They think I got it from an armadillo. Isn’t that the most fucked-up thing you’ve ever heard? I mean, seriously. It’s the twenty-first century. Who gets leprosy anymore? No one. That’s who. Unless you, like, live in a gutter covered in filth or were in the Bible, or unless you’re me. My name is Abby Furlowe^*. I’m seventeen years old. I live in     , Texas. I’m blanking out the name of my town because I don’t need some jerk-off coming to find me, getting all up in my face and spray-painting the words DIRTY LEPER across the front of my house. Privacy is important to me now. It didn’t used to be. I used to want to model for Seventeen magazine. I used to want to be an A-list actress and have a beach house in Malibu. I used to fantasize about the paparazzi following me around and me blowing kisses into their cameras, or giving them the finger, depending on my mood that day. When I was a little kid, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I’d say, “I want to be beautiful.” And then they’d laugh and say something cheesy like, “Oh, sweetie. You already are beautiful.” And it was true. I was. I really, really was. And I wasn’t one of those bleach-blonde chicks who thinks she’s so pretty she could maybe be a model one day; I actually was that pretty. And I’m a natural blonde. I was crowned princess of my junior high, I was on the high school cheerleading squad, and I was crowned Miss      two years ago. I got to wear a rhinestone tiara and a dress Miss Universe herself would’ve killed for. I stood in the back of a red convertible cruising down Main Street, waving to onlookers at the Fourth of July Parade. You would never think that now, if you saw me today, but it’s true.

I guess the very first thing I noticed was a little reddish spot on my thigh, like a little sunburn patch or something. It was the summer I turned seventeen, and I was a lifeguard at the local pool. No big deal, right? It’ll go away. Just leave it alone, I thought. But it didn’t go away. That’s the thing. That’s the worst thing. It never really went away.

So, anyway. I waited and waited for it to go away and it didn’t, so finally I showed my mom. She ran her fingers over it and poked at it, but it didn’t hurt, and she squinched up her face at me like she does when she’s worried about something but doesn’t want to say what it is.

“What?” I said.

“Don’t pick at it,” she said.

“I haven’t been picking it, Mom!”

“Okay.” She nodded. “That’s good.”

She put some ointment on it and took me to the doctor the next day.

Dr. Jamieson was the doctor who had delivered me. He knew my complete medical history from minute one, even before that, actually, if you want to get technical. He knew about every rash, flu and infection I’d ever had. He didn’t know anything about this red spot though. He thought it was eczema so he gave me a prescription for some cream. So off I went, bought the cream, put it on, blah blah blah. It didn’t work. In fact, I got another little scaly patch on the side of my foot and then one on my face. On my face! Right between my eyebrows. Like, the worst possible spot, obviously. So…yeah. I went back to see Dr. Jamieson.

“Are they itchy?” he asked.

“Kind of.” I scratched the one on my foot.

“Ringworm,” he said.

“Gross!”

“It’s not actually a worm,” he said. “It’s a fungus that lives on the skin.”

“Still gross.”

He whipped out his prescription pad and scribbled something illegible on it. “Should go away in two to three weeks,” he said. He tore the sheet off and held it out to me, his mouth a thin, tight line.

I grabbed it and left the room, disgusted that I had a fungus. Now, I wish I had a fungus. I’d welcome a fungus.

I put the antifungal cream on all the spots every night for three weeks. The spots didn’t go away. Then, when I woke up in the morning, my face would be puffy and red and my eyes all swollen up. The swelling would go down in a few hours so at least I looked okay by the time I got to the pool. It would happen the next morning, and then not for a day or two. Then it would happen again. I went back to see Dr. Jamieson.

“Could it be from something I’m eating?” I asked.

“Possibly,” he said. “Let’s try you on an elimination diet.”

“Is that when you have to stop eating everything that tastes good?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” he said.

So I cut out eggs, dairy, soy, wheat, gluten, oats, corn, citrus fruits, nightshade vegetables (tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes), nuts, seeds, caffeine, all processed foods and, hardest of all, sugar and chocolate. Basically, I ate celery, cucumbers, fish, turkey and rice for four weeks. It sucked. Nothing changed. I still got the morning puffies. I still had the spots. And they looked angry. I went back to Dr. Jamieson. He didn’t know anything. He sent me to see a dermatologist.

My friend Liz went to a dermatologist in tenth grade for her acne and he put her on birth control. It was a win-win for Liz because it got rid of her acne, made her periods way better AND she didn’t have to explain to her parents why she was on birth control. She actually started having sex since she was already on birth control anyway. I bet if my mom and dad had known that about Liz, they wouldn’t have sent me to see a dermatologist.

I had a major crush on my dermatologist, Dr. Baker. He was super young and pretty hot. He looked too young to even be a doctor.

Dr. Baker suggested I do some special medicinal facial mask, like, every night. So I did that and the spot on my forehead kind of calmed down for a while. It faded to a pale rose color. But the spots on my thigh and foot didn’t really change, so I just tried to forget about them. I tried to think of them as birthmarks, and I hoped that by the end of summer my tan would be dark enough that they would fade and eventually disappear. The sun usually makes my skin look better. When I wasn’t at work, I made sure to always keep the spots on my foot and thigh covered up, which wasn’t too hard, except no more booty-shorts or super short skirts, which was a drag. I covered the spot on my forehead with makeup and then wore my bangs over it and sometimes headbands and hats. If you look at any pictures of me from that time, I’ll always have something pulled down over my forehead, so no one really knew. No one saw it. My parents knew. And my brother, Dean, who started calling me Scabby Abby. You wouldn’t think that anyone could be such a colossal douche to their own sibling. Well, you’ve never met Dean.

