Mom reaches out and lays a hand on my shoulder. “You okay, sweetie?”
“Huh?” I snap to.
“You look a little down.”
“I’m okay,” I say. My plate is empty, food eaten on autopilot.
JP guides half a meatball through thick red sauce, his eyes tracing its trajectory. “It’s been one of those weeks.”
“Right?” I side with him.
“You’re not kidding,” Mom agrees. “Can’t believe it’s only Wednesday.”
“Hump Day is the worst. It’s like all I can do to make it to Friday,” JP says. “And even then, I don’t want to deal with Saturday and Sunday.”
“You know you’re always welcome here,” Mom says.
JP nods. “Thanks. It’s just, I don’t know, like my mom’s like even worse these days and it’s like no matter how—”
My chair shrieks to the side as I get up. “I have a test on Friday. I should go study.” Throb goes the leg as soon as I stand.
They both stare at me. Mom frowns.
JP puts on the same face I catch him in all the time at school when he’s talking to the guys at our lunch table. The slightly glazed half smirk. His mask. “Kill that test with fire, Beast,” he says, one pump of his chin to finish off the sentence.
The two of them pick up where they left off, JP starting to elaborate on the most recent rage his mom was in. She’s a mean drunk. It kicks me out a little faster. I just can’t hear about it, I don’t know why. It’s like I want to be there for him, but I prefer to leave it at that. I got you, we’re friends, moving on. Hearing about JP’s mom issues gives me a mild temptation to go down to the basement and see the trains.
When my dad first got his diagnosis, he started building a train set. I was a baby at the time, so Mom told me all this later, but it’s still down here. Dusty and lost. As the years went by, my father expanded the table and added tiny mountains and villages. It takes up an entire corner of the basement next to full-length mirrors. Maybe he wanted the fake little trees and tracks to reflect into infinity. A miniature father and son wait at a faded red train station for a locomotive that will never come.
The whole thing works. All the lights and switches and town houses with doors and windows that open up. He even left behind Christmas bunting for the entire town to get gussied up for the holidays. Mom tried to get me into the trains when I was eight and then again at ten. I never wanted to flick that switch and make them run. They made me deeply sad, but I didn’t know what kind of sad to call it.
I still don’t.
I wander into the living room to get my school bag, but my leg hurts so much I have to rest. Mom would’ve filled that frigging prescription if she knew what it felt like to have your bones try to grow inside a cast.
I’m growing again. I know it. No book or quiz or podcast can save me.
I think of Jamie. She understands.
Another cup of coffee sounds so good right now—let’s stunt these legs right up!—but group is so far away. One more week. All I have to do is hold on, and we can be horrible again.
I sink into the oldest, softest chair we have and disappear into the cushions. No wood to creak, just worn-out springs that gave up years ago. Mom hates this chair. When she sits in it, she can’t climb out because it’s an abyss of threadbare plaid and compressed foam. Once it was my dad’s, but I’ve made it my own.
Pulling some books from my bag, I open one and shake my head sharp and fast. Focus. Study. Chemistry. Let’s get pulled into Coulomb’s law, pun intended, because opposite charges will produce an attractive force while similar charges will produce a repulsive force. I’m ugly as fuck, so let’s get some lovely equations to give me a lap dance.
“How are things at home?” my mom says loud enough so that I know she’s making sure I hear too. I should’ve gone upstairs.
JP sighs. “She tripped and knocked herself out on the coffee table. Again.”
“Did you pad the corners, like we talked about?”
“Yeah, but then that pissed her off even more and she threw them away. She’s like, ‘I’m not a baby!’ and all that, but she’s real bad right now.”
“And you sent that email to your dad?”
“He doesn’t care,” JP says. “I could get a plane to write it in the sky over his office and he wouldn’t give a crap. He’s like, no one can make her go back to rehab, so it’s not his problem anymore.”
There’s rustling. I don’t have to see them to know they’re hugging.
My mom hugs and I punch. Go figure.
