by Dean Gloster
I took five years of karate in the off-season, when I first started soccer, because the coaches thought that would help us with our kicking strength. Kayla was screwed.
“Wearing the blue shirt and almost no hair,” Curtis Warren boomed, in a fake announcer voice, pretending to hold an invisible microphone. “Is Bald Ho Monroe.” That got a rippling laugh from the crowd.
“Which you’d know,” someone yelled to him. The laughs got louder.
“In the other corner, protected by her jab and heavy makeup,” Curtis went on. “Is Massive Scary Mascara Southerland.” There was laughter at Kayla too.
I took a deep breath and then blew it back out. I wasn’t going to fight for these jerks’ entertainment. “No. We’re not doing this.”
Kayla glared at me, furious, like she still wanted to fight.
“Punch her, Kayla,” someone yelled.
“Yeah!” Someone else.
Kids were still arriving behind me and were piling up along the fence up above us, not wanting to miss the school’s two least popular girls punching each other into bloody suspension.
“Forget it,” I said to Kayla. “If your face needs rearranging, learn to apply makeup.”
Flat-footed, she put her up clenched fists, not high enough to do any good. “Let’s go, Bald Ho.”
I clenched my jaw. “You’re not worth it, Southerland. It’s too late to beat you stupid.” Did she think she’d get accepted by the Tracies if she beat me up? Like that would happen.
Her voice got louder and ugly. “Quit then. Go ahead. Quitter Ho. That’s what you are. A quitter. Like your brother.”
I might have broken my right hand the first time I punched her in the head, but didn’t feel it until the third and fourth punch with that hand. By then, I’d driven her back, completely through the crowd, up against the fence and low concrete wall, barely aware the madwoman roar was coming from me. My right hand in useless agony, I smashed her cheek with my elbow, and she slipped and went down. I jumped on her and tangled my hurt hand in her hair to hold her so I could keep punching her face with my good left hand.
She was wailing and bloody then, trying to get a hand in front to block. She caught my left arm. So I head-butted her, bashing her back into the concrete with a hollow thud. Hands grabbed me, pulling me off her. Someone carried me straight back about five steps.
I wasn’t done fighting, so I struggled, even though I heard Mr. Brillson, my favorite teacher, yelling in my ear, “That’s ENOUGH, Kat! Knock it off NOW!” Before I could think, I smashed my elbow backward. There was a surprised grunt of pain, and the hands let go.
I stepped forward, fists up, even the hurting one, to pound Kayla Southerland into bloody paste. Everything was in slow motion. Kayla was lying, curled into a ball, holding her face, blood mixed with tears. She howled an awful “No . . .” One eye was white and wide in terror, the other already swollen partly shut.
One of the football players stepped part way between us, holding his hands down in a calming gesture, his face full of fear. I looked around, and every kid, from Miranda to Jordan to Kelly and Tracie, was staring with scared eyes like I would kill someone. Even the kids behind me looked shocked. I saw Evan there, looking at me in horror. Next to Evan, his face white and scrunched in pain, Mr. Brillson was doubled up and clutching himself, below the stomach.
Apparently, I’d just elbowed my favorite teacher in the balls.
72
They caught me hiding in the girls’ bathroom, sniffling and staring at tear-blurred graffiti in the dingy toilet stall. I wasn’t hiding from punishment as much as from everyone’s terrified look after I’d beat down Kayla and elbowed Mr. B. Like I’d sprouted poisonous fangs, and was about to bite them all to death. But there was no hiding from the awful feeling—if I hadn’t been stopped, what would have happened? I was shaking, an adrenaline reaction, or maybe I was now scared of myself.
“Monroe, get out here,” Vice Principal Janey “the Fritz” Fitzgerald bellowed.
I didn’t know what to do or say. “Would you believe I have diarrhea?”
“Now.”
I wiped my eyes, blew my nose, and shuffled to my doom. The Fritz, compact and muscular, despite her gray hair, grabbed me by the upper arm and practically dragged me to her office, in a trot.
Fascinated clumps of students watched me get hauled off. Ashley’s expression was glee.
