by Nancy Rue
But Zooey’s eyes bulged fearfully. Suzy giggled nervously. Kresha studied the green socks she was wearing with pink jeans. Lily looked at Reni. She was pulling her chin in and stretching her neck up. It was a sure sign she was getting ready to say something indignant.
“What?” Lily said.
“You want us to learn how to give people mouth-to-mouth resusamatation or whatever it is?” Reni said.
“Yes. And I think it’s very important, especially if we ever want to get any respect from people like Shad and those guys. ”
“And just how do you expect us to learn that stuff?” she said.
“Yeah!” Kresha said, pumping her head up and down.
Suzy bit at her lip, and Zooey looked like she was going to hold her breath until somebody came up with an answer.
But Lily tossed her hair and frowned at them. “Well, how else? I’m going to teach you,” she said. Although, for the life of her, she had no idea how.
Four
But Lily didn’t lose any time coming up with an idea. She told herself that the Girlz were just blown away at the thought of doing something so adult and serious and that as soon as she got her lesson plans together, they’d be all over it. Lily started that very evening.
“I want to take a CRP class,” she said at the dinner table that night.
“CRP?” Art said, mouth full of spaghetti. “What does that stand for?”
“Can’t Write Plain,” Joe said.
“No, no. Write starts with a W, not an R.” Dad’s blue-like-Lily’s eyes got intense, and he picked up his glasses from the side of his place mat and chewed thoughtfully on the earpiece. “It could stand for Chaucer’s Rollicking Pilgrimage.”
“Children Rolf Plenty,” Art said and then pretended to upchuck his spaghetti.
“Must we reduce everything to regurgitation in this house?” Mom said. “I think Lily’s talking about CPR.”
“You mean like mouth-to-mouth?” Joe said. “Gross!”
“Cardiopulmonary resuscitation,” Dad said.
“Relax, Joe,” Art said. “Nobody’s lips touch.”
Joe went back to twirling pasta around his fork. Anything that even came close to kissing got him practically writhing on the floor.
Lily narrowed her eyes coldly at all of them. “It can save a person’s life,” she said. “And that’s what I want to do. Save lives.”
“That’s very noble, Lilliputian,” Dad said.
“I don’t even know what noble is,” Joe said. “But if you ever think I need CPR, just call a doctor, okay? I don’t want to take any chances.”
“I’m not going to just learn it on my own!” Lily said. “I want to take classes and learn for real.”
“Where is all of this coming from, Lil?” Mom said.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out,” Art said. He dumped a ladleful of sauce over his noodles and reached for the Parmesan cheese as if he were preparing his last meal. “It’s that whole accident thing.”
“So what?” Lily said. She could feel her face going blotchy, and she turned to her mother. Wasn’t it about time for Mom to squash Art and Joe down before they started flinging the really ugly comments?
But Mom said, “Is that it, Lil? Did the accident spark this sudden desire to chase ambulances?” She put up her hand before Lily could protest. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to help people.”
“Thank you,” Lily said and gave her brothers a triumphant look.
“But,” Mom added, “I’d like to see how long this phase lasts before I try to sign you up for a CPR class. You know how you are with things.”
“No! How am I?” Lily said. She could hear her voice getting all pointy the way it did when she was trying to defend herself. It usually didn’t work on Mom and Dad, but it was hard not to use it.
“Go take a look at your bedroom,” Art said. “It’s like a shrine to your I’m-going-to-be-a-supermodel phase.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Last time we had a paper recycling project in Scouts, I went in with all these stupid magazines with girls on the covers. Their faces all look like they smell something funny. I had to put the magazines in a paper bag so nobody’d see them.”
“I was good at modeling!” Lily protested.
“Yes, you were,” Mom said. “You also quit. The point is that whenever you get all excited about something, you go all out, and that’s all we hear about for months. Then, poof, it disappears.”
Lily stuffed a hunk of French bread in her mouth so she wouldn’t have to answer. I’m not about to tell them I’m just trying to figure out who I am, just like they’ve all figured out who they are. They would laugh so hard, I’d have to leave home or something!
