“Finding out that Julian was having seizures was really hard, Isabelle. But once we knew, we realized we could help him get better.”
Papa kissed Julian on his cheek as he stood up.
“Were you and Mama afraid that I might have seizures, too?” I asked.
“A little, but Julian’s type of seizures are so rare, the chances of it happening twice in one family isn’t likely. We also knew that if you had seizures like Julian, we’d love you, just as we love Julian.”
Papa brought the jar of pickles to his mouth, took a gulp of pickle juice, and smiled.
“I’ll never forget the moment I saw your chubby Perez cheeks and your beautiful brown eyes the day you were born. I didn’t know what lay ahead, but I knew that you completed our family.”
8
“Stand back.”
Julian caught the seriousness in my voice and moved to the other side of the corridor. I twisted my lock, carefully entering the combination. I leaned my hip against the door, lifted the latch, and allowed the door to spring open.
Notebooks, highlighters, gym socks, sweatshirts, a hairbrush, and sheets of paper spilled out across the floor.
“Does this always happen?” Julian asked.
“No.” I smiled. “Usually, I stand by the door and stop the avalanche, but I wanted you to get the full effect.”
Julian stooped and gathered up my notebooks. I collected the highlighters and crammed them into a pencil case.
“I’m not touching those,” Julian said, pointing his chin at my socks. “How many pairs?”
“I don’t know. Six? I meant to take them home weeks ago, but, you know, I just haven’t.”
“It’s the same under your bed.”
“You’ve never seen under my bed.” I paused and considered the power of Las Brisas. “Wait, have you seen under my bed?”
“No,” Julian laughed. “But I’ve heard Mama and Papa complain about it.”
Julian tucked my notebooks under some worn-out textbooks on my locker shelf as I balled up my socks. He turned to inspect the inside of my locker door and smiled at his reflection in the small mirror. He ran his fingers over the stickers layered like a frame around it. His eyes moved down, to the photo.
“Anna’s dad took it. He gave me a copy.” I stepped forward, rolling up my sweatshirts. I quickly stuffed them in the bottom of my locker and moved to close the door, but Julian’s hand pushed it back open.
“This was from the Winter League Championship?” Julian asked. “You’re wearing your special sneakers.”
I nodded.
“The trophy is so shiny.”
I stood beside Julian and looked at the photo with fresh eyes. Frizzy hair framed my forehead, and my uniform stuck to my skin with sweat. My arm curled around Anna’s neck, her arm wrapped around my shoulders. Anna had changed the elastics around her braces to our team colors (white and blue) just before the championship game. You could see them in the photo—all of them. Her smile was that big. My lips were parted in a smile, but . . .
“Your eyes,” Julian whispered.
“What about them?”
“They’re sad.” He leaned in closer and then looked over at me.
I shook my head.
“No, Julian. They look worried because I was worried.”
I pressed my sweatshirts down and stacked my socks on top.
“If you think opening my locker was tricky, closing it is even harder. Watch.”
I reached for the papers and placed them on top of my mound of clothing. With my hairbrush holding everything in place, I whipped my locker closed, pulling my hand out at the last moment.
“It would be easier if it wasn’t so full of clothing,” Julian observed.
“I know.”
Julian looked at me for a moment. I knew he was still thinking about the photo.
“Where do you want to go next?” I asked.
“Let’s just wander,” Julian suggested.
The hallway smelled of mop water, sneakers, and pencil clippings. Las Brisas hadn’t changed a thing. Julian walked a little ahead of me, peeking into each classroom that we passed.
“Whoa, whose room is this?”
“That’s Ms. Foley’s room.”
“Writing?” Julian asked as he pushed the door open and walked in.
“And reading.”
Julian spun a book rack in a full circle. His fingers tapped the spines of the books in the classroom library. He then flopped on one of her beanbag chairs.
“Where do you sit?”
“We don’t have assigned spots, but I try to sit by the windows.”
Julian stood and gazed out into the courtyard. We were on the second floor, staring into the middle of a full sugar maple. It was bright green with spring now, but turned vibrant red in the fall.
“Do you have assigned spots at your school?” I asked.
“I kind of have to. The teachers have special gear for me—a lot of gear. It would be hard for them to move my spot from day to day. But I do move to different rooms depending on what I’m working on, kind of like you.”
Julian walked over to Ms. Foley’s desk and looked at her photos.
“Let’s get going. I want to see more before time runs out.”
We didn’t linger long in my math classroom.
“Math teachers don’t do much to decorate,” I explained as we passed through the rows and rows of student desks. At the end of the hallway, we descended the stairs, all the way down to the basement and into my art room. The tabletops had been wiped clean but streaks of clay, markers, and paint remained.
“This is a lot like my art room,” Julian said.
“Really?”
He nodded as he walked around the perimeter.
“We have a clay area and a paint area, and lots of sinks, but they are lower, and accessible.”
I reached for his hand.
“Come see what I’m working on.”
