4. No leaving fingerprints behind at a crime scene—very helpful if I ever rob a bank.
5. No getting caught picking my nose. My shoes are usually in the way.
6. No arm wrestling.
7. No golf. Well, I suppose I could figure out a way to play golf but I’m so not gonna because golf is booooring.
8. No cheesy high fives.
9. No making that silly okay! circle shape with my fingers.
10. Fewer areas to put sunscreen on and fewer areas to sunburn. This is a good thing for me because I have super-fair skin.
11. I don’t have to worry about accidentally using my hands in soccer. I guess that gives me an advantage.
12. No fighting over the arm rest at the movies. Really, no fighting over the arm rest anywhere.
13. No arm pits. How can there be pits when there are no arms? They’re more like . . . flats.
14. I’ll get the royal treatment when I start driving in a few years. That’s right—it’s princess-parking for this girl everywhere I go. And, yes, I will be driving an actual car. Watch out, roads!
15. Less money spent on jewelry—rings, bracelets, watches, etc.
16. No flabby flapjack arms when I get old. My great-grandma has those. Hopefully she’s not reading this.
17. No push-ups.
18. I never get that floppy, numb arm thing at night from sleeping on my arms. My dad gets that just about every night.
19. No one’s ever challenged me to a thumb war. Which is good. Because I don’t like war.
20. Pranks that work. One day I’ll pull a fantastic prank like pretending my arms get torn off in an elevator door or something. I look forward to that.
I stared at the screen. Who exactly was I trying to convince? The person who’d called me a freak yesterday? Or myself? I hit Publish and browsed through some of my previous posts. I noticed that Emily had commented on a lot of them—mostly short remarks like “LOL!” or “Miss you, girl!” Someone else had commented that I was in their art class at school, though they didn’t say who they were. A couple of other people wrote that I made them laugh. That was nice.
I was responding to one of Emily’s comments when I heard a knock at the door. I let Connor in, and we played video games while we waited for Zion to show.
When we heard another knock, I jumped up and opened the door. Zion stood there, looking all shy as usual, with his mom. She had the biggest smile I had ever seen. “I just wanted to meet these new friends of Zion’s,” she said. She looked like she might explode from happiness. I guessed from her expression she didn’t meet a lot of his friends. I remembered what Zion had said about his parents being huge geeks as I took in her Wolverine tank top and purple skirt. I thought she looked pretty cool.
“Hi.” I resisted the urge to stare at my own feet like Zion. “I’m Aven.” I turned and looked at Connor. “That’s Connor.” Connor barked as he continued playing the game, totally ignoring us.
“I’m Zion’s mom,” she said. She wore a sparkly purple headband in her curly black hair. I wanted one of those sparkly purple headbands. And the matching purple skirt.
She looked at me with eyes that were the same exact deep brown as Zion’s. “What game are you guys playing?” she asked.
“Just Mario Kart,” I said.
She glanced from Connor to me and back again, and for one terrifying moment I thought she was going to ask if she could play with us. Instead, she looked down at Zion. “Well, have fun playing with your new friends, sweetie pie,” she said and kissed him on top of his head.
Zion groaned a little. “You can go now, Mom,” he said, but not really in a mean way.
She turned that beaming smile back on me. “I’ll be back in a few hours if that’s okay.”
“Okay,” I said.
When I shut the door, Zion sighed and said, “I thought she would never leave,” even though she’d only been standing there for about one minute.
“Hey, where’d your mom get her headband?” I asked Zion.
He looked at me like I was crazy. “I don’t know.”
We played a couple more races, and then I led the two guys to the storage shed.
Connor rummaged through the junk while Zion and I tried to read some old documents we found stacked in a giant heap in one corner. Periodically Connor would hold something up for us like an old boot or a handkerchief and say, “Check this out,” like whatever he was holding was interesting, when, in fact, it was not.
