The Blue Girl

by Laurie Foos

  At night in bed, I keep thinking, What if something happened to my basal ganglia? What if my cerebellum stopped functioning? What if the neurotransmitters dried up? What if the pathway between my spinal cord and cerebral cortex got clogged? And what if my gray matter turned blue?

  I think about my heart and my lungs all the time. It’s all tied into my brain, which I have no control over, and sometimes when I sit in Mr. Davis’s class, I keep thinking that my brain has turned against me.

  It says on the web that we’re only born with a certain amount of gray matter and no more. It’s finite. I don’t think Greg has much gray matter at all, since he doesn’t even understand biology. Rebecca has more than Greg, but I don’t think she has as much as Audrey. I think Audrey has the most. Much more than I do. When Audrey pulled the girl out of the lake, I stood there with my eyes closed just like everyone else. Audrey is the one who knows what to do.

  What if Audrey’s gray matter turned blue when she saved her?

  Not long after she saved the girl, I slept at Audrey’s house. I hadn’t slept there since her father got taken away, and Mama thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, sleeping there with Audrey’s dad not long out of the hospital. But she relented because Audrey’s mom needed us to stay with Buck. She didn’t say why, but the three mothers were going out. That was the first night I smelled the vanilla and chocolate in the air at Audrey’s house, the same smell that floats through mine, but I didn’t mention it to Audrey, because she looked so tired. I think our moms were putting something over on us.

  We were sitting in the den with the television off, Audrey and her little brother, Buck, and I, drinking Cokes. Buck was supposed to be in bed, but Audrey always lets him stay up. Her father played that weird basketball game of his in the living room. We watched him for a while, and I even clapped once when he scored a basket. He smiled at me, a half-smile out of the side of his mouth. I almost missed it. Buck and Audrey stared at me when he smiled, and I felt the way I do when my brain seems to turn against me and I go all red in front of other people. I tried to distract her by asking where her mom was, where she’d gone with Mama and Libby.

  Audrey said, She thinks it’s a secret. She laughed when she said that. I laughed, too, but I don’t know why I laughed. I didn’t get the joke.

  Buck said, Watch this, Caroline, this is about her, and then he held his breath until his face started to go red and then blue. He fell on the rug. Audrey’s father didn’t even look at him, he just kept shooting the Nerf ball. Audrey had to jump off the couch and make Buck sit still until he caught his breath again.

  That’s enough about her, she said. She said it in a gentle way, though, not angry as I would have been if Greg had done something like that in front of my friends, holding his breath and falling down. It’s bad enough Greg keeps pawing at one of my best friends and keeps going on and on about the blue girl. After it looked as if he’d settled down, Audrey walked Buck to his bedroom. I leaned over on my chair to hear.

  Tell me again, he said, tell me about her again.

  Audrey leaned down and said, Not tonight, Bucky, go to bed now.

  I almost got up and went over to them. I wanted to whisper, Yes, please, Audrey, tell it again. Tell us about how you saved her, Audrey. Did you feel it, all that blue skin and body? Do you think it got inside you? because Audrey’s so skinny now, with blue veins under her eyes. Audrey doesn’t seem to worry if her brain might turn blue, not like I do.

  Even though Audrey saved a girl who was almost dead, she doesn’t think the things that I do, about whether she’s turning blue inside, or whether she’ll stop breathing. I didn’t even see much of what happened, since I had my eyes closed most of the time, holding on to Mama, but now I’m the one who worries about dying.

  The night of that sleepover, Audrey didn’t sleep. I woke up almost every hour and heard her father shuffling around the living room playing his game. At about three or four in the morning, I got up to go to the bathroom and saw him sitting on the floor with the ball between his knees.

  Doesn’t it ever stop? I asked when I got back to Audrey’s bedroom. I was on the floor in my sleeping bag, and Audrey was in bed with the palms of her hands pressed against her eyes.

  No, she said. It never stops.

