by Susan Haas
I gasped. Did that just happen? After six long months, did my third gift appear to me on the toilet? Well played, humor. Well played. What else could rear up and knock me over—literally—as if to say, “Pay attention!”
I don’t remember anything else about class that day. My head was filled with thoughts of gifts. My gifts. Finally.
Three down, two to go. And then my body will be here.
At home, Mom put me in my wheelchair so she could move me around easily while she cleaned. Tucker carried all the books from the kitchen table to the den. Mom and Hannah took down the good dishes—the Thanksgiving dishes—and washed them.
I watched without really paying attention.
I was happy to have finally discovered a gift, but where was the relief? I had expected it to wash over me like a good hard rain, flooding out all my doubts and fears. But to be totally honest, coming one step closer to my goal made my stomach a little queasy. I couldn’t tell if it was because of excitement or worry.
Mom’s cell buzzed from the kitchen table. She was smiling as she set out the plates, but when she glanced down her face went cold. She stared at the phone like it was a rattlesnake. Her hand inched toward it, then pulled back to her chest. All at once she snatched the phone from the table.
“Hello, Lou. Yes, yes … it has been a long time since we last talked.”
CHAPTER 22
Age 13, 14 hours until surgery
“Hi, Haas family!” the receptionist at the Ronald McDonald House greets us. “How’s your day been so far?”
“Long!” says Mom, “but I think those brownies might help.”
We follow our noses to the kitchen, and Dad serves three brownies onto napkins.
There are two other families in the dining room.
Katy, pale and thin, picks at her brownie as her mom tells her to eat. Her sleek bald head is different from the one I’ll be rocking tomorrow. I pump my arm, and she waves back, shyly.
A boy with a chocolate-covered face runs over to greet us.
“Hi, Eddie,” Mom says. “How was dialysis today?”
“Good,” says Eddie.
He plops onto the floor next to Gus and throws his arms around his neck. Gus licks the chocolate from Eddie’s face and nuzzles his ear. I laugh.
Technically, as a service dog, Gus shouldn’t be doing this, but in this house Mom and Dad don’t enforce the rules.
I stare at the brownies while my parents chat with Eddie’s mom.
Dad’s phone pings in his pocket—a Facebook message ping.
I squirm—please! It has to be—but Dad doesn’t make a move. I drink in deep gulps of air. Dad turns toward me, gives me his don’t-even-think-about-it look, and returns to the conversation.
I hold in the belch as long as I can. When I’m about to explode, I let it out in a series of small burps that I hope Dad won’t hear. Eddie does, though, so I have some fun making him laugh. Finally, Eddie and his mom head back upstairs.
Mom feeds me my brownie, but Dad waits an unnecessarily long time before fishing his phone from his pocket.
When he does, he makes a point of checking his email first. Finally, he looks up and says. “I suppose you want to hear your message.”
I’m too tired to answer, so I stick out my tongue.
Dad touches the screen then reads, “Leslie from Long Island says, ‘This surgery sounds painful. How will you handle that?’”
Mom and Dad exchange looks, and before they say a word, I know, I know they aren’t going to read me any more messages. My messages.
I screech, and my arm goes wild. Gus jumps up and tries to quiet me. He licks my face.
Mom pulls out my cookie sheet, and I don’t even care that we’re in public. I write: I am 13.
I can’t manage more but it’s okay. They know the rest. I can fight my own battles.
Upstairs, Mom positions my chair in front of the TV and flips through channels, but I’m not watching. I’m thinking about Long Island Leslie.
I want to tell her that brains don’t have pain receptors, so you can poke around inside all you want without it hurting. But that would be a half truth. The other part, where they connect the leads in my brain to the battery in my stomach, hurts like a beast. First surgery, the pain took me by surprise. This time, I’m prepared.
Morphine works great if I don’t wait too long to ask, but if the pain really cranks up, nothing helps. I need to break up the two-person fistfight before it turns into a citywide brawl. My family helped me work out a plan for how I can tell them when I need more pain meds. One hand squeeze means I need a pump of morphine, two squeezes means two pumps, and three means Bring. It. On.
