A Shot at Normal

by Marisa Reichardt

  “And there’s no guarantee that not putting something into my body will protect me, either.” I fold my fists at my sides. Bang them against my legs. “I got the measles because of your choices.”

  “And I still firmly believe that was the healthier option,” my dad says.

  “June.” My mom reaches for me, but I flinch away. “The choices Dad and I have made for you and Poppy and Sequoia are because we want you to see things differently. We want you to think outside the box. There are too many sheep, doing whatever their neighbors and their friends do without thinking. The world and the choices in it aren’t so black and white. We want you to grow up to be a free thinker.”

  “News flash: I won’t get to grow up to do anything if I die from polio at sixteen.”

  My dad glares at me. “That’s some extreme hyperbole.”

  “How can you say that when a six-week-old baby died from the measles? When I ended up in the hospital because of it?”

  He shakes his head, and some strands of hair come loose from his hair tie. “You are not a six-week-old baby. You are a healthy, strong sixteen-year-old girl. And the fact that you’re standing here right now is proof you didn’t need the measles shot. You’re better off having contracted the virus and created natural immunities. You’ll come to see that eventually. This is a lesson from the world, and the world is your classroom. Listen to it.”

  “The world?” I throw my hands up in the air. “Please. The kitchen is my classroom. That’s the whole problem. It’s boring, and nothing happens there besides scrambled eggs and dirty dishes.”

  “Oh, don’t pull that. You spend plenty of time outside. Hiking. Surfing. You know your mother and I encourage it.”

  “But I want to meet people. And do real school things like joining clubs and going to football games and the prom. I can’t do that by going to school in our kitchen with my sister and brother. Don’t you get it?”

  “Nobody is stopping you from making friends. Have at it.” My dad riffles through a pile of papers on the table. “We just got a brochure yesterday.” He tosses it to me. “Take an art class. Volunteer for a beach cleanup.”

  I crumple the brochure in my hand. “Teenagers don’t go to beach cleanups to meet people. They make friends at school. If I get my vaccinations, I can go to Playa across the street.”

  “Juniper,” my dad huffs, “even if you could attend the school across the street without vaccinations, we wouldn’t let you go. That is not how we’ve chosen to educate you and your siblings. And since you’re a minor who would need parental permission to enroll, that’s how it’s going to stay.”

  “So I’ll never have a social life.”

  “We’ll be starting field trips again soon. You’ll meet other homeschool kids,” my mom tries. “And honestly, June, every one of those things you mentioned about high school is entirely overrated. I went to a traditional high school, and all I got was four years of bullying and a nervous tic.”

  “Well, Mom, I’m not you. I’m me. And I don’t really care about your tragic teenage years right now.”

  She sinks dramatically to the couch. Shakes her head at my dad. “I don’t know what to say here.”

  “I do,” my dad says, pointing at me. “You will be homeschooled and that’s that. Vaccines are not an option in this family. You are receiving a perfectly fine education, not to mention the kind of practical guidance that will prepare you for the real world.”

  “Are you even listening to yourself? You want to prepare me for the real world. You tell me to think outside the box. To stand up for myself and my beliefs. But when I tell you I believe something different than you do, you can’t handle it. You don’t want me to be my own person with my own ideas. You want me to be just like you.”

  “June,” my mom says in her sad, defeated way.

  “I have a question. If I stepped on a rusty nail, say it was lodged so deeply into my foot that you had to take me to the ER, just like you had to do when I had the measles, and a doctor there said I needed a tetanus shot, what would you do? Would you say no thanks, we’ll rub some of our sham essential oils on it and hope for the best?”

  My mom laughs sarcastically. “I don’t know where you think you’re going to step on a rusty nail.”

  I hold up my hand. “Wait. That’s what you got from what I said?”

  My mom rubs her temples, trying to stave off a stress headache.

  My dad sputters, “For one, we’d have to hear a darn compelling argument to be willing to inject you with anything.”

  I stand up straight. Square my shoulders. Look him in the eye. “You love your convictions more than you love me.”

  “That’s not true,” my mom says.

  “Are you sure about that?” I look at her hard. “Because it doesn’t feel like it. Maybe you need to think about it.”

  “I don’t need to think about any such thing. All the choices we’ve made are because you are our top priority.”

  “Whatever. I’m going to bed.”

  “Good,” my dad says. “Because this discussion is over. I’m tired of fighting with you about this. It ends right here, right now.”

  I pound my way up the stairs, not even caring if my heavy footsteps wake Poppy and Sequoia.

  In my room, I take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle of it. On one side, I write down the alleged cons of vaccines, according to my parents: autism, paralysis, allergic reaction, Big Pharma, government scam.

  I write the pros: NOT DYING. NOT CAUSING OTHERS TO DIE.

  I underline that sentence. Add exclamation points, pressing the pen so hard it makes holes in the paper. I crumple the list in frustration. Toss it across the room.

  My dad said we’ll never discuss this again. I’ll obviously have to figure out a way to do this on my own. Dr. Villapando told me to get a good attorney. He wasn’t serious. But I am.

