Meena Meets Her Match

by Karla Manternach

  This is the spot, I imagine a voice saying. Right about here.

  I clamp my hands onto the top of my head. I don’t want to think about it.

  But it’s like a shadow lurking in the corner, no matter what I’m doing. It’s not solid and bright and real. It’s blurry like the X-ray picture. It’s foggy and see-through like the Magic Mist. But I always feel it there, even when I close my eyes.

  Especially then.

  I start heading back down the hall, but my chest is tight and I’m gasping for air like I’ve been sprinting. I only get halfway to the office before I have to stop and catch my breath.

  Our President Portraits are hanging there in the hall. I see President Meena holding the cake with rainbow sprinkles, colorful streaks in her hair, purple scribbles all over her face.

  I cover my eyes and lean against the wall.

  What is the matter with me?

  I wish I could ask Sofía. I wish I could ask why my arms jerk and why I scribble when I don’t mean to. I wish I could ask why she’d rather be perfect than be my friend. What’s the matter with me?

  I’d give anything to talk to the Sofía who drew and played and raced with me—the one I’d been friends with since kindergarten.

  But I don’t know her anymore.

  I open my eyes. This Sofía is standing with her hands on her hips, her lips pressed tightly together. “What did I ever do to you?” she asks.

  I can barely get enough air to answer. I should say, You stopped being my friend, but I don’t want to care, and I don’t want to cry.

  So instead I clench my jaw and say, “You beat me. You beat me at everything.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m not trying to beat you.”

  I know she isn’t. She doesn’t even have to try. And the truth is, it doesn’t matter if she has better handwriting or crazier hair or more colorful teeth than me. It doesn’t matter that her clip is always higher than mine.

  I just want her to be my friend.

  But that’s not what I say.

  “You’re supposed to have Ups and Downs,” I say, gripping the little papers. “We’re all supposed to. But you never have anything but Ups!”

  Her face freezes. “You don’t know what I have,” she whispers.

  “I know you never clip down,” I say. “You never get in trouble, and you never get any tumors in your brain—but there might be one in mine!”

  At first her face stays frozen. Then she blinks, and it starts to melt into something like surprise. “Meena—” she says. She takes a teeny step toward me.

  I jump back and the volcano inside me explodes. I feel hot lava flying around in my stomach and flooding my chest. I feel it shining out my eyes and streaming out the ends of my hair.

  Why shouldn’t Sofía have a Down for a change? I wish I could snap her pin off the clip chart or rip the feathers right off her flamingo. I want to do something that hurts her as much as she hurt me.

  But I can only think of one thing.

  “I’m not making you a valentine,” I say.

  She takes a step back, her eyes wide.

  “I’ll make one for everyone else, but I’m not making one for you.”

  “You have to,” she says. “It’s the rule.”

  “I don’t care. Mrs. D can clip me all the way down to Principal, and I still won’t make you one. And you know what else?” I lean right up to her. “My box will be the best one in the class. Even better than yours.”

  “It isn’t a contest,” she whispers.

  “Of course it’s a contest,” I yell, and stomp off down the hall.

  17

  The hurt keeps boiling inside me. All morning I wriggle in my seat, feeling the steam pouring out of my skin.

  The lava churns during spelling. Our words are full of letters that Shouldn’t Be There—words like wrong and doubt. I write and erase and write and erase so many times that my paper turns crumbly and gray.

  The heat is still there at recess. I don’t look for beautiful trash or play kickball or race. I jump rope by myself—up and down and up and down until I’m sweaty and panting. Even that doesn’t snuff it out.

  Then, in the afternoon, when Mrs. D starts our read-aloud book, I slump over my desk and feel my whole body throbbing, just like when I bang my elbow and that first zing of pain turns into a heartbeat instead.

  I try to think about my valentine box. I imagine how our igloo will look when it’s finished. I try to remember exactly how many stripes Raymond has in his fur. But I can’t get my mind to focus on anything. It’s like the worry is under my skin or ringing in my ears, and nothing I can think of is noisy enough to cover it up.

