by Barbara Dee
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.”
He smiled. “Terrific. Nicole will stay with you overnight, but she won’t get here until dinnertime. Think you can hang out, do homework, fix yourself a snack, until she shows up?”
“Dad, I’m in seventh grade. I’m not a baby!”
“I know.” But you had leukemia, Norah. So that resets the clock. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. And I’m glad you’re back to normal. With your job, I mean.”
He kissed my cheek. “Me too, sweetheart. Me too.”
* * *
Sometimes, when I was in the hospital overnight, I had a sort of nightmare. I say “sort of” because I was awake for it, or at least a version of awake. It usually happened the times I woke up in a dark bed area (we didn’t have private rooms) and suddenly I had no idea where I was. Like it felt I wasn’t in an actual place, at an actual address on a map; I could have been anywhere, or nowhere. And this was terrifying.
Once I told Ayesha about this not-anywhere feeling. She said she’d had something like it too, when she was a patient. And the way she dealt with it was by telling herself, over and over, that she was somewhere else. It didn’t matter where, exactly—just anywhere besides a hospital.
So I tried that too. The next time I woke up in the hospital with that creepy floating-in-space, where-am-I sort of feeling, I played a version of the Room game. I pretended to be a camera in my very own bedroom, noticing every little detail, from left to right. And I can’t say it tricked me into believing I wasn’t in the hospital, in a sick person’s bed, with a hospital bracelet around my wrist—but it did make me feel a little better. And I even dozed off for a bit, eventually.
But that night, after Dad told me about his business trip, I got zero sleep. I tried the Bedroom game, but it didn’t work—probably because it was only in the hospital that you felt like you were Nowhere, and needed to convince yourself that you were Somewhere Else. Here in my cozy room with the bright yellow walls and the rainbow-colored quilt on my bed, I had no problem knowing where I was: I was home, exactly where I was supposed to be. And the reason I couldn’t sleep was that I kept thinking about what Harper had told me: that I was telling Griffin a lie. About who I was.
Which was completely wrong of her. And actually, she was the one being unfair.
I mean, if he’d asked me what I did last winter break and I’d answered something like Ah yes, I remember: I went skiing in Vermont, that would be a lie, because the truth was that I was stuck at the hospital doing all-day chemo, feeling like a blob of oatmeal clogging the drain in the kitchen sink. But he’d never asked a specific question, and I’d never answered anything specifically false. In fact, Griffin and I never discussed facts—we only ever talked about fantasy creatures. So how could you lie if you were talking about fiction? Fiction was nothing but a bunch of lies anyway.
Harper was a great friend, but she didn’t understand any of this. And why should she? Yes, she came to the hospital all the time, but as a visitor. She wasn’t a patient, like me; she never had the scary middle-of-the-night feeling that she’d stopped being part of regular life, that she was floating above it in a kind of endless blank nowhere. So she didn’t have anything to forget, or to try to forget. Versus me, who wanted only to go forward. Act normal. Be normal.
And anyhow, why should I volunteer personal information to a boy who maybe liked that awful, airy Thea with the squealy laugh?
And only gave me a stupid hug, which meant he felt sorry for me?
* * *
The next morning in math, we had a substitute teacher, a rumpled guy who seemed like he’d woken up about fifteen minutes before homeroom. Ms. Perillo had prepared a few worksheets for us, and I guess he was too sleepy to hand them out himself.
So he pointed at me for some reason. “Young man, would you help me distribute these?”
Astrid laughed. Rowan snorted. And Thea did a pouting face at me like Aww, poor you.
“My name is Norah,” I muttered.
“Sorry, young lady,” the sub said, honking his nose into a dirty tissue. “My mistake.”
I passed out the worksheets, avoiding eye contact with every single person in the class. Was it possible to be any more humiliated—called “young man” by a teacher who hadn’t heard My Whole Story? I felt like a popped balloon.
When I sat down again, there was a folded-up piece of paper on my desk.
I unfolded it.
Green ink. Gel-pen ink.
A drawing. Of what? It looked like a thumb with a giant eye. Underneath it was written: ICU.