Connor also found an entire box of books about tarantulas. “Cool,” I said, dipping my toes into the box and sifting through the books. “Maybe you guys can carry this up to the apartment for me.”
While I browsed through one of the tarantula books, Zion continued moving the stacks of documents and boxes until he uncovered a large wooden desk buried beneath all the stuff. Connor and I examined the desk with him—it had a row of drawers going down one side, but those were locked. “Where do you think the key is?” Zion asked me.
I shrugged. “This desk is probably like fifty years old. It could be anywhere. You know how to pry it open?”
Zion shook his head. “It’s so dusty in here.” He coughed. “And my mom’s going to be back soon.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess we can give up for today.”
“Wait, look,” Connor said. He reached under the desk and pulled out an old guitar. It was pretty beaten-up from neglect and the strings were missing. On the back of it, in very small letters, someone had carved the initials A. B. C.
“What do you think they stand for?” Connor asked. “The alphabet?”
“No.” I ran a toe over the carved letters. “Something, something, Cavanaugh.”
«So, like, I know you don’t go to therapy anymore and all that, but my mom and I were browsing online, and we found out there’s this, uh . . . social event for kids with Tourette’s over at the hospital,” I said, walking next to Connor on our way to class the following week.
Connor stopped and turned to face me. “You mean a support group.”
“Well, sort of,” I said.
“I don’t need a support group. I’m totally fine.”
“I just thought it would be cool to meet some other kids who have the same thing as you, you know? Maybe even make some new friends.” Actually, it had mostly been Mom’s idea, but she thought it would be best if I brought it up so Connor would be more open to it.
Connor raised an eyebrow at me. “I don’t know.”
“It would be just as much for me as you,” I said. “It turns out I like kids who have Tourette’s, and I don’t have all that many friends. So I’d like to go and see about making some new friends in a place where I’m not the only kid who’s sort of different.”
Connor continued giving me his skeptical look. “Really?”
“Well, I looked up support groups for kids with no arms, and guess what? There are none. At least not that I could find. I guess Tourette’s is a lot more common.”
“One percent,” Connor said as he turned and continued walking toward class.
“What?”
“One percent of people have Tourette’s.”
“See!” I blurted. “I bet lots of kids with Tourette’s go to this social event.”
“Support group.”
“Whatever. It might be fine. Please will you go with me? Please?” I begged.
“Are you saying you’d go without me?” he asked.
“Why not?”
“Uh, because you don’t have Tourette’s.”
“Well, I could just meow from time to time. No one would know.”
Connor gave me a playful shove. “Fine, I’ll go with you.” He rolled his eyes. “And you won’t have to meow.”
Mom walked us into the hospital just after seven-thirty. A receptionist directed us down a corridor and into a small meeting room. Mom promised to pick us up in front of the hospital at nine o’clock sharp and left us there to brave the meeting alone.
&n
bsp; As we entered the room, we were immediately greeted by a boy shouting, “Chicken nipple!”
I looked at him in surprise, and he shouted it again, aiming it at no one in particular. I glanced at the other kids in the room—five boys and only one other girl. “What’s with all the boys?” I whispered in Connor’s ear.
“Tourette’s is way more common for boys.” Connor barked as we stood there surveying the room. The other kids didn’t seem at all fazed by his barking, but they watched me with curiosity. That was okay.
A pretty woman walked into the room and introduced herself to us. “I’m Andrea,” she said, shaking Connor’s hand. “Are you Connor?”
Connor nodded, barked, shrugged, blinked his eyes. He was nervous. I could tell.
“And you’re Aven, Connor’s friend?” Andrea said.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Why don’t you two find a place to sit and we’ll get started.” I could see Andrea also had Tourette’s by the way she made a funny counting motion with her fingers, but other than that, she seemed to keep it under control. I wondered if she had a milder form of Tourette’s or if she had learned how to control it—if so, I wanted to find out how for Connor.
