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My brain pawed through these secret caches of butterflies like a hungry raccoon. Noe and I should go digging for them, said my dream-brain.
“Here we are, A
She hadn’t called me A
I lay on the couch and she tucked me in with blankets and gave me a candy for my throat. It burned a hole in my cheek. I spat it into a tissue. The clock on the DVD player said 10:11 a.m., which seemed too early to be taking a nap.
Mom was in the kitchen making tea. I fell asleep before the tab on the kettle clicked up.
103
I WAS SICK FOR FIVE DAYS, hot all the way through except when I stood up or moved, in which case the cold reasserted itself in queasy flashes. I wore a hat inside the house, and thick socks. When I was sleeping, I thought I was hiking. Every time I woke up, confusion: where were the snow and the pine trees? Then I’d fall asleep again—Ah, there they are. Sometimes I’d get up and chug half a box of orange juice and hurry back to the couch so I could be on my hike again. The hike made sense. The hike had clear parameters and a clear sense of momentum. The hike was all body. It had nothing to do with words. I wished I could turn all my problems into sacks of stones I only had to carry around, into mountains I only had to wear my legs out climbing. I was tired of trying to think my way through life, of having to explain and justify and make myself acceptable to the world. I wanted to lift, to drag, to climb, to smash, to bushwhack.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to have a lobotomy and finish my life as the Incredible Hulk, pure muscle. I could follow directions. I’d make a great firefighter, charging in with my hose. Maybe I should join the army. I wouldn’t have to decide what to wear, or what to eat, or who to say hi to or not say hi to in the hall. Uncle Dylan was always hassling Max to sign up. Maybe I’d ask him about it, next time we went over for di
I fell in and out of these thoughts, in and out, in and out. I dreamed I had already joined the army, and had a narrow gray bed in a cell like a nun’s. I dreamed Noe and I were best friends.
Mom read in the living room. Cars hummed up and down the street. I felt like a drop of blood, all surface tension. I felt like the deer heart the hunter presented to the evil stepmother instead of Snow White’s. I would always be the flea-bitten deer whose heart gets chopped out to save Snow White, I thought to myself. And maybe that was okay. Maybe that was worth it. In my dreams, I saved an old lady from a bathroom stall again and again.
I shivered and shivered. Mom came and went from work.
Wrapped up on the couch with a fever, exempt from all duties of life. Was there anywhere safer in the world?
104
ON THE FIFTH DAY MOM CAME home from work early. I was frozen solid. Several times I told myself to greet her, but somehow I ended up asleep before the “Hi, Mom” came out. I remembered and forgot and fell asleep, woke, remembered, forgot, until she woke me herself, lowering herself to the floor beside me.
“A
I shifted on the couch. Every time I moved, snow packed into the newly exposed parts of my body. I sat up with difficulty, my teeth chattering.
Mom was holding a big envelope. “Look what came,” she said.
She handed it to me. The front of the envelope said CONGRATULATIONS. The return address said NORTHERN UNIVERSITY.
I wept while Mom called Nan and Uncle Dylan. I wept while she called Pauline to tell her the news. I wept until I felt her arms lift me up and carry me, too easily, to bed.
105
WHEN I WENT BACK TO SCHOOL on Monday, grass was showing through the snow in damp green patches. The sun looked like a scrambled egg. At some point in the week I was gone, the school had received the projectors that were supposed to arrive in September as part of a Technology in the Classrooms grant. In class, the teachers mostly fussed with them while we sat bathed in cancerous blue light.
Sphinx Lacoeur had gotten fired, or almost fired, after Ms. Bomtrauer had called Gailer College to complain about the questionable health advice he was giving impressionable young gymnasts—I never got the whole story. The gym birds were up in arms over the injustice. You could see them twittering and puffing in the halls, ski
Noe had started to wear a tiny gold cross on a fine chain. You could barely make out its glimmer around her neck. She carried around a thick book called Foucault’s Pendulum and a pink travel mug with GAILER COLLEGE embossed on the side.
Margot Dilforth had shocked everyone by making out with another girl at a St. Patrick’s Day party. Now they were walking around the halls arm in arm. I had never seen Margot Dilforth looking radiant before. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. Now she glowed.
At lunch, I went to the nutritionist’s office, knocked, and walked in. He was knitting a green-and-white dog sweater and had a new audiobook playing. I saw the CD case on his desk: Entering Mist.
The way to Master Tung’s house was up the twelve-peaked mountain . . .
Bob didn’t bother to scramble for the stop button. He set his knitting down, leaned forward, and gently clicked the player off.
“A
I tossed a small blue notebook onto his desk and plunked myself onto the creaky plastic chair.
“I was thinking we could start over,” I said.
He picked up the notebook and flipped through it. As he read through the columns, he began to sit up straighter. When he looked back at me, there was something like confidence in his face. He cleared his throat and adjusted the collar on his shirt.
“So, A
106
I WASN’T TRYING TO STARVE MYSELF. I was just too sad to eat.
Bob said that happened sometimes, when people got stressed.
He said the main thing was learning to feel good again.
“What would make you feel good?” he said.
I didn’t have an answer for that, so mostly we ate Cheez-Its and listened to Entering Mist.
107
I STARTED GOING BY BOB’S OFFICE now and then when I got hungry. He kept a cardboard box full of trail mix packets outside the door. I felt like a bird visiting a bird feeder throughout the winter. I started making detours to go past the box throughout the day. Sometimes I was afraid it would be empty, but it never was. I tore into the packets as I hurried away, and inhaled the nuts and seeds so fast I couldn’t taste them.
108
ONE DAY, STEVEN CAUGHT ME PAWING through the trail mix box. I jerked away guiltily. We were the only two people in the hall.
“A
After that, there were sometimes chocolate éclairs in the box, and sometimes chili garlic peanuts, and sometimes neatly wrapped bowls of spinach-mushroom ravioli.
Somehow, I was always able to eat the things that came from Steven, as if the charm of friendship was the one thing powerful enough to overcome the curse of the Stone King.