So that went on for a while, but then the spot on my head started to get brighter and redder, so I stopped using the mask that Dr. Baker had prescribed because I was afraid that it was making it worse. I tried different masks and pastes and all sorts of crap. I tried oatmeal masks, avocado masks, egg whites and mud. I used toner, concealer, cover-up and finishing powder. I bought something called ScarFade from the drugstore. I “borrowed” Dad’s credit card and bought a super-expensive skin-lightener off the Internet that claimed to completely obliterate redness. Nothing worked. Plus, I was starting to look like the Marshmallow Man in the mornings, and sometimes my eyes would be so swollen that I could barely see. Also, I was grounded for a week for using Dad’s credit card without permission and had to pay him back in monthly installments. I went back to see Dr. Jamieson. He thought maybe I was having an allergic reaction to something in my environment and sent me for an allergy test.

Allergy tests are really fun! Said no one ever. Except maybe some super-freak who wished he were a pincushion instead of a human. They poke up the insides of your arms with about a thousand different needles and then leave them in you for an hour while your skin swells up in some places but not in others. I found out I’m allergic to hay and rabbits. This meant pretty much buck-all to me since we don’t live on a farm, I’m never around hay and I’ve always thought that rabbits were kind of stupid. I avoided anything remotely hay-ish or rabbity from that day forward, not that it was hard. The spots didn’t go away.

That summer, my feet were cold all the time. They got so cold, they were numb. Every night, I wore my dad’s big wool socks that he got in Alaska to bed. My feet went glacial at night. One night, I was dancing at a house party. I was in my bare feet on the dance floor because my high heels were slowing me down and I’d taken them off. Someone had dropped a beer bottle and it smashed all over the floor but everybody just kept dancing. Everybody else had shoes on. Not me. After about three or four more songs, my friend Marla pointed at my feet and said, “Dude, you’re bleeding.”

My feet were a mess, spiked with shards of glass and torn and bleeding all over the place. But the freakiest thing was, I didn’t feel anything.

I went to the bathroom to wash my feet and get the glass out of them. The door to the bathroom was locked. I banged on the door. Nothing. I banged again, harder. I heard a low moan from behind the door. I turned around; a line had formed. Dustin Lorimer was behind me. He pointed to my feet. “You alright?”

I’ve had a massive crush on Dustin Lorimer since I was, like, five. His mom used to look after me and Dean when we were little. He lives the next street over.

I told Dustin that I was fine but I needed to get into the bathroom right away. He looked at my bloody feet again then stepped in front of me, threw his body against the bathroom door (HOT!) and the door popped open. Aaron Forsythe was in the empty bathtub looking like a sorry mess. He was drunk as fuck. It looked like he’d been crying and snot was running down his face.

I used to have a crush on Aaron Forsythe, but after seeing him like that, I didn’t anymore. Obviously.

Aaron held his arm out with his fingers in the shape of a gun and pointed it at us.

“Get out of the tub, man. Abby needs to wash her feet,” Dustin said.

“Why does she need to wash her feet?” Aaron slurred.

“I stepped in some glass,” I said.

“Oh, shiiit,” Aaron said, looking at my feet. He looked like he might projectile vomit on us. Dustin helped him stand up and climb out of the tub.

“What were you doing in the tub, Aaron?” Dustin said. “Or do I want to know?”

“Just thinking about stuff, you know. Sometimes you gotta think about stuff,” Aaron said. “The bathtub is a really good place to think. Empty or full.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dustin said.

Aaron belched and staggered out of the bathroom clutching his studded belt. Dustin turned to me. I sat down on the edge of the tub and put my feet in. The glass in my feet scraped across the porcelain, the sound making us both wince.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Dustin said. “That looks pretty nasty.”

“I think it’ll be okay,” I said, and turned on the tap. I wasn’t sure if I should use hot or cold, but it turned out not to matter because wherever I turned the dial, it all felt like the same temperature.

“I’ll get you a towel,” Dustin said. He opened the tall cupboard across from the sink. I picked shards of glass out of my heel and toe. I wondered how the hell I wasn’t feeling it, but I figured I’d had enough to drink that I didn’t. I just didn’t. That can happen with rye-gingers. Vodka-sodas too. Anything, really, if you drink enough of it. You just don’t feel stuff. Not until the next day. But the next day came, and the day after that, and I had less and less feeling in my feet and I was getting another patchy weird spot behind my knee.

But that night at the party, I danced until dawn, I talked to boys, I flirted like mad—I looked smoking hot and I knew it. My feet bled, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. I wrapped them in maxi-pads and went home with my best friends, Marla and Liz. We cabbed back to Marla’s house, and the three of us slept on her bed like a pile of puppies, our hair entwined, our arms and legs draped over each other. And I thought that it would always be that way. I thought my life would stay like that.

Summer started winding to a close, as it eventually does, and cheerleading tryouts had started at the end of August. This was twelfth grade, and I was pretty sure I would make the team again since I’d been on it the year before, but tryouts were still nerve-wracking. I had made the first cut, but there was still another round to get through, and then my interview.

One day, I got home from work and flopped down on the couch beside Dean. He was playing some stupid war video game. I looked at my hands. I had bitten all of my nails down to the quick, which I hate doing because they look so gross. I tugged off my socks then looked at Dean. He wasn’t paying attention to me. He was shooting everything that moved. I bent my leg up and started to bite my big toenail. It’s a shameful habit that I’ve had for as long as I can remember.

“Ugh, sick, Abby! How can you do that?” Dean kicked at my foot so I had to stop.

“I can’t help it,” I said. “I chewed off all of my fingernails. I have nothing else to bite.”

“What are you? A vampire? You need to bite things all the time?”

“I’m anxious, okay?” I gingerly bit off the nail of my pinky toe and spat it at Dean. He shielded himself as if I’d thrown a knife at him.

