Mustaches for Maddie

by Chad Morris

  I’d heard that some people get really scared when they are in tight spaces. I wasn’t comfortable, but I wasn’t terrified. At least, not yet.

  “This is going to take a while, Maddie,” the lady’s voice said over some speakers.

  That was twice today I heard my name on an intercom.

  “Okay,” I said. But I wasn’t really okay. They’d put me in some giant machine where I could barely move and left me.

  And that’s when I realized what was really happening.

  BOOM.

  A burst of fire and torn steel flew into space. Our engine had exploded.

  This was it. We were all going to get sucked into the black hole if we didn’t act fast.

  I jumped into my space suit in under twenty seconds and leaped up onto a small table, pushing the buttons on the control panel above it. A beep sounded, and my whole body moved slowly forward, completely surrounded by metal.

  Slowly.

  Too slowly.

  C’mon. Faster. Faster.

  Whoever programed this thing did not think it through. We needed to get into the escape pods quickly. That’s why they call them escape pods.

  The space suit was too tight, but I knew I’d be glad to have it when I was rocketing toward the next closest planet. Seriously, if you don’t have one of these and your escape pod cracks, your blood can boil in less than twenty seconds.

  And I didn’t want my blood to boil.

  Nope.

  My escape pod and I needed to get out of reach of the black hole before we imploded. I’m not a big fan of imploding. I can’t imagine it feeling very good.

  I took a deep breath and let the metal close in around me. Any moment now.

  Beep.

  Please no blood boiling. Please no imploding.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

  I jumped at the noise. It was loud. Really loud. I didn’t know what exactly this machine was doing, but it was not doing it quietly. I had the headphones on, and it was still really loud. Seriously, I was under enough pressure as it was without this thing making so much noise.

  Beep. Beep. Beep. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

  Maybe it was broken or something, but the lady didn’t stop it.

  No, I had just smacked into a space rock as I rocketed from the ship, trying to escape the inevitable clutches of the black hole. The whole area was filled with space debris.

  BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

  I bounced against another meteorite.

  And another. But after a while, I thought they were getting smaller. I hoped I was getting away from the rocks and closer to safety. The escape pod kept making noise, though. Maybe all the banging and bouncing had done some damage.

  More beeps. More brrrrrrrrr.

  I didn’t know shooting into space in an escape pod would get boring. I was lying there all alone, staying still and listening to the crazy machine booming and ringing and buzzing.

  For like forty-five minutes.

  Not a very quick escape.

  Finally, I was out of reach of the black hole. I just didn’t know if I was out of danger.

  What had the machine seen when it looked inside my head?

  We waited for the doctor a loooooooooooooong time. Maybe it wasn’t as long as I thought, but I bet it was. Maybe that long needed a few more Os. Like, if I was a man, I could have grown a beard in the time we waited. A super long beard. Like a guy in motorcycle gang would have. Or a dwarf king. Or that guy in the fairy tale who fell asleep for a hundred years. Oh, what was his name? Rip Van Winkle. Yeah. He had a crazy long beard.

  I tried to think of anything other than what the MRI might show about my brain. So I wondered about school. I hoped I would get a good Shakespeare part and Cassie wouldn’t be upset with me. Oh, and I wondered if Devin liked Cassie like she liked him. I hadn’t had a chance to ask him yet.

  My dad was sitting with me now. He had been in a meeting when my mom told him the doctor wanted me in the hospital immediately. He left right in the middle of his meeting to zoom to the hospital. He got here while I was in the giant metal escape pod. He had a big smile and made lots of jokes. I think he says weird things when he’s nervous. I bet that’s where I get it.

  The hospital had this craft lady who popped into the room to check on me and brought fun stuff, like paints, drawing supplies, and even fingernail polish. I guess if you have to get shots and have doctors test you and put you in a giant machine, they give you stuff to do.

  I liked it. I think I’m crafty. That means good at crafts, or it could mean really clever. I’m both. Crafty and crafty. I liked to make bracelets out of beads or rubber bands or crocheted yarn. I’d made bracelets for some of my friends and cousins and Max. They really seemed to like them. Max pretended his was a communicator to talk to Superhero Headquarters.

  The craft lady let Max play with the stuff, too. He was making something out of Play-Doh when a doctor came in. She was probably a little older than my mom and wore a blue coat.

  “Hello,” she said. She was carrying a box of tissues. That was weird. Why would a doctor bring in a box of tissues? Didn’t they usually carry bandages and doctor tools?

  Oh. Maybe Mom had a booger hanging out of her nose. That would be embarrassing. I checked just to make sure. Nope. My dad didn’t either. I did a quick check on my nose, too. I thought I was clean, but I couldn’t tell for sure without crossing the room and looking in a mirror. Max had one, though. That’s probably why the doctor brought the tissues.

  “We have the results back from the MRI,” the doctor said. “And Maddie has a brain tumor.” She held out the tissue box to my mom.

  A tumor. I didn’t know what that was—not really.

  I looked at my mom and dad. My dad just stared at the doctor. My mom was paying close attention to her, too, but her eyes were different. She didn’t cry, but they were different. She waved off the tissues.

