Because of Anya

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Fifteen

  Keely was wobbling her way across the balance beam when it happened. One minute she was trying not to fall, the next minute the gym was filled with such an unearthly silence that she had to look up. It seemed like her head automatically jerked in the same direction as everyone else’s.

  Keely’s eyes took in the sight of Anya standing there, wigless, stunned, her mouth agape, her eyes filled with crazy panic. And behind Anya, Stef was snickering silently, her hand cupped over her mouth.

  Stef. Stef had pulled off Anya’s wig.

  Keely was suddenly filled with such fury that she fell off the balance beam. Nobody seemed to notice because everyone was watching Anya. Besides Keely, Anya was the only one who wasn’t frozen in place. Anya had the wig in her hand; she was streaking out of the gym like her life depended on getting away.

  The doors slammed shut behind her, and still nobody moved.

  Finally Mrs. Vance said, “Children, I believe you should go back to your classroom now.”

  Mrs. Vance sounded puzzled, like she didn’t have the slightest idea what she’d just witnessed. But her voice broke the spell everyone was under. Kids jumped off whatever apparatus they were working on. They all began talking at once.

  “Did you see—”

  “Why—”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She has cancer,” Keely said softly. Then she spoke louder. “She has cancer and she’s really sick and she might even die. And Stef just pulled her wig off.”

  The buzz of voices grew as Keely’s news crossed the room. Keely closed her eyes, weakly. She could make out just one word in all the buzzing.

  “Stef . . .”

  “Stef . . .”

  “Stef . . .”

  Sixteen

  The classroom, the bathroom, the janitor’s closet . . .

  As she ran Anya kept thinking of—and then rejecting—places to hide. She zigzagged down the hall, veering away from doors with every idea she discarded. There was no place to hide at school, no place she could be sure she wouldn’t be found.

  She crammed the wig onto her head, holding it in place with her left hand while she shoved open the door to the playground with her right. She kept waiting for someone to stop her, but nobody did. The playground was empty. The parking lot beyond was full of cars and nothing else.

  Anya kept running. As long as her legs kept pumping, she didn’t have to think, didn’t have to remember the sight of all those shocked faces, all staring at her exposed head.

  Anya was off the school grounds now. She was into the neighborhood behind the school. She’d never done anything like this before. She’d never skipped school, never run away. She’d always been a good kid, sitting in her seat, never even making a peep unless the teacher gave her permission.

  But she’d never had her hair fall out before. She’d never lost her wig in the gym before and had twenty-two kids staring at her bald head.

  Anya ran faster. The only place she could think to go was home, and that was a mile away. She’d never run that distance before, never even walked it, but she knew she could get there today. She had to.

  By the time she reached her family’s own familiar picket fence, she was panting in great, huge gulps that might be considered sobs if she let herself think about it. She had a stitch in her side and her legs were shaky, but she unhooked the latch and stepped into her own yard. She pulled up the rock in the front flower bed that had the key hidden underneath, and let herself into the house.

  The house was empty—both Mom and Dad were at work—but Anya still didn’t feel safe enough. She dragged herself into her own room. The wig stand was still on her dresser, so she threw it out into the hall. She threw the wig after it. She locked her door and propped her chair against the knob. Then she crawled into bed.

  It didn’t seem like enough to be under the comforter, so she burrowed under the blankets and the sheets, even the bottom one. She lay with her cheek against the rough weave of the mattress and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

  In no time at all, it seemed, Mom was there—no, Mom and Dad both, both crying and calling out, “Oh, honey . . . ,” “Oh, Anya . . .” Anya didn’t even think to wonder how they’d found her, how they’d gotten in through the locked door and the propped chair, how they’d known to leave work and come to her. She let Mom cradle her in her arms like a little baby. She let Daddy’s tears fall on her own bare scalp.

  “They saw,” Anya kept crying. “They know. Everyone knows.”

  She pushed herself away from Mom’s hug; she brushed away the tears that could have been Daddy’s or Mom’s or her own.

  “I’m never going back to school again,” she said. “Please. Don’t make me. I won’t go.”