I can’t tell Long Island Leslie all that, and I even if I could, I wouldn’t. I decide just to leave it right there.
Some cooking show I used to like last year is on TV. Geez. Do these people know me at all?
I focus instead on the banner strung over my window. Letters cut from construction paper are strung together like a Christmas garland. It says, We Love You Lexi.
Anna and Elle made it. They gave it to me at my hat party. I bet it took forever to cut out each one of those letters. I picture them fighting over what size and color they should be. That makes me laugh, then I sigh.
Why haven’t you written me yet? You promised.
Gus pads over and drops a ball in my lap.
“I think he’s trying to tell you something,” Dad says. “Should we take him out to play for a few?”
I stick out my tongue. Right now, a distraction sounds great.
Deep breath in. My story. Breath out.
CHAPTER 23
Age 5, The Year of the Buttered Cat
Mom sunk into a chair at the kitchen table, her phone still to her ear.
I leaned hard toward her hoping to hear Lou’s voice. I hoped it would be deep and confident. Like Superman. I pictured Lou standing on top of a building, his cape blowing behind him, and his cell tucked under his chin.
As it turned out, Mom was holding the phone so close I couldn’t hear anything at all. At first, she didn’t do any talking. She just sat there nodding.
Finally, she took in a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll pass that on to Ken. But don’t forget, Lou. The clock is ticking. We’re nearly halfway to her deadline.”
She shook her head and tossed her phone on the table. I stared in disbelief.
Her deadline?
My search didn’t have a deadline. Did it? I thought back to the teenagers at Mitey Riders—still waiting for their bodies after all these years.
Did they miss the deadline for finding their gifts?
I tried to push that out of my mind. That’s not what Mom and Lou were talking about. There was no deadline, no ticking clock for finding my gifts and getting my body. Obviously.
I repeated my gift count. Three down, two to go. And then my body will be here. But this time, something else jumped in behind that, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make it go away: Tick. Tick. Tick.
When the Trejos arrived at six, I was still in my chair. Anna and Elle stole me from the kitchen and rolled me into my room. I watched them stage lightsaber duels with my Star Wars action figures and flip through my Marvel comics. Only my family had ever been in my room before. Touched my stuff.
I knew this was gonna be weird.
“You like superheroes?” Elle finally asked, admiring the Spider-Man, Thor, and Hulk posters hanging over my bed.
Tongue out.
“Me too.”
“Not me,” said Anna. “I like wizards.”
“Yeah, but Mom won’t let us read Harry Potter books yet,” Elle said with a sigh.
I uncurled my finger and pointed to the stack of Harry Potter books by my bed.
“Wow, Lexi! You’re so lucky!”
I smiled.
They dumped all seven books on my bed then stood back like they were admiring their Halloween candy loot.
Anna picked up The Chamber of Secrets and ran her hand
over the cover. Then she saw The Prisoner of Azkaban and grabbed that instead.
Elle had picked up The Sorcerer’s Stone and was curled on my bed, happily devouring the first pages.
Anna gasped. “Mom said you can’t read it till you’re ten! I’m telling!”
Elle sighed. She closed the book and held it tight to her chest. “Which is your favorite, Lexi?”
I pointed to The Prisoner of Azkaban, which Anna was cradling like a new baby.
“What’s that he’s riding?” Anna asked, pointing to the cover.
I pointed to a poster by my desk.
“Magical Beasts,” Elle read. She scanned it and said, “Oh! It’s a hippo … a hippogrr—eyeff?”
Ggguuhhh.
“Hippogrief?” guessed Anna.
HippoGRIFF! It’s a hippoGRIFF! If only I could tell them!
“Girls, dinner!” Mom called, and they rolled me into the kitchen.
As we ate, Mom told the whole Silent Pee story, which was sort of embarrassing, but I was proud that everyone knew about my third gift.