  It reminds me of how music couldn’t cover up the banging sounds in the MRI.

  All afternoon I can feel Sofía sitting across from me at her desk. Even though I don’t look at her. Not once, all day.

  After school I walk home way ahead of Mom and Rosie, like I’m Line Leader of my family.

  I get right to work on my box. I cut the trapdoor. I make wings with waxed paper. Then I take off the lid and look inside.

  I think about the paint in Pedro’s box and the pine needles in Eli’s and the velvety pillow in Sofía’s. I stare at the not-colorful, not-fragrant, not-pretty inside of my empty box for a long time, waiting for Inspiration.

  Only this time, the idea that finally comes to me doesn’t feel like the sun rising in my chest, or like bells ringing in my arms and legs.

  It feels like the hot lava that bubbled in my stomach all day cooling off and turning to rock.

  I take Raymond up to my workshop, dig around until I find what I need, and then leave him there so he can’t see what I do next.

  I head back to the kitchen dragging that old feather scarf I found in the trash. It’s stringy and crunchy and still smells like tuna. But I just start plucking.

  I grab fistfuls of pink and sprinkle them inside. I squeeze You-Must-Be-Crazy Glue in there and throw in more feathers. I pluck and squeeze and sprinkle until my box is so full, there isn’t even room for valentines. Then I glue a few more feathers sticking out of the egg carton. I put the lid on, sit back, and take a look.

  My box is grinning a mean grin. He’s full of feathers now. He even has pink bits of feathers stuck in his teeth.

  He looks like he just ate a flamingo.

  • • •

  I work on my valentines the rest of the afternoon. I don’t feel lovey or friendly, but I cut as neatly as I can anyway. I add loads of ribbon and glitter and tape a piece of chocolate to each one. I even spend extra time using my very best writing, which takes forever.

  Sofía will be sorry she isn’t getting one of these.

  Mom shines the counter while I work. She checks her phone. She stands by the refrigerator eating stalks of celery, one after another. They disappear into her mouth like pencils getting ground up in a sharpener. For a while she and Rosie play concentration at the other end of the table, but Rosie wins so many times that she gets bored and wanders off. Mom picks up the cards and shuffles and reshuffles them until her phone starts to ring. “Hello?” she shouts, grabbing for it. “Hello, I’m here!”

  Her face gets droopy.

  “Oh, hi.” She rubs her hand across her head. “No, not yet. I even tried calling her office.” Mom sags against the counter. “Just get something for the kids. I’m not hungry.”

  Dad’s carrying a pizza box when he gets home a little while later. He raises his eyebrows at Mom. She shakes her head, her mouth a straight line. “Maybe she’ll call after hours,” he says.

  “Or maybe she’ll make us wait another day.”

  Dad sets down the pizza and rubs Mom’s shoulders. She lets out a breath. Then they both turn and look at me.

  I stop clipping right at the point of a paper heart.

  They both have the same look on their face. They look just like Eli’s guinea pig when you lift him out of his cage, before he remembers that you’ve always been nice to him and there’s nothing to worry
about.

  They look like a guinea pig when he’s scared.

  The lava rock in my stomach turns to a sheet of ice.

  Nobody eats much at dinner. My stomach is too full of rocks. Mom’s must be full of celery, and Rosie stopped liking cheese again this week. But even Dad doesn’t eat more than a couple of bites. He just sits there flipping my purple marker over and across his fingers.

  Then the phone rings.

  Mom jumps. Dad lets go of the marker.

  And I don’t know why, but I lunge across the table and grab the phone.

  “Hello?” I say.

  There’s a pause. “Well, hello,” someone says. “Is this Meena? This is Dr. Suri.”

  I drop the phone.

  I knew the voice even before she said her name. I’ve heard it a hundred times. I hear it at night when I’m lying awake. I heard it today in the hall. This is the spot Right about here.

  I don’t want to know why my doctor is calling.

