When Ben became obsessed with the middle, I thought he was talking about his weight. He said it was a hole, right there in the middle. In the middle, he emphasized in a voice that was a little too excitable for what I needed in my life at the moment.
It had been a week of texting about the middle this and the middle that. Whenever I tried to clarify by asking “The middle of what?” Ben would say “Exactly” or “You’re asking the wrong question” or “How do you define a middle without ends?” Eventually I just stopped responding. Ben’s texts grew more frantic and, frankly, unhinged, but I wouldn’t give. My parents had taught me well by ignoring my calls for help with something I could easily do myself.
But then Ben was at my door, a hole in his middle.
“See?” he asked, his tone simultaneously aggressive and desperate. “Do you see what I mean?”
“Obviously,” I told him, but I couldn’t see it. You can’t see nothing. You can’t prove a negative, and that’s all that was left in Ben’s stomach: a middle that wasn’t there.
“It’s going around,” he said. “I didn’t think I would get it. I didn’t think I could get it. I thought I was immune.”
“Why would you be immune?” I asked, thinking to myself that you can’t be immune to something that doesn’t exist. Saying that aloud wouldn’t help, and I wanted to be a supportive friend. We’d never dated, but there was always the possibility, as I firmly believe in never burning bridges, never cutting things off prematurely, and always leaving possibilities open. Possibilities like Ben’s missing middle.
Across the street, I noticed some people collecting in a little knot, staring over at us. I could see them pointing at Ben. I could see them pointing at Ben through his missing middle.
“Come on in,” I told Ben, reaching out to grab him by the shoulder but pulling back at the last second. What if he was right? What if he was infectious? If it was airborne, then it was probably too late already, but at least I could keep neighborhood gossip at bay. “Have you tried eating?”
“Have I tried eating?”
“To fill the emptiness.”
“Look at me,” Ben said. “Look at it.”
I tried to, I really did. Ben’s middle was missing a great big chunk of itself, but it was more of a vacancy than a hole. A hole has defined edges. That’s what defines a hole. The idea you can walk up to the edge of it and run your fingers along that edge, imagining what it would be like to fall inside it. What was missing from Ben, though, didn’t have an edge. What was missing was like a blind spot or a blur. I’d attempt to focus on it but, of course, there was nothing to focus on. I just saw the wall beyond. When I tried to find the edge of it, that edge moved, so that all of Ben’s middle was missing when I looked for it—when I reached the edge of his body, the missing bit of him snapped back into the center. If I just looked him in the eyes, it seemed only a small part of him was gone. I was almost convinced that all of Ben was missing, that if I tried to track the vacancy up his body instead of to either side, I’d find emptiness all the way up until I was staring into a hole where Ben’s face should be, a fringe of hair dancing around a void like scraggles of seaweed in a lazy current.
“Is it getting worse?” Ben asked, voice fragile—no, hollow—no, empty, like the sound of him speaking was just the echo of an echo. His pupils were too large or they weren’t pupils at all, just holes that shouldn’t be where the holes we look through should be. My stomach began to roil and twist, bringing on that anti-gravity feeling like I was at the top of a roller coaster’s hill, just about to drop.
“No, it’s fine. You’re fine. Why don’t you sit? Let me get you some coffee.”
From the safety of the kitchen, I peered out at Ben. Was he getting worse? Was he becoming less? Or was he swelling into more?
Coffee wouldn’t help. Neither would a slice of cake. I checked my phone and found pundits claiming it was the beginning of the end while others argued it was the end of the beginning. What was it they were all so obsessed with? The middle. Or the lack of it. Local news showed a picture of the sun that was incomplete, the middle of it hard to focus on. Was it my eyes or the photo? Was it the sun or our perception of it? None of the scientists quoted in the articles had any answers, but they were certain it was going to get worse.
I brought the coffee and cake to Ben, and he drank the coffee and ate the cake, and I tried not to stare at where his stomach should be to see if anything fell through. Nothing did, but I noticed that the couch behind him—no, through him—was clean of cat hair, the fabric brighter as if steam-cleaned.
“Is something wrong?” Ben asked, alarmed. He stood up and tried to see his missing self, but couldn’t get the angle right. “Can you see?”
I nodded and, despite my initial fear, stuck my hand into where Ben should be. No resistance. No change in temperature. But that hand felt better. I leaned into Ben, my head passing through, then my torso, and finally my legs as I tumbled to the carpet. I felt great. The air smelled sweet as the breath of a lover. I turned to tell Ben, but he was gone, and in his place was another.