“What the hell do you have to be anxious about? What? Was some little kid mean to you at the pool?”

“No.”

“Three guys asked you out and you don’t know which one to pick?”

“No.”

“You’re pregnant!” He pointed at me. “You got knocked up!” He laughed with glee. “I’m gonna be an uncle! Wait till I tell Mom and Dad! Or, should I say Grandma and Grandpa?”

“I’m not pregnant, you moron.”

He shrugged. “What, then?”

“Cheerleading squad.”

“Oh, fuck the cheerleading squad.”

“You would,” I said.

He thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I would. Most of them. No, wait. All of them. Not you, though. That would be too weird. Even for me.” He hit my foot away from my mouth again. “Stop that! You’re going to make me puke! I’ll puke on you! Is that what you want, Abby? Because I’ll do it. Blaaaah! Blaah!” He pretended to barf all over me and I shoved him away. He shoved me back.

“Stop it.”

“You stop it.”

“You stop it first.”

“I can only stop it if you stop it.”

“Okay. Fine. I stopped, okay? I’m stopped. Happy?” I put my socks back on.

“Yep.”

He went back to playing his video game. I bit the skin around my cuticles and thought about all of the cheerleading stunts and combos I still couldn’t do. And the ones that I could do, but couldn’t land every single time. Standing back handspring, step out, round-off, front handspring, step out, switch leap, front flip, front flip, full twisting layout. I was going over the combo in my head that I wanted to do for the final tryout. I kept switching it around and around, adding and subtracting different stunts. Plus, I had to make up a cheer for this round of tryouts because they wanted us to be able to contribute to the cheer repertoire as well. I closed my eyes and started to mumble cheers I was inventing. After a few minutes, Dean turned to me and said, “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

Like most ill-informed citizens, you might think that cheerleaders are all style and no substance. The lights are on but nobody’s shopping. But you couldn’t be more wrong. They say that the sign of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. Well, cheerleaders have to hold about seventy-eight opposing ideas in their minds at the same time and retain the ability to do backflips. You need to know to the exact millisecond when to twist, when to spin, when to stay still, when to arch, when to tuck, when to tumble, when to toss, when to jump, when to leap, when to fall and when to fly. And do all of it while maintaining perfect balance, often while holding other people, sounding off so loud that a whole stadium can hear you, smiling, always anticipating the next move while paying attention to the counts and keeping time with everyone else. Also, you have to be quick, smooth and precise while you do all of this with enthusiasm.

Stupid people can’t be cheerleaders. They just can’t. It’s too complex. If you’re stupid, you’ll never make a great cheerleader. You should just play rugby instead.

A little while later, Mom came through the front door, carrying a bag of groceries.

“MOM! Abby’s pregnant!” Dean yelled.

The bag of groceries dropped from my mom’s arms and the eggs cracked their yellow mess all over the front hall. She stared at me.

“I’m not, Mom. I swear.” I punched Dean in the shoulder, hard. “I’m not!”

“Are you sure?” Mom said, her voice shaky.

“Yeah.” Dean turned to me. “How can you be sure, Abby?”

“You are such an ass,” I said, scowling at him.

He grinned. “But seriously. How do you know for sure that you’re not, Abby?”

“Because,” I said.

“Because, why?”

“Because I’m a virgin, okay!” I threw my hands in the air. “There! I’m a virgin! Are you happy now?”

“Ha! I knew it!” Dean said, smug. He had been trying to get that out of me since the summer before. And I was super pissed at him in that moment for tricking me into having to admit it.

“But wait, Abby! What about immaculate conception? You could still be pregnant! Mom, you’d better get her a pregnancy test!”

“You’re an idiot. I hate you!” I pounded his shoulder with my fist, but he only laughed at me and kept playing his video game. He was a pretty big guy and I couldn’t really hurt him. Which was incredibly annoying. Especially when he pinned me down and farted on my head. There was nothing I could do then but wait it out.

“Dean. Clean up this mess,” Mom said, and walked out of the room, her heels clacking over the tile.

“Ha!” I said, pointing at him. Then I went up to my room to practice my cheerleading moves in front of the mirror.

I had been working out all summer, trying to build my strength and endurance so I could make the cheer team, but I knew the competition was really tight. Plus, I’d been feeling a bit weak (which made sense, given what I know now), and I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to land some of the stunts. Fifty-four girls had made the first cut, twenty-five would make the next cut, and fifteen or fewer would be on the team after those twenty-five had their interviews. Most of the cheerleaders on the squad last year were gymnasts or dancers, so they already had a lot of practice and training in those kinds of skills. I had never done either of those, but somehow made it onto the team in my junior year. I went through my closet and picked out what I was going to wear for the next tryout. A pleated yellow skirt (yellow is the most cheerful color!) and a red tank top (wearing red means you have confidence!). But red and yellow together? Ketchup and mustard. McDonald’s. Ack! I hated all my clothes. I wanted to give them all away and start fresh with a whole new wardrobe. I called Marla. She picked up on the first ring.

“What are you wearing for the cheer tryout?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why? What are you wearing?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m calling you!”

“Are you alright?”

“No! I’m freaking out! I just tried on my cheer shoes from last year and they don’t fit anymore! Ahhhhh!”

“Abby. Calm down. I’ll come get you and we can go to the mall and buy you a new pair.”

“Come over right now?”

“I’m on my way.”

“You’re the best.”

“I know,” she said.

I ran downstairs to ask Dad for the money for a new pair of cheer shoes. He was at the kitchen counter, pummeling a lump of dough. He sighed when I asked him, wiped his hands on his jeans and fished two twenties out of his wallet and handed them to me. I kept holding out my hand.

“What?” he said.

“That’s only forty dollars. Cheer shoes are, like, eighty dollars.”

