But Dr. Simon’s work did not go unnoticed by Dr. Gregory Benefield, an allergy expert who received his undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins in 1967 and did his graduate work and residency at Mount Sinai.
“He’s the first person I thought of when I reviewed Jubilee’s medical file,” he says, his voice a deep and serious baritone.
In fact, everything about Dr. Benefield is serious—from his crisp bow tie and thick-rimmed bifocals to his dark eyes that only lit up when I first mentioned Jubilee’s name.
“Ah, yes.” He smiled. “My little walking medical mystery.”
Though Dr. Benefield had never come across a case of a person being so severely allergic to other humans before (and in fact, there are only three other documented cases of it—none in the United States), he had a hunch about what the cause must be.
“I recalled Dr. Simon’s work from my graduate studies,” he says. “And every doctor before me—and there had been many—had ruled out nearly every other possibility. I just thought, “What if?” I ran a few simple tests—experiments really. We kept her in an isolation ward for a week, and her symptoms cleared up. Then I touched her arm to see what would happen. Sure enough, an hour later, a rash. It appeared to be the cause of her condition.”
Her condition that, after a few more tests, finally had a diagnosis—an allergy to humans.
“It’s the most fascinating thing, genetically speaking,” says Dr. Benefield. “When you’re allergic to something, like a food protein for instance, your body mistakes it for an invader and attacks it with a release of antibodies and histamines. It’s an understandable mistake to an extent—it’s a foreign protein, just not a dangerous one. But for a human body to attack other human proteins would mean that the affected person doesn’t have at least one of those proteins—those very building blocks that make us human. Technically speaking, does that make her not human?”
A mind-boggling proposition for sure, and not one that Dr. Benefield means literally, he assures me. “There is obviously some genetic mutation in her DNA—a variation causing her to be absent one or more human proteins.” It’s estimated the human body is made up of more than two million proteins. “She would be a fascinating candidate for genetic sequencing.”
He’s not the only one who thinks so. Since Jubilee’s unique condition has been publicized, Ms. Jenkins has received numerous phone calls and requests from researchers all over the country—and in some instances, internationally—to study the young girl’s condition.
But could further testing, or genetic sequencing, lead to a cure?
“Perhaps in the future,” says Dr. Benefield. “There is still much we don’t know about allergies, particularly how to heal someone of their condition. Studies are ongoing, but our best practices at the moment are symptom management—in Jubilee’s case, keeping her away from any skin-to-skin human contact—and the hope that children will outgrow their allergies with age.”
Does that happen often? I ask.
“It happens,” he says. “Though typically not with very severe allergies.”
Like Jubilee’s?
“Like Jubilee’s.” (continued on page 26E)
* * *
* * *
nine
ERIC
“AJA! THE DOG needs breakfast,” I yell as I grab the coffeepot and start to pour my first cup of the morning. I gave up on quitting—especially since we brought this mutt home from the animal shelter two weeks ago. Aja couldn’t think of a name, so we’ve been calling it The Dog, though The Puppy would be more accurate, as it’s been waking me multiple times every night, needing to go out, wanting to play, or whining for no discernible reason at all, bringing back memories of Ellie’s sleepless first year of life.
I walk down the hall, The Dog at my heels. “Aja!” I say, giving his door a firm knock with my knuckle as I pass by. In my bedroom, I set my coffee mug on my nightstand and pick up The Virgin Suicides from where I left it last night. I flip through it, skimming a couple of paragraphs here and there, hoping something might jump out at me that I missed the first two times I read it this week.
Those vampire books? I breezed right through and sent Ellie a text:
Read Twilight. Team Jacob all the way. Dad
I was glad she was, too—according to her journal, she found him to be “soooo much hawter than Edward”—because that vampire seemed to have some serious control issues.
But this book? I can’t understand why Ellie wrote: “This Eugenides guy gets it. He just really gets it.” I think of her words and look back at the book: what exactly does he get?