Intensive Care Unit?
Omigod, is that a hospital reference?
Why would Griffin do that? Does he know about me?
And if he does , does he think this is funny or something?
Barely breathing, I peeked at him.
Griffin ripped off a corner of one of the worksheets, wrote something on it fast, and handed it to me: Supposed to be Cyclops. Told you I can’t draw! Stupid sub is blind. I see you.
ALL ABOUT FEELINGS
So you were right,” Harper said as soon as I sat down next to her in English. “Kylie did get in trouble. Silas, too.”
“For what?” I asked her, still distracted by the period before.
“What do you think, Norah? Sneaking out to get pizza yesterday. And guess who saw them and told the principal: Ms. Farrell.”
This surprised me. Ms. Farrell hadn’t struck me as the tattle type. But sneaking out of the building during school hours was pretty serious. “How do you know?”
“Everyone was talking about it in math. They both got a week of detention. So thanks for trying to convince me not to do it.”
“You’re welcome. Harper?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you come with me to the mall after school today? To get my ears pierced?”
“What?” Harper seemed jolted by my change of subject. “Norah, are you even allowed? I thought you always went straight home.”
“Yes, normally, but Dad said I could. He has a business trip, so he can’t pick me up today. And I asked my parents if I could pierce my ears after you told me Aria did it at the mall, and they said yes.”
All of which was technically true.
“Well, but I have Art Club,” Harper began.
I leaned toward her to beg. “Please? A sub in math called me ‘young man.’ That’s the second time someone thought I was a boy. And I think earrings will make me feel better. About how I look.”
“Oh. Sure. Of course!” Harper was too good a friend to protest that I already looked perfectly wonderful, blahblahblah. And here I was, actually sharing my feelings about cancer-ish topics. So of course she was going to be supportive, even if it meant missing Afterschool—and not telling her mom where she went instead.
Class started. Today was especially fun, because Ms. Farrell had us play a game called Greek Gods Couples Counseling, where a god and a goddess who were having relationship issues had to talk to a “therapist.” I was in a group with Aria and Harrison; every five minutes we were supposed to switch roles.
First I was Echo and Aria was Narcissus. We argued to Harrison about how we couldn’t communicate.
Next Harrison was Orpheus and I was Eurydice, telling Aria about our unfair separation.
Then Aria said: “Okay, I have an idea: Now I’ll be Artemis and Harrison will be Actaeon. Norah can be the therapist.”
“Wait,” Harrison protested. “I don’t know that story.”
Aria narrowed her eyes. “No problem, Harrison, I’ll tell it to you! Artemis is the beautiful goddess of the hunt, right? She’s always running after animals in the woods. And one time she stopped to bathe in a little brook. And this hunter guy named Actaeon was in love with her, so he spied on her bathing. But Artemis always needed privacy, so when she realized Actaeon was following her around and spying, she flung some water at him. And when it hit Actaeon’s head, antlers grew, and he turned into a stag and ran off.”
&n
bsp; Harrison squirmed in his chair. “Huh. That’s not a very nice story.”
“Oh, it’s not?” Aria said, her dark eyes flashing. “Which part don’t you like, Harrison? Spying on someone when they’re trying to run? Or getting punished for it?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on. I saw you staring at me yesterday in Afterschool!”
Harrison’s eyes rounded. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Don’t lie! Of course you were watching me. You totally wrecked my concentration. So all my times were off.” Aria raised her eyebrows at me. “Norah was there. I bet she saw you.”
“Actually, yeah,” I admitted. “I did notice you yesterday in the parking lot, Harrison.” Now he was blushing so hard I thought he might violate the No-Crying rule.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I won’t do it again.”
“You’d better not, at least not without asking me first,” Aria warned. “Or I’ll turn you into mashed potatoes. With gravy!”
Aria grinned at me. I could see she was just teasing Harrison. But it was cool how she was standing up for herself—jokey about everything except running.
For a second I found myself wishing I could be like Aria Maldonado—or maybe be Aria Maldonado. Chatty. Smiley. Athletic. Loud.