  I’m going to sue my parents.

  FOURTEEN

  It’s my first Monday back at the farmers market, and it’s weird to be here. I already feel like I’m keeping a secret everywhere I go, but it especially feels like that here. In this place. Where I had contact with Baby Kat.

  I made sure we brought the pop-up canopy today. I work on opening it as my mom organizes sprigs of herbs tied in twine and essential oils along our folding table.

  Mary strolls by with a bin of apples in her arms, backtracking when she sees me. “Juniper Jade, where have you been, sunshine? This place hasn’t felt the same without your smile.”

  “I was sick,” I say. My mom ruffles my hair like I’m a two-year-old and the blowup fight in our living room didn’t happen last night. “Poppy and Sequoia, too.”

  “Oh, my. It must’ve been bad for you to be out for so long. What did you have?”

  I open my mouth to talk, but my mom cuts me off so hard with an arm across my chest that she practically knocks the wind out of me.

  “It just seems to be one thing after another when you have three kids,” my mom says.

  “Ah, yes. I remember those days.” Mary pulls her apple bin closer and takes a step away from us. “We all saw a CDC notification in the paper about a person who had the measles being at the farmers market. I hope it wasn’t that. Ten confirmed cases in California is the last I heard. And of course we all know about that baby who died.”

  My eyes dart to my mom and back to Mary, who’s studying me intently.

  “It wasn’t the measles,” my mom states firmly. “We’re all fine and back at school.”

  “In the kitchen,” I say.

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “It certainly is,” my mom says.

  Mary smiles at my mom. “Welp. Here’s to good sales today.”

  My mom gives her a thumbs-up. “Back atcha, Mary.”

  I turn my back to my mom and roll my eyes as I tie my apron around my waist. Melinda Jade: Queen of Overkill.

  Once Mary is out of earshot, my mom hisses at me, “That woman is the biggest gossip in town.
Don’t you dare tell her a thing. Nobody needs to know you had the measles. Keep it to yourself.”

  I clutch bottles of essential oils in my hands, wanting to grip them tight enough to shatter them. The crowds are smaller today. Maybe because summer is over and nobody wanders in from the beach for snacks and fresh fruit. Our stand is never as busy as the others, but today, we hardly sell anything.

  At one point, I notice Mary huddled up with another woman. My heart skitters because I recognize her. First from here and then from the urgent care clinic. The severe bun. The perfectly put-together outfit. The woman who reminds me of Mimi. Mary pulls in two young moms pushing babies in strollers. They lean into the elderly woman’s hushed whispers. Their eyes follow her finger pointing at me. Land. Judge. They pull their strollers closer, trying to create distance. Then one of them snaps a photo of my mom and me with her phone.

  Why is she taking a picture?

  My gaze jerks away from them when the woman with the business suit and the flip-flops stops at our stand. “Do you have mint?”

  “We do,” I say, staring at her shoes. I want to ask her why she wears them. Does she actually get away with it at the office? Does she have an office? Or does she always work from a table at Starbucks? Instead of asking her any of those things, I untangle sprigs of mint from each other. “How many would you like?”

  “One is plenty. I like it for my tea.”

  She pays me, and I shove the money into the front pocket of my apron. “Thanks for stopping by. It’s been a little slow today.”

  “Yes, well, things always seem to slow down once summer has ended,” she says.

  “I guess.” I stop myself from saying more. “Enjoy your mint. And tea.”

  She holds the bundle up in the air as if to say cheers. “I will.”

  When we’re packing up a few hours later, that same elderly woman with the severe bun passes our stand.

  She glares at my mom and me.

  I square my shoulders. Stare back.

  “I know who you are.” She says it like a threat. And it sends a chill straight to my bones.

  FIFTEEN

  The next afternoon, long after I’ve spent the morning diligently listening to a Kitchen School lecture on chemical compounds, and the buses filled with students have pulled away from the high school across the street, I interrupt my dad from his copyediting to tell him I’m going to the library to do some research.

  “Very well,” he says.

  One thing he will admit is that this house lacks the necessary resources for proper research. Case in point, my grandma’s 1989 encyclopedia collection. On top of that, we have one computer for the whole family, including my dad’s work, and one tablet. A tablet Sequoia is currently glommed onto, doing a math tutorial, which is the closest he’ll ever get to playing a video game. So I really do need to go to the library, but it’s not my fault if my dad assumes today’s trip is for the English paper he assigned instead of figuring out how to sue him.

  Our house is only a block from town, but there’s the smell of storm in the air, so I pull up my hoodie and hurry down the sidewalk, trying to beat it. Playa Bonita is small, and the postage-stamp-size library in the middle of downtown reflects it. The orange carpets are old and well-worn, as if they haven’t been replaced since the seventies, and there’s a constant musty scent that emanates from the pages of the books lined up along the metal shelves. When I push through the front door, my ears are assaulted by energetic singing and the annoying clang of a tambourine from Preschool Story Time in the back corner, where toddlers bounce on their stubby legs, attempting to dance, and moms and nannies alternate between clapping along and snapping photos with their phones.