• • •
Kayla Southerland was already sitting in a chair in the Fritz’s office, her head tilted back, pinching her nose to stop the bleeding, with bloody tissues stuffed in both nostrils and an ice bag pressed against paper towels on one eye. That eye was swollen shut, and her other eye was blackened, a dark circle underneath. Her mascara had run with the tears, so it was hard to tell other damage from excessive cosmetics.
I was holding my injured right hand, which was purpling up on the little finger side of the palm. The side of my face stung with scratches, which I couldn’t even remember getting. When I wiped my cheek, there was blood on my hand.
The Fritz pushed me into the chair next to Kayla’s, then huffed into her chair on the other side of her big desk. She leaned forward, breathing hard. Her frizzy gray hair made her look like a curly-haired schnauzer. A furious one. “What was this about?”
“She started it.” Kayla jabbed a finger at me.
“It was my fault,” I said, at the same time.
The Fritz opened her mouth, then closed it into a frowning line. She looked less angry.
Back when we still got along, Rachel taught me how to deal with angry grownups: Ultimate Frisbee Blame Toss. When there’s a serious problem, grownups expect you to deny everything. But if you start with that excusing, denying, blaming-others thing, it makes them bang on you harder, to get you to accept responsibility. Instead, with Ultimate Frisbee Blame Toss, you grab total fault from the first words out of your mouth—then explain the facts to show the other person did something much worse, flinging the blame with a little flip.
“It was my fault,” I said again, in the silence. “She punched me and smashed my head against my locker, and when I said I wouldn’t fight her, she called me a ‘quitter ho’ like my dead brother, who died after he stopped his cancer treatment. Then I lost it completely.”
Kayla started sputtering, but the Fritz shushed her.
“I was out of control. Completely. There was no excuse for getting that violent.” I swallowed. “I could have killed her. And when Mr. Brillson grabbed me to stop me from hurting her more, I wasn’t thinking, and I elbowed him. In the—” I looked up. “—testicles.”
“Yes,” Vice Principal Fitzgerald said, in a clipped tone. “I heard.”
“I’m especially sorry about that,” I finished miserably.
“Did you?” Fitzgerald was looking at Kayla. “Call her dead brother a quitter?”
“I . . .” Kayla trailed off. Maybe she was having difficulty figuring out the right lie, because there were fifty witnesses.
“First she said I use his cancer as an excuse for everything. Then, when I said I didn’t want to fight her, she said I was a quitter, like my brother.” I repeated what she’d said, mimicking her tone.
“And did you punch Kat?” It was quiet in the office for a long pause.
“She knocked me down.” Kayla was furious. Kayla was doing most of the bleeding, but also getting the hard questions.
“After you punched me,” I lobbed in. “And smashed my head into the locker. Before you told me to come outside so you could beat me up some more.”
The Fritz raised both hands to shut us up. “Do either of you wish to make a police report?”
I looked at her blankly.
“Seeking to have the other charged with assault and battery?”
I shook my head.
“Nuh-no,” Kayla managed.
The Fritz leaned forward. “You are both suspended.” After a beat she continued. “For the rest of the day. I’ll think about further appropriate punishment tomorrow.
In the morning I want you both”—she looked from me to Kayla, with her gaze longer on Kayla—“to give to me and to each other a written apology for your part in this. And Kat—write Mr. Brillson an apology as well.”
She waved us out, with a shooing motion and expression of disgust. “Hitting people is never acceptable. You are both released to go home. Have a parent sign your apology notes, so I know they’ve read them. And have them provide a daytime phone number.”
We walked out into the sunlight, Kayla with her ice bag and the bloody paper tissue still sticking out of her nostril, like a red and white nose flag. A good look for her.
“I hobe you’re habby,” she said, through the plugged nose. “By Dad is going to kill me.”
Right. My brother had, actually, died. Mr. Brillson had probably saved Kayla from brain damage, so it was already her lucky day. And my hand was killing me. “Keep using pressure.” I put a finger on the side of my nose to show her. Beep used to get tons of nosebleeds from the leukemia, which was dangerous when his blood counts were bad.
Kayla stormed away, swearing.