  The tissues were for wiping away tears. Apparently the doctor thought that the fact I had a tumor should make us cry.

  “It’s rather large,” the doctor said. “About the size of two and a half golf balls.”

  I didn’t really understand what the doctor was saying, but I wanted to pretend that it had something to do with golf. Golf was boring, but mini-golf was fun. And people didn’t bring tissue boxes to play mini-golf at Alfunzo’s Fun Zone.

  “Because it’s pushing against her brain, she’s having trouble with the left side of her body. It’s also right next to the optic nerves and could affect her eyesight, if it hasn’t already.”

  My eyes? I had noticed that my eyes bounced a little sometimes, but only when they were tired.

  The doctor kept talking. “The neurosurgery department will be able to answer your questions better than I can. They will likely want to schedule a surgery in a few weeks. It’s likely a very slow-growing tumor, so we don’t have to rush her into emergency surgery tonight. They will schedule an appointment with you to talk all about it, hopefully tomorrow.”

  Surgery? Wasn’t that a fancy word for cutting someone open and fixing stuff inside them? Were they going to open up my head? I didn’t like that idea very much.

  Today went from guacamole to needing brain surgery.

  Boo.

  Triple boo.

  Super-ultra-quadrillion boo.

  The doctor turned to me. “Do you understand, Maddie?”

  I nodded, though it was kind of a lie. I really didn’t understand.

  My dad walked over and hugged me. My mom grabbed a tissue and quickly wiped her eyes.

  “Do you have any questions for me?” the doctor asked.

  I didn’t want to talk to the doctor. I wanted to talk to my mom and dad. I shook my head.

  The doctor kept talking. “After it’s all done, you’ll get to go on these really cool
beds where you can push buttons and move your head up or down and your feet up or down. You can move it into all sorts of positions so you can be really comfortable.”

  That sounded pretty cool. My bed at home didn’t have any buttons.

  The doctor smiled. “And I heard that the nurses will let you order whatever you want from the menu to eat. So you could get a brownie or spaghetti or French fries.”

  I liked brownies and French fries, but I didn’t want to try to figure out what was going on anymore. I looked away, and the doctor went back to talking to my parents.

  “Hey, Maddie,” Max whispered. Under his red hair and blue eyes, he was wearing a mustache made out of orange Play-Doh. The room didn’t feel like it was a place for laughing, but I did. He looked so hilarious. And honestly, it felt good to laugh. Really good. The rest of the room was so stuffy and serious. “I made it for you,” he said. He peeled the Play-Doh mustache off his upper lip and handed it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said and took the glob of clay. I loved it. It was a little gross and a lot cute.

  I loved all kinds of different mustaches, but right then, that one was my all-time favorite. Not just anything could make me laugh when I found out I needed surgery on my brain.

  “Eggs taste gross,” Emery said.

  “Why can’t we have cereal?” Ethan asked.

  “Because I made eggs,” Mom said.

  “If you loved us, you’d make us pancakes,” Emery said.

  “Yeah, I vote for pancakes,” Ethan agreed. The twins had a way of trying to sound like the majority of the family.

  “Nobody said we’d be voting this morning,” Mom said. She spotted me coming in. “Maddie, aren’t you tired?” Her voice was overly cheery, like when she was either exhausted or grumpy. “Do you want to go back to bed?” We had been at the hospital until after dinnertime, and by the time we got some food and drove all the way back home, it was really late. Then it took me a while to fall asleep. That didn’t usually happen, but yesterday wasn’t a usual day. I had a real monster to think about. Not just a made-up Dragoporkisaur but a haunting terror. Something horrifying and unknown waiting in the darkness to get me.

  I shook my head. No one had woken me up to get ready for school. It would be time to leave in fifteen minutes, and I wasn’t ready at all. I hadn’t slept well. I didn’t want to go to school. And I didn’t want to go back to bed either.

  “Can I go back to sleep?” Ethan asked, fake yawning and scratching his crazy-messy hair.

  “Yeah, me too,” Emery said.

  “No,” Mom said. She set the frying pan on a cold burner.

  I sat down at the kitchen table next to Max.

  “Maddie, are you gonna die?” Max asked. He asked it like he was asking for pancakes. There wasn’t anything different about his voice—no tears, no emotion, just curiosity.

  Die? I hadn’t thought about that.

  That felt heavy. Like a thousand pounds on my heart.

  “She’s not going to die,” Mom said, facing us. “I told you that she is going to have surgery so they can take out her tumor.”

  “But you said this was serious and we had to pray for her every day,” Ethan said.

  “That’s true,” Mom said. “But she’s going to be fine.”

  “I drew this for you,” Emery said and handed me a card. It showed a crayon version of me with a big head and yellow hair. Above it were the words I love you, Maddie. That made me feel all gushy inside. Maybe the twins weren’t completely evil after all. I opened up the card.

  “I hope you don’t die, but if you do, can I have your money and your candy?”

  Okay. Maybe still a little evil. That was more like what I was expecting.

  “And I drew this one,” Ethan said.

