by Lois Metzger
Mike writes it all down.
Mike: “I know that hospital. My grandmother died there.”
Oops.
Mike: “Different floor.”
Amber’s mom: “Is that all?”
Mike: “I heard something happened with her heart?”
Amber’s mom: “Like I said, I can’t go into it right now. I’ve got a lot on my plate.”
Mike thinks that’s an odd way to put it, considering.
Later Mike is so hungry he can’t sleep. Even FireBalls don’t help. He feels like there’s an animal in his stomach, clawing him with huge talons, taking him apart from the inside. He wishes he could call Amber. How did Amber know Mike would need to call her in the middle of the night? She’s so intuitive, almost clairvoyant.
Mike goes to the kitchen. Mighty Joe Young is digging into his Feline Fine.
Mike: “Don’t throw up.”
Mighty Joe Young looks up at him with large copper eyes. Mike wonders if the cat is thinking about what he just said. Mike tries to remember what Amber told him she eats when she can’t sleep.
Carrots dipped in mustard.
Mike takes a carrot out of the refrigerator. It’s pale and limp. He opens up some horseradish mustard. Amber recommended it—she likes strong mustards. Mike sticks in the carrot, takes a bite.
Mike: “Gahhh!” It makes his eyes water. He thinks if he takes another bite, he’ll throw up, along with Mighty Joe Young.
Amber also drinks lemon juice in water. Mike pours out a glass of water and splashes in some lemon juice. He takes a sip and finds it disgusting. He wonders if Amber has any taste buds left or if all those FireBalls killed them off.
There’s a loaf of bread. Before I can say anything, Mike grabs the loaf and takes it back to his room like a thief. He pulls out a slice, stuffs it into his mouth.
Don’t eat that, don’t eat that, don’t eat that.
He removes it from his mouth. It’s a soggy ball of bread. He puts it on the windowsill and stares at it. Then he shoves it back into his mouth.
Don’t eat that, don’t eat that, don’t eat that.
He takes it out again, puts it back on the windowsill. It looks like a snowball. He takes out another slice and does the exact same thing. Why is he doing this? Soon he’s got five snowballs on his windowsill.
And he remembers:
In Belle Heights Park, after a snowstorm. Mike throws a snowball at his dad. His dad fires one back—misses. Mike throws one at his mom and she lets out a shrieky laugh: “Ah, it hurts my teeth! I’ll get you for that!” Her aim is perfect. Another snowstorm. Mike and his parents build a snowman in Belle Heights Park. The next day somebody puts a hat on it, a real old-fashioned hat from the 1940s. No question about it, Mike thinks, he’s the classiest snowman in all of Belle Heights. Another snowstorm. Mike wears sneakers in the snow and his feet get really cold and wet. He is seven—a big boy—but his dad carries him home.
Mike keeps putting the snowballs back in his mouth, chewing them, spitting them out. Eventually they fall apart and he throws them away. The behavior is bizarre, but I’m pleased he doesn’t actually eat them.
Mike doesn’t know what else to do. He starts taking down all his baseball posters. That’s fine—he should’ve done this long ago. They rip. He doesn’t care. He wants totally empty walls, except for the mirror.
All you need to look at is you.
CHAPTER 21
THE HOSPITAL IS ON THE FAR SIDE OF BELLE Heights, and Mike takes the Q33 bus to get there. He rides the elevator up to Amber’s floor. When he gets off, he sees a large room with a TV and some couches. It’s dark except for flickers of light from the TV. Several girls are there. One girl is skinny. Scary-skinny, Mike thinks. She has a needle in her arm, attached to a pole with a bag of fluids. She sees Mike staring at her. Mike wonders if she’s embarrassed by this. She yawns.
His sneakers squeak on the shiny floor. There are nurses everywhere—at desks, walking around. A nurse tells Mike that Amber is in the Sun Room. He has to pass a series of closed doors before he gets to an open one with a hand-drawn picture of the sun on it. He sees Amber sitting on a couch. The room is empty except for her. She’s got on a white T-shirt and jeans. Mike has never seen her arms before. He thinks she looks thin but nothing like the girl with the pole.
It’s good, really good, to see Amber again.