“Well, you get an allowance, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Sorry, Ab. That’s all I have for you.” He washed his hands at the sink. “You’re going to have to cover the rest yourself.”

“Fine.” I stomped back upstairs and got my secret stash of cash out from under my mattress. It was only for emergencies or things I really, really needed. Cheer shoes were one of those things.

Marla honked the horn twice and I raced outside to meet her. I climbed into her little red Mini Cooper.

“Hi,” I said.

“Seriously?” She reversed out of my driveway.

“What?”

“You’re worried you’re not going to make the team?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re going to make it, Abby. You’re thin, you’re gorgeous and you’ve got legs up to your freakin’ eyeballs. You’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s me who should be worried. I’m a fat cow.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’ve gained eighteen pounds since last year,” she said.

“Maybe it’s muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat.”

“Abby.” She pinched some flesh on her stomach. “This is not muscle.”

“Well, you’re not fat.”

“I’m a blimp.”

“You’re not going to go all anorexic again on me, are you?”

“If I have to.”

“Marla, cheerleading is not about being skinny, okay? It’s about having muscle and strength. If you’re too skinny, you’ll get weak and pass out. You know that.”

She shrugged, sulking.

“Look, maybe you’ll be a base.”

“Yeah, if I even make the squad.”

“Just remember, fifty percent of cheer is attitude…Kind of like life,” I said, sticking my tongue in the corner of my cheek.

Marla rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m definitely screwed then.”

“Okay, shut up already. Help me decide what to wear.”

“Alright, but first you have to tell me something. And I want the truth.”

“What?”

“Why do you want to be a cheerleader so badly? You don’t even like sports.”

“I like cheer.”

“Come on, Abby. You’re taking this way too seriously. Why is this so important to you all of a sudden? Last year you didn’t even care if you made the team or not. Liz and I made you try out.”

I sighed. “Okay. If by some miracle I make the team this year and am really…spirited…I could be eligible for a full scholarship to USC.”

Marla looked over at me. Gave me a slow blink.

“University of Southern California.”

“I know what it stands for, Abby.” She stared up at the stoplight in front of us, her jaw tight. When it turned to green, she pressed the gas too hard, making us lurch forward.

“It’s one of the best acting schools in the country,” I said, adjusting my seatbelt. “Probably the best. I’d never be able to afford the tuition though.”

“What about the University of Texas?”

“I don’t want to stay in Texas,” I said.

“So you’re just going to leave everyone behind? Your family? Your friends?”

“I’ve always wanted to be an actress, Marla. You know that.”

“You’ve always been a drama queen, that’s for sure.” She pulled into a parking spot.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. Let’s go get your shoes.”

The morning of the tryout, I was so nervous I couldn’t eat breakfast. I ended up wearing our team colors: my yellow skirt and a black tank top. I pulled my hair into a high ponytail and put a nice black bow in it. I looked at myself in the mirror. “You can do this,” I said. Then I bounced around with my pom-poms for a little bit, psyching myself up. “S-P-I-R-I-T; who’s got it? Me! Me! ME!”

There were three judges: Coach Clayton; the assistant coach, Miss Gable; and Rihanna Pilansky, head cheerleader. They all sat behind a long table and stared at me without smiling. I was so nervous my palms were wet. I rubbed them off on the soles of my shoes so they wouldn’t be too slippery for when I did my stunts and tumbling.

“Hello, Abby,” Coach Clayton said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes I am,” I said, smiling.

They turned the music on and I did the routine I had practiced a hundred thousand times. Keep smiling. Keep smiling no matter what. Don’t you dare stop smiling. I screwed up a little bit on landing my round-off but I just smiled bigger, hoping they’d overlook it. It was all kind of a blur. When I was finished, I didn’t even know if I had done a good job or not. I didn’t fall on my ass; that was the important thing. The gym looked kind of wavy when I was done and I felt like I might pass out. I looked at the judges. They were all writing things down on their score sheets.

“Thank you, Abby,” Coach Clayton said.

“Thank you for the opportunity,” I said.

She nodded at me and smiled.

I gave them a wave and walked out of the gym, holding my head high and my shoulders back, my heart thudding in my ears.

Here’s the thing about armadillos: they are the only creature on Earth other than humans that can get leprosy. If you’ve ever been to Texas, you know that we have a ditch-load of the giant pill-bugs running around, most of them, from what I’ve seen, end up as roadkill. Well, it turns out that around 20 percent of those armadillos are carrying the leprosy bacteria: Mycobacterium leprae. Who knows how they got it. I’m not even sure I want to know. Scientists think that new cases of leprosy in the United States could be from contact with infected armadillos. Like I said, f’d-up.

I don’t really remember ever touching an armadillo, like, petting one or whatever. But maybe I did and just forgot. It’s possible. I do remember when I was eleven and Dean was twelve, my parents put us in this Young Life church group—even though they aren’t religious and never go to church—because they thought we could use some structure in our lives. Basically, we were fighting so much, they didn’t know what to do with us. And, it was free. So we had to hang out with these other kids and the leaders, like, once a week for a year or something, and it sucked balls and we both hated it. Some of the guys were kind of cute, but they were too busy studying the Bible to notice me. Lame.

Anyway, I vaguely remember this one barbecue cookout thing they had, and I had a plate heaped with steak and hominy and coleslaw and potato salad and corn bread and all kinds of good stuff. I remember trying some meat that was kind of strong tasting, and squishy, like a sponge. I asked the leader what it was and he said armadillo meat. So, it’s possible that I contracted leprosy that day. At a church barbecue. Which pretty much means that if there is a God, He wanted me to get leprosy. He practically gave it to me Himself. Thanks, God. What a great gift. You shouldn’t have, really.