“Lexi finds humor in everything,” Kali said.
“She’s definitely her father’s child,” agreed Mom. “Tucker, eat your spinach.”
Dad picked up my hand and high-fived me.
“Maybe you’ll have a career in comedy,” Ms. Trejo pointed out.
“Yeah!” Kasey agreed. “You could write for SNL.”
“What’s SNL?” asked Anna.
“A show you aren’t allowed to watch yet,” Ms. Trejo said.
Elle was right. I was lucky. I had free access to both Harry Potter and SNL.
“But who would push her chair at work?” Hannah asked.
“She’ll have an assistant for stuff like that,” Kali said. “Or maybe she’ll have a motorized chair she can drive herself. Please pass the chicken.”
Motorized chair? Assistant? When did everyone decide I’ll need THOSE? Please! My gifts! Talk about my gifts!
Didn’t they understand? My gifts were a sign that my body was on its way. Two more and it would be here! But Ms. Trejo and my parents were talking about wheelchairs and colleges. No one noticed my flailing arm.
I tried to escape into a fantasy—somewhere, anywhere—but for the first time ever, it didn’t work. No superheroes came to my rescue.
I felt like I had stepped into quicksand. The more I flailed, the deeper I sunk.
“And how about those arms? Who’s gonna hold those down for her?” Tucker said. “Throw me the ketchup.”
“Pass Tucker the ketchup,” Mom said.
I flailed harder.
Stop it! This is stupid! YOU’RE stupid. You don’t get it. Maybe it IS taking longer than I thought, but I’m figuring out my gifts. Two more and my body will be here. Two. More.
The tick, tick, tick grew louder. My arm hit Kasey’s fork, sending it sailing across the kitchen. The table went quiet, and everyone stared at me. I glared back.
“What’s wrong?” Kali asked.
Anna and Elle looked into their napkins, and for a hot second, I was ashamed.
Tucker shrugged and said, “Maybe she wants to work someplace else. Maybe she wants to work at Cartoon Network.”
I arched hard and screeched.
“Okay, okay, no Cartoon Network,” said Kasey. “I’m sure your wheelchair can go any place you want. There’s rules about that, you know.”
No! Mom! Dad! Tell them about me catching up! Tell them my body is coming in, and I’ll catch up.
Mom rubbed her temples, and I knew my message was getting through.
Mom! Please. Tell them.
Right at that moment, The Cat bounded into the kitchen with Luke hot on his heels. They looped the kitchen island. Luke barked and growled. The Cat hissed and yowled. Finally, The Cat took a ginormous leap and landed on the table, smack in the middle of the mashed potatoes. Luke jumped up, his front paws on the table, and barked.
Anna and Elle leaned back and stared, wide-eyed, until Ms. Trejo said, “And this is why we only have a bunny.”
Everyone laughed except for Dad. He threw his napkin on the table and plucked The Cat from the potato dish. “I am fed up with you two arguing like an old married couple.”
He tossed The Cat onto the back porch. Luke ran out behind him.
“You two can stay out here until you learn to get along!”
“I think they already have,” Kali said, under her breath.
Through the window I could see The Cat curled on his back and Luke hunched over him, licking potatoes from his paws.
“Please pass the potatoes,” said Tucker.
“Gross,” said Hannah.
After that, dinner continued as if nothing unusual had happened. Luke smooshed his nose against the window and looked so sad, we all felt sorry for him—except Dad. He would look out at him every so often and shake his finger.
As our guests got ready to leave, Ms. Trejo said, “Maybe the girls could come over to work on homework once a week. The National French Exam is coming up soon. They could study for it together.”
“That sounds like … like fun,” said Mom, but I could tell she and I were on the same page.
Once was fine—I mean we survived it and all—but every week? Besides, I had work to do. I still had two more gifts that had to be found. Fast!
“Well, Mondays the girls have Bible study and Tuesday is French,” said Ms. Trejo. “How’s Wednesday afternoon? We could start tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” said Mom. “I think we have something then.”