  Seventeen

  Mrs. Hobson gave everybody math sheets to work on, but even Yolanda, the smartest kid in the class, couldn’t seem to make herself push her pencil across the paper, marking down meaningless answers. Whispers floated across the classroom, but Mrs. Hobson didn’t yell at anyone to shut up.

  The classroom phone rang. Mrs. Hobson sprang toward it.

  “Yes? Yes, I see. Mm-hm. Well, that’s good, at least. Is it—”

  Mrs. Hobson was silent, listening, for a very long time.

  “Oh,” she said finally. “Yes, we will.” She hung up.

  Keely raised her hand.

  “Is Anya going to die?” she asked.

  “Anya doesn’t have cancer,” Mrs. Hobson said. “I don’t know where that rumor came from.”

  “Then what does she have?” Tyler spoke up. “You didn’t see her, Mrs. Hobson. If you had, even you’d be saying, ‘Dude, that ain’t normal.’”

  “Tyler,” Mrs. Hobson said warningly. “You’re talking about a fellow member of this class, a fellow human being, someone who is now telling her parents she never wants to come back to school because you all saw her without her wig.”

  Mrs. Hobson paused long enough to let that sink in. Keely took the time to glare over at Stef.

  “I didn’t know this myself,” Mrs. Hobson finally continued, “but Anya evidently has a disease called alopecia areata—a-lo-pee-she-uh air-e-ah-ta—I think I’m saying that right. Her father told me she just began showing signs of it in the fall, but the disease progressed rapidly in December. So she’s been wearing a wig since we came back from Christmas break. Anya’s been very embarrassed about it and didn’t want anyone to know. Her dad says alopecia areata is not painful and not deadly and not contagious.”

  Tory, who’d been waving her hand in the air, abruptly put it down.

  Mrs. Hobson sank back into the chair behind her desk.

  “I must say, this is a difficult situation to deal with,” she continued. “It’s unfortunate what happened during gym. Not just that you all saw Anya without her wig, but that it was such a surprise. . . . I believe it’s our job to convince Anya that she can feel safe coming back to school, regardless of how many people know about her wig. Perhaps if you all write her a letter apologizing for staring during gym, and promising to be supportive if she returns—and do I have any volunteers to go down to the library to do some research on alopecia areata?”

  Mrs. Hobson was reacting like such a teacher, Keely thought. She acted like this was no different from making Tyler write an apology note to the school cook: “I am sorry I burped in your face when you asked me if I wanted cheese or pepperoni pizza. . . .” She acted like this was no different from sending a kid down to the library when someone asked a question Mrs. Hobson herself couldn’t answer: “Well, Sammy, I honestly can’t say I know whether Jesse Owens could run faster than a cheetah. Why don’t you go on down to the library and find out?” This was different. This was Anya maybe dying—

  Keely remembered that Anya didn’t have cancer after all. She wasn’t going to die. But she had lost her hair. In her mind’s eye Keely could still see how strange Anya had looked standing there without her wig. How naked. How terrified.

  Keely raised her hand.
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  “I’ll go to the library,” she volunteered.

  “Thank you, Keely,” Mrs. Hobson said. “Would anybody else like to go with Keely?”

  None of the others raised their hand. They looked scared, like they might catch alopecia areata just from typing the words into the computer.

  Eighteen

  Anya didn’t go to school on Thursday. She didn’t go to school on Friday. She stayed home and lay in bed, eating chicken noodle soup and butterscotch pudding. Sick food.

  Anya didn’t wear her wig, either. She kept the Cincinnati Reds cap on her head all the time instead, pulled as far down over her ears as possible.

  Mom stayed home with Anya. Daddy stopped by school and picked up Anya’s books and homework. He brought letters from the rest of her class, too, but she wouldn’t look at those. At least the homework gave her something to do. She didn’t want to watch TV, because everyone on TV had hair. She didn’t want to read, because she was so sick of Camelot she thought it might make her throw up just to open the book. She didn’t want to play any games, because then Mom would be there, hovering, starting sentences she could never finish.

  “Would . . .”