  “Hello?” Mom says, scooping up the phone. “Hello? Yes, I’m here!”

  I climb down from the table. I take a wobbly step backward, grab my valentine box, and run for the stairs.

  18

  I slam the door of my workshop.

  There must be something else I can do to this box.

  He’s so pretty on the outside. The way the light hits the candy wrappers, they look like the oil splotch in the driveway—like every color at once. But what about when you look inside?

  I open him up and see all those mean feathers, and my throat tightens. All the boxes at school today matched the people who made them.

  Does my box match me? What’s inside of me?

  Mean feathers? Angry lava? A tumor?

  Who cares if you’re covered in rainbows when you’re full of Things That Shouldn’t Be There?

  I have to fix this. I drop to my knees and start yanking out the feathers. Raymond is sitting on the floor, staring back at me. My eyes fill with tears, but I can still see the pink fluff that floats in the air and feel the prickly bits stuck to the bottom.

  I start scratching them out. The pointy parts get stuck under my nails, but I just keep at it. I wish I could scratch all the bad stuff out of everything—all the feathers and the lava and the tumors. I wish I could fix my body. My bracelet. Whatever broke between Sofía and me.

  But I can’t. All I can do is pull every last feather out of this box.

  There might be a tumor inside me, but my box won’t be full of another single thing that’s mean or ugly. And neither will I.

  I sit back on my heels and remember Sofía’s flamingo box. I think about the million, billion Ups she’s had since she stopped being my friend. I imagine her clip, sitting at the top of the chart, and jealous lava starts to bubble again.

  But the truth is, I don’t want Sofía’s Ups.

  I want my own.

  I close my eyes and remember racing with Dad. I think about breathing with Mom and cuddling with Rosie. I imagine looking through the wood chips with Eli.

  I want the Ups I already have, I realize—the ones I’ve barely noticed since this whole thing started.

  I wipe my eyes on the back of my arm and look inside my box. It’s not perfect in there. It never will be.

  But I can make it beautiful. I can fill my box with the most wonderful things in the world. Because that’s what I do. That’s what I’m good at.

  I make beautiful things from trash. I take beat-up, worn-out, used-up things, and I give them a second chance. I make them better and more colorful than they were before.

  That’s when I’m At My Best.

  I start grabbing bottle caps and Easter grass and lids from dried-up markers. I start shoving in wads of tinfoil and bits of blue glass with the edges worn down and a ball of the red wax you take off cheese. I dump in all the beads I pulled out of the mud and the plastic wing Pedro twisted off his drink bottle.

  I need them all.

  I want to stay here forever with my trash. I’d fill up on every color in the world and be ready for whatever comes next. I wish I could just work on my box, and that this time would go on and on—before I find out about the something in my brain. And before any other scary thing can happen, I get up, go to my window, and breathe on it until my own Magic Mist appears. Then I swipe my finger across the glass to make an arc, and then another, and another.

  I stare at my see-through rainbow and hold the word please in my heart.

  The fog disappears, the picture dries into colorless streaks, and Dad is shouting up the stairs at me.

  “Meena Zee!” he says. “Come down here.”

  • • •

  Mom and Dad are waiting for me.

  “We have some news,” Mom says when I’m halfway down the stairs.

  They’re holding out their arms to me. But I can’t tell if this is going to be a good-news hug or a we’re-so-sorry hug, so I squeeze Raymond instead and walk right past them. Rosie is on the floor of the living room with Pink Pony, coloring.

  “Not yet,” I say, my heart beating faster. “It’s story time.” I flop down onto the couch. “Come on. Someone has to tell a story.”

  Rosie does a little cheer and hops up from the floor. Mom and Dad look at each other then back at me. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” Dad asks.

  I cross my arms. “That’s what I want,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

  He nods. “Okay, deal.”

  They come over and sit on either side of me. Rosie squishes in too. We’re one big pile of family now, everyone sitting on everyone else.

  Whatever is going to happen next, I want it to happen here.

  “Rosie, why don’t you get us started?” Dad asks.

