Finally, I looked up from my shorts and gave Dr. Kamath a tiny nod. “Okay,” I told her. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”
Burnt Toast
FUN HOUSE MIRROR. That’s what I thought when I saw myself. No way can this be real. No way in hell. Fun house mirror.
It came from this movie I saw once, a true story about a kid who was born with some freaky disease that made his head grow out of control. It kept growing and growing, and he looked more and more deformed, until finally his brain gave out and he died. That isn’t the saddest part of the story, though. The part that rips your heart out is when his mom takes him to the fair and he goes into one of those fun houses with all the mirrors—the kind that make everyone’s face look warped and hideous. Only for this kid, it’s the opposite. When he enters the fun house and sees his reflection, it’s like some kind of sick joke. He looks normal.
I hadn’t thought about that movie in years, until the moment in Dr. Kamath’s office when I saw myself. Despite all the ice and anti-inflammatory meds, the right side of my face was still swollen almost beyond recognition. Puffy and purple as a plum, zigzagged all over with stitches. And right in the middle, the tour de force: a square of graft skin so black and crusty it looked as though a miniature slice of burnt toast had been stapled to my cheekbone.
“Oh my God.”
“Alexa,” Dr. Kamath said gently. “The sutures will dissolve, the swelling will go down, and the bruises will fade. Keep that in mind.”
Something came out of my mouth, a cross between a whimper and a moan. I didn’t even sound human.
“Listen to me, Alexa. I know the doctors told you already, but I’m going to say it again. It’s perfectly normal for the graft to look this way now…. Scabbing is … Color changes are … It’s actually a sign of … In a few weeks…”
Dr. Kamath’s lips kept flapping, but the words no longer registered. I was thinking back to the morning of ninth-grade yearbook photos, when I woke up with a zit on my nose and flipped out. I spent half an hour covering my face with my mother’s foundation and powder so my picture would be perfect.
A zit.
A single zit, the size of a poppy seed, which would be gone in two days.
If I could go back in time, I would slap myself so hard my head would spin.
Just Shoot Me Now
WHEN I GOT home from the hospital, the number of reflective surfaces in my house seemed to have multiplied. Not just mirrors, but things I’d never noticed before. Computer screens, shiny countertops, glass doors, spoons, even the well-buffed mahogany of the dining room table. As I walked around the house, they all seemed to be saying the same thing: look, look, look.
The best place to be was my room, which only had one mirror, and that I had already taken off the wall and shoved in my closet, so … problem solved.
I lay in my bed, wearing the same pajamas I’d worn yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.
Outside my window, the ice-cream truck jingled.
In an alternate universe, Taylor and I would be dashing across the lawn in our bathing suits, dollars in hand. Instead, here I was on this beautiful August afternoon, staring at the ceiling. The same ceiling that Taylor helped decorate. One night when she was staying over, we’d pulled a stack of magazines out of my closet—Rolling Stone and Seventeen and Elle—and we’d cut out pictures and made a giant collage, right there over my bed. I remember the two of us standing on pillows, pounding the ceiling with our fists to make the tape stick.
Tear it down, my brain said. Rip the whole stupid thing down right now. But my body wouldn’t listen. It was too tired, too comfortable lying here under the covers, with the fan blasting.
Any second now, my mother would poke her smooth, blonde head through the door, insisting that I get out of bed. Take a shower. Grease my face. Because the graft didn’t have sweat or oil glands it had to be lubricated, twice a day, to prevent cracking. The whole thing made me want to puke. But my mother wouldn’t stop bugging me about it.
So I would ignore her, just as I’d been ignoring my cell every time it rang. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to do anything. All I wanted was to be left in peace so I could stare at the ceiling, straight into Johnny Depp’s brown eyes. So what if he was old enough to be my father? Johnny Depp had incredible eyes. Deep. Soulful. I could do without Bar Refaeli the Israeli supermodel, however, squinting down at me from on high. Squinting and judging. What happened to you? she seemed to say, with her ice-blue stare. What’s with the face? How come the doctors couldn’t fix you? How come you’re still in your pajamas? Don’t you know you never get a second chance to make a first impression?