Why didn’t the rest of the people at the barbecue get leprosy then, you’re probably asking (I know you’re asking that because that’s what I asked). Well, because all of the other people there who ate that armadillo were in the 95 percent of the population naturally immune to the bacteria that causes leprosy. Nothing happens to them. They don’t get nerve damage, they don’t get sores, they don’t get fevers, weakness, numb feet and all the other crap, nothing.

And me, lucky, lucky me, I’m in the 5 percent of the population that is not immune to the bacteria.

I know what you’re thinking; I should sue the youth group. I should sue the church. I should sue GOD HIMSELF!!!! I should. And I would if I could. But how could I prove it? There’s no way to prove it. It was six years ago. Also, suing the church won’t make my face and hands and feet look the way they used to. They won’t bring back what were supposed to be some of the “best years of my life.” It wouldn’t undo any of it. They always say that life isn’t fair, well, I’m living proof of that. There is no fair in life, it just is.

I ended up making the cheerleading squad, and, needless to say, was thrilled. The other thing about being a cheerleader is that guys pay attention to cheerleaders. Suddenly, it’s like you go from pretty-hot to super-hot. If you’re actually ugly, or a butter-face, and you are on a cheerleading squad, guys can’t tell that you’re ugly. Based solely on the fact that you’re a cheerleader, it’s a given that you’re also hot. It’s like a shield. A cloaking device. That’s what cheerleading can do for a person. But you have to earn it. You have to be light and limber and eat healthy pretty much all the time so you don’t gain too much weight or else you’ll be too heavy to toss around or stand on people’s shoulders. You have to practice all the time, like, every day, and stretch and stretch and stretch so you’re flexible enough to do the splits or put your leg behind your head or arch backward while balancing in someone’s hands. But you also have to be strong enough, so you have to do push-ups and sit-ups and calisthenics too. Then you’ll wake yourself up at night chanting 5, 6, 7, 8! in your sleep.

Cheerleading’s a buck-load of work. But if I got a full scholarship, it would all be worth it.

I made the final cut of the cheerleading squad just before school started. In the second week of school, Jude Mailer asked me out. I said yes. Obviously.

Jude Mailer was one of the hottest guys in school. Ask anyone. Like me, he was in twelfth grade. He played forward on the boys’ basketball team. He was tall, but not gangly awkward tall, just nice, let me reach that for you, tall. He did sometimes bump his head in doorways, but I thought that was kind of cute.

The day he did it was a Monday, so I figure he must’ve been thinking about it all weekend. I sat with Marla and Liz in the cafeteria. I was picking at Liz’s fries even though I wasn’t supposed to eat junk like that because I had to keep my weight down if I wanted to be a flyer on the squad, which I did. The flyer is the person who gets vaulted to the top of a pyramid to perform a stunt. They are the lightest, most agile, most balanced people on the team. Flyers didn’t eat French fries. But all three of us had made the squad that year, so we felt justified.

“Who do you think will be a flyer this year?” Marla asked.

“Carrie Nelson, probably,” Liz said. “She’s so…”

“Compact?” I said.

“Bitchy. I was going to say bitchy,” Liz said.

“I wouldn’t call her a bitch per se,” Marla said. “She’s just a flighty little tart.”

“You hardly even know her,” I said.

“I know,” said Liz. “But doesn’t she just come across as…”

“Bitchy?” Marla said.

“Yeah!” said Liz.

“Have you ever really talked to her though?” I asked.

“Not really,” Liz said. “But I can just tell these things. I have bitch-dar. It’s like gaydar but for bitches.”

“Maybe you were picking up your own signal,” I said.

Marla started cracking up and Liz got fake-mad and threw a fry at me. I caught it and ate it. Then Jude came up to our table. Everyone went quiet for a minute. Then Liz giggled.

“Hey,” he said, looking at me, then, briefly, at Marla and Liz.

“Hey,” I said.

Marla gave him a little wave and Liz moved over, gesturing that he should sit down. He sat beside her, directly across from me. “How’s it going, Abby?”

“Good…Great,” I said.

Marla and Liz, after staring at him for a bit and making everything awkward, finally got the hint and made up an excuse to leave the table. Marla gave me the double thumbs-up as they walked away and Liz fanned herself with both hands.

“Would you want to go out with me this weekend?” he said.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. You’re a cheerleader. You’re hot. He’s a basketball player. He’s hot. You belong together. It’s only natural. “Sure,” I said. Maybe that wasn’t enthusiastic enough. He thinks you’re not into him. He thinks you hate him! “Yeah, definitely.”

“Cool,” he said, grinning. “Let me get your number.” He took out his phone and punched my number into it. As far as I know, it’s still in there.

Jude and I had a lot in common. He liked going to the movies; I liked going to the movies. He liked black licorice; I liked black licorice. That’s enough to base a relationship on, right? He was pretty quiet, actually. We didn’t talk much. But sometimes, just being quiet with someone is as nice as talking, or sometimes better. He never called me. Not once. He would text me back after I texted him, usually. But he never called. At first I was pissed off about that, but eventually, I didn’t care anymore. He was a hot basketball player, he had his own car and he was my boyfriend. Because I was on the cheerleading squad, I was at all of his home games, and all of his away games too. I probably would have gone to them even if I hadn’t been cheering them though, because that’s what good girlfriends do. I was a good girlfriend, I think. I never told him what to do or what to wear or that he shouldn’t hang out with his friends, which I know a lot of other girls do. I bought him little presents, like sweatbands and cinnamon hearts. Do you know how hard it is to find cinnamon hearts when it’s not February? Nine out of ten on the difficulty meter, with ten being impossible. I even stayed after school sometimes to watch Jude’s basketball practices while I did my homework. Even though I don’t really like basketball, I liked watching Jude play.