Amber (smiling a sneaky smile): “So how do you like the E-D unit?”
Mike: “E-D?”
Amber: “I told you about my boyfriend, Eddie, remember? It’s a joke. ‘E-D’ stands for ‘eating disorder.’” She laughs.
Mike: “Eddie’s not your boyfriend?”
Mike can be a little dense sometimes.
Amber: “No, Eddie’s not my boyfriend!”
Mike wonders why Amber thinks it’s funny that she lies to people about having a boyfriend.
She has a sense of humor.
Mike: “So when can you go home?”
Amber: “Well, it’s my second time, so I have to stay longer. It’s like a rule. Last time I had a bed near the window. This time my bed is near the door. Sit down, will you? You’re making me nervous.”
Mike sits on a padded chair that looks soft but it’s like a rock.
Mike: “So this is the Sun Room.”
Amber: “It’s never sunny, by the way, but it’s usually empty and it’s good to have some alone time. I have a roommate. Her name is Deirdre. The staff calls her a frequent flier because she’s been here three times already. I’m so jealous of her.”
Mike: “Because she’s a frequent flier?”
Amber: “No! Because she’s so much skinnier than me.”
Mike: “Is she in the TV room?”
Amber: “I think so. She’s blond.”
Mike didn’t notice the color of her hair.
Amber: “Deirdre’s so beautiful. Anyone can have inner beauty. Not everyone has real beauty. She’s a size double zero.”
Mike: “How is that even possible?”
Amber: “Deirdre used to do ballet. She was good, too. But she can’t dance anymore. Whatever. She does a different kind of dance now. She dances between the raindrops in the rain.”
Mike: “Dances between the—what?”
Amber: “It’s an expression. Like, I want to stand in the sun and cast no shadow. Or move as lightly as a spider, not even disturbing a web.”
Mike: “I never heard those expressions.”
Amber: “Just because you never heard of something doesn’t mean it isn’t meaningful.”
Mike takes a deep breath.
You could at least smile at her. Stop acting like you’re at a funeral.
Amber: “So is everybody at school talking about me? Not that I care.”
Mike: “They say you had a heart attack.”
Amber: “See? That’s wrong.” She says something Mike can’t understand, so she spells it out: “A-r-r-h-y-t-h-m-i-a. It’s an uneven heartbeat. They say it can lead to a heart attack.”
Mike (thinking it sounds bad): “Isn’t that bad?”
Amber: “It’s not even why I came to the hospital. Didn’t my mom explain?”
Mike shakes his head.
Amber: “She’s such a bitch! You know what she did? She took away my red bracelet. She found out what it meant. Red for anorexia. A-N-A for short.”
Anna—the best friend. Who doesn’t exist. Just like Eddie. Mike’s getting freaked out by the fact that Amber doesn’t have a best friend or a boyfriend. It’s sad, he thinks.
It’s not sad. Amber has something better than friends.
She doesn’t have anyone, Mike thinks.
You are her friend.
Amber: “My wrist feels so naked. Can you get me another bracelet? You can only buy them online. You probably don’t have your own credit card, so you’ll have to use your mom’s.” She shivers. “It’s cold in here.”
Mike: “You want my jacket?”
Amber: “Thanks.”
It’s b
ig and puffy on her.
Mike: “Amber, if you didn’t come here for a heart rhythm—”
Amber: “Arrhythmia. Try to get it right.”
Mike: “—then why are you here?”
Amber (with that sneaky smile again): “Remember, Friday night, there was a new moon?”
Mike: “No.”
Amber: “Well, there was. The new moon is when you honor Anamadim. She’s the goddess of anorexia.”
Mike: “The goddess of—what?”
Amber: “I’m not surprised you never heard of her. I only just learned about her recently.”
Mike knows something about gods and goddesses, mostly because they pop up in Harryhausen’s movies, but, he thinks, a goddess of anorexia—?
There’s a god or goddess for everything under the sun. Listen to Amber.
Amber: “I had to sneak out of the house and make a sacrifice to Anamadim.”
Mike (not sure he wants to know): “What’d you sacrifice?”