It was true, that part about everyone else in the Robbins family having his or her “thing.” Dad was into his C. S. Lewis literature and all that. Mom loved coaching girls’ sports almost as much as she loved frozen yogurt. Art was a talented musician, and Joe was already a jock.
Only Lily hadn’t been able to, as the magazines put it, “find herself.” And it bummed her out a lot that she hadn’t been able to discover the activity that made her shine. Sure, she’d been great at modeling, but that hadn’t proven to be her passion.
But medicine is! I just know it, she thought now.
“Uh-oh,” Mom said, lips twitching. “The wheels are turning.”
“What wheels?” Joe said, looking around the kitchen as if he were expecting to spot a Harley parked on the linoleum.
“The ones in Lily’s head.”
“What are we in for?” Art said. “Cable reruns of House every night?”
“Are there cable reruns every night?” Lily said.
“Yeah.” Joe didn’t miss a beat as he buttered a slab of bread. “Seven o’clock, channel 30.”
“Aw, man! Shut up!” Art said.
“What are we doing at seven o’clock?” Dad said, looking, bewildered, around the table.
“Nothing, hon,” Mom said. She winked at the kids.
“So, can I, Mom?” Lily said.
“What? Watch House?”
Lily tried not to grit her teeth. “No, take a CPR class.”
“I don’t even know if you’re old enough,” Mom said. “Let’s wait and see if this is a passing phase or something you’re really into.”
I am really into it, Lily thought stubbornly. But she didn’t argue. When Mom said, “All right! Next topic” the way she did just then, it was time to drop it. As soon as dinner was over, Lily excused herself and made a beeline for the TV so she could watch the rerun of House while Joe and Art took their turns cleaning up the kitchen. Good thing there was a pad and pencil on the table at the end of the sofa. Lily used it to write down words she wanted to look up, words like intubate and coding. “He’s coding!” a nurse would say, and everybody would scramble all around with concerned looks on their faces.
That night Lily practiced her concerned look in the bathroom mirror when she was brushing her teeth. I look like I have a headache, she thought. I’m gonna have to work on this.
The next day she got to school early and went to the library to check out as many first aid books as the librarian would let her.
“You boys and girls know you can only have two books on the same subject at a time,” the librarian said as she looked at Lily over the top of her red-framed glasses. “Are you writing a special report?”
“Something like that,” Lily said. She decided she might have to wait until she’d saved a couple of lives before she started talking about her new career to people who weren’t likely to understand.
At both recesses, she asked the Girlz to go play without her so she could read up for that afternoon’s meeting.
“Read up on what?” Reni said to her.
“Don’t you remember what we talked about yesterday?” Lily said.
Reni’s raised an eyebrow. “I remember what you talked about,” she said.
Lily felt a pang somewhere
inside. Reni’s voice sounded funny. Kind of cold or something. But as soon as they had skipped off to find a spot out of the wind and Lily got her nose into the first book, she forgot about everything else. She could read about the difference between minor injuries and life-threatening ones, and Lily skipped right to the life-threatening ones. She read about amputated fingers and signs of internal bleeding and diabetic comas. The part about putting a splint on a sprained muscle looked really interesting. She’d have to try it on China tonight . . .
She was only up to “Skull Fractures” by the end of the school day, but she figured she had enough to teach the Girlz in the first afternoon. However, they ran into some snags that first afternoon.
Zooey, Reni, and Kresha all came in with after-school snacks, and they had to wait while Suzy stopped by her house for not only the big thermos of hot chocolate Mrs. Wheeler had made for them but also invitations to a sleepover at their house Saturday night.
“Ooh!” Kresha said as Suzy poured out cups with what, to Lily, was maddening slowness. “Look good!”
“Hot chocolate is good!” Zooey said. “Do you want me to run home and get some marshmallows?”