The only thing I can say to describe him on the court was that it was like watching poetry in motion. He was a graceful gazelle. He made basketball look like a dance. I could tell he was more agile than I was, even before the leprosy bug was doing nasty and horrible things inside my body.

Jude liked to get a hamburger and a milkshake from Mitzy’s Diner after his practices. I’d usually go with him and get fries with gravy.

“Fries with gravy and ketchup is disgusting,” Jude said, staring at my plate.

“But fries with ketchup are good,” I said.

“Agreed.”

“And fries with gravy are good.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So why can’t fries with ketchup and gravy be good?”

“One or the other, Abby. Not both.”

I looked down at my plate. The brown and red swirled together over the mess of fries. It did look kind of gross. I shrugged, ate a fry. “If you say so,” I said.

Jude sighed.

“Are you this particular about all your food or just French fries?”

“I care about food,” he said. “I respect food.”

“Uh-huh.”

“This.” He gestured to my plate. “This is not respect.”

I ate another fry, grinning at him. “But it sure is tasty.”

He gazed over my shoulder toward the kitchen. “I think I might like to be a chef,” he said.

“Ooh la la.”

“It wouldn’t have to be a fancy place, like, fine dining or anything. Just simple, good food done right.”

“Maybe you could have your own food truck,” I said.

“No. I would be way too cramped in one of those. Plus, I’m not even done growing. I’m probably going to get even taller than this.”

I nodded, chewing another fry.

“I was thinking more like my own restaurant.”

“Oh yeah? That would be cool. What would it be called?”

“Jude’s,” he said, like it should have been obvious. Then he smiled dreamily like he could see it all materializing just as he imagined. The server came then and cleared our plates. She gave me a wink. I watched Jude stare after her as she walked away. I coughed into my hand.

“What about basketball?” I said.

“What about it?”

“You’re so good.”

He wiped his mouth on his napkin and scrunched it into a ball. “Not that good.” He launched it into my nearly empty water glass. It landed at the bottom, soaking up the ice water.

“You’re—”

“Not good enough to play pro ball. It’s a high school team, Abby. It’s not a career.” He took a big drink from his milkshake and set down his cup. I guess someone somewhere had told him he wasn’t good enough. And maybe they were right. I didn’t know. “What about you?” he said.

“What about me?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I…I want to be an actress,” I said.

He screwed up his face a little, assessing me.

I picked at my nail polish. “I want to be famous,” I mumbled into the table.

“What?”

“I WANT TO BE FAMOUS!”

Some old people turned around to look at us. A little kid in a nearby booth laughed and screeched. Our server looked up from her cash register.

“Why?” Jude said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just something I’ve always wanted. I’ve always known. I want to get out of Texas and I want to be famous.”

“You couldn’t be famous in Texas?”

I shook my head. “I don’t belong here,” I said.

“What? You’re too good for Texas?”

“No, no. It’s not that. It’s just a feeling. Like, I don’t know how to describe it…”

“Relax. I’m just kidding.”

“Oh.”

Jude studied me. I could feel his eyes running up and down my body. Over my breasts, my collarbones, my cheeks, my hair. “Yep, I could see that working out for you.”

I exhaled. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.

“You’re a total babe,” he said and took out a pack of gum, offering me a piece before popping one in his mouth.

“Thanks,” I laughed, and wondered if I was blushing.

“Hollywood?” he said.

“Yeah. Well, hopefully.”

“How are you going to get there?”

“Cheerleading.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I’m playing the long game.”

By this time, I had lost almost all of the feeling in both of my feet, which made climbing to the top of a pyramid, or balancing on people’s hands, extremely difficult. My hands and wrists were starting to bother me. They’d get, like, a buzzing feeling, which was different from pain but definitely didn’t feel right. I thought I’d been texting too much and maybe had carpal tunnel syndrome or something. I knew that could happen, that it was pretty common, so I didn’t worry too much about it. My feet I attributed to poor circulation, inherited from my mother’s side. I started to get fevers and night sweats. I thought I had a weird flu that wouldn’t go away. Sometimes I got headaches, but everyone gets headaches. Don’t they? When I knew I had a fever, I’d just take a couple of Tylenol and have a cold bath and get into bed with a cold washcloth on my head. It was usually gone by the morning. I also got tired a lot. Usually when I got home from school or cheer practice, I felt weak. I thought I was just hungry, so I’d have a huge snack, then go chill out for a while on the couch or in my room. One time, I fell asleep after school and slept right through dinner and through the whole night.

The next morning when I walked into the kitchen, my mom handed me a cup of coffee. “I couldn’t wake you up last night,” she said. “I thought you were dead in there.”

“Her breath sure smells like she died,” Dean said.

“Shut up, Dean,” I said.

“Monkey-butt is how I would describe it. With a little side of skunk.”

“Are you feeling alright?” Mom felt my forehead.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Abby. It’s called halitosis, okay?” Dean said. “There are things you can do to manage your problem. It doesn’t have to ruin your life.”

“Would you please shut up?”

“Floss. Mouthwash. Toothpaste. Have you heard of toothpaste?”

I turned my back on Dean and looked out the window. Mrs. Greely was out watering her garden. She was about ninety years old but still did all her own yard work. She called me Tabby, but I let her. It seemed right for her to call me that. Maybe you’re a different person to everyone you know.

“I want us to go back to the doctor this week,” Mom said. “I’ll make you an appointment today.”

“Dr. Jamieson doesn’t know anything,” I said. “Besides, I have cheer practice every afternoon this week, a quiz on Thursday and a test on Friday. I don’t have time to go to the doctor.”

“I can take you to a different doctor if you want, but you’re going to have to miss practice one day this week so we can go.”

“I was just tired, Mom. I’m fine. Teenagers need a lot of sleep! I’m normal, okay? Marla sleeps, like, fourteen hours a day.”