  I should have said something then, anything. Audrey’s become so pale and thin lately. That night she looked compressed somehow. Can someone’s body compress itself? She yawns all the time and nods off during tests. I let her cheat all the time. It’s the least I can do. I may have issues with my brain and worry about it all the time, but at least I don’t have to live with the memory of saving the blue girl.

  I have to study for the biology test so I won’t fail like my brother, Greg. Mr. Davis says if you understand the cell, you understand the universe, but I don’t think that’s true, because no one understands the blue girl. Not even Mr. Davis. He doesn’t even think she exists.

  I try to understand my cells. At my desk I lift my arm up to the light and imagine them flaking off or circling together trying to build more skin. It makes me feel better to think about my skin regenerating itself, growing, working to keep me alive.

  If I can stop thinking about my cells long enough, maybe I can figure out why the girl is blue. Rebecca wants to know. Greg wants to know. No one says, I want to know, but I can tell. I can see the wanting in their eyes. Audrey wants to know more than any of us, even though she won’t say so. I want to know, but I think Audrey’s desperate to know most of all.

  It’s embarrassing to have an older brother in the same class. Greg doesn’t seem to care, even though everyone thinks he’s obnoxious and slightly stupid, but in a cool way, as if being an idiot is cool. They want to be like him, and I can see Rebecca staring at his crotch sometimes. I wish she wouldn’t look at him that way. It makes me think of all the arousal her sympathetic nervous system is going through. I would rather not think about anyone’s sympathetic nervous system or its arousal, but I can’t help it. Rebecca’s been different since the summer, since her boobs grew and she started sweeping her hair to one side.

  Extracellular matrix.

  Vacuole.

  Bacteriophage.

  I cannot make the words penetrate my brain. The words are like dead cells that won’t regenerate. Last year, before the blue girl came and almost drowned, I was acing earth science. I got a 97 on the final exam. Mrs. Gordon, the teacher, wrote, Bravo, Caroline!!! with three exclamation points. I used to be able to read the glossary in the back of the book and memorize all the terms in one try. When Mr. Davis made us map out gene combinations, I got up and filled in all the dominant and recessive genes without even studying.

  I wonder if there’s a recessive gene for blue pigment in the skin.

  When Mama goes out, I stay on the computer all night. She doesn’t like me spending that much time on the computer. She says it will ruin my eyesight and give me wrinkles in my forehead from squinting. She doesn’t say it, but I know she thinks I don’t need one more thing working against me when my waist is already rolling over on itself and my thighs are too thick. This morning I put pins in my hair to keep it off my face, and when I asked Mama how it looked, her face told me everything. It looks nice, Caroline, very nice, she said, but I knew it wasn’t true. Mama’s a very bad liar.

  On the web I look up “epidermal pigmentation.” It says, “Sorry, no matches found.” I take one of the butterflies out of my hair and think about how many skin cells I might’ve killed just from sliding the pin against my scalp. It almost makes my cry. I type in “blue” and “skin.” It says, “The word ‘and’ is very common. Try another word.” My neurons feel like they’re on fire. I type “blue skin” and up come all these hits. I remember Mr. Davis talking about random selection, so I close my eyes. I hold my finger out to see where it lands on the screen.

  It’s a questionnaire. I hear Greg thumping around downstairs, looking to steal Mama’s pies. They smell so good, a sweet, creamy goodness that seeps right into t
he fat cells. Mama is right about that much. They’re for a bake sale, she says whenever we ask her, and to me, Greg says, When has there even been a bake sale in this fucking town? And I say, Shut up, Greg, those are Mama’s pies. He wants them, but he knows better. Mama loves those pies.

  It takes ten minutes to download the questionnaire because my computer’s so slow. Last week I asked Dad if he would think about getting me a new computer if I get an A in biology. He just looked at Mama and shook his head, and when we were alone, Mama said, Don’t ever look to a man for happiness, Caroline. I told her I wouldn’t, but I still want the computer.

  The list is long. I print out the most important questions on page one:

  Are the nail beds blue?

  Does the person exhibit signs of pulmonary edema?

  Does the person have a persistent cough?