“You don’t need marshmallows,” Lily said and then bit at her lip. “I mean, we don’t need marshmallows. It probably tastes just fine without them. I’m sure it tastes great without them.”
Suzy giggled nervously.
“You in a hurry or somethin’?” Reni said to Lily.
“We just have a lot to learn,” Lily said. “We could run across somebody today who needs our help, and we wouldn’t be ready.”
Zooey’s cheerful, round face grew somber. “We could? Why?”
“She’s exaggerating, Zooey,” Reni said. “Forget it.”
“Start to talking, Lee-Lee,” Kresha said.
“Well,” Lily said, “we need to start with what to have in our first aid kits.”
“What first aid kits?” Suzy said, thermos suspended in her hand. “Were we supposed to bring a first aid kit today?”
“No,” Lily said patiently, “I’m going to teach you guys how to put one together.”
“Where’s yours?” Reni said.
“Huh?”
“Don’t you have one?”
“Not yet,” Lily said. She opened her eyes wide at Reni, who just looked back at her.
“Then how are you going to tell us what to put in one if you don’t even have one yourself?” Reni said.
Lily frowned. The rest of the Girlz waited.
“Okay, skip that for now,” Lily said. “I’ll get mine together and bring it in to show you tomorrow.”
“We’re doing this again tomorrow?” Reni said.
“Well, yeah, duh!” Lily said. Her patience was slipping away. “It takes more than one day to learn how to take care of people’s bodies.”
“Ve look at bo-dies?” Kresha gasped. Her sharp little eyes peered out from behind her straggly bangs. “Sound pretty gross to me.”
Lily took in a huge breath. “We aren’t going to look at them. We’re going to learn about them.”
“Excuse me, Lily,” Suzy said, “but how are we going to learn about them if we don’t look at them?”
“What I want to know is—”
Reni said, “What if I don’t want to learn about bodies? Not mine! Not nobody’s!”
A surprised silence seized the inside of the clubhouse. Nobody in it was more astonished than Lily. She stared at Reni, while another pang, a little bigger than the one that morning, rippled through her.
Reni just gazed back, blinking her big brown eyes.
Finally Lily got herself to say, “But why wouldn’t you want to learn about this stuff?”
“Maybe I would,” Reni said. She swept her gaze over the other Girlz. “But wouldn’t you all like to have a say in what we do in here?”
“What do you mean?” Lily said.
Reni did the chin-pulled-in thing. “I mean, don’t you think you’re bein’ just a little bit bossy about this?”
Reni looked around again. Nobody nodded, but nobody shook her head either. The pang inside Lily got bigger. She tried to find a way to slap it aside.
“I’m not being bossy,” she said. “I just—” She straightened her shoulders and thought about little Thomas and about intubation and amputated fingers and starched white coats. “I just have a mission,” she said, “and I’m going to accomplish it. I have to. I even talked to God about it.”
Lily looked around the clubhouse once more. Heads were so still they looked like they were frozen onto necks.
“Nobody’s objecting,” Lily said. She couldn’t bring herself to say, “Except you, Reni.”
“Mmm-mmmm,” Reni said. “All right, then. But I am not gonna touch any blood or any throw-up or anything like that.”
“Fine,” Lily said, tossing her hair. “I’ll take care of all the messy stuff. I don’t mind.”
“There’s going to be messy stuff?” Zooey said.
Lily plunged into a reading of the chapter about fainting (the least messy part of the book) so Zooey wouldn’t bolt. Then they all practiced pushing each other’s heads between their knees. Even Reni. And afterward Reni and Lily walked to the corner together like always.
“I guess this is okay,” Reni said. “This first aid stuff.”
“I’m not really bossy, am I?” Lily said.
Reni shrugged. “I guess that’s just the way you are,” she said.
Somehow as Lily hurried home in the cold almost-dark, that answer didn’t make her feel much better.
I’m gonna have to get smart about all this stuff so she won’t think I’m just being bossy, she told herself. I’ve gotta talk Mom and Dad into letting me take a class. God, can You make this happen?