Chicken Nipple Boy moved over a seat so Connor and I could sit next to each other. He yelled out, “Chicken nipple!” as I sat down next to him, then he leaned over and whispered to me, “Do you have Tourette’s?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Oh. Chicken nipple. I do, in case you—chicken nipple—didn’t notice.”
I grinned at him. “I wasn’t really sure.”
“I’m Dexter,” he said. “Chicken nipple.”
“I’m Aven.”
“Well,” Andrea said, sitting down at the circle. “I guess we can get started. Everyone, we have a couple of new friends with us tonight.” She turned to us. “Why don’t you guys introduce yourselves?”
Connor was ticcing badly, so I spoke. “I’m Aven.”
“Aven doesn’t have Tourette’s,” Andrea said.
“Yeah.” I laughed. “Can you imagine? What a doozy that would be.”
Dexter laughed out loud and shouted, “Chicken nipple!” and the other kids softly chuckled a bit. I liked Dexter already.
“At least if you had Tourette’s,” the completely monotone, expressionless girl sitting across from me said, “you wouldn’t have to worry about slapping yourself in the face all the time like I do.” As though on cue, the girl slapped herself in the face.
“Yeah, but you should see what Aven can do with her feet,” Connor said, blinking his eyes rapidly. “Face-slapping isn’t that far-fetched.”
“I want to—chicken nipple—see what you can do with your feet,” Dexter said.
“Maybe later if we have time and Aven doesn’t mind,” Andrea said, smiling. She clearly enjoyed the lighthearted conversation among us kids, and honestly, so did I. Andrea turned her attention to Connor. “Introduce yourself, Connor.”
“I’m Connor. I do have Tourette’s. As if you couldn’t tell.” He barked.
“Well, welcome, you two,” Andrea said. “We’re so happy to have you. Why don’t we all go around and introduce ourselves? We’ll start with you, Dexter.”
“Chicken nipple. I’m Dexter. And as you can see, I love to say chicken nipple. Chicken nipple.”
Connor gaped at Dexter. “I have to know—why chicken nipple? Why not another word?”
“Dexter has a rarer form of Tourette’s called coprolalia,” Andrea explained. “He says words and phrases, some of which people may find inappropriate, but he can’t help it.”
Connor turned his attention back to Dexter. “Yeah, but why chicken nipple?”
Dexter laughed. “Sometimes I say other—chicken nipple—things. I’m glad when it’s just chicken nipple. Chicken nipple. Sometimes I say ‘barbecue’ or ‘pirate ship’ or ‘I love bubble baths’ and some—chicken nipple—other things. Sometimes I say my own name, which is really embarrassing for some reason.
“One time I went through a short period—chicken nipple—when I said, ‘I’ll punch a baby’ every time I saw a baby. That was awful. Chicken nipple. People would run away from me with their—chicken nipple—babies.” Dexter looked at me with a straight face. “Chicken nipple. I swear I would never punch a baby. I like babies.”
“I believe you,” I said, trying to maintain a straight face myself.
Just then Dexter cried out, “Barbecue chicken sandwiches,” and everyone laughed, especially Dexter. I normally would never in a million years laugh at someone’s disability, but I realized we were all laughing with Dexter, certainly not at him. And it was okay. I think it made everyone feel better in a way.
Josh introduced himself next. Josh made the same whooping sound all the time and had what Andrea explained were several motor tics. This included bending over a lot and sort of like playing air guitar. Other than that, Josh was quiet.
The girl introduced herself as Rebecca. I already knew Rebecca slapped herself in the face. She even wore little padded gloves to help soften the blows. I had never realized Tourette’s could be painful, even damaging to the person who had it. Rebecca also grunted and coughed a lot, even though she didn’t have a cold or anything.
Jack rolled his eyes constantly and shook his head. He also made a strange yelling sound like nothing I had ever heard—like he sucked in air so fast it made a shrieking sound.
