Faceless

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  “The wall is already packed,” I point out. “There’s no room for a new picture.”

  She shakes her head. “I’ll just have to take one of the old ones down to make room for something new,” she answers, and I hug her once more before Serena and I run out into the fog.

  Our school has been transformed into a Winter Wonderland. Like most kids who live where the temperature rarely drops below freezing, every student at Highlands High is fascinated by snow, so my class picked a prom theme that gave us an excuse to get a snow machine. They’ve coated the hills outside the building and people are racing down on sleds in their formal wear. Serena holds my hand as she makes a dash for the sleds, but I pull away.

  “I’m going inside,” I explain.

  Serena hesitates. “Do you want me to come?”

  I listen to the shouts of my classmates flying down the hills and shake my head.

  “Good luck.”

  I shrug, trying to look calmer than I feel. “Piece of cake, right?”

  Serena leans in to kiss my cheek and then runs off toward the sleds.

  The music in the gym is almost deafeningly loud. I’m shaking so hard that I can feel the headpiece teetering on top of my head, threatening to fall off. No, Serena secured that thing with about a zillion bobby pins. It’s not going anywhere.

  No one is staring at me. Maybe it’s too dark in here—under the paper snowflakes and twinkle lights—to see the pink lines on my cheeks, the rippling scars peeking out from the side of my dress. Or maybe they simply don’t care, too caught up in their own prom nights to notice mine.

  Or maybe they’ve finally all just gotten used to me.

  I spot Alexis and Chirag in the center of the dance floor. Even though the music is upbeat and fast, Alexis is clinging to Chirag like they’re slow-dancing. Is it just my imagination, or is she hanging on a little more tightly than he is? Is she staring into his eyes while he glances around the room like he’s looking for something?

  Or someone.

  Our eyes lock. It’s officially too late for me to turn around. Too late to beg one of the limo drivers waiting in the school parking lot to take me home, where I could take off this dress, change back into long sleeves and pants, wash off my makeup, and climb into bed.

  Instead, I take a step forward, into the press of bodies moving in time with the beat. I struggle to steady my shaking hand as I tap Alexis on the shoulder. Her dress is strapless, black and shiny. I feel sweat on her bare skin when I touch her.

  Shouting to be heard over the music, I ask, “Can I cut in?” even though that sounds like a line from an old movie, something no one would actually say in real life.

  For a split second, I think she’s going to say no. But before she can say anything at all, Chirag peels himself away from her, wrapping his long fingers around her wrists and pulling her arms down from around his neck.

  “Of course,” he answers. The music shifts into a slow song and Chirag holds his arms out for me. I step toward him, my left hand on his shoulder, my right hand in his. But I don’t stand nearly as close to him as Alexis did.

  We dance in silence, Chirag leading in time to the music. His right hand rests on my left hip, over my scars.

  “You’re a good dancer,” I say, surprised. I never knew that about him. “I guess we never actually danced together.”

  Chirag shakes his head. “Never had the chance.”

  I want to tell him that I know what he did the night of last year’s prom, to give him credit for mourning before I did, like it was another one of our races and this time, he won.

  But instead I lean into him, willing my muscles to relax, begging my body to stop shaking. Silently, I repeat the words Marnie has told me a thousand times during therapy: Talk to your muscles, teach them to do what you want them to. Chirag bends his left arm, bringing me closer. Despite the paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling and the snow on the ground outside, I don’t think I’ve ever been so pleasantly warm. I’m finally living the picture in my head: the girl in the green dress, slow-dancing with Chirag.

  Before my accident, I thought we’d play on the beach all summer long, then spend senior year walking through the halls with our hands in each other’s back pockets. But maybe, even if my face hadn’t changed, we still would have. Maybe all those little things that bothered me would have made me erupt one day, or maybe we just would have fallen out of love, the way people do from time to time.

  But whatever might have happened, there is one thing I know for sure: If I’d never gotten hurt, I’d have had the chance to say I love you, too, just like I said in my head a thousand times.

  And so I say it now, because Chirag deserves to hear it: “I love you, too.”

  “What?”

  I shake my head. This isn’t how I planned it. First, I was going to say I’m sorry. I was going to apologize for being a bad girlfriend and a bad friend, for making everything awkward and awful between us. I was going to explain that I’d handled things all wrong, that I should have broken up with him immediately after my accident. It would have been so much better that way: He’d still have driven me to school and PT and anywhere else I’d asked him to. He’d have been a good friend at a time when it was impossible for anyone to be a good boyfriend to me. Then I was going to tell him that I’d been lying when I said I never loved him.