  Is the skin blue at any points other than arms, hands, and extremities?

  I don’t know what pulmonary edema is, but fortunately it’s in blue and underlined, indicating a link. I click on it, and the new screen explains that it’s a “swelling of the lungs or lung tissue.”

  That day at the lake, the girl didn’t breathe for a long, long time. It seemed like forever when Audrey leaned over her and tilted her neck back exactly the way they taught us CPR at the end of last year on the dummy named Annie. Greg got in all that trouble for squeezing it and trying to mount it and for being a general pig. I sat next to Audrey in the gym that day, and I remember I couldn’t pay attention because I kept thinking about my lungs and my own cilia and bronchial tubes. Everything could shut down at any minute. Nobody can prove that it won’t. One second you could be breathing and the next your lungs could collapse. I didn’t think Audrey was listening because she sat there looking down at the floor. I thought of asking her if she ever wondered how it would feel to have asthma or to just quit breathing, or if she felt her breathing was safe, but I knew how crazy it would sound so I didn’t ask.

  I guess Audrey listened better than any of us, because she knew just what to do that day. She turned the girl over just the way the woman had shown us that day with the dummy in the gym, and she used the flat of her hand when she pounded the water out of the blue girl’s lungs. I can still remember the water spurting out, brown and thick with stench. When she pumped the girl’s chest, I could see Audrey’s mouth moving as she counted. She tilted the girl’s head back. Everyone was yelling and crying: Rebecca’s mother, even Mama. I looked up at Mama’s eyes full of tears just when the girl started coughing.

  Mama, I said on the way home, don’t be sad. Audrey saved her.

  Mama said, Someday when you get older, you’ll see that sometimes you wish you weren’t someone’s mama. You’ll wish it was just you, you all alone.

  I didn’t say anything, but I wanted to tell her that I felt that way already, even though I’m only fifteen. How will I feel when I get older and my cells start to die off and my gray matter gets soft? What will happen to me then?

  When I hear Mama come in after midnight, I shut off the computer and climb into bed with the questionnaire under the blanket. It’s dark, but I’ve already memorized the questions. Cyanosis, it said on the website. Caused by lack of oxygen. I breathe as deeply as I can and try to imagine the oxygen seeping into my cells.

  I dream the blue girl is back. She’s sitting outside on the grass behind the auditorium eating something out of aluminum foil. Rebecca and I stand by the window on the second floor looking down at her. She looks right back up at us. Her mouth moves very slowly as she eats.

  She got bluer, Rebecca says.

  Audrey comes up behind us. I turn around to her, but she looks right past me out the window. She’s wearing a gray sweater that hangs off her shoulders. It looks like her shoulder bones might pop right out of her skin, and her eyes look all hollow with dark veins around them. I look down at her fingernails to check to see if they’re blue, and they are. My poor friend Audrey, just a mass of cells.

  Doesn’t she look bluer to you? Rebecca asks.

  I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or to Audrey, so I don’t say anything and neither does Audrey. We just stand there at the big window that looks out over the field and watch her as she picks stuff out of aluminum foil and eats it.

  What do you think she’s eating? Rebecca asks.

  I think maybe cheese or pieces of meat, something with a lot of protein and vitamin B. She needs riboflavin to oxygenate her blood. Rebecca thinks she eats plants that grow out by the lake.

  Maybe she eats blueberries, Rebecca says, and then she moves away from the window and says, I’m going to find out.

  She turns around and walks down the stairs to the double doors that lead out to the field. I grab Audrey’s sleeve to pull her along. Her feet shuffle when she walks, and for a second on the way down the stairs, I think that if I let go of Audrey, she’ll fall and her bones will crack open as her body slams into the steps, and I won’t know what to do because I haven’t studied the skeletal system enough.

  I reach over to hold both hands around Audrey’s arm when Greg sneaks up behind us.

  What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Greg says.

  Audrey slips away from me. Rebecca starts pulling on the door handle. The doors are made of metal, and they bang every time Rebecca yanks at the handle.