I lifted one hand in the air, flipped Bar the bird. She only stuck her boobs out farther.
“Lex?” came a voice at the door. Not my mother this time. Ruthie. “Mom told me to come check on you.”
Shocker.
I didn’t say my sister could come in, but here she was, anyway, holding a half-eaten bagel in one hand and a phone in the other. “Ryan called—for the fiftieth time.”
“So?”
“So, call him back. Put the boy out of his misery.”
I stared at Ruthie. “You think I care if he’s miserable? He deserves to be miserable! I’m never calling him back. Ever!”
Ruthie shrugged. “Fine. Call your friends, then. Invite them to the barbecue tomorrow.”
“Barbecue,” I repeated.
“Hello … it’s Labor Day weekend. Mom’s only been cooking for days.”
Oh, just shoot me now.
Ruthie must have seen the look on my face because she laughed. “Come on. You didn’t seriously think she would cancel. She lives for this crap.”
It was true. There were four times a year my mother lived for: Christmas, Ruthie’s birthday, my birthday, and Labor Day weekend, when, for as long as I could remember, she had been hosting her famous back-to-school BBQ for the entire neighborhood. This was Laine Mayer’s big opportunity to turn on the Carolina charm and bust out the collard greens. And the chicken-fried steak. And the ribs. And the biscuits. And the corn bread. And the sweet tea. There was such an insane amount of food, and it was all so obscenely fattening, that my mother just threw up her hands in the spirit of gluttony and let me eat whatever I wanted. Last Labor Day, Taylor swiped a pitcher of mint juleps. She and I and this other girl, Meagan O’Hallahan, traded swigs behind the garden shed before my neighbor Mr. Jonas caught us and made us trade it in for lemonade.
“Call your peeps,” Ruthie said, shoving the phone in my face. “Sasha can pick them up. It’ll be fun.”
I stared at her. “Fun?”
“Yes, Alexa. Fun. Remember fun? The other F-word?”
“F-you,” I muttered.
But Ruthie just smiled. “That’s the spirit.”
“I can’t go to the barbecue.”
“Why not?”
“Look at me!” I cried, swatting the phone away, feeling my eyeballs prickle. “I’m a freak!”
“You’re not a freak.”
“I am. I’m a circus freak. I’m right up there with the bearded lady. I’m … the butt-faced girl.”
“So wear a hat,” Ruthie suggested calmly. “One of those big straw ones of Mom’s.”
I snorted. “Right.”
Ruthie shook her head.
“What?”
“I don’t get it. Everyone wants to see you. Your friends keep calling, and you refuse to talk to them.”
“Everyone wants to see me,” I repeated. “Uh-huh.”
I could just imagine what Taylor had been telling people, about my hospital flip-out, my ice cream–flinging fit. I knew why everyone wanted to see me. It was the same reason why, when you see a bum on the street—even though he’s crazy and stinky and muttering and he gives you the creeps—you can’t stop staring.
When I said this to Ruthie, she frowned. “That’s a terrible analogy.”
“Easy for you to say,” I shot back.
“You don’t have your butt stapled to your cheekbone.”
“What do you want me to do, Lexi? Feel sorry for you?”
I stared at my sister in disbelief. “Yes!”
“Well,” Ruthie said slowly, “if that’s what you want, then you’ll have to find someone else to do it because I won’t join your pity party.”
I shrugged. “Fine.”
My sister was staring at me. I could feel it. But my eyes were back on the ceiling, glued to Johnny Depp. I tried to imagine it was just the two of us. No Israeli supermodels, no sisters. Just me and Johnny. Maybe on a cruise ship. Or a beach. Better yet, a desert island, where no one would ever—
“Lex.”
“What.” I didn’t move my eyes, just my lips.
“Call your friends,” Ruthie said. She dropped the phone onto my bed, then turned to walk out of the room.
“You don’t understand,” I started to say.
Ruthie paused in the doorway. “Try me.”