  I usually head straight to the young adult fiction section and tuck myself into one of the overstuffed beanbag chairs. But today I need the computer lab, which is a glass-enclosed room housing twelve Apple computers and two printers. I have to check in with the attendant first. The last few times I was here, an elderly woman wearing a Christmas vest in the summer was working. But today, there’s someone new—a lanky teenage guy with floppy curly hair wearing a Playa Bonita High School T-shirt. His backpack sits at his feet, the seams busting open from too much academia, as he thumbs through a copy of The Crucible.

  I like The Crucible.

  I like boys who read.

  I like floppy hair.

  My dad told me to go out and meet people in an art class. How about a person right here at the library?

  “That’s a good one,” I say, pointing to his book. I hear the nervous quiver in my voice, but I hope he doesn’t. “I read it, too.” I roll my eyes at myself. “Obviously. I mean, I wouldn’t say something was good if I hadn’t read it.”

  “I believe you.” He focuses his big brown eyes on mine and smiles. My knees go floppy like his hair. “It’s kinda brutal, though, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, definitely. Mob mentality.” I stop myself from pulling up a chair and telling him all about the paper I wrote for my dad. “Brutal stuff for sure.”

  “Scary stuff.” He shudders. “People are scary.”

  Not being vaccinated is scary. I remember why I’m here. “I need a computer.”

  “Take your pick.” He waves his hand at the bay of computers and accidentally smacks the wall. His clumsiness is comforting, and I try to decide how I’d describe him to someone: lanky and slightly awkward but comfortable in his own skin. “It’ll cost you one library card, though.”

  “Why? Do people actually try to steal computers?”

  He twists his mouth into an amused smile. “You know, I’m not really sure. It’s kind of a weird rule, now that I think about it.”

  “Stealing a computer from the library definitely seems like too much work. Heavy. Awkward. That dangly cord.” I twirl my finger in a curlicue, then fish my card out from the front pocket of my backpack and hand it over.

  He studies it. “Juniper, huh?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Cool name.”

  “Not really.”

  “I get it.” He points to himself. “I’m Nico. People seem to like my name okay, but I don’t.”

  “I like it better than Juniper.”

  “That’s something, I guess.” He grins and his brown eyes light up. “I think my parents tried too hard to name me something cool, and there’s no way I can live up to it.”

  “It’s funny how names say more about the person who picked them than the person with the actual name.”

  “Huh.” He nods and his hair flops. “I never thought of it like that.”

  I shrug. “Maybe I’ve thought about it too much.”

  “Doesn’t seem possible to think too much.”

  “If you say so.” I shove my hands into my pockets and look around the room. “So … computer.”

  “Right. Which one do you want?”

  There’s only one other person in the lab right now—a middle-aged woman with a website pulled up on Beanie Babies. She scans the stuffed animals, stopping every few seconds to scrawl a note onto the yellow legal pad next to her.

  I point to the computer as far away from her as possible. “That one, I guess.”

  “Lucky number seven,” Nico says as he places my library card into the corresponding pocket of a numbered plastic cardholder hanging from the wall.

  “There’s no such thing as a lucky number.”

  “Then how do you explain the lottery?”

  “Math.”

  “What about people who win the lottery twice?”

  “Still math. Did you know there was a lottery in Bulgaria where the same six winning numbers were drawn within four days of each other?”

  “Really? That sounds rigged.”

  “Not rigged. Look up The Improbability Principle sometime. All that stuff you think is rare actually isn’t. Coincidences happen all the time, but people chalk it up to luck.”

  “Huh.” He scratches his head. “That’s no fun.”

  “Reality rarely is.�
��

  “Truth.”

  “Sorry to bum you out.”

  He smiles. “You didn’t.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  He pulls his book back up to his face as I take a seat at my assigned computer and open Google. After some trial-and-error searches for my rights to be vaccinated, I stumble across some information about custody battles, where one divorced parent wants to vaccinate a child and the other one doesn’t, but I can’t find anything for a teenager who has never been vaccinated for polio trying to do so.

  I do learn that if I want the HPV vaccine or mental health treatment or STD testing, I can do that without parental consent. In California, I can have an abortion without telling my parents. It makes no sense to me how I can get medical treatment for those things but not a meningitis shot.

  Maybe doctors have never had to deal with someone like me.

  Maybe I have to be the first.

  Maybe I have to lead the way.

  I find some pages on the pros (and alleged cons) of vaccines. I want to study them more closely, so I print them out for ten cents a copy to read later. Now I’m free to spend the rest of my time here in one of those comfy beanbag chairs with a good book.

  “Thanks for not stealing a computer,” Nico says as he hands my library card back to me. “I don’t run very fast.”

  “Neither do I.”

  I spend the next hour gorging on a story about a girl fighting off metaphorical monsters the summer before college, but I eventually get a crick in my neck, so I decide to check the book out from the librarian and finish it at home along with my vaccination reading. When I get outside, the ground is wet from what was probably a five-minute downpour, and I see Nico unlocking a bright green ten-speed from the bike rack next to the book return box.