  Rosie smiles and nuzzles against Mom’s shoulder. “Once upon a time,” she says.

  Dad looks right at me.

  I shut my eyes. My body starts to shake, but I take a deep breath, nestle down, and wait. I want to hear the story. Nothing else. Just this. Only this.

  He clears his throat. “Once upon a time,” he says, “there was a little girl who made big messes.”

  Someone ruffles my hair.

  “She made such big messes,” Dad says, “that her parents had to make weird rules, like ‘no bringing home trash from the neighbors.’ And ‘no coloring people’s hair with marker.’ ”

  “That’s just like Meena!” Rosie says.

  “Is it?” Dad asks.

  “But she’s not little. She’s a big girl.”

  “That’s true,” Dad says. “She is a big girl.”

  Someone gives me a squeeze. It might be everyone.

  The shaking moves up into my throat. My teeth start to chatter.

  “One day,” Dad says, “some doctors had to look to see if there were any messes inside that big girl. They used special machines to see inside. Fancy machines. Machines that made her very scared. And what do you think they saw?”

  “What?” says Rosie.

  Lava, I think. Ripped feathers. A tumor.

  “Did they see the penny she swallowed when she was a baby?” asks Dad.

  “No,” Rosie says.

  “Did they see the peas she stuck up her nose when she was a toddler?” Dad asks.

  “No,” giggles Rosie.

  “Did they see a shadowy spot inside her head?” Dad asks.

  Rosie is quiet. Then in a tiny voice she asks, “Did they?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  I blink and look at Rosie. She’s looking back at me with crinkly eyebrows. I swallow.

  Then I take her hand and rest it on top of my head. I put my hand on top of hers. “This is the spot,” I say. “Right about here.”

  Rosie eyes go wide.

  Mom rests her hand on top of mine. Dad puts his hand on top of Mom’s.

  Nobody says anything. It’s like they’re all making a silent wish on me.

  I make one too.

  Then one by one we all take our hands away.

  “But as for that shadowy
spot in the girl’s head,” Dad says. He waits until we all look at him again. “It turned out to be nothing at all.”

  For a few seconds I’m so scared of what he’s saying that my mind tries to shoo the words away like pigeons, until they slip through and land anyway, and I hear them.

  Nothing at all.

  I blink. “Really?”

  Rosie starts to bounce. Dad is smiling a watery-eyed smile. “Really,” he says.

  “The thing in my head . . . ,” I say it very slowly, wanting to be sure. “It isn’t anything?”

  “It’s a bump,” Mom says, wiping her eyes. She’s smiling too. “Lots of people have one. It’s just the normal shape of your skull. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  I stare at them. Rosie jumps off the couch and skips around the coffee table, dragging Pink Pony by the mane. The rock in my stomach cracks down the middle. Little bits of it loosen and break away.

  I should be jumping for joy or skipping like Rosie. I should feel like I do on my birthday, when I’ve waited and waited and then I wake up and it’s finally here.

  But I don’t.

  “Then why did I have a seizure?” I ask. “Why do my arms jerk in the morning, and why did Sofía say I space out sometimes like I’m not even there?”

  “She said that?” Mom asks.

  I nod.

  She and Dad look at each other. Then Mom sighs and brushes the hair away from my forehead. “We don’t know, honey,” she says. “But I’ll tell you what the doctor thinks.” She takes hold of my hands. “She thinks you have epilepsy.”

  My stomach starts to tighten again. “Is that a thing in my head?”

  “No,” Mom says firmly. “It’s not like a tumor.”

  “It’s more like the kind of brain you have,” Dad says. “It just works differently from other people’s.” He grins. “But we knew that already, right?”

  “Does that mean I’ll have more seizures?” I ask.

  Rosie stops skipping and listens.

  “Maybe,” Mom says, looking at both of us. “Dr. Suri wants us to do another test to see if that’s likely. But if you do, we can manage it. You might end up needing to take medicine to prevent seizures. And you’ll just have to be careful about certain activities.”