My throat burned. I knew if I said another word I would cry, so I just shook my head.
“Come to the barbecue, Lex,” Ruthie said. “Wear a big hat. Make a fashion statement.”
My sister, whose idea of a fashion statement was cutoff sweats and the same Chuck Taylor sneakers she’d worn since eighth grade. Whose eyebrows were so thick they practically met in the middle, yet she’d never picked up a pair of tweezers in her life.
“Don’t let your face define you,” she said.
It hit like a sledgehammer, the irony. I would have laughed, but I could tell from Ruthie’s expression that she was dead serious.
“Okay,” I said, matching my sister’s solemn tone. “I won’t let my face define me. I’ll let my butt define me. Oh, wait. My butt is my face.”
“Oh, wait,” Ruthie said. “Your sarcasm isn’t invited to the barbecue.”
I’m pretty sure she missed my point. Or she was trying to be funny. Either way it backfired, because all I did was yank the covers over my head and close my eyes.
I celebrated Labor Day weekend in my room, in my pajamas. Sitting cross-legged on my bed, I systematically polished off two plates of barbecue, compliments of my dad. “Are you sure you don’t want to join us, Beans?” he’d said, the first time he came up to check on me. “Everyone’s asking for you out there. It’s not the same without you.”
I was sure.
Later, he brought out the big guns. “It would really mean a lot to your mother if you would come outside.”
I replied with a long, low, rumbling belch.
“Well, if you change your mind…”
My father’s false cheer was almost more than I could bear. After he left, I tore into the dessert plate like a starving animal, shoving key lime pie into my mouth with my bare hands. I knew I should stop eating. I wasn’t even hungry. But my body had long since stopped listening to my brain.
“Yo, Lex.” A voice from the hall interrupted my feeding frenzy. “I’m coming in.”
At first, I couldn’t place the voice. Then an auburn head popped through the door, and it made perfect sense. Meagan O’Hallahan, the only girl in Millbridge, Connecticut, who used the word yo.
Meagan’s father, Frank O’Hallahan, was the chief of police and good friends with my dad. Meagan and I would have been closer if she didn’t go to Weston Academy for school, and Maine every summer for camp. I liked her a lot, but I got to see her only a few times a year.
“What’s shakin’, bacon?” Meagan bounded into my room all cheery, ponytail swinging.
Then she got a look at me. “Oh … um…”
I could only imagine what she saw. For starters, I was still in bed, surrounded by dirty dishes. My hands and pajama cuffs were coated in barbecue sauce and chunks of pie, and my hair hadn’t seen shampoo in days. Then, of course, there was the face. No more bandages. Nowhere to hide.
“Gosh…” Meagan said. “I’m sorry, I just thought … My family’s out at the party and your mom said…”
Never, in the ten years I’d known her, had I seen Meagan O’Hallahan flustered.
Her dad wasn’t just the police chief, he was also some kind of wrestling champion, and her mom was a CEO. She had four older brothers, each one bolder and wilder than the next. The O’Hallahans didn’t do flustered. And yet, here was Meagan, stammering away, her eyes flitting from my face to her hands to a spot on the wall above my head.
“It’s … good to see you,” she finished lamely. “You look great.”
Right.
“Really,” she insisted.
Meagan tried to change the subject, saying she was glad that I was okay. And that Jarrod was okay. Her brothers, Mark and Michael, who played peewee football with Jarrod back in the day, ran into him at the Dairy Freeze, and Jarrod said—
“Jarrod said? What exactly did Jarrod say?”
Meagan shook her head. “Nothing. Just that he was driving the car when it crashed. And that he and Taylor went to see you in the hospital and you were … you know … still recovering.”
I laughed, a short bark, but Meagan didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy trying to avoid looking at me.
“Anyway, my dad said the accident report showed there was no trace of drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the crash, and he wasn’t driving over the limit, so … thank God, right? That everything turned out the way it did?”
“Yes, thank God,” I said, my voice sliding into sarcasm. “Everything turned out just beautiful.”