I guided Julian to the shelves in the back corner where my clay pinch pots were waiting for their glaze. The pots were as small as my fingertips, topped with tiny lids. Each lid was decorated with a tiny figure: a lion, a coiled snake, a bird’s nest with eggs inside. Julian carefully plucked one from the back of the shelf. It was my cornucopia pot.
“They’re so small.”
“I know! Anna and I have been working on them together. We’re trying to see how small we can get them, while keeping the lids recognizable.”
Julian chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“My pottery is the opposite. It’s enormous. I’m working with my classmate, Dylan. We squeeze a ball of clay as hard as we can and make an imprint. Then we arrange them together. Right now, our sculpture kind of looks like a termite mound.”
“How tall is it?”
“Let’s see . . .” Julian squatted down and reached his hand up over his head. “It’s about this high. I haven’t worked on it since my big seizure, but pretty soon we’ll have to build it out because we won’t be able to reach higher from our chairs.”
“I’d like to see it when it’s complete,” I said.
“I’d like you to see it, too.”
We climbed up the steps to the main hallway, past the principal’s office and nurse’s office, toward the gym. Julian paused in front of the trophy case. A gigantic golden trophy sat front and center.
“Blue Eagles Girls’ Basketball: Division One Champions,” Julian read aloud. “This is your team’s Winter League trophy, right?”
I nodded.
“This was the game you scored forty-three points and had thirty-two assists?”
I nodded.
Behind the trophy was a team photo. Coach had insisted that I hold my MVP trophy for the photo. The team had insisted that I sit in the front. My
smile had matched theirs.
“Your eyes are worried here, too.” Julian placed his hand on my shoulder. “She meant to call and let you know,” he said.
“Papa could have,” I said, as I shrugged his hand off.
“But he doesn’t think of things like that.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
Julian stepped closer to the trophy case and looked at the collage of championship photos.
“I wanted to ask you about the game, but you know I—I can’t.” Julian’s voice was soft. “And you never talked about it. Papa read me the article from the paper . . .”
I glanced at the photos and pointed to the glass.
“That one, with me stretched out across the floor, passing the ball to Alissa—I was pushed down by the forward on the other team. She wasn’t called for a foul, but I didn’t mind, because after Alissa caught the ball, she ran it in for a layup.”
My finger moved to a photo of me shooting a three-pointer over my defender’s outstretched arms. “This photo was just as the third quarter started. We were tied at halftime. Coach told us that we needed to come back strong.”
“Looks like you did.”
I nodded.
“You got an ice-cream cone when you joined us at the hospital,” Julian offered. “I remember Papa got your favorite flavor—black raspberry.”
I smiled.
“There’s that smile again, like the one in these photos—with your mouth but not with your eyes.” He stepped closer. “But now your eyes are sad, not worried.”
“When I didn’t see you at the game, Julian, when I couldn’t find you or Mama or Papa in the crowd, I found Anna’s dad at halftime and asked him to call home. He couldn’t get hold of Mama or Papa. I watched him from the court. He kept calling through the entire second half.
“Maybe that’s why I played so hard, to try to block the worry. After the game ended, after the trophies were awarded, everyone went home—except for Anna and her dad. He still couldn’t get hold of Mama and Papa, so he took us for ice cream.” I looked over at Julian. “I thought something bad had happened to you, something very, very bad. Finally, after my second Mudslide sundae, Papa called back. He said it was just your fever, and that it had gotten really high, really fast.”
I turned my back to the photos and wiped my eyes on my sleeve.
“They forgot about me during my biggest game of the year. And I’m not supposed to complain about it, because what would that make me? Selfish.”
“You’re not selfish, Belle.”
“I am, Julian. When I spoke to Papa on the phone and heard that you were okay, I didn’t care how high your fever had gotten, or what tubes you’d had stuck inside you. I was angry. When I got to the hospital and Mama told me about your temperature—how you went from 103.4 degrees to 104.1 degrees during the ambulance ride—I interrupted her and told her about my free throws. When she told me about your seven-second seizure in the ER and the five-second seizure you had right before Anna’s dad dropped me off, I pulled up my sleeves and my pant legs so I could show her the floor burn on my knees and elbows. And do you know what Mama said?”
Julian shook his head.
“She told me that I was being selfish.”
“Belle, it’s not selfish to want to be seen.”
“And Papa? He was happy because I shared my ice-cream cone with him. He didn’t know I had already had ice cream with Anna and her dad. He didn’t think to ask what I’d been doing for the past hour, waiting to hear from them.
“It was like my game didn’t even happen. No one asked how I’d played or how much I scored. They didn’t even ask who won. I felt like I didn’t matter.” My voice trembled. The back of my throat burned. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “I know you were sick, Julian, and it was scary—but that game was a big deal for me, and no one noticed or cared.”
“Belle—”
I put my hand up and Julian pressed his lips closed.