  The blue girl’s out there, I tell Greg.

  No fucking way, Greg says.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Audrey leaning against the wall, shaking her head. I’m about to ask her what’s wrong when the bell rings. I press my biology book hard against my chest and tell myself to think about my cells because it’s getting harder and harder to breathe. I think, Swollen epiglottis, bronchial obstruction, when the door flings open, slamming against the wall and sending Rebecca flying into me. My biology book sails out of my arms and lands with a crack on the floor. The blue girl just stands there at the top of the stairs. Her lips tremble as she stands there staring at us. She looks at Audrey and then at Rebecca and then at me. I try to smile at her, but I can’t, my lips won’t move.

  All of a sudden her mouth opens. She looks like she’s going to speak, and then a wind comes out of nowhere, a huge gust that makes all the butterfly clips fly out of my hair. The wind blows harder. The glass rattles in the windows. I see Audrey in the corner, pinned against the wall by the wind, and I think, Someone has to come, someone has to help us. The blue girl’s mouth opens wider, and the wind spins all around us. It hurts my ears. It sounds like screaming.

  Greg yells, Shut the fucking door! but before anyone can move, the blue girl gets caught in the wind. It looks like slow motion, like a movie, her arms and hands twirling around in the wind. Her legs fly up in the air and her hair whips around. The wind knocks me down, hard. I feel the hard floor against my spine. A pain shoots through my lower back, and as I try to get up, I think, I’ve broken a vertebra before I could memorize which one is which.

  Everyone runs out of the classrooms and into the hall. I lie on the floor with a stabbing pain in my back. Mr. Davis yells for everyone to crouch down and hold their arms over their heads like a crash position. Rebecca is screaming, Greg is screaming, Fuck this! Fuck this! The wind howls and blasts through the hall. I feel my body twisting as the wind blows me across the floor. Audrey reaches for my hand. Hold on, hold on, she says, and I grip her hand as hard as I can, so hard I can feel the ligaments in my arm stretching.

  I lift my head for a minute. Every nerve ending in my brain must be shooting messages at once. My brain feels overloaded, but I keep my head up as long as I can to watch the blue girl spinning in the wind, to see if I can tell if she’s breathing. When the wind finally stops, the girl stops in mid-air and then spits out a fountain of water that covers everything. All I hear, just before I wake up, is the splash.

  Libby

  I AM NOT A PERSON WHO DREAMS. SOME PEOPLE MIGHT say that this is not possible, that everyone dreams, that dreaming is part of the brain’s natural function, that the psyche
has to release, has to relieve itself, has to figure itself out. But for me, there is nothing to figure out. Diseases spread. We pass afflictions on to our children more terrible than anyone could imagine. We try to undo the undoable. Babies are born blue. People seem to die and then seem to live again, even though life seems impossible.

  I used to dream but not anymore, not for a long time. When I did dream, I was a frequent dreamer. I kept a diary next to my bed and wrote the dreams down when I woke up. Before Ethan and Rebecca, I’d sometimes read the dreams aloud to Jeff in bed in the morning. He was never interested, I know that now. I complicated things, he told me years later, and he did what he could to settle me. Once he bought me a dream dictionary so I could look up the meaning of the symbols, but after Ethan was born it all stopped. I’d dreamed too much, Jeff said. It was time to wake up.

  Now I am awake, or as awake as it is possible to be. I cannot imagine being more awake than I am now.

  I haven’t told the others, Magda and poor Irene, but when the blue girl first appeared that day on the lake, I felt awake for the first time in years. She was a rumor until then, a whisper overheard in the parking lot of the grocery store. A dream, except I’d stopped believing in dreams. When I heard about this strange blue person who lurked somewhere around the lake area—I don’t think we knew then that she was a girl—I thought maybe I would be able to dream again, that I would look forward again to nighttime, to sleep. I felt comforted by the possibility of dreaming again. I thought there would finally be an end to this blankness. And there has been, even without new dreams, because I have awakened. The blue girl, who came to our woods and almost drowned in our lake, has awakened me.