Confessions of a Teenage Leper

by Ashley Little

  “Arrgh!” I yelled into my arms.

  “What?” She patted my back. “What is it, hon?”

  “That just sounds so cheesy. And I don’t even think that’s true.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you are a good person, Abby.”

  I lifted my head. “Yeah, but what if I’m not? What if I’m shallow and mean?” I wiped my nose on the back of my sleeve.

  Auntie Karen stared at me, her eyes as blue and clear as beach glass. “Is that what you think?” she said quietly.

  I nodded. Yes. No. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

  The thing about Auntie Karen is that she’s technically an adult, but she still seems an awful lot like a teenager. I’m not sure why this is. She doesn’t have any kids of her own, so maybe that has something to do with it. She knew we’d had a party because she found a beer cap under her chair later that night. She held it up and raised an eyebrow at us.

  “I wonder how that could’ve gotten there,” Dean said.

  Auntie Karen shook her head and flicked the cap into the trash. But we also knew that she wouldn’t say anything about it to Mom and Dad. She could be counted on that way.

  “I kind of feel like pizza and a movie tonight,” she said.

  “That’s funny. You don’t look like pizza and a movie,” Dean said. “Abby, on the other hand…”

  “Eat it, dick-breath,” I said.

  Dean gave me the finger.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” said Auntie Karen. “What’s all this about?”

  “This is about Dean being a capital D douche-bag twenty-four seven, three-sixty-five. Also, he sucks off guys.”

  Auntie Karen looked from me to Dean.

  “You know,” Dean said, “pizza and a movie sounds pretty good. As long as it’s not some stupid chick flick.”

  Auntie Karen nodded slowly. Then she stood up. “No chick flicks, got it.” She put on her leather jacket and grabbed her purse. “Should I pick up some beer?”

  “NO!” Dean and I both yelled.

  “Okay, okay.” She backed down the hallway, hands in the air. “No beer. No chick flicks. No problem.”

  She came back with a large pepperoni pizza and a bottle of Coke and we found Die Hard 2 on Netflix. The three of us sat on the couch and watched the movie while we ate all the pizza and drank all the Coke. Dean and Auntie Karen got into a contest to see who could burp the loudest. Dean won, but not by much.

  There was nothing special about that night, nothing that stood out about it so much that I would remember every little detail. Except that I do remember everything about that night, because it was the last night I had of being a normal seventeen-year-old girl—if you could even call me that. It was the night before I found out I had leprosy.

  Our home phone rang the next morning a little after 8:30 a.m. Dean and I looked at each other, then looked at the phone. I grabbed it off the wall while I poured milk on my Cheerios.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, may I please speak to Miss Abby Furlowe?”

  “This is Abby.”

  “Hi, Abby. This is Michelle calling from Diagnostic Laboratories.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your test results are in.”

  “Okay…”

  “So you need to make an appointment to see your doctor to discuss them.”

  “Can’t you just tell me?”

  “Sorry. We can’t give out results over the phone.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s our policy.”

  “But…okay, so I have to make a doctor’s appointment and take an afternoon off school, drive across town to go in and see him so that he can tell me? Instead of you just telling me right now on the phone?”

  “That’s right.”

  I sighed.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s our—”

  “Policy. Yeah, you said that.”

  “Dr. Jamieson has received your results. He’ll be able to—”

  “Can you just tell me one thing? Am I going to die? Do I have, like, six months to live or something? Because, I think I should find out as soon as possible if that’s the case.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t actually know what the lab results are. All I know is that they’ve been sent to your doctor and you’re to meet with him to discuss them. At your earliest convenience.”

  “That’s the thing, though. It’s not convenient.”

  “Well…”

  “Could you text me my results? That would be convenient.”

  “No, I’m sorry. You need to make an appointment to see Dr. Jamieson,” she said.

  “Okay. Then. That is what I will do.”

  “Terrific.”

  “Super.”

  “Great. Well, take care, Miss Furlowe.”

  I hung up.

  “Good news?” Dean said.

  I rolled my eyes at him. He shrugged, then got up to get his stuff ready for school, leaving his dirty breakfast dishes on the table.

  I drank an entire pint glass of orange juice without breathing. Then I called Dr. Jamieson’s office. They’d had a cancellation that morning so there was a spot at 9:20 a.m. I skipped school and drove Mom’s car to Dr. Jamieson’s office. There was no way I could wait.

  “Mycobacterium leprae,” Dr. Jamieson said, staring at the paper on his desk. “Bacteria that causes leprosy. Also known as Hansen’s disease.” He looked up at me and winced.

  My body felt like cold concrete. A dark, bottomless pit sucked me down into it. The mother of all migraines attacked my brain. I wanted nothing more than to vomit. I wanted to vomit across Dr. Jamieson’s desk and all over Dr. Jamieson himself. A tiny little laugh escaped my mouth. But nothing was funny. Nothing would ever be funny again. I stared at my left hand on the arm of the chair.

  “Will my fingers fall off?”

