggling, for once, over the cost of

  some other poor creature’s thighs.

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  Abercrombie

  Dressing Room

  Now you believe the rumor

  that they spray the clothes with perfume

  every few hours because,

  within these hothouse walls,

  everything stinks—

  the drooping skirts,

  the wilted jeans,

  the fading dresses losing petals,

  tank tops fighting for air,

  barely

  hanging

  on,

  all so alive until


  you picked them.

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  Sleeping Beauty’s

  Wedding Day

  After the kiss and the trip to the castle comes the

  showering, shaving, shampooing, conditioning, detangling, trimming,

  moussing, blow-drying, brushing, curling, de-frizzing, extending, texturizing,

  waxing, exfoliating, moisturizing, tanning, medicating, plucking, concealing, smoothing,

  bronzing, lash lengthening, plumping, polishing, glossing, deodorizing, perfuming,

  reducing, cinching, controlling, padding, accessorizing, visualizing, meditating,

  powdering, primping, luminizing, correcting, re-curling, re-glossing, and spraying.

  No wonder that hundred-year nap

  just doesn’t seem long enough.

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  Photoshopped Poem

  Some say the Before poem

  had character.

  This poem is much more attractive.

  With the Healing Brush Tool

  I took out most of the lines.

  I left in a few

  so it wouldn’t look unnatural.

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  Prince Charming

  First thing through the door, Jed compliments

  Mom’s new haircut.

  He listens to Dad go off.

  “Guess we’ll have to wait for baseball, Jed,

  to win back Husky pride.”

  He brings state quarters for my sister’s

  lame collection. She shrieks like they are

  diamonds.

  Finally he guides me down

  the slippery driveway to his car,

  engine running, heat on high

  so I won’t be cold. He says, “Girl,

  you look amazing. That sweater

  makes your boobs look

  way bigger.”

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  A Brief History

  of Feminism

  Simon says touch your toes.

  Simon says turn around.

  Simon says touch your toes again.

  Now wiggle a little.

  Simon says he is not a pervert.

  Simon says hop on one foot.

  Simon didn’t say stop hopping!

  Hop closer.

  Simon says hop closer.

  Simon says is that a push-up bra?

  Geez, honey, calm down.

  Simon says calm down.

  On second thought,

  Simon says you’re pretty cute

  when you’re all worked up like that.

  Wanna hop your sweet self into my office

  and see my sofa bed?

  Simon says, we were just playing, Officer.

  Simon, anything you say

  can be used against you in a court of law.

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  Suburban Legends

  Even though we don’t really believe

  all the crap about pale men and women,

  their mouths wide as nightmares, lurching out

  from the sinister trees, a trip to look for

  the albino farm is as good an excuse as any

  to get in that car and continue the story

  of Terri, who draws on eyeliner with red pen,

  and Karen deliberately spilling her vodka and Sprite

  so she can take off her shirt and wave it out the car window,

  and me, stuck once again with the ugliest guy,

  the one with the half-assed mustache and tragic skin.

  Speeding away from Westroads Mall and the PG movie

  we will never see, we own this Omaha night.

  Terri passes a joint with the driver.

  Karen screams when the wind or cold

  hands hit her bra, and I pretend nothing

  is worming beneath my miniskirt,

  while, not far off, a phosphorescent boy

  blinks pinkly across a bonfire and says,

  “Are those people for real?”

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  The First Anorexic

  Even the bruises she loves,

  those bites when her mouth,

  expecting resistance, sinks to the core

  where the hissing begins tempting her

  to scrape the flesh from every ruddy strip.

  She hurries to swallow

  the seeds, the stem, the clinging leaves.

  Now Eve can see beyond the garden.

  Now she knows there is nothing but hunger.

  Each meal will be a new sweet punishment.

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  A SHAPE MAGAZINE

  Fairy Tale

  Once upon a time there was a girl who

  had a good hair week! Seven cute looks

  she could do at home, and their names were

  Waves, Bob, Bun, Bangs, Braid, Sleek, and

  Party-Ready Ponytail.

  One day, while out walking in the woods

  at a steady pace with short bursts of speed,

  the girl met a wolf and told him, What big

  smudge-free lashes you have!

  The wolf said, The better to see you

  fix common makeup blunders; erase

  years in minutes! So the girl skipped

  the loose powder, stuck to pastels, and

  dabbed her lips with Spun Sugar

  Plumping Gloss ($18), so delicious that

  the wolf ate her up. The woodsman

  rode by—torching three hundred calories

  in just thirty minutes!—lifted his axe,

  and shouted, Adios, belly flab!

  It was a quick-and-easy workout.

  The girl sprang from the wolf’s

  killer middle to snag fall’s hottest

  shoes and bags, and they all lived

  happily

  ever

  ab-tastic.

  Art TK

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  Retelling

  What the miller’s daughter should have said

  from the start

  or at any point down the line is,

  no.

  No, you can’t drag me to the king.

  No, I can’t spin that room full of straw into gold.

  No, not that room, either.

  Or that one.

  Quit asking.

  No, I won’t give you my necklace.

  No, I won’t give you my ring.

  No, I can’t give you the child;

  the child will never exist.

  End of story.

  Once upon a time

  there was a miller’s daughter

  who got a studio apartment,

  took classes during the day,

  waited tables at night,

  and when customers asked

  what’s in the gravy

  on the rump roast sandwich,

  it’s the best thing they’ve ever

  tasted, she winked and said,
>
  Guess.

  Art TK

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  BFF

  Jill doesn’t want me to feel bad.

  Jill says Dylan isn’t good enough for me.

  Jill would let me borrow her green skirt,

  but it’s new, and I might stretch it out.

  Jill is glad her parents don’t force her

  to buy hot lunch.

  Jill knows a superchic way to do my hair

  so it will hide my ginormous forehead.

  Jill can teach me how to do my mascara

  so my eyes look less squinty.

  Jill can’t help it if Dylan asked her to the movie.

  Jill won’t tell anyone

  besides Dylan

  about that time I peed my pants at Target.

  Jill wishes I had made cheerleading, too,

  but aren’t her pom-poms cute?

  Jill is soooooo glad we’re BFFs because,

  Like, who else could put up with you?

  LOL!

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  Blow Your House In

  She used to be a house of bricks,

  point guard on the JV team, walling out

  defenders who could only huff and puff

  and watch the layups roll in.

  She traded for a house of sticks,

  kindling in Converse high-tops and a red Adidas tent.

  At lunch she swirled a teeny spoon in yogurt

  that never touched her lips and said

  she’d decided to quit chasing a stupid ball.