  “Don’t you . . .”

  “If . . .”

  Instead Anya worked alone. She took extra time on all the schoolwork, writing her social studies answers in her best cursive and making little curlicues on all the numbers on the multiplication sheets. As far as she was concerned, she could study at home forever, or until her hair grew back, whichever came first. The rest of her class would probably forget what she looked like. But Mrs. Hobson would remember Anya as the kid with the most beautiful handwriting anyone had ever seen.

  Friday night Daddy came in and sat on the edge of Anya’s bed.

  “What are we going to do, Anya?” he asked quietly.

  Anya didn’t answer. After a moment she couldn’t even see his face. There were too many tears between them—tears in her eyes, tears in his.

  Nineteen

  “Keely—wait!”

  It was Stef. Keely kept walking. She walked faster, in fact, racing out to second recess with the pack of other kids.

  Keely had been avoiding Stef for two days. She couldn’t believe she’d ever wanted to be friends with someone who’d do what Stef had done. The first couple of recesses she hadn’t known what to do or where to go, but she’d fallen in with Fumi and Yolanda after she saw them drawing on the chalkboard. They were nice. She liked them. They liked her. They liked art every bit as much as she did. She couldn’t believe she’d never paid much attention to either of them before.

  Then something strange had happened at the start of the first recess on Friday. Nicole and Tory had come over to the table where Yolanda was showing Fumi and Keely how to make braided necklaces.

  “Can we try that too?” Nicole had asked.

  Yolanda had silently handed over the lengths of string.

  Keely had wondered what Stef was doing at recess without any of her friends, but Keely hadn’t asked. She didn’t want anyone to think that she cared.

  Now it was recess again, and Stef was screaming at her.

  “Keely, I mean it! Stop right now!”

  Keely turned around long enough to say, “You’re not my boss. Leave me alone.”

  It felt so good to say those words. Keely felt like they’d been building up inside her for nearly five years.

  “No, please, just listen,” Stef begged. “I mean, I know I’m not your boss. You don’t have to do anything I say. But I was just hoping . . .”

  Were those tears in Stef’s eyes? Stef never cried. Stef never begged. She never just hoped. She bulldozed people, she took no prisoners, she walked all over everyone else to get what she wanted. Stef was so horrible she would even rip a wig off the head of a girl she thought was dying of cancer.

  Keely stopped. She leaned back against the wall and narrowed her eyes at Stef.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Everybody’s mad at me,” Stef said. “Tory, Nicole, you—everyone. They all think I pulled Anya’s wig off that day in the gym. Mrs. Vance and Mrs. Hobson even sent me down to the principal’s office because of the rumors going around. But I didn’t do it, Keely, I swear I didn’t. Everyone says you were the one who saw me—you have to tell people that’s just not true.”

  Old habits almost made Keely agree instantly: “Okay, Stef, whatever you say.” And then she should cower and beg for forgiveness. But Stef was cowering and begging. Somehow Keely was the one with power now.

  “How do I know it’s not true?” she asked.

  “Did you see me do anything to Anya?”

  “No,” Keely admitted. “But you wanted Tory or Nicole or me to pull on her wig. I just thought you’d decided to do it yourself.”

  “But I didn’t. I wouldn’t have pulled it all the way off. Not in front of everybody. Keely, you have to believe me!”

  “You were laughing,” Keely said. “I saw you, afterward. You had your hand over your mouth and you were laughing.”

  “I wasn’t! Oh, never mind!” Stef whirled around and ran away—not toward the playground with all the other kids, but back toward the building. Keely stood still and watched her friend—her former friend—speed away in a cloud of red hair.

  What if Stef was telling the truth?

  In her mind Keely replayed what she’d seen that day in the gym. Anya without her wig, Stef behind her with her hand over her mouth . . . Stef might not have been laughing. She might just have been gasping. She might have been every bit as stunned and horrified as everybody else.

  “Oh, no,” Keely breathed.

  What did Anya think?

  Twenty

  “You want me to drive you where?” Mom asked Saturday morning as she whizzed through the living room straightening crooked pillows.