“She’s on her back fourteen hours a day, I’d believe that,” Dean said. He made the face where you put your tongue in your cheek and move your fist so it looks like you’re giving a blow job. I wanted to hit him in the mouth, but I didn’t.

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m not sick.”

She pressed her lips together. “Do it as a personal favor to me, then,” she said.

“Can I do it as a personal favor to you next week? When I don’t have, like, fifty million things to study for?”

She sighed. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll make your appointment today.”

“You might ask if they can do something for your breath, too, while you’re there,” Dean said, fanning his hand in front of his face.

I leaned toward him and blew my morning breath all over him.

That day I ate lunch with Marla and Liz. Jude and his friend Brett joined us at our table. Jude slid his tray in beside mine and gave me a little kiss on the cheek.

“How’s it going?” he said.

“Urrgh,” I said, gesturing to my pile of textbooks.

“That good, hey?”

It was the lead-up to Christmas break and the teachers had it out for us. We had hundreds of assignments and they gave pop quizzes almost every day. I needed to keep my grades high so I could get into USC and stay on the cheerleading squad through the rest of the year. Marla, Liz and I burned off steam at lunch like we usually did, by making fun of other people.

Clint Rasmussen walked by us, mouth breathing, checking his phone. “What must it be like to go through life with a head shaped like a potato?” Marla said, her eyes following Clint.

“You know where he’s from, don’t you?” I said.

“Not a clue.”

“Idaho.”

“No.”

“That would explain a few things,” Liz said.

“He’s actually really lucky,” I said. “When he wants hash browns, all he needs to do is shave his face.”

Liz made a disgusted face, sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth.

Dale Romanchuk was coming our way. He was a mangled-looking kid who could never quite keep it together. Greasy hair. Glasses. A face full of acne. His clothes were always wrinkled and mis-buttoned. Liz pushed her backpack out a little. Dale tripped over it, spilling his drink, nearly falling, but catching himself at the last minute.

We laughed, covering our mouths.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Jude said.

“Yeah, Liz,” I said. “It’s not his fault his parents are cousins.”

She and Marla laughed.

“Boom. Boom. Boom,” Liz said as Heather O’Leary walked by our table.

“That’s gotta be at least a five point two on the Richter scale,” I said.

Heather glanced over her shoulder at us. Liz made a mean face back at her, and we giggled as she turned away again, smoothing her hair.

“I think she’s actually lost weight since last year,” Marla said.

“No. She just started wearing baggier clothes,” I said. “It’s an optical illusion.”

“Huh,” she said. “Maybe I should try that.”

Uber-geek Brian Tate stood in the pizza lineup, just out of earshot. I gestured toward him with my chin. “Excuse me,” I said, emulating his squeaky voice, “but do you know what the square root of I will never get laid is?” Liz and Marla cracked up. Bailey Lovell and Caleb Markowski walked by our table. He was super short and she was really tall. “Here come Brontosaurus and T-rex,” Marla said.

“Mwaarr!” I dug my elbows into my sides, making little T-rex arms. Liz bobbed her head, stretching her neck up and down, impersonating a brontosaurus. She and I pretended to try to kiss each other and not be able to reach the other’s lips, all the while making dinosaur sounds. We laughed. We laughed so hard we collapsed into each other, unable to breathe.

“She’s actually a really good basketball player,” Jude said.

“At least she’s good at something,” I said. “I’ve seen her biology quizzes. She’s failing everything.”

“We took art together last year,” Liz said. “All she made all year were these circles that looked like nipples. A dot in the middle and a circle surrounding it. Charcoal? Boobs. Pastel? Boobs. Watercolor? Boobs. Clay? Boobs. She’s, like, obsessed with boobs or something. We called it boob-art. Bailey’s boob-art.”

We laughed.

“I like boobs,” Brett said.

“Isn’t that wonderful for you?” Marla said.

He grinned at her.

“We gotta go,” Jude said, standing. He cocked his head at Brett and Brett stood up too. I leaned my cheek toward Jude for a kiss, but none came. “See you later,” he said. Then they were gone.

By the time my doctor’s appointment came, I had another scaly red spot on my chest, right above my left boob. Mom took me to a new doctor named Dr. Lee. She was short with dark hair and dark eyes that looked like they’d seen a lot of sad stuff. I sat on the little bed-thing and showed her the spots and told her everything. She looked closely at each of the spots and touched them all. Then she turned to the sink and washed her hands.

“Are you sexually active, Abby?” Dr. Lee asked.

“Um, how do you define…active?” I said.

She smiled.

Jude and I had fooled around a bit. I wasn’t saving myself for marriage or anything, I just, I don’t know. I wanted to be in love. Is that stupid? It’s stupid. I know. But you only get one first time! Just one! I wanted to be sure. Jude was supersweet and really nice to me and a great kisser. I thought that maybe he could be the one I would lose my virginity with, but I still wasn’t 100 percent sure. I felt like I was still getting to know him.

“I’ve never had sex,” I said, hanging my head.

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of, Abby. It’s perfectly normal.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s just that all of my friends have. So it doesn’t exactly feel normal.”

“There’s absolutely no harm in waiting. In fact, I highly recommend it,” she said.

I nodded.

“You play sports?”

“I’m a cheerleader.”

“Really? That’s great.”

“Thanks.”

“Would you say that you sweat a lot?”

“I would say that I sweat a normal amount,” I said. I sniffed at my armpit. “Why? Do I smell? Do I have body odor?” I was horrified.

“No, no. Nothing like that,” Dr. Lee said. Then she pulled out her phone and started swiping away. I hate when doctors do that. Are they texting? Are they looking something up on WebMD? Nobody knows.