God answered—the minute she got home.
Five
Everyone was arriving home at the same time. Mom dumped the mail on top of the dryer in the laundry room/mudroom, and Dad eyed it longingly as he took off his slush-covered boots. He loved anything that could be read.
“Anything for me?” he said.
“Newsletter from your health club,” Mom said.
Art froze, knit cap half off his head. “Dad has a health club?” he said.
“Cool,” Joe said. “Do they got basketball courts over there?”
“Yes, they have basketball courts,” Dad said. He picked up the newsletter and started patting all his pockets for his glasses.
“Since when does Dad have a health club?” Art said.
“Since the doctors told him it would help his recovery if he took advantage of some of their facilities,” Mom said.
Lily concentrated on folding her scarf and putting it into her coat pocket. She didn’t like to think about the night Dad had burned his hands and arms in the kitchen fire.
If I had known then what I’m learning now, she thought, he might not have to recover—
“Here’s a class for you, Lilliputian,” Dad said.
Art rolled his doe-eyes. “Oh, now Lily’s going to the health club.”
“Art, watch it,” Mom said. She looked over Dad’s shoulder. “What are you talking about, hon?”
“Right here. For girls ten to thirteen. ‘Taking Care of the Body.’”
Lily held her breath. Dad was right! It was a class designed especially for her. But she was afraid to yell out, “When can I sign up?” and start another big discussion about this being a phase she was going through.
“Sounds good,” Mom said. “Saturday mornings at ten o’clock. Can you get up that early, Lil?”
“Are you kidding?” Lily said. “Yes!”
“I’ll drop the form off when I go over there tonight,” Dad said.
“I still can’t believe my father’s going to a health club,” Art muttered as he went on into the kitchen. “And my sister! This is too weird.”
But Lily had no trouble ignoring him. Her head was completely crammed with, I’m gonna take a class! I’m really gonna know things. I’m gonna
save lives!
The first session was only two days away. Wanting to go to her new class already knowing something, Lily practiced putting splints on China’s arms and legs with pencils and hair ribbons. As for the Girlz, Lily suspended first aid study with them until she could get the real scoop from her new teacher.
“They’ll probably check out stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs to us the first day,” she told the Girlz. “Then we can have one good club first aid kit instead of a bunch of junky ones.”
Soon talk at the Girlz Only Group meetings turned to the sleepover they were having at Suzy’s Saturday night.
“Is there going to be food?” Zooey said.
“How late do we get to stay up?” Reni wanted to know.
Kresha’s concern was a little different. Actually, a lot different.
“I vill ask my mama,” she said.
“Why didn’t you ask her last night?” Reni said.
“Does she want my mother to call her?” Suzy said. She was looking nervous. Whenever things didn’t go exactly according to plan, Suzy’s eyes got all scared. At times like that Suzy reminded Lily of a fragile little porcelain doll.
“No, it not dat,” Kresha said. “Mama, she vork in the night.”
“Who stays with you?” Reni said.
“My two brodders.”
“You’re so lucky,” Zooey said. “I bet you get to eat frozen pizza every night.”
“Zooey, what does that have to do with it?” Reni said.
“Whenever my mom and dad go out and leave us with my brother, we eat frozen pizza. I like DiGiorno, you know. Their sauce is the best—”
Lily didn’t wait for Zooey to finish since she had been known to go on about things like pizza for fifteen minutes. “How often does your mother work, Kresha?” Lily said.
“Every night,” Kresha said. “No Sunday, but every night other.”
She smiled at them and went on chattering about finding a chance to talk to her mother about the sleepover.
How can she smile? Lily thought. If I had to be alone with my two brothers every night, I’d hate it!
But Kresha did get permission, and by Friday the Girlz had every detail planned out. Zooey was bringing her mother’s special brownies. Kresha was going to teach them all some Croatian words. Reni was going to supply the CDs, and Lily promised to bring the blood pressure cuff she was going to get in class so she could take all their blood pressures. They were so excited it was all they could talk about.