When JP started doing this loan-business stuff back in the eighth grade, I didn’t give it much thought. Why would I? I was there for the first transaction. Chase Cooper wanted a pack of gum and was short a dollar. JP spotted him and a week later, with my help, got two dollars back. It was even a little fun shoving Chase into the wall; I’m not going to lie. It’s a rush. Now we’re in high school and his side project has gone school-wide, which is weird. Especially since he doesn’t need any cash, ever, but it’s his thing and we all have a thing. Something to distract from real life. He gets off turning guys who need a favor into clients who owe him. So if I can make him happy in some dumb way, then that’s what I do to help. Better than sitting in the kitchen.
When Mom gets up and fills their glasses with more ice, I sneak my things into my bag and whisper away off the couch. The cane is wood with a worn-down rubber tip that normally tack-tacks against the floor, but I work to be as light as a cotton ball.
It takes forever. I breathe once I’m in my room and the door is closed. I hop over to my window and stare at the roof. That football still taunts me. I close the curtains and sit at my desk to ignore the pull to go get it. I search for a podcast I haven’t already heard, but I’ve heard them all, so I randomly pick the one about dazzle camouflage. The spine of the chemistry book cracks as I lay it flush against the flat wood. I’m reading, but my eyes slide down the page. My mom and my best friend are downstairs talking about wine-bottle-dodging strategies while my leg screams in pain.
I mean, jeezus. His own mother throws empty bottles at him. I’ve seen the welts. He’s shown me. And afterward JP’s head would shake, and his perfect hair and perfect body and perfect face would follow as he slumped against the wall, looking like a young Greek god on a bad day. It dawns on me I would still trade places with JP. Any day. So WTF does that say about me?
NINE
“Strip down and climb up onto the bed,” the nurse says. “We have to measure you.”
This is what all kids want to do at 8:30 on a Tuesday morning. Get half-naked in a hospital and wheeled into surgery. Yesterday I had an emergency appointment with Dr. Jensen and he looked at the X-rays and was like, yeah, that cast needs to come off ASAP.
“You should’ve told me as soon as your leg started hurting,” Mom says.
“Your mom’s right,” the nurse says. He logs into the computer and types some stuff. “Growth plates could get messed up, if they haven’t already.”
Mom inhales sharply, like she’s the one in pain.
“You need to strip,” he says to me, and then gives my mom a look.
“I’ll step out.” She slips out of the exam room and shuts the door behind her so the metal knob clicks.
The nurse’s head turns toward me. “Anything you want to ask while your mom’s gone?”
I shake my head.
“Now’s the chance,” he coaxes.
What does he think I need to ask him, where’s the nearest whorehouse? I tilt my baseball hat and look up at him from my wheelchair. “I’m good.”
“All right. Skivvies and a gown.” He tosses a threadbare green number in my lap.
He’s joking, right? That thing is as small as a Kleenex. “Thanks.”
“No problem. I’ll be in the hall with your mom,” he says, taking the clipboard with him.
A full-length mirror beckons on the back of the closed door, and I pivot my wheels away from it. Being anywhere near naked is
one of my least favorite hobbies. Especially when I always hope to see someone else looking back at me.
But not today. I have to go into surgery, get these stupid pins removed and replaced, and get a new cast. Hooray. This is why I’m here when I’d rather be in trig.
Everyone’s in a tizzy about my leg healing in a confined space. The bone will bunch up and I’ll be all lopsided. To which I say, I don’t care. It’ll give me an excuse to slouch.
A knock at the door and the nurse is inside before I’m finished. “I’m not done yet,” I say as I struggle with my jeans. They’re stuck.
“Here, let me help,” he says, reaching for my jeans before I get a chance to say whether or not I am cool with that. But I sit there like a mute as he wrestles off my pants over the cast. When he’s done, he re-hands me the gown and the obvious dawns on him. “Whoa, dude, this isn’t gonna fit.” Nurse Ryan, as per his name tag, digs under the counter and pulls out one that’s more my size.
He stands above me. “You sure you’re only fifteen?” He makes something that could be confused for a laugh.