“How are we all doing?” Ms. Farrell was at our table, eyeing us. “Resolving conflicts in a peaceful manner befitting deities?”
Aria kept grinning. “Yeah, we are. This is so fun.”
“I’m glad you think so. It’s a warm-up for our big project.” Ms. Farrell winked and walked off.
We played the game for a few more minutes. Then Ms. Farrell wrote two words on the whiteboard:
SYMPATHY
EMPATHY
“Two nice Greek words,” Ms. Farrell said. “Along with ‘therapist’ and ‘therapy,’ by the way. The Greeks were all about feelings.” She pointed to the whiteboard with her blue marker. “So who can tell us what these words mean, and how they’re different from each other?”
Harper raised her hand. “Sympathy is when you feel sorry for someone. Empathy is when you feel what someone else is feeling. Like you’re putting yourself in their shoes.”
“Right.” Next to SYMPATHY, Ms. Farrell wrote FEELING FOR. Next to EMPATHY, she wrote FEELING WITH. “Which is harder—sympathy or empathy?”
“Sympathy,” Addison guessed. “Because you see why things are hard for someone else, but you can’t always help them.”
Ms. Farrell looked at me. “Norah? What do you think?”
I swallowed. “I wasn’t raising my hand.”
“Yes. But I thought you might have an insight to share.”
“Why?”
It sounded like back talk, but I didn’t care. She was putting me on the spot, making me talk about cancer. Not directly, but I could tell what she was doing. Like: Hey, guys, don’t feel sorry FOR me; try to feel WITH me. As if that was possible.
Everyone was staring at me now.
“Just answer,” Harper muttered. “Don’t do this.”
Fine. I took a breath. “I think empathy is harder because when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, sometimes you feel things you don’t want to. But I don’t think empathy is always possible, anyhow.”
“How come?” Ms. Farrell asked, tucking some loose hair behind her ears.
“Because sometimes the other person’s experience is so weird that you can’t put yourself in their shoes. I mean, you may think you can, but you really can’t.”
“I don’t agree,” Addison called out. “People aren’t stupid, Norah.”
“I’m not calling anyone stupid,” I said.
“Omigod, you so are! You’re saying people can’t understand some things, even if they want to. And to be honest, I think that’s a pretty stuck-up attitude.”
“That’s not what Norah said,” Harper protested. “She said that sometimes it’s hard to empathize. Sometimes.”
“All right, girls,” Ms. Farrell said calmly. “Let’s stay on topic here, please. So let me ask you: In the Couples Counseling game, which were you feeling for your characters—sympathy or empathy?”
“Sympathy,” Addison said. “Because when I was playing Hera, I felt sorry for her. Zeus was a terrible husband, but she couldn’t divorce him, right? So there was no way to help her.” Addison shook her braids.
“For me it was empathy,” Aria said. “Because I felt exactly the same as Artemis when she got spied on.” She raised her eyebrows at Harrison, who seemed to shrink.
Ms. Farrell nodded. “Okay, well, for this first project of the year, I’m asking you all to use your strongest empathic powers. You’re going to pick a mythic character—a god or goddess, a mortal affected by the gods, a creature, any character in any one of the myths—and put yourself in his or her shoes.”
“Did the gods wear shoes?” Harrison asked.
“I’m pretty sure they wore sandals,” Kylie said. “You know, with those tie-up laces.”
“Figurative shoes,” Ms. Farrell corrected herself. “And you’ll prepare a five-minute speech from that character’s point of view. Feel what the character is feeling; express his or her thoughts in the first person. Help us to understand your character’s behavior, even if it’s hard. Especially if it’s hard. And be creative. Wear costumes, use props. Yes, Malik?”
“Can we have special effects? Like if we pick Zeus, can we have a thunderbolt?”
“Malik, you’re not going to electrocute anyone, right?” Kylie asked, giggling.
Ms. Farrell held up a hand. “Guys, I want you to have fun with this project, and be theatrical—but the focus should be on your words. And I should tell you that the three best speeches from this class will be delivered to a special school assembly promoting empathy.”