Amber: “Food that tempts me. I took some saltines and crushed them in my front yard. Back in my room, I pledged to Anamadim: ‘Fill me with the ecstasy of emptiness, empower me to endure the necessary deprivations, make light the vessel where I sojourn upon this earth.’”
Mike thinks, She’s having a re
She cares about something, deeply.
Amber (with a laugh): “It’s a bit much, I know, but it really helps me, okay? To reach my goals. Anyway, I had to write down the pledge and then sign it in blood. Wouldn’t you know it—that’s when my mom woke up. The problem was, when I cut my wrist, I used a really sharp steak knife—”
Mike (alarmed): “You cut your wrist?”
Amber: “I wasn’t trying to kill myself! I just made a tiny cut, here.” She shows him a spot on the side of her wrist, where she has a Band-Aid. “Anyway, it wouldn’t stop bleeding. My mom flipped out. She thought I was a cutter. Like she knows anything. If I was a cutter, I’d wear a black-and-blue bracelet.”
Mike: “They have bracelets for cutters?”
Amber: “And purple for bulimia, where you throw up after you eat. Which is disgusting. I only throw up when I absolutely have to.”
Tamio was right, Mike thinks; Amber does throw up.
Who cares? He never applies himself to anything worthwhile.
Amber: “Anyway, my mom took me straight to the hospital.” She shrugs. “The cut was no big deal. It didn’t even need stitches. But that’s when they told my mom I was severely emaciated. C’mon, do I look severely emaciated to you? Also they found the arrhythmia. And the fact that the mass of my heart had decreased. Weird, huh? I didn’t know hearts could do that.”
Mike: “Amber, are you scared?”
Amber: “No, I’m just mad because I’m stuck here for six weeks, maybe longer.”
Mike notices a closed door in the corner of the room.
Mike: “What’s that?”
Amber: “The bathroom. It’s locked. All the bathrooms are locked. You have to ask permission to go. And they watch you, to make sure you’re not throwing up. They even watch you in the shower. There’s zero privacy here. Before they weigh you, they do a cavity search.”
Mike: “A what?”
Amber: “Some people put rolls of quarters in their butts.”
Mike wants to leave. He wonders what he’s doing here in the first place. Do I even know this person? he thinks.
Of course you do.
I don’t, not really, he thinks. Amber’s always telling me all this stuff she does, but actually nothing about herself, if that makes any sense—
It doesn’t.
Amber had an aunt who died, and they were close—
Why bring up something painful? You know what you need to know.
Mike stands. The chair sticks to him.
Mike: “I have to go.”
Amber: “Okay. Will you come back?”
Mike doesn’t want to.
You’ll come back.
Mike: “Sure.” He notices, for the first time, Amber’s eyelashes. They’re so sparse. He thinks those eyelashes, and his jacket, make her look like a little kid, lost and alone.
She’s neither.
Amber takes off Mike’s jacket and gives it back to him.
Amber: “Hey, will you tell that witch outside that it’s freezing in here?”
Mike goes to the nearest nurse at a desk. Her head is bent over a magazine.
Mike: “Hi, I was just in the Sun Room with Amber Alley. She’s wondering if you could turn up the heat?”
Nurse: “They’re always cold. Anyway, I can’t change the thermostat. It’s controlled.” She doesn’t look up.
Mike passes the TV room again. He sees Deirdre. Is she blond? Hard to tell. She doesn’t have much hair, and the intermittent light from the TV gives him only strobelike glimpses. Someone is sitting next to her.
Mike stops.
He can’t move.
It’s a boy, Mike thinks. He sees short hair, sideburns… an Adam’s apple.
You’re seeing it wrong. It’s a girl who looks like a boy.
I can’t move, Mike thinks. I’ve turned to stone, like in Clash of the Titans, when Perseus’s men look at Medusa—
You are not stone. You are living and breathing.
It’s like I’m stuck between frames in a movie.
You can move. Just put one foot in front of the other. It’s only a trick of the light.
CHAPTER 22
OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL, EVERY STEP IS A STRUGGLE. Mike moves painfully slowly, sometimes stopping just to stare at a—what? A squashed leaf, an ancient cocker spaniel trudging along, a crack in the sidewalk.