  And not because I’m trying to re-create something that’s gone. But because I owe it to the people we used to be. To the old Maisie. The girl who never got to say it. The girl who wanted to say it. Who deserves to say it.

  “I never got to say I love you, too,” I say, louder this time. “I couldn’t stand the idea that you might go the rest of your life without hearing me say that.”

  Chirag shakes his head. “You didn’t have to say it, May,” he says, and my mouth is filled with the taste of him: clean sheets and Ivory soap and cumin.

  “But I never should’ve said—”

  Chirag interrupts me. “I know why you said what you did the night we broke up,” he says, swallowing so that I can see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down beneath his bow tie.

  “You do?”

  He nods. “I always knew.” He smiles. “Do you remember when I said I had about a million things to tell you that night?” Now it’s my turn to nod. “Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I mean, yes, a lot of things have happened since your accident, and someday I’m going to tell you every single one of them, but mostly, that night, I just wanted to tell you that I loved you—even though it was over, even though so much had changed. You know what I mean?”

  I know exactly what he means. I open my mouth to begin my apologies, but Chirag speaks first, anticipating my thoughts just the way he used to. “You have nothing to apologize for,” he says softly. “Say you’re sorry to everyone else if you have to. But you never have to say it to me.”

  I look up at his face—his perfect, unmarred face. I guess there are some things that I don’t have to say out loud. I press my cheek against his chest and we sway back and forth to the music.

  “You know,” I begin with a smile, “you never really said it. You just wrote it on a piece of paper, like that was enough to make it official. I actually said it out loud: I love you, too.”

  Chirag grins. We’re competing again, just like we used to. I guess my competitive side didn’t vanish completely. Maybe I’m only competitive about a few select things now.

  Like teasing Chirag.

  “I literally just said it,” Chirag protests.

  “No,” I counter. “You said that you wanted to say it. That’s not the same thing.”

  Chirag cocks his head to the side, considering. “So really, when you said it, you didn’t need the too, right?”

  I shrug. “Maybe not.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Alexis Smith standing at the edge of the dance floor, her hands folded across her chest. Ellen and Erica are standing on either side of her. They look like bodyguards, ready to take me down the instant I mak
e a wrong move. Ellen leans over and whispers in Alexis’s ear, maybe something about how Alexis doesn’t have to worry about a freak like me stealing her man.

  No, Ellen wouldn’t be that mean. Not anymore.

  “I think we’re pissing off your girlfriend,” I say softly.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Chirag says. “I mean, we’ve been hanging out a lot lately, but tonight, she’s just my prom date.”

  “I’m not sure anyone told her that.”

  “Well, I’ll make sure she gets the memo,” he says, and slowly, he leans down until his lips are just above mine. His right hand still rests on my left hip, and he begins tracing my scars, his fingers curling over the edge of my dress, touching the broken parts of me. It doesn’t feel anything like I imagined it would. His touch is warm, gentle, and insistent, like he could go on forever.

  So I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips to his. Chirag opens his mouth slightly, then closes it. For half a heartbeat, I think he’s having second thoughts, but then I realize it’s something else entirely: He’s scared that he might hurt me. So I press against him, guiding his lips to follow mine. I want him to know that it’s okay. I’m okay.

  The kiss is warm, and my knees feel wobbly, just the way they used to. And I discover that there are butterflies, even for someone like me.

  The music changes. A fast song comes on, and Chirag and I pull apart, grinning sheepishly, like two kids whose parents have just caught them making out.

  I don’t know if falling in love a second time, like Michael and his girlfriend did, is in the cards for Chirag and me. But I do know that what we had before was real. He was the first boy I loved, the first boy to love me. And nothing will ever change that.

  And I know that this is the way things should have ended between us, not with me slamming his car door shut behind me.

  It should have ended with a kiss good-bye.

  “I better go,” I shout over the music. Chirag nods. We glance at Alexis Smith, who appears to have turned fuchsia in the last two and a half minutes. I spot Serena at the edge of the dance floor and make my way toward her, taking her hands in mine. Her skin is icy from the snow outside and I press her fingers to my cheeks, which are flushed and warm. I don’t care that she is touching my scars. I don’t even care that Alexis is dragging poor Chirag out the door and to the parking lot, where I’m pretty sure they’ll have a fight every bit as epic as the fights my parents used to have.

  I can’t stay much longer. Adrenaline kept me wide-awake tonight—I could taste it—but it’s beginning to fade now, and exhaustion is taking its place. I’ll call my mother, ask her to come and get me. I have an appointment in the morning with Dr. Boden, one in a long list of appointments I will have with doctors and psychologists and physical therapists for the rest of my life, whether I move to New York or stay in California. I will always carry around a box of pills so that my bag jingles when I move. I will always wish this hadn’t happened to me.