“Whadaya mean?” said Tucker. “We never have anything on Wednesdays. It’s the number one boringest day of the week.”
“Then tomorrow works?” Ms. Trejo asked.
Mom smiled. “Tomorrow is fine.”
“Oh, I forgot something,” Anna said. She ran over to me and whispered, “This is for you, Lexi.”
She pressed a small rock into my hand and curled my fingers around it. I couldn’t see it, but as I studied it with my fingers, I decided it felt gray—like an ordinary old rock. It had rough edges that smooshed into my palm.
Mom stood at the door and waved. Luke sneaked in with his tail between his legs. The Cat pranced in behind him like he owned the place.
That night as Dad put me to bed, he uncurled my fingers. The rock had left little patterns in my palm.
“What’s this?” he asked.
He held it up. I had been right. It was an ordinary piece of gravel—gray with little white flecks.
I laughed. Dad scratched his head. It was my secret.
As I drifted off to sleep, I imagined the feeling of the rock pressed into my palm. I had squeezed it so hard, every bump, every corner was burned into my memory. Why did she give me that? Was I supposed to do something with it? My stomach churned. I had no idea where Dad had put it! I took a deep breath. It couldn’t have gone far. If I was supposed to do something with it, someone in my family could find it for me.
My family.
I was still mad at them for planning my grown-up life without my body, but right then, right at that moment, what they thought didn’t count for anything. Besides, I’d show them. My body was coming. Now that I knew three gifts, it was closer than ever.
Three down, two to go. And then my body will be here. Tick. Tick. Tick.
CHAPTER 24
Age 5, The Year of the Buttered Cat
The afternoon after their first visit, Anna and Elle came back, this time lugging backpacks. Mom set us up at the computer to do some online test prep for the exam. After that, we slogged through vocab and conjugations. By the fourth worksheet, I was over French. That ticking clock that was not supposed to be there still was, and I had a hard time concentrating on anything else. Finally, I pretended to fall asleep.
The girls rolled me to Mom’s office. I nailed my part, eyes shut tight and head drooped to one side.
“Mrs. Haas, can we stop now?” Anna asked. “Lexi’s tired.”
I opened one eye, just a tiny bit. Mom
eyed me with her head tilted.
After a long moment she smiled and said, “Why don’t you girls hang out in Lexi’s room.”
“Way to go, Lexi,” Elle whispered as she rolled me to my room.
They shut my door behind us. Anna jumped up on my bed. Elle clicked my lightsaber on and off like ten times in a row so that it made that whoosh power-on noise over and over. That weird feeling of having something alien in my space came back and sat on my chest like an Ewok.
Finally, Anna said, “Cut it out, Elle.”
Elle stabbed her with the lightsaber then with an, “Ohhh,” dropped it and grabbed Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone from my nightstand. She ran her hand over the cover then opened it, just a tiny bit, like she was afraid an owl or a dragon might fly out.
She glanced up. In one motion, she flipped open the cover and sputtered the words out, like she had dived headfirst into icy water. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
“Elle, no! We aren’t supposed to read them yet.”
Elle stopped talking, but from the way her eyes were moving back and forth, I knew she was finding out about the Dursleys’ secret.
Anna reached over and snapped the book shut.
“Ow, that was my hand, Anna!”
“We’ll get in trouble.”
“Not if Mom doesn’t find out.”
I knew exactly how to fix this, but they were off in their own world. I drank in deep breaths and let out a long burp. They turned to face me.
“What was that?” Anna said, giggling.
I uncurled a finger and pointed to a pile of Harry Potter CDs on my desk.
Elle grabbed them. “She said we couldn’t read them, but she didn’t say we couldn’t listen to them. Lexi, you’re a genius!”
Obviously.
She closed my door and popped the first CD into the player.
“Elle, if Mom finds out we’re gonna be … in … big …”
Anna slumped onto my bed like she was under the Imperius Curse or something. No one said a word until the CD ended.
Elle was putting in the second one when my door flew open.