I’m tempted to have Aja read it because I’m fairly certain he’s smarter than me, but I don’t think the material (boys spying on girls with binoculars, sex under bleachers, virgins impaling themselves on fence posts) was appropriate for Ellie to be reading, much less a ten-year-old boy.
“No!” I shout. The Dog has squatted on the carpet in front of me and is releasing a stream of urine onto it, while his dewy black eyes stare up at me, as if to say, I told you I needed to go out. I sigh, and realize Aja still hasn’t responded to me. I’m reaching down to scoop The Dog up when a loud crash jerks my head up in the direction of the living room.
“Aja?”
Silence. I run down the hall toward the noise, panicked that I’ve forgotten some Art of Safe Parenting rule—something Stephanie would have innately known, like maybe I should have secured the flat-screen to the TV stand with bolts. I have visions of Aja sprawled beneath it, crushed by forty-eight inches of LCD technology.
But when I get there, Aja is standing upright, looking not at the TV, but at the glass coffee table, which no longer resembles a coffee table. It’s shattered, likely by the hammer that—for inexplicable reasons—is sticking up from the center of it.
“Aja!” I yell, brought up short by the sight, my heart still hammering from my sprint down the hallway. “What happened?”
My eyes scan the large plates of sharp-edged glass at his bare feet, surrounded by thousands of tiny glittering shards lighting up the carpet. The Dog, who followed me from the bedroom, is dancing around the mess and barking. I grab his collar to still him and then look to Aja for an explanation of what I’m seeing.
His head hangs on his shoulders, eyes trained to the ground, and he’s standing so still, I have the fleeting horrific thought that a shard has somehow struck him directly in the heart and killed him where he stands.
“Aja!” I say again, but then realize that I don’t want him to move, seeing as how any step he’d take in any direction would certainly embed glass in the soles of his feet.
“Don’t move.” I feel a little ridiculous when the words come out—it’s like giving an imperative to a marble statue. I walk The Dog to his crate in the corner of the living room, secure him inside, and then go back over to Aja, trying but unable to avoid the glass crunching beneath my tennis shoes.
“Aja,” I say again when I’m hovering over him, staring down at the crown of his head, where black hair sticks out at various angles and on either side the bent legs of his glasses are clinging to the tops of his delicate ears. This close, I notice that his body is trembling ever so slightly, as if a vibration of the earth is happening just in the spot below his feet.
I bend my knees until my chest is level with his head and put my arms around his tiny frame, easily hefting him up in the air. His body, arms rigid at his sides, is as stick-straight as a pencil—and nearly feels as light.
When I set him gently down in the kitchen, we both stand there not touching or speaking and I wonder if maybe he’s traumatized or in shock. I search my brain for the first-aid treatments I learned in Boy Scouts. Did we cover shock?
As I’m deciding between slapping him across the face (seems harsh, but I have a flash of a scene from a movie where it works) and throwing a cold cup of water at him (ditto), Aja speaks. Or at least, I think he spoke.
“What?” I bend down a little, trying to see his face, if I can make out the
words his mouth is forming.
“I’m sorry,” Aja says, so quietly it takes me a minute to register the phrase.
Before I can respond, Aja takes off, running out of the kitchen and down the hallway. His bedroom door slams shut and the noise reverberates in my ears.
And I’m left there, feet glued to the linoleum tiles, looking back into the living room at the big sparkly mess and wondering what the hell just happened.
AFTER PICKING UP the large shards, then sweeping and vacuuming the leftover bits, I get on my hands and knees to look under the sofa and make sure I got it all, but before I can even look I feel a sharp stab in my palm. I lift it up to look and a long sliver of glass glints back at me, a bead of red blood already asserting itself on the squishy pad beneath my fingers.