I push off the wheelchair and now I’m the one to stand over him. He’s a good half foot shorter than me. I put on the gown, but why I don’t know. Modesty? Pride? I doubt there’s much left. “Yeah, I’m fifteen.”
“All right, show-off.” He points to the scale. “We should weigh you first. Hop up.”
Easy for him to say.
He fiddles with the sliders. His eyes bug. “Two hundred and seventy-two pounds.”
“Is that bad?”
“No. It’s solid muscle,” he says, squeezing my bicep as a prop. The nurse steers me toward the clean white sheet of paper covering the flat hospital bed. “Get on there and lie down.”
Two knocks on the door and Mom pops her head through the crack. “Can I come in now?”
Hail, hail, the gang’s all here. The nurse motions for her to take the empty chair next to my clothes. I swing my bad leg up and it hits the paper with a crunch.
“You’re wincing.” Mom wrings her hands. “Be careful—go slow.”
“He’s fine.” Ryan slaps his hand on my back so hard it feels like a million hornets. “He can take it; don’t worry about him.”
You’re right, I only notice pain when a mastodon’s goring me.
“Let’s get the tape measure. Lie flat and still.” He takes a yellow roll from his pocket and hands the end to my mother. “Pin this down by his heel.” The nurse walks toward my head, the tape unwinding. He presses it by the side of my head. “Six foot five and a half. No wonder your leg hurts: you’ve grown almost two inches,” the nurse says. He takes the measuring tape and wraps it around my upper arm. “Flex.”
“Huh?”
“Make a muscle.”
I squeeze it tight.
“What does this have to do with his leg?” Mom asks.
“Nothing. I was just curious.” He takes the tape back and clamps it between two fingers, running the length with a stupid grin on his face. “Jesus…twenty and three-quarter inches! What do you bench?”
I put my hat back on. “Nothing.”
“Not buying it. Schwarzenegger’s arms were twenty-two and a half inches when he was competing. There’s no way you’re at twenty and three-quarter inches by doing nothing.”
“We’re here for my leg,” I say, dropping the bass in my throat as low as it goes. So low, my chest rumbles as I speak. “Get to it.”
Ryan backs away. “Hey, man, no problem.” He raises his hands up, soft palms facing me.
Mom and I lock eyes and she turns to him. “We’d appreciate it if this could be wrapped up as quickly as possible,” she says. “Dylan wants to get back to school. He loves school—he’s very smart.”
The nurse smiles but I can almost smell the drops of piss I alphaed out of him trickling down his leg. “It’s just guy talk,” he mumbles. He clicks the mouse and snaps the computer to life, bringing up my X-rays, and whips his little pointer all around the screen. “All right, so here we are. It’s the pins that are causing the problem because they’re screwed into your bones, and as you’ve grown, they’re pulling against the body of the cast. Hence, the pain. So Dr. Jensen wants to move up the schedule, install some new plates, and redo a cast so it’s smooth. No pins.”
Fine. We already went over this yesterday during the freak-out. When we found out my bone might be permanently effed.
“You should feel proud of yourself,” the nurse says. “They usually pull the pins out while you’re awake, but your break was so bad and you grew so much, you need surgery.”
“Defenestrate” is one of my favorite words. Not the version where you shitcan someone, although I’d really like to fire this nurse-guy, but the original meaning where you throw them out the window. King James II of Scotland defenestrated a dude, and if it worked for him, I imagine it’d work for me. Why not? I would like to pick up Nurse Ryan with my mighty twenty-and-three-quarter-inch arms and defenestrate him.
Splat.
I bet Mom would hold the window open.
She sits there, her leg jimmying up and down like a piston and her mouth mashed into a razor-thin line, so pissed she can barely speak. “How much longer?”
“He’s prepped for 9:15 AM,” the nurse says. He slams a hand on my back one more time, and my eyelid twitches. “All right, man, I’m off to talk to the doc. No food. No liquids. See you soon.”
Mom grunts as soon as the door closes.
“This is supposed to be the best orthopedic practice in Portland,” I attempt to justify.