73
My harsh punishment for attacking a classmate and octave-upping a teacher started with getting the afternoon off. Not exactly a rocket scientist score in the punishment-fits-crime contest.
You might think I’d feel great, after the Kayla Southerland beatdown. Nope. Horrified. Awful for hurting her, even worse that I’d been one Mr. Brillson–grab away from maybe causing permanent damage. And Mr. Brillson’s thanks for trying to keep me from flunking out and then saving me from a mayhem rap was my bashing him in the balls.
When I got home, my hand hurt as badly as my conscience, throbbing fiercely. It was streaked black and purple, with swelling now all the way up through the little finger. Which freaked me out. Was that normal? The first sign of leukemia in Beep was easy bruising. I knew I probably didn’t have leukemia, but I couldn’t stop looking at my hand every two minutes. I mean, what if I did?
After they gave Beep my marrow-to-be cells, he got better for a while, but then got sick again. What if there was cancer in my cells too, and that’s what made him worse?
Ibuprofen didn’t touch the ache, and neither did the added Tylenol. Mom didn’t answer my repeated calls. (Now that Beep was gone, she turned off her ringer when she met with clients.) I tried Dad at the office, but it rolled over into voicemail, so I hung up without leaving a message. I waited a few hours for Mom to wander home, then decided I’d better get my hand looked at. I’d go to UCSF Benioff Children’s. There were closer hospitals, but that’s the one I knew how to get to, from my practice with Beep, and it was on public transit, so I wouldn’t have to ride my bike far, with the messed-up hand.
I left a note for Mom, holding the pen in two fingers like half a set of chopsticks, then shot her and Dad thumb-typed text messages: Hurt my hand at school. Having it checked out. I’ll text later.
I got on my bike to go to BART, which would take me to San Francisco, except I couldn’t grip the handlebars with my right hand. So I had to hold on with my thumb and first finger, like an old lady pinching a teacup handle. Going over the speed bump on Fairmount, my hand slipped and I bumped the black and purple part. My vision went dark, and I pulled over, as I almost passed out from pain. Ouch.
74
After the BART and Muni ride, by the time I got to UCSF, it was almost 7 P.M. Turned out, I didn’t actually know how to check into a hospital as a patient. My massive hospital experience was with Beep already admitted, or sprinting to the front of the line at the emergency room over at Children’s Oakland, pushing him in his wheelchair, while we tried to stop a clotless-cancer-kid nosebleed.
Seven P.M. was the change of shift for the PICU nurses, so I figured I’d wander up, ambush one I knew coming off shift, and get help to sort it out. Nurses help people for a living.
My right hand was a throbbing mess. The black and purple had spread down the palm almost to my wrist, and my little and ring fingers were hugely swollen.
The first person I saw coming off shift was Chestopher, my (and Beep’s) favorite. Score.
“Hey.” I waved urgently with my left hand, from the waiting room outside the nurses’ station.
“Hi.” Chestopher gave me a big smile, like it was totally normal to get visits from dead people’s relatives at work. “Kat.” I hadn’t seen him in months, but he remembered my name. He still had gorgeous long eyelashes. “How are you?”
“Bad.” I sniffled. Then, like a complete moron, I tried to wipe the tears with my smashed right hand, which hurt, so I cried harder. Then I started blubbering. “I beat up a girl, and it was scary, and I’m mad at everybody and I MISS BEEP.” Practically howling.
He got me tissues, which of course they have in the PICU waiting room. “What happened?”
“I got in a fight with a girl at school and hurt my hand, and now it has this huge bruise.” I showed it to him. “It’s not—” I swallowed and my voice came out quavery, “—leukemia, right?”
He touched it gently, and I yelped. “Did this happen today?
I nodded.
“Ever have problems before with excessive bruising?”
I thought back. My hand throbbed. “No.”
“Bloody noses? Tiredness? Joint pain? Swelling?”
I shook my head each time.
“Can you move your fingers? Make a fist?”
I tried. They barely bent on the little finger side, and it hurt too much. “No.”
“I have some good news, and some bad news.”
“Which is?” Throb.
“I’m pretty sure it’s not leukemia.”