I swear under my breath: “Shit.” The pain is concentrated and intense and I know it’s going to hurt even more when I pull it out. Though I’ve kept it at bay ever since Aja ran to his room obviously traumatized, anger wells up from somewhere deep. Intuition tells me Aja put that hammer through the glass on purpose, but I have no idea why. What was he possibly thinking? I hold my hand steady down the hall, so the blood now pooling in my palm doesn’t drip onto the carpet. At Aja’s door, I pause. I lean my head closer, my ear almost touching the door, and I hear the faint clack of the keys on the keyboard. I sigh and continue to my room in search of the first-aid kit under the sink in my bathroom, my foot stepping squarely onto the wet spot left by The Dog.
Double shit.
AFTER BANDAGING MY hand and cleaning the dog piss out of the carpet, I know I should go talk to Aja, but I pick up my cell and dial Connie instead.
“Good lord, Eric,” she says after my brief recap of the incident. “And he didn’t tell you what happened?”
“No.”
“Did you ask?”
“Of course I did,” I say, thinking back. Didn’t I? “I think I did. I don’t know, he just seemed so traumatized or something.”
“Where is he now?”
“In his room.”
“You’ve got to go talk to him and let him know that accidents happen. He probably feels terrible.”
I open my mouth to tell her I don’t think it was an accident, but I realize how awful that sounds, so I change the subject.
“Have you read The Virgin Suicides?”
“What?”
“The book—The Virgin Suicides. Have you read it?”
“Uh . . . I don’t think so. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Eric, seriously. Go talk to him.”
“OK, OK,” I say.
I throw my phone on the bed, rub my good hand over my stubbly cheek, and a stench wafts up from my armpit. I’ll talk to him after I shower.
Fifteen minutes later, when I walk into the hall with my still-damp hair, the first thing I notice is Aja’s wide-open door.
“Aja?”
I peer into the room. It’s empty. “Aja?” I yell out again. Silence.
I wonder if he took The Dog out for a walk. I head to living room and my eyes dart to the crate in the dining room—where The Dog is lying, head on his paws, looking up at me with sorrowful eyes. My heart starts to beat a little faster.
“Aja!” I yell, even though it’s a futile attempt. I know I won’t be getting a response. A glance in the kitchen confirms what the newly formed pit in my stomach is trying to tell me. Aja’s gone.
I run out the front door and down the concrete steps to the parking lot, calling his name with even more urgency. The bright blue sky forces me to squint and the hairs on my arm react to the unexpected cold air—wasn’t it sixty-five earlier this week?—as I scan the cars, the sidewalk, the road. A hunched balding man in an overcoat two apartment buildings down from me is walking a puff of a dog that looks like a Pomeranian. The guy’s staring at me, openmouthed, and I glance down at myself, taking in what he sees: a barefoot guy clad in a robe, breathing heavily and shouting.
“Have you seen a boy?” I ask, staring back at him. “He’s ten, but small for his age. Looks about seven?”
He puts his hand up to his ear, which even from this distance I can see is sprouting a handful of long white hairs. “Ten, you say?” His voice is gruff.
I nod.
He sets his lips in a line and shakes his head, while his dog lifts its leg and pees on a car tire.
As I turn to go back inside and get my car keys, I wonder: am I overreacting? When I was ten, I would stay outside for hours with my buddies. I try to remember what we were even doing. I have a vague memory of throwing rocks at stuff. Well, my friends were throwing rocks. I was most likely studying them.
But Aja doesn’t have any friends. And he’s never shown the slightest interest in going outside—he’s always on that blasted computer.
The computer!
I rush into his room and swipe the mouse to wake up the screen, praying he followed my rule about not leaving it password-protected. A chat room fills the monitor and relief floods me. He’s a good kid.
I scan the missives.
ProfX729: Didn’t wrk.
IggyCanFly: What’d u try?
ProfX729: Hammer. Annihilated coffee table.
IggyCanFly: W@?! D0000000000d. Bet ur dad’s P’d.
ProfX729: Nt my dad.
IggyCanFly: Rght. Sry.
ProfX729: Think I ne2h sth bigger. More ke.
IggyCanFly: Like w@—a car? ;)
ProfX729: Maybe.