  I’ll never look the way I did before. No amount of makeup will turn me into the pretty girl I used to be—despite the pale skin, the freckles, and the big nose that I hated. Years from now, even after I’ve spent more time with this nose, this chin, these cheeks than the sixteen years I spent wearing the features I was born with, sometimes I will still be surprised when I see my reflection in the mirror. Maybe I’ll never be able to sleep through a thunderstorm. And even though I danced with a prince at the ball tonight—even though I’m leaving early just like Cinderella—I don’t feel like a fairy-tale princess about to find her happy ending.

  But I know who I am. I’m a girl with a sharp tongue and wicked sense of humor, just like Adam said. I’m a girl who fell in love for the first time when she was sixteen, who’s had the same best friend since she was five, who fights with the mother she loves fiercely and whose father sang her to sleep every night when she was small.

  I also understand that who I am is fluid, ever-changing, impossible to pin down—no matter how much I’d like to make a list and stick to it. And who I am would be ever-changing even if I hadn’t been out running that morning, even if that tree had never been struck by lightning, even if I’d never heard the words electrical fire or face transplant.

  But I’d like to think that I will always feel this grateful: to my doctors, to my friends and my parents, and especially to the donor whose skin I live in. Whose skin has become my own.

  Finally, I feel lucky, just like everyone said I was. And I hope that will never change.

  I learned so much as I researched and wrote this novel, and so many friends and colleagues helped me along the way. Tremendous thanks to Emily Seife for giving me the chance to tell this story, and for all of her extraordinary help and encouragement as I navigated my way through it.

  Enormous thanks to David Levithan and the entire team at Scholastic. Thanks to Elizabeth Parisi for the lovely cover and to Abby Dening for the book design; to Rebekah Wallin in production and to Jessica White, my fantastic copy editor; and thanks to Veronica Grijalva and Caite Panzer and the sub-rights department. Thanks also to the entire sales, marketing, and publicity teams, especially Tracy van Straaten, Saraciea Fennell, Bess Braswell, and Emily Morrow.

  Enormous gratitude to the inimitable Mollie Glick and the wonderful team at Foundry for their unwavering support and guidance, especially to Joy Fowlkes and Deirdre Smerillo.

  Thanks to the many resources online and in-print that helped me as I researched this novel, starting with an article written by Raffi Khatchadourian and published by the New Yorker in February 2012. Many thanks to Amy Li, Shoshana Woo, and special thanks to Dr. Bill Losquadro for answering my many questions (no matter how absurd they must have seemed to him!)—and thanks to my sister Courtney for putting us in touch.

  Thanks to my teachers, colleagues, family, and friends for their advice and support: thanks for reading and for listening.

  And, as always, thanks to JP Gravitt, for everything.

  “It’s funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn’t it?”

  —Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna

  Alyssa Sheinmel is the author of Second Star, The Beautiful Between, The Lucky Kind, and The Stone Girl, as well as the coauthor of The Haunting of Sunshine Girl series. Alyssa grew up in Northern California and New York, and attended Barnard College. She now lives and writes in New York City. Follow her on Twitter at @AlyssaSheinmel or visit her online at alyssasheinmel.com.

  Copyright © 2015 by Alyssa Sheinmel

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sheinmel, Alyssa B., author.

  Faceless / Alyssa Sheinmel.

  pages cm

  Summary: Maisie is a normal sixteen-year-old, until an electrical fire caused by a lightning strike leaves her with severe burns, her face partially destroyed—she is lucky enough to get a full face transplant but she soon discovers how much her looks shaped her own identity and her relationship with those around her, including her boyfriend.

  ISBN 978-0-545-67601-4

  1. Face—Transplantation—Patients—Juvenile fiction. 2. Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc. in children—Juvenile fiction. 3. Burns and scalds—Patients—Juvenile fiction. 4. Identity (Psychology)—Juvenile fiction. 5. Parent and teenager—Juvenile fiction. 6. Families—Juvenile fiction. 7. Friendship—Juvenile fiction. [1. Face—Transplantati
on—Fiction. 2. Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc.—Fiction. 3. Burns and scalds—Fiction. 4. Identity—Fiction. 5. Family life—Fiction. 6. Friendship—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S54123Fac 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014043153

  First edition, October 2015

  Cover image © 2015 by Tim O’Brien, using photography © ivanastar/iStockphoto

  Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-67602-1

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