  “No. But you will need to protect them from injury,” Dr. Jamieson said. He kept talking but I wasn’t listening anymore.

  I had leprosy.

  I was a leper.

  There was nothing else to say.

  The next thing I knew, I was sitting on my bed in my room. I don’t really remember how I even got home from the doctor’s office. I puked into my garbage can. Then I cried. I was hyperventilating, I smelled like vomit and I had leprosy. I don’t know if life gets any worse than that. I curled around my pillow and cried until my head felt like it had been run over and my pillow was soaked with snot and tears. I willed a sinkhole to open up beneath our house and suck me down into it. I waited for a while to see if that, or some other fluke disaster, would happen to spare me from this misery. Nothing happened. I finally had to get up because I needed to pee. Then I went to find the phone number of the hotel Mom and Dad were staying at. I wanted my mom.

  “Hello?”

  “Mommy?”

  “Hi, Abby. What’s wrong, sweetie? What is it?”

  I couldn’t form words around the lump jammed in my throat. How could I tell her I had the worst disease known to humankind? I couldn’t even breathe.

  “You can tell me, whatever it is, Abby. You know you can tell me.”

  “I have leprosy!” I bawled into the phone.

  “Narcolepsy?”

  “No—”

  “That’s why you’ve been sleeping so much! You know, I used to work with a woman—”

  “LEPROSY, Mom! Leprosy.”

  “You…what?”

  “I have leprosy.”

  Silence.

  “Mom!”

  “What did they say?” Her voice was very tiny and she sounded so far away.

  “I’m a leper!”

  “Oh, Abby. You’re not a leper, honey.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of a leper. Someone who has leprosy. I have leprosy.”

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Abby.”

  “YOU’RE SORRY!?” I started crying harder. It was a mad, manic crying now, the kind where it sounds more like laughter. My vision was so blurred with tears,
I couldn’t see. Finally I caught my breath and swallowed and found that I could speak again. “Mom?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “We’re coming home tomorrow, Abby. We’ll figure it out, okay? Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”

  “Dr. Jamieson said I have to go to Louisiana.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because that’s where the treatment center is. They’re going to put me on drugs that kill the leprosy bacteria. But I have to live with a bunch of other lepers until the drugs start working!”

  “Oh, Abby…”

  “Is this real, Mom? Am I having a nightmare right now? You’d tell me, right? You’d wake me up—”

  “Abby.”

  “WAKE UP!” I pinched my arm, hard. “WAKE UP. WAKE UP. WAKE UP.”

  “ABBY.”

  “What?”

  “Take a hot bath. Make it as hot as you can stand it. Stay in it for twenty minutes. Then put on your pj’s and get into bed. We’ll be home tomorrow as fast as we can, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you, sweetie. We’ll get through this. Don’t worry.”

  “You’ll love me even though I’m a leper?”

  “Of course I will. I’ll always love you. No matter what.”

  “Okay.” I was crying again now, but it was different, softer, barely there crying.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “See you tomorrow, Abby.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  I hung up. Then I went to the bathroom and threw up again.

  There’s that expression, “It’s not the end of the world.” But sometimes, it actually is. This was one of those times. I was a teenage leper. My life was over. I died that day. A part of me did, anyway. And for as long as I live, I’ll never be able to get it back. I’ll never be able to say, “I didn’t have leprosy. I was never a leper.”

  Someone out there reading this might say, “There are worse things.” Maybe even you would say that. But I don’t believe you.

  I had to check in to the treatment facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ASAP. Mom and Dad came home the next day, around noon like Mom had said, and we all cried together, except for Dad and Dean because guys don’t cry apparently. But I’ll bet you any money they cried afterwards. On their own. In private. Dad’s eyes were all puffy and Dean’s were pink and watery like Mom’s, so I could tell.

  Probably guys cry all the time, or at least, a lot more than people think they do, it’s just that nobody sees them do it. Like a tree falling in the woods sort of thing.

  I was up late that night. Super late. For some reason I was having trouble sleeping…Oh, right, I’d just found out I had leprosy and had to get shipped out of state to go take drugs that would kill the disease-bacteria living in my body. Talk about the vacation of a lifetime.

  I got sucked into an Internet vortex looking at photos of people with leprosy and reading about leprosy and the treatment facility in Baton Rouge. I stared at the computer for so long, it felt like metal filings were being shoved into my eyeballs. I couldn’t read any more. I closed my computer and went to get a drink from the bathroom. I saw that Dean’s light was on, and because I was distracted, or I wasn’t thinking, or a combination of the two, I opened Dean’s door.

  Dean was sitting at his computer, jerking off, with an open jar of peanut butter beside him and peanut butter all over his dick. There was another guy on his computer screen, an older guy.

  “Jesus, fuck!” Dean saw me and jumped out of the chair. He turned off his monitor and grabbed a pillow and held it in front of him. “What do you want, Abby?”

  “I, uh. Ha. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, okay. Get out!”