“What if you’d rather not?” Cait asked in a small voice.
“No one will be forced onstage, Cait. But you do need to do your speech for this class, okay?”
“Okay,” Cait said, melting into her seat.
“What if you can’t pick anyone?” Addison asked.
“If you’re having trouble coming up with a character, I’ll try to help you find a good fit. Or you can ask our expert mythologist, Norah, if she has any suggestions.” Ms. Farrell smiled at me, but I didn’t smile back.
And then Stinkeye Number Three happened. I tried to ignore Addison, but she refused to look away.
The bell rang.
“Let me know if there are more questions,” Ms. Farrell called as we got up to leave the room. “And I want to hear which character you’ve chosen by Friday!”
A PAIR OF GREEN DRAGONS
The rest of the day zoomed by. When Harper told Aria our plan for the afternoon, Aria surprised me by offering to come with us. I’d never been to Mimi’s, the place where Aria had had her ears done, and I was pretty sure we could get there by bus—but Aria said her mom would drive us. In fact, her mom would come inside the store with us; for piercing, they made you have a grown-up with you, Aria said.
At dismissal, Aria’s mom was already waiting in the parking lot.
“This is such a fabulous idea,” Mrs. Maldonado gushed. “Norah, you’ll look so pretty with earrings!”
“I don’t need to look pretty,” I admitted. “I just don’t want to be called ‘young man’ anymore.”
“If anyone calls you that, just tell me, Norah, and I’ll turn them into mashed potatoes,” Aria shouted. “With gravy! What kind of earrings do you want?”
“Big fat dangly ones.”
“You know, they start you off with tiny studs,” Harper said. “You have to wear them for a month.”
“An entire month?” By then, my hair would be almost long enough. Almost.
Aria grinned at me. “Yeah, but once the month is over, you can wear whatever you like. I plan to get giant hoops with perches for birds. Or lightsabers. Or light-up Christmas trees.”
“You’re going to get regular earrings that won’t pull your earlobes off,” Mrs. Mald
onado said, pretending not to smile. “And Norah, I do have to ask: Your parents are both okay with this? Because I’m a little nervous that we haven’t spoken directly—”
“Oh, don’t worry, they totally are!” I swore. “Anyhow, Mom’s back in California and Dad’s out of town right now, so thanks for taking me.”
“You’re very welcome, dear. I’m just happy to do this.”
When we got to the mall, Harper said she needed a snack, so first we went to get cinnamon pretzels. The pretzels made us thirsty, so we got shakes. (Mine was strawberry/banana/mango; it was so delicious I finished the whole thing without realizing it.) Then Aria asked if we could possibly buy some lip gloss “really fast.” I said sure—not only because it felt so great just wandering aimlessly around a shopping mall, but also because Aria-without-Kylie was a loud, fun person who knew song lyrics. Also, her mom didn’t helicopter; she kept popping into shoe stores, so it almost felt like the three of us were on our own, singing, staring at shop windows, eating junk food.
Seriously, it was the most fun I’d had in eons.
At four, we all went to Mimi’s, a store where the music was Japanese and the signs were pink and lowercase. A young woman who reminded me of Ayesha—dark skin, long black hair in a tight, high ponytail, a million studs in each ear—announced in a bored voice that to get my ears pierced I needed to have a parent present.
“And here I am,” Mrs. Maldonado announced in a don’t-mess-with-me voice. “A present parent.”
I thought Almost Ayesha would make Mrs. Maldonado show some ID to prove she was my parent. Because, I mean, she didn’t look anything like me—her skin was light brown, and she was very tall, like Aria. But Almost Ayesha just checked her watch, yawned, handed me an “ear care pamphlet,” and led me over to a pink-curtained booth labeled ear’s lookin’ at you, kid! I meant to ask how they were sterilizing the ear-piercer thing—but before I knew it, she’d punched two holes in my earlobes, and stuck in tiny silver balls.
Harper handed me a mirror. “Norah, I love it! You look incredible!”