IggyCanFly: D00d, jk. C the winky face? ^^
ProfX729: Got an idea. MTF.
IggyCanFly: Wait. Not a car, K? 2 yng 2 drive.
IggyCanFly: D00d, u there?
IggyCanFly: D00d?
I only understand every third word, but two things are clear: 1) Aja did throw the hammer into the coffee table on purpose. 2) He’s left to go try whatever he was trying with something else. Something bigger. Something that may or may not be a car. And the panic that’s rising with every second, flooding my body with alarm, is telling me that whatever it is he’s doing, it’s something dangerous.
And the only question that remains is: can I find him in time?
ten
JUBILEE
“WELL, THIS IS a first,” Louise says.
I look up from the returns I’m scanning.
“Found this in the stacks,” she says, holding up a flip-flop.
“Shoes?” I ask.
“Just the one,” she says. “I’ve found a lot of strange things here before—I keep a box in the back—but never one shoe.” She walks around the circulation desk. “You’d think someone would notice if they walked in with two sandals and walked out with one.”
Roger appears over Louise’s shoulder. “In the stacks?” he asks, nodding at the shoe.
They’re both behind the circulation desk now and the hairs on the back of my neck start to stand at attention. The area is feeling just a little too crowded. I start to tap my left wrist.
“Yep,” Louise says. “Might be the weirdest thing yet.”
“I don’t know,” says Roger. “That naked American Girl doll with the pins stuck in its eyes—remember? That was pretty creepy.”
“Oh dear, yes. That was strange.”
“A librarian friend of mine in the city? Found one of those house-arrest ankle bracelets, cut clean through,” Roger says.
“Oh my! Can you imagine?”
Roger and Louise laugh and keep talking, but with a lowered pitch, which is how I know a patron is approaching. I look up, hoping it’s not someone asking me how to use the Internet again. That was an anxiety-ridden experience. My eyes lock on Madison H. I’m surprised to see her, since she was just in a week ago, and she doesn’t strike me as someone who comes to the library that often—even if she is on the board.
“Hi,” she says, smiling, her thick lip gloss shining like a just-licked lollipop.
“Hi,” I say, staring at her. I look in her hands for books, but she’s not carrying any. “Um . . . can I help you?”<
br />
“Oh, well I thought we had talked about grabbing lunch last week. I was in the area—do you still want to?”
Huh. I guess she did mean it when she asked on Halloween. I glance at the clock—it’s 12:10—and I technically could take a break right now, if I wanted. I look back at her expectant face.
“I’m sorry, have you already eaten? I probably should have called first.”
“No, no,” I say, turning my attention to my computer screen. “Um . . . let me just finish checking in these books and, um . . . I’ll be ready to go.”
MADISON NAVIGATES HER car into the parking space in front of TeaCakes. It’s only a few blocks from the library, but she said she’d drive because the weather has taken a sharp turn toward cold the past few days.
She moves the gearshift to park, while I peer at the storefront—the large expanse of window, where people on the other side are eating and talking and gesturing with their hands. But when I imagine that Madison and I will soon be sitting at one of those tables, the giant fist starts squeezing and tightening my chest, and my body freezes, limb by limb. I can’t get out of the car. And I know no amount of tapping is going to change that.
So I sit there staring dumbly—at the eating, gesturing people who make being human look so easy. I kind of hate them. Not in such a way that I’d wish anything bad would happen to them, but just in the way that you hate the pretty, popular girl at school. Like the way I kind of hated Madison H.
“You coming in?” she says.
I stare at her, my face filling with heat. “No,” I say, my dry throat expelling the word like a stuck crumb.
“No?” She tilts her head.
My brain races to find an excuse, something plausible as to why I can’t leave the car, and then I look down and land on one.
“I forgot my coat.” It’s true—I left it in the back room of the library in my shock and confusion at Madison’s asking me to lunch—but I know it’s a feeble justification, considering I walked to Madison’s car without it, and TeaCakes is only a few yards in front of us.
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