“I almost don’t care anymore.” Mom rises and comes over to where I’m plopped on the bed. She lays her hand on top of mine. “You must be sick of it,” she says.
“Happens every day,” I say.
She nods.
“When will I stop growing?”
“I don’t know.”
“How are you so small and I’m so big?” I ask.
“Genetics are funny.” She squeezes my hand and I squeeze back. “You take after Dad. He was a big guy. You’re just like him, in every way,” she says.
Then I have only eleven years left until I die too.
Mom brushes off invisible pieces of lint from my stylin’ gown. “I just wanted you to know you’re not alone.” She touches her nose to my shoulder. A little nudge. “If you ever feel too big, it’s just because the world can be a little small sometimes.”
My stupid head lands on her shoulder. Her cheek presses on top of my scruffy buzz cut, and her arm wraps up as much of my shoulder as it can reach.
A new knock at the door and we both tense. It’s time. “Yeah?” I ask.
An orderly comes in with a standard-sized wheelchair. “I’m here to take you to surgery,” she says, sucking her lip when she sees me. “Oh…I don’t think…Hold on, let me get another chair.”
I hop down and get into my old one. Super deluxe and supersized. “No problem, use mine,” I say. The orderly pushes me and I wave goodbye to my mom. “See you in a couple hours when I’m back in the big, wide world.”
TEN
Waking up from this surgery isn’t as much fun as the last time. No pain pump with a super-cool button to push. No doubt Mom put the kibosh on that. Ah well.
She sits in the far corner of my dark hospital room, reading a book. On the cover a woman in a torn red dress with crazy hair and bare shoulders is getting mauled in the neck by some pirate dude. The spine’s cracked. Must be one of her favorites. Another of the hundred and ninety thigh-slapper novels that she hides under her bed and I accidentally find when I’m looking for ski poles, I bet. “What time is it?” I cough out.
“You’re awake,” she says, ramming the book into her bag. By my side in no time, she scoots a stool close and sits down near my head. “How do you feel?”
“Fine. Groggy.” I rub my eyes and flatten a palm against my head, the hair starting to stubbornly grow back. Feels like I’m rubbing a hedgehog.
“That’s normal,” she says. �
�Dr. Jensen said it went well and you can go home tomorrow. New cast, want to see?”
I roll over and check. All the names are gone. No more Fern Chapman. I smile. Good. She’s not allowed to sign this one. “Cool.”
“You had a visitor.”
“I did?”
A sneaky little smile takes over. She points. I follow the line and on my bedside table, there’s two daisies in an old iced-tea bottle by my bedside. “Where did these come from?”
“A girl dropped them off. I’m guessing she’s the same girl from that day when I caught you at Pioneer Courthouse Square,” she says. “Jamie? Is that her name?”
I almost explode off the bed. “Jamie was here?”
How did she know I had surgery? And she came into my room? With daisies? Do I smell them for clues or something? I pick up the bottle. The two daisies droop against the side of the open mouth. These aren’t store-bought daisies. Their petals are all gamey and chomped on by bugs. The two ragged stems swim in cloudy tap water.
“So what happened?” I ask, as nonchalantly as I can. “She came in?”
“It was the strangest thing. I’m sitting here, reading my book, when she barges in, all bags and boots and then I could see the girl underneath it all. She’s pretty.”
She says that like it’s a surprise—maybe it is because she was here for me. “Did she say anything?”
“Not at first, no. I was like, can I help you? And she almost ran for the door, but I talked her into staying.”
I bet. Patron Saint of Small Talk right here. “What did you say?”
“What do you mean?”
“What embarrassing story did you tell her?”
“Give me some credit.” She sniffs. “I found out you two met in group. Jamie was here for a doctor’s appointment of her own, and I learned her favorite food is crab cakes. So there.”
Crab cakes. I will remember that.
Mom sidles over. “So that’s the girl from the square.”
“Mystery solved.”
“I wish she hadn’t run away that day; she’s a sweetheart. And poor thing too. She’s got such a hard road ahead.” Her head tilts to the side, heavy with sympathy.
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