“I don’t want to talk about the game anymore,” I said as I started walking down the hallway, leaving the trophy case behind. “Come on, Julian. We’re probably short on time. I’ll take you to the cafeteria and show you where Anna likes to sit so she can stare at the boy she’s too shy to talk to.”
“What’s his name again?” Julian asked, jogging a little to catch up.
“His name is Troy. She’s had a crush on him since third grade.”
“That’s a long time,” Julian said.
“I know.”
“Belle—stop.” Julian stepped in front of me. “Where do you keep your trophy? I’ve never seen it.”
“It’s in my closet.”
“Can you show it to me sometime?”
I nodded and started walking again. The smell of ketchup and chicken fingers greeted us as I pushed the cafeteria doors open.
“Belle?”
“Yes, Julian?”
I turned around and looked at him, looked deep in his brown eyes, eyes that weren’t sad or worried, but warm and filled with love. He hesitated.
“Are you going to ask another question about the Winter Championship? I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”
Julian’s cheeks dimpled as he shook his head.
“You’re making me nervous,” I said, fighting a smile.
“What I’m wondering is . . . is there someone you’re too shy to talk to?”
My cheeks grew warm and I inched closer.
“We might be in Las Brisas, having a heart-to-heart moment. But Julian, listen closely: I am not talking about crushes with you.” I spun around and marched over to Anna’s favorite seat.
“I’ll take that as a yes then,” Julian called out after me.
9
I stopped short on the sidewalk on my way out of school. Mama was standing next to our car and waving me over. My heart sped up as I walked closer. I let out a breath of relief when I saw that she was smiling and Julian was sitting in the backseat.
“Hey, Julian.”
He lifted his head and looked at me. His lips quivered as he tried to smile.
“Julian has a checkup,” Mama explained.
I opened the door and buckled myself in next to Julian.
“How was Julian’s day?” I asked my mother.
Mama looked at me in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were wide with excitement.
“His teachers tracked only three seizures today.”
“Wow, that’s . . . that’s so few.”
“I know.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “By this time yesterday, he’d had seven. So far today he’s at four—including the one at breakfast. I’ve got a good feeling about the rest of the day. I think his new meds are really kicking in.”
“Did he work on his clay sculpture today?” I asked.
“His what?”
“Julian is building a clay sculpture with Dylan.”
Mama looked over at Julian, whose hands lay on his lap. His head rolled toward the window.
“No, Isabelle. Julian is taking a break from art right now as we work on reducing his seizures.” Her eyes caught mine for a few seconds. I knew better than to speak up.
Julian’s body relaxed as Mama started the car. The engine always soothed him. Today, it seemed to knock him out.
“How was your day?” Mama asked as we left the school parking area.
“Good,” I answered, watching Julian’s breathing grow heavy.
“How’d you do on your math quiz?”
I thought about lying, but it just didn’t feel right.
“I have it tomorrow,” I said.
Thanks to her special gift, Mama’s brain was able to hold countless bits and pieces of information. On top of all of Julian’s seizure info, Mama remembered every one of my tests, assignments, and presentations. She had memorized the r
idiculous llama dance I had performed when I was three. She could recite the birthday song I created for Papa’s fortieth birthday—all seventeen verses of it. I only needed to mention a quiz once, and she’d remember the date and ask me how it went.
But that had changed since Julian’s big seizure. Now, her memory was off.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“Yes, Isabelle. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.” She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. I pretended not to notice.
The drive wasn’t long, but it took us out of town, across the falls, to a city nearby. Julian used to see doctors in regular doctor offices, but as he got older and his seizures continued, he met with special doctors in their special offices. These offices weren’t in a clinic, or a cozy building. They were housed at the regional hospital, in the children’s wing.
When I was little, I’d found the hospital exciting, with its shiny, waxed floors, the bright lights, and the elevators. I liked the warm receptionists, the eager nurses, and the never-empty baskets of stickers. The hospital became less magical as Julian’s seizures continued and the potential mystery cure grew more distant.
For this visit, like every one before, Mama, Julian, and I wound our way through the hallways, up to the fourth floor, and through the automatic doors decorated with paper flowers.
I stood next to the gigantic fish tank. Two clownfish raced around a bubbling treasure chest; one bloated purple fish floated on the surface.
“We’ll see you in a little bit, Isabelle,” Mama said, kissing me on the forehead.
“Bye, Julian,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze.
He always squeezed back, every doctor visit, for as long as I could remember. With his hand in mine, I waited. I laced my fingers in between his and moved in closer.
“Julian?”
“Isabelle.” Mama’s voice came as a sharp whisper. “None of this nonsense now.”
My arm pulled back. I watched my mother wheel Julian toward the reception desk.
“Mama.”
She paused and turned. “What is it, Isabelle?”
I stepped over quickly.
“Can I . . . can I see what the doctor does with Julian?”
She took a deep breath and brushed her curls behind her ears.
What the Wind Can Tell You Page 9