  “To Anya Seaver’s house. She’s a girl in my class. I looked up the address. It’s not very far,” Keely said.

  “Anya Seaver?” Mom pulled a dead leaf from a house-plant. “Isn’t that the girl Stef was trying to make you think had cancer?”

  That was how it went with Mom. Just when Keely decided Mom was too busy to pay attention to a single word Keely said, Mom would remember the wrong thing.

  “She doesn’t have cancer,” Keely said. “She’s got alopecia areata. It’s a disease that makes people’s hair fall out. That’s why she was wearing the wig. But she’s perfectly healthy otherwise.”

  Mom gave Keely a measuring look.

  “This isn’t some dare of Stef’s, is it?”

  “No, Mom,” Keely said. “This is entirely my own idea.”

  Mom raised one eyebrow and cocked her head thoughtfully. But a moment later she was busy doing something else: sorting the Newsweeks from the House Beautifuls in the magazine rack.

  “Jacob’s got a birthday party to go to at eleven, at Chuck E. Cheese,” Mom said without even looking up. “If it’s on the way, I can drop you off at this Anya’s then. You’re sure it’s all right with her parents?”

  Keely couldn’t bear the thought of calling Anya’s parents, explaining, asking permission. It was going to take all the nerve she had just to go talk to Anya. Keely had made a deal with herself: If she knocked on Anya’s door and someone answered and said she could come in, she’d talk to Anya. But if nobody answered or if Anya’s mom or dad said, “Sorry, Anya doesn’t want visitors right now,” then it would mean that Keely wasn’t supposed to tell Anya anything, it was none of Keely’s business, just like Mom had said way back at the beginning of the week.

  “Just give me a ride. I’ll take care of everything else,” Keely said.

  So at eleven fifteen, after Mom and Keely had left Jacob with a horde of screaming five-year-olds at Chuck E. Cheese, Mom drove down a quiet street full of older, well-kept houses.

  “It’s number 347,” Keely said. “Right there.”

  “So they’ll be dropping you off afterward?” Mom said.

  Keely hadn’t even thou
ght of that problem.

  “Or I’ll call,” Keely said. Maybe she’d just have to walk home by herself. She’d never done anything like that before.

  She stepped out of the SUV, and it seemed like an even greater distance than ever down to the ground. She pushed open a wooden gate and walked slowly up the sidewalk. She felt every bit as intrepid as all those explorers they studied at school, sailing off into unknown waters. She rang the doorbell, and the door opened. Behind her she heard Mom drive off, and she felt abandoned. But why shouldn’t Mom drive away? She thought Keely was expected, welcome.

  “Yes?”

  A woman stood in the doorway regarding Keely. Anya’s mom. Keely gulped.

  “Hi. I’m Keely Michaels. From Anya’s class at school. I, um, need to tell her something that might make her feel better about coming back to school.”

  Anya’s mother pushed the door open wider, letting Keely in. Keely looked around a small, cozy living room. “Is Anya here?”

  “She’s in her room. She’s been a little . . . upset. Just a minute.” The woman turned and hollered down a hallway. “Todd?”

  A man came out from the hall. Keely guessed it was Anya’s dad.

  “Todd, this is one of Anya’s friends from school. She wanted to tell Anya something that she thinks will help her. Do you think—”

  “Why not?” Anya’s dad said. “It’s worth a try.” He didn’t sound very sure of himself.

  “Go on down the hall, honey,” Anya’s mom said. “It’s the first door on the right.”

  “Shouldn’t you tell her I’m here, ask her if . . .”

  Anya’s mom winced.

  “She’s more likely to let you in if we don’t ask,” she said.

  Both of Anya’s parents stepped aside, letting Keely past. Keely was surprised by how easily they faded into the background. They seemed as insubstantial as ghosts, compared with her own parents. If Keely had been the one who’d lost her hair, Keely’s dad would be standing right outside her bedroom door, not letting anyone see her if she didn’t want to be seen. And Keely’s mom—well, Keely was almost certain her mother would turn the whole world upside down finding a cure. No—she’d probably invent one herself.