There’s the Q33 bus. Get on the bus.
Mike has to be led by the hand like a child, so to speak. He stands the whole ride home even though there are plenty of seats. He stoops over and looks out the window at the darkening sky—it gets dark early now. He starts thinking about another one of Harryhausen’s movies, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. For once I don’t think this is a bad idea. Maybe it’ll calm him down. He remembers the part where Sinbad fights a skeleton. But it reminds him of that girl, Deirdre. He thinks, She’s practically a skeleton; she could end up like the skeleton in that movie, a pile of broken bones.
Don’t let some silly movie upset you. When you get home, go straight to your room, turn on some music, work out.
To my relief, this is exactly what he does—150 crunches, 100 push-ups.
You are becoming infinitely strong.
Mike is sure, now, that he saw a girl at the hospital, a girl who only looked like a boy. That kind of mistake happens all the time.
With some effort, Mike is himself again.
His mom knocks on his door. Quickly Mike puts on a T-shirt and then lets her in.
Mom: “Could you turn the music down, please? The walls are shaking.”
Mike turns it down.
Mom: “Have you had dinner?”
Mike: “I ate in the hospital cafeteria.”
Mom (clearly not believing him but asking anyway): “What’d you have?”
Mike: “Grilled cheese and fries.” He’s memorized what to say by now. He has whole menus in his head.
Mom: “You’re having lunch with your father on Saturday.”
Mike: “What? Why?”
Mom: “He’s your father.”
Mike: “So?”
Mom: “It’s been a long time. He wants to see you.”
No one’s asking if you want to see him.
Mom: “He’ll meet you at a Chinese restaurant. I wrote down the address.”
Mike: “What’s the name of it?”
Mom: “I don’t think he told me—just that it’s on the corner of Belle Terrace and Seventy-Fourth Lane.”
Mike: “Mom, I need the name.”
Mom: “Why?”
So Mike can look up the menu online and see what he can eat, that’s why. He doesn’t tell her that, though.
Mom: “Well, I don’t think your father knows t
he name.”
Mike: “That’s so stupid.”
Mom: “You’ll find it. How hard can it be?”
Impossible, it turns out. Mike takes a bus to Belle Terrace and Seventy-Fourth Court, a block from Seventy-Fourth Lane. It’s across from the expressway, and there aren’t any restaurants, just fruit stands and depressing, down-on-their-luck stores. One place has mannequins with missing arms. Mike is feeling grumpy anyway because he fell asleep at dawn and woke up too late to go for a run.
A Chinese woman is staring at him. Mike knows what she’s thinking: That boy didn’t run today. He’s so lazy.
Mike thinks, It’s not my fault I have to meet my idiot father for lunch.
Mike (to the Chinese woman): “Stop staring at me!”
The Chinese woman looks at him blankly. Maybe she doesn’t understand English. Or maybe she’s only pretending not to.
Man’s voice (behind Mike): “Mike, is that you?”
Mike turns around. It’s his dad.
Dad: “I can’t believe it.”
Mike can’t believe it, either. His dad has a potbelly. He’s let himself get completely out of shape since the breakup.
Dad (barely above a whisper): “Your mother was right.”
Mike: “Right about what?”
Dad: [nothing]
Mike: “So anyway, where’s this restaurant?”
Dad (numbly, like he’s in shock): “On the other side.”
He means the other side of the expressway. What’s his problem? He wanted to have lunch with Mike. Mike didn’t want to have lunch with him.
The restaurant is large and noisy. Mike and his dad sit at a table in the corner, and a waitress hands them enormous menus.
Dad: “Let me order. I know what’s good here.”
Mike: “That’s okay.”
Dad: “You used to love sweet-and-sour chicken.”
Well, things change.
Dad: “Can I get you the chicken?”
Mike: “No. I’ll have steamed broccoli.”
Dad: “That’s hardly a meal.”
Mike: “It’s what I want.”
Dad: “We can go to Luncheonette after. I know you love the rice pudding there.”
Mike: “No, thanks.” Mike’s had enough rice pudding to last him the rest of his life.
They order. His dad gets the sweet-and-sour chicken.