  “It’s just…”

  “WHAT?” Dean held the pillow to his crotch. He looked like Beaker the muppet.

  I stifled a laugh. “What are you doing?”

  “Just get out.”

  I left and got ready for bed, trying to erase that scene from my mind. That is something a sister should never see her brother doing. But as Dad would say, there are no mulligans in the game of life. I listened to music on my headphones and told myself it had never happened. I was in bed, almost ready to turn off my light when there was a rap at my door.

  “Yeah?”

  Dean peeked his head in. “See? Knocking. It’s what people do,” he said, tapping his fist against the door frame.

  “Come on in, Jelly,” I said.

  “Don’t even.”

  “PB, then.”

  “Shut it, leper.” He was wearing plaid pajama pants and a gray T-shirt. He stood beside my bed with his arms crossed over his chest, looking awkward.

  “What do you want?”

  He eyed the end of my bed.

  I scooted up and patted a spot for him to sit down. He hesitated, looked around. He sat at the edge of my desk chair, as if he couldn’t stand for it to touch him. His eyes drifted over me, then he stared at the wall above my head.

  “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  “I’m a webcam boy.”

  “Uhhhh…” I said, laughing. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve heard of the Internet, right?”

  “Shut up. Just tell me.”

  “So…people on the Internet pay to see me…you know. Do stuff.”

  “For real?”

  He nodded.

  “Whoa.”

  “I just got paid two hundred dollars for that.”

  “The peanut butter?”

  He nodded. “Last week I was paid four hundred dollars to eat a cucumber.”

  “Naked.”

  “Well, yeah, I was naked, and I know it’s kind of whacked, but four hundred bucks, Abby. I mean, it’s not that hard to eat a cucumber.”

  “But what if next time they want you to do more than just eat it?” I said.

  “I have my limits.”

  “Everyone has a price,” I said.

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Okay, stop. Stop. You’re nasty. I don’t want to hear any more.” I clamped my hands over my ears. “La-la-la-la.”

  “Listen. LISTEN. I’ve made enough to be able to move out this summer and afford all my own everything. A car too.”

  “And that’s how you had enough to pay the hospital bill…”

  He nodded.

  “But isn’t it…gross?”

  He shrugged.

  “Ick.” I shivered. “I couldn’t do it. Aren’t the guys all old and creepy?”

  Dean laughed. “Not always.”

  “So they, like…”

  “What?”

  “They tell you to do stuff and you do it?”

  “Yeah. Well, there’s a proposition and a negotiation that goes on.”

  “Wow.”

  “I mean, I won’t do everything. I’ve said no to stuff before.”

  “I can’t—”

  “It’s just until…I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You can’t tell Mom and Dad.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not ever.”

  “Okay.”

  “Even when we’re old.”

  “Alright,” I said.

  “It’s just that it’s so much money, you know? And it’s pretty easy. Like, no one we know can pay for all their own stuff, right? Even if they do have a job. I mean, you have to work A LOT to be able to buy your own food and rent and furniture and TV and car and all that. Insurance. Gas. Who do you know that can afford all that?”

  “On their own? Hardly anybody,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “So you, like, take Paypal, or what?”

  “Yeah, Paypal.”

  “No way.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “The numbers don’t lie, baby.”

  “You’re messed up.”

  “I’ve made fifteen grand in the last four months. You have leprosy. Who’s winn
ing here?”

  I covered my face with my hands. “Good night, Dean.”

  “Sorry. I mean, I’m sorry that you have leprosy and that you have to go to Louisiana…I feel sorry for anyone who has to go to Louisiana, actually.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, I’m serious. It stinks there. Especially in Baton Rouge.”

  “Whatever.”

  “They have a chemical plant there or something.”

  “So, is it, like, always the same guy or is it different guys, or what?”

  “They’re usually different, but I have my regulars.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Jesus isn’t one of them, no.”

  “But you never meet them in person, right? I mean…”

  “It’s all from the comfort of my own room.”

  “Wow.”

  “Pretty easy, right?”

  I stared at him. “Who else knows you’re doing this? Does Aaron know?”

  “No. No one knows. Just you. And if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”

  “Christ, Dean.”

  “Some of them are actually really nice. I mean, we talk afterwards sometimes and…”

  “Stop.” I covered my ears. “I don’t want to hear any more. For real this time.”

  Dean’s face fell. “Fine. Whatever.”

  “Good.”

  He looked around my room. “You scared about tomorrow?”

  I nodded.

  He eyed my overflowing suitcase. “How long are you staying for?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “As long as I have to, I guess.”

  “You’ll be living with other lepers, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “What if you get it from them?”

  “I already have it, idiot.”

  “Yeah, but you could get it, like, twice as bad.”

  “I don’t think it works that way.” I picked at my nails.

  “Okay, I’ve got something to cheer you up.”

  “What?”

  “Why did they have to cancel the leper hockey game?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Why?”

  “There was a face off in the corner.”

  “Dean—”

  “Okay, okay. What did the leper say to the prostitute?”