“Okay.” Throb. That was a relief, but I had this weird mixed feeling. If it was leukemia, life would somehow make sense.
“But you need to get this looked at by a doc. You might have broken your hand.”
• • •
Even though I wasn’t an official patient yet, Chestopher went to get ice. “Keep it elevated.” He put his own hand on the top of his head to demonstrate. So I put my hand up, in demented teapot pose, until he got back with the plastic bag of ice.
He handed it to me. “Where are your mom and dad?”
Uh oh. “Still in the East Bay.” Assuming Dad was home from work.
“Do they know you’re here?”
“Sort of.” I looked behind him at some poster about diabetes, which had gotten interesting.
“Sort of?”
I was worried about how to get home and exactly how things would go after that. Maybe, since I might have a broken hand, they’d let me stay at the hospital overnight. I could use a night off from my life. “I couldn’t get through, so I left them a message I was getting my hand checked out.”
“Maybe we’d better try them again.”
“Or we could figure out exactly what’s wrong first, so they’ll have totally accurate news and won’t worry unnecessarily.”
“They’re probably already worried.” Conversations with grownups always skitter off in the wrong direction.
They discourage loud cell phone conversations in the PICU, even out at the nurses’ station. I went outside to call, where there was better reception anyway. Great. First, my favorite boy in the universe shared his deepest family secret, and thought I called him a liar. Then I beat up a terrorized girl, elbowed my favorite teacher in the nuts, and broke my hand. Might as well finish the great day as a runaway, calling the world’s most freaked-out Mom. Chestopher came along for moral support.
Mom was predictably unhinged when I told her about what happened and where I was. When I finished, Chestopher took my phone and gently talked Mom down off the roofline, promising he’d wait with me until they got here.
We went back to the PICU waiting room, my home away from home, for the forty minutes it took Mom and Dad to drive in from Albany. My hand throbbed worse, even with the ice, and was just as swollen.
So he wouldn’t think I was a complete dork, I told Chestopher the reason I was worried about
leukemia. Beep seemed to get better after my transplant, but then got worse again. “I thought maybe he got cancer the second time from me.”
“No, Kat,” Chestopher said. “We test cells before we give them to patients. You didn’t have leukemia. Beep’s cancer came back from his body, not yours.”
So I asked him about the other thing I’d worried about for months. “Beep got graft-versus-host. At the end.”
Chestopher nodded.
“So.” I cleared my throat. “It can be serious, you know?” I’d looked it up online. It can be fatal. “Did my bone marrow make Beep sicker?” Out of nowhere, I was crying again.
Chestopher put his arm around me, like I was a little kid. “No. Beep was lucky. You were a good match. Beep had a really, really mild case of graft-versus-host.”
“Everybody called it ‘mild,’ but I don’t know what that means.” I told Chestopher about the Johns Hopkins Patients’ Guide to Leukemia. How it called even heart failure “mild.”
“Not like that. Beep’s was about the mildest I’ve seen. Your transplant didn’t make him sick, Kat. You just gave everybody more time to say good-bye.”
I thought about that for a while and cried some more. But I felt better, as if a huge weight lifted off me. I’d have to find something else to feel bad about. “It was scary, when I beat up that girl. I could have killed her.”
“Why’d you get in a fight?”
“She started it. Then, when I tried not to fight, she said I was a quitter—like my brother.”
“She called Beep a quitter?”
I nodded.
“She’s lucky you didn’t kill her.” Chestopher is some kind of nonviolent Buddhist, but he didn’t sound bothered about my beating up the girl who called Beep a quitter.
“My hand really hurts,” I said after a silence. “Maybe this is it for my boxing career.”
He didn’t laugh, but he did smile. “Retire as a prizefighter, undefeated?”
“Yeah. My prize is dealing with Mom when she gets here.”
• • •
When Mom and Dad arrived, it wasn’t that bad. I guess when you’ve already lost one kid to leukemia and one of your other kids goes to the hospital with excessive bruising, it’s a huge relief to find out she’s just a thug—not, you know, dying. (Perspective. A good thing, but it doesn’t come factory installed. When someone in your family gets cancer, it’s the expensive upgrade.)