Zachary rolled his shoulders so much, he feared he would need surgery on his already worn down fifteen-year-old joints.
Mason made constant farting noises with his mouth and pulled on his hair, which made his hair patchy because he pulled on it so much that some of it would come out at times. Mason had over fifty tics, he told us. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with that many uncontrollable things going on in my body. Besides Dexter, Mason’s tics were probably the most embarrassing of the group. He hardly ever went out in public—like Connor.
Andrea guided us into a discussion on how we felt about going out in public—more specifically, going places like the movies, library, etc. Connor wasn’t alone in not liking to go to the movies—no one ever really went. Rebecca was the only one who felt okay going to most places because her vocal tics weren’t as loud as the others and could almost sound normal at times if you assumed she had a bad cough or something. People still got annoyed by her frequently, though.
As cool as Dexter was, he was terrified of going out in public. I guess he said “I’ll punch a baby” in front of some dad holding a baby in the drugstore one day, and the dad nearly attacked him. Had Dexter’s mom not intervened, it could have been bad. Once again, I thought if he had been wearing a T-shirt explaining he had Tourette’s, maybe the situation could have been avoided.
Dexter also had obsessive-compulsive disorder, which Andrea explained often accompanied Tourette’s. It was hard for him to leave the house because he worried so much that the stove and oven were on at home. He even asked if he could call his mom a couple of times during the meeting so he could have her check them. Andrea let him.
It sounded as though most everyone’s parents were supportive and understanding of their Tourette’s. Well, everyone except Connor’s parents. Some of their extended family members, such as aunts, uncles, and grandparents, often accused them of faking it for attention, like Connor’s dad did. I thought it would be exhausting to put on such an act all the time. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to do such a thing or how anyone could think they were doing it.
It was strange listening to everyone speak among a cacophony of barking, farting, whooping, shrieking, and chicken nipples. It was also strangely comforting. No one cared about my lack of arms; they were all far too caught up in their own struggles. And I, for once, felt completely normal among this group of misfits. I hoped Connor felt the same way and would come back with me again.
“So how was the meeting?” Mom asked as she drove us home.
“It was great.” I looked at Connor for con
firmation.
“Yeah,” Connor said. “It was really good.” He looked out the window.
“That’s great. What did you guys talk about?”
“All kinds of stuff,” I said. “Like what everyone’s tics were and how they felt about going out in public and things like that.”
I could see Mom watching Connor in the rearview mirror. “Do you think it was helpful, Connor?”
“Hmm?” he said absentmindedly.
“I asked if you thought it was helpful,” Mom said again.
Connor shrugged. “I guess so. Yeah, it was nice to meet other kids like me. I just . . . ”
“What?” I asked when Connor trailed off.
“I’m worried I’ll start swearing like Dexter.”
“I don’t really think of ‘chicken nipple’ as a swear word,” I said.
“You know what I mean.”
“You heard Andrea,” I said. “That’s pretty rare.”
“Yeah, but Dexter started out like me, too—making strange noises and movements. And then one day he said ‘chicken nipple,’ and everything changed. I guess I’m afraid the same thing will happen to me.” I couldn’t see Connor’s face as he gazed out his window. “Things are hard enough the way they are. I can’t imagine how hard it would be if I started saying obnoxious things all the time. I think I’d rather have brain surgery at that point.”
“You shouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “I think the more you worry about it and stress yourself out, the worse your tics will be. And maybe if you start saying words, it will just be normal stuff, like ‘I love African safaris’ or something like that.”
Connor chuckled. “That’s normal?”
“Yes, for someone who loves African safaris. I don’t think you should think about it too much.”
“When’s the next meeting?” Mom asked, obviously trying to change the subject.
“Next month,” I said. “They meet once a month. We should go back because we’re going to talk about relaxation and how it can help when we’re out in public.”
“You mean when we’re out in public,” Connor said. “You don’t have to worry about that stuff, Aven.”
Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus Page 8