  As he handed me a card that said “Get well” on the front, my mom explained, “Grandma and Grandpa watched them yesterday while we were at the hospital. They made you cards.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Grandma and Grandpa wanted me to hug you super-­tight,” Mom said as she hugged me, “and tell you that they are praying for you.”

  It seemed like everyone was praying for me. I knew Grandma and Grandpa prayed for me all the time. They prayed I would grow up nice and healthy and smart and awesome, but this felt different. Were they praying that I wouldn’t die?

  I felt cold.

  My mom started to explain to the boys everything the doctor had said. I felt bad, like I’d gotten a really bad grade, except it wasn’t a grade for a term. It was a grade for life.

  “Hey, girl,” Dad said, walking into the kitchen. He sometimes got to work in his office at home. He walked over and gave me a big hug. He didn’t let go right away. “I’m sorry about this,” he whispered. “Everything is going to be just fine.” I liked hearing it, but it meant that there was a chance that everything might not be fine.

  “Maybe I will go back to bed,” I said.

  “I wish I could do that,” Dad said.

  “You can if you want to,” Mom said, then quickly turned to everyone else. “I’m talking to Maddie. Not dad or the twins or Max.” All of the boys moaned. My dad’s was fake, but the twins did it for real. Apparently if you have a tumor you get to do all sorts of things. “Give me just a minute, and I’ll come to your room and talk to you,” Mom said to me.

  I nodded.

  “And I’ll come right now,” Dad said.

  He followed me out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into my room. I flopped onto my comforter. It was really fluffy and had a whole bunch of mustaches printed on it. Funny—but I wasn’t laughing. I didn’t feel like it. Dad lifted the mustache blanket up, and I snuggled into the fluffiness and closed my eyes. I was hoping to fall asleep superfast before Dad could talk or Mom came in.

  It didn’t work.

  “Try not to worry too much,” Dad said and rubbed my back. Again, I liked it, but it meant there was a reason to be afraid. It was like telling me not to worry about a monster.

  I heard my door open and felt Mom sit down on my bed next to Dad.

  “When you wake up, you can have ice cream for breakfast,” Mom said. I pulled the covers off my face and smiled. That sounded great. I had never had ice cream for breakfast in my whole life. Mom was doing a lot better job of cheering me up than Dad.

  Mom ran her fingers through my hair. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, but of course I wasn’t. I wished I could go back to yesterday when I was a little slow and trippy and my hand didn’t work but my brain was fine.

  “Don’t worry,” she said and kissed my forehead. When I was little, I thought Mom’s kisses could cure anything. I wished she could kiss away my tumor.

  “Is there anything you want to say? To ask about?” Dad asked.

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk; I wanted to pull the covers back over my head.

  “Then we’ll let you sleep,” Mom said.

  “Wait a second,” Dad said. “I have an idea.” Uh-oh. Dad having an idea wasn’t always a good thing. “The surgery is scheduled for a little over two weeks from now. I think we should go on a vacation before that.”

  “Really?” I asked. Dad just pulled ahead big-time.

  “I’m not sure we have the money,” Mom said.

  “I’ll find it,” Dad said. That was weird. My dad was usually the one who worried about money, and my mom was the one wanting to go on vacation. “We should do something really fun all together before we have to worry about this medical stuff.” He smiled at me. “Where would you want to go for a few days?”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. I knew. “Disneyland,” I said. I had gone there when I was in the first grade, but I couldn’t really remember it. Cassie said she went there every year.

  “Done,” Dad said. He was totally winning.

  “But what about your book?
” Mom asked. Dad had a ton of stuff to get ready before his book release and tour.

  “I’ll play during the day and get my work done at night,” he said. I liked his smile, but it already looked tired.

  “Okay,” Mom said. She turned back to me. “Dream about that. But first, I wanted to ask if you’re okay if I talk to your teacher and let her know what’s going on.”

  I didn’t know what to say. That would change things. Mrs. Baer was super nice, but I didn’t know if things would be different once she knew I had something weird in my head. And would the class find out? Would they think I was some sort of freak? Maybe because of my weird arm, some of them had been thinking it for a long time.

  “She’s going to have to find out sooner or later,” Dad said.

  “Okay, but not yet,” I said. I didn’t want everyone else to know. Especially not Cassie.

  Mom agreed, and I pulled the covers over my head and tried to think about Disneyland.

  When the bell rang for recess, Cassie walked with me, and only me, down the hall. She’d never done that before. Maybe we were best buds now. That was good. With everything I found out yesterday, I needed a best bud. She had her blonde hair in curls today and wore a shirt with sleeves that looked like a lacy tablecloth. The white kind with fancy twists and flower-shaped spaces you can see the table through. Super cute. As always.

  My mom had dropped me off late after my ice cream for breakfast. I couldn’t really sleep, and we decided that it was best for now if we tried to live as normal as possible until Disneyland and then the surgery. I was going to miss quite a bit of school. I tried to think more about the vacation part than the surgery part. My mom walked me all the way to my classroom, but then waited outside. I didn’t want her to give anyone the hint that anything was wrong.

  “I’m going to Disneyla—” I started. I knew Cassie would want to hear it. She loves to tell us all about the trips her family takes every year.

  “Did you ask him yet?” Cassie interrupted me.