Meagan grimaced. “I’m sorry, Lex. I didn’t mean—”
“Especially for Taylor. Did you hear? She has a new boyfriend.”
“Yeah…” Meagan said. “About that … there’s someone who—”
“Oh, so you did hear. Did you talk to her?”
“No, I—”
“Oh, so you talked to him. Of course. Old Weston Academy buddies. I should have known.”
“Lexi—”
“Are you hooking up with him, too? Is that what you’re here to tell me?”
“Lex.”
“What?” I snapped.
But before Meagan could answer, a voice from the hall cut in. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
My stomach sank.
I thought about diving under the bed.
I thought about picking up an empty soda can and hurling it at the door.
I thought about doing a lot of things. But instead, I heard my voice ring out, hostess style, “Come on in, Ryan! The more the merrier!”
And now, incredibly, here he was. My lying, cheating boyfriend, standing in the doorway to my bedroom.
Ex-boyfriend, I reminded myself fiercely. Even though Ryan was wearing a shirt I loved—the royal blue polo I’d given him for his birthday, which made his eyes even bluer. Even though his hair was damp from the shower, with comb tracks in it, and I could smell his soap from here. A clean, lemony scent that always made me dizzy. Even though—
“Should I…” Meagan started to say, glancing from me to Ryan and back again. “Do you guys want me to, like…”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Stay. Pull up a chair…. You, too, Ry … Come on. Don’t be a stranger.”
Ryan took a tentative step forward. “Hey, Lexi.”
I said nothing. I was too busy watching the expression on his face as he moved closer. Closer. Close enough to observe the carnage head-on.
“Oh, shit.”
I knew he didn’t mean to say those words, just as I knew that the flinch in his eyes was involuntary—like a muscle spasm or a sneeze. But that didn’t stop the sick feeling that came over me, as though someone were wringing out my stomach like a washcloth.
“Leave,” I murmured.
“Lexi, I … crap … I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t care. Leave.”
“Lex—” Meagan started to say, but I cut her off, too.
“I mean it,” I said. “I need you both to get out of my room. Please.” My voice was rising, but I didn’t care. “Now! Get out of my roo
m!”
Ryan looked stunned. Meagan’s face was as red as her hair. You could practically see the thought bubble rising over her head. She’s losing it.
“You’re right! I’m not just ugly now! I’m crazy, too!”
Ryan tried one last time. “Lex, you’re not—”
“Shut up, Ryan. Why don’t you go find Taylor? I’m sure she’d be happy to give a repeat performance!”
Just as I was bending down to pick up a plate, my mother’s head poked through the doorway.
“Alexa Grace.” Her voice was low, shocked. “What is going on up here?”
“Just playing a little Frisbee.” I smiled and flung the plate across the room, where it hit the edge of my desk, cracked, and fell to the floor.
“You may experience some anger,” Dr. Kamath had said during our last session, the day I left the hospital. “Anger is a natural part of the grief process.”
I wondered what Dr. Kamath would think if she could see me now, standing on the bed in my barbecued pajamas, screaming and hurling dinnerware. Was this what she meant by “natural”?
You Don’t Mean That
THAT NIGHT, I was still mad. Mad at my mother for inviting Ryan to our house, for allowing him to come upstairs. “I can’t believe you did that to me!” I said, pausing to take an angry bite of ice cream—my bedtime snack. “You never even asked!”
While my mother sponged down the countertop, she fed me lines about how Ryan and I needed to “talk through our problems,” and “put this fight behind us,” until I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“We didn’t have a fight, Mom.”
“What do you mean?”
“We broke up, okay? It’s over.”
“What?” she said.
“Okay, we didn’t technically break up, but we might as well have. He cheated on me.”
My mother dropped her dishrag. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Ryan wouldn’t do that.”
“He would,” I said, “and he did.”
My mother shook her head. There must be some kind of a misunderstanding, she insisted. The Danos went to our church. Mrs. Dano was on the soup kitchen committee. Ryan was a good boy, a gentleman.
My Life in Black and White Page 7