“I’m fairly confident that the spots on your skin are tinea versicolor. I’m going to give you a fungicide that should clear them up. As for the muscle weakness and fatigue, I’d like you to take an iron supplement and make sure that you’re eating properly, with plenty of protein in every meal, and not skipping meals. Also, you should be getting at least eight hours of sleep every night, preferably more, without exception.”

“Sorry, fungus?”

“Yes. Tinea versicolor is a yeast that lives on the skin and causes irregular discolored patches. It’s common for people your age who are physically active and often sweating or in the heat to experience it.”

“Like, ringworm?”

“Yes.”

“Because that’s what Dr. Jamieson thought I had and he already gave me an antifungal cream and it didn’t work.”

“Probably wasn’t a strong enough dosage,” she said. “I’ll give you a pill to take orally in addition to an antifungal cream.” She pulled out her prescription pad and started scribbling. “Nothing to worry about. Although, I’ll warn you, even though your spots will most likely disappear after you’ve been taking the pills for a week or so, they may come back if you’re hot and sweating a lot, like in the summer.” She tore the prescription off and handed it to me. “You’ll be fine,” she said.

She was wrong.

Marla and Liz and I went shopping in      a few weeks later. I rifled through a rack of striped sweaters. “I think I’m going to have sex with Jude,” I announced. Liz squealed, clutching a cardigan to her chest.

“Finally,” Marla said. “It’s been, like, what?”

“Almost three months,” I said.

“Christ, I’m surprised he’s stuck around this long.”

“Marla!” Liz said. “Be nice.”

“What?” Marla said.

Liz shrugged. “We thought maybe you were saving yourself for marriage or something.” The three of us looked at each other for a moment. Then we all cracked up.

“No, no, no, but are you sure, Abby? Are you, like, really sure?” Liz said. “Because you know,” she lowered her voice, “toast can’t ever be bread again.”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s like Marla said. At this point, we’re either going to have sex or break up and…I don’t want to break up.”

“Have you talked about it?” Marla said.

I shook my head. “Jude doesn’t really talk much.”

Liz nodded. “The strong, silent type.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Maybe he’ll speak more through body language,” Marla said, coming at me, grinding up against my leg.

“Stop!” I laughed, pushing her away.

“Okay, okay.” Liz flapped her hands. “When are you going to do it?”

“Where are you going to do it?” Marla said.

“I was thinking the night of our three-month anniversary. We’re going for dinner at Rydell’s. I made reservations.”

“Rydell’s?”

I shrugged. “He likes food. It’s a foodie place.”

“Don’t eat too much,” Liz said. “You don’t want to do it on a full stomach.”

“So then…back to his place?” Marla said.

“I don’t know.”

“Your place?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not his car, Abby. Please, God, not his car. You’re too good for that,” Marla said.

“Probably not his car,” I said.

She made a face.

“But maybe.”

Liz squealed, laughing.

“The back seats fold down.” I shrugged.

Marla shook her head.

“Do you need condoms?” Liz asked. She opened her purse and pulled out a gray strip of little plastic packets. “Here. These are the good kind. Not that cheap saran wrap the school nurse hands out.” She slapped them into my hand.

“Thanks,” I said. I shoved them away in my bag.

“Our little Abby,” Marla said, putting her arm around my shoulder. “Growing up so fast.”

I figured by the time our three months rolled around the pills and cream would have worked on my new blemishes. I didn’t want Jude to see the angry red spots and was careful to hide them from him, from everyone. I hated looking at them, touching them, even knowing they were there, but I kept taking the pills and applying the new fungicide every day, three times a day, believing they would eventually go away.

Jude and I never made it to our three-month anniversary. Jude dumped me two days before. Just out of the blue. No warning. Bam! In a text. After we had been dating for three months. Which is a long time, in high school. In high school, days are like light years. You have all the time in the world, and that world belongs to the young, and you are young; you will never die, and you will always be beautiful.

The worst part was that right after Jude dumped me, IN A TEXT, he started going out with Carrie Nelson. Like two days later. But, whatever. I’m over it. Obviously.

Marla and Liz were there to console me and bring me ice cream and tell me what an ass-hat they always thought Jude was and that I was better off without him, because that’s what friends are for. They made a list of all the guys I could potentially go out with to get back at Jude.

“Okay, Abby,” Marla said, “let’s face it. You’re one of the hottest girls in school. You could get any guy you want.”

“But I don’t want to go out with someone just to get back at Jude. I only want to go out with someone I actually like.”

“Ugh, that’s so mature of you,” Liz said.

“Okay, who do you like, then?” Marla asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on!”

“Dustin Lorimer?” I said.

“Oh, gawd!” Liz said.

“What?”

“He’s so…boy next door.”

“Yeah, he lives one street over from me.”

“Really? Dustin? He’s so vanilla,” Marla said.

“What’s wrong with vanilla?” I said.

“It’s boring!”

“I kind of like vanilla,” I mumbled. “As a flavor.”

They laughed at me. “Who else?” Marla said.

“I know who you could go out with to make Jude really mad,” Liz said.

“Who? Who?” Marla said, getting her pen ready.

“Nate Russell.”

Marla squealed and wrote his name on the list in her big, bubbly cursive.

“No way,” I said.

“Oh, come on. He’s sexy.”

“He’s about as sexy as a sasquatch,” I said. “He smells like one too.”

Nate Russell was a skater boy. He had long hair and a nose-ring, between his nostrils, like a bull. He and his friends had a huge hate-on for all jocks and preps, which, of course, included cheerleaders.

“Even if I did like him, which I don’t, he would never go out with me,” I said. “He hates people like us.”

“He only hates us because he can’t be us,” Marla said.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Maybe I should ask him out,” Liz said. “Do you think?”

“Sure. If you want to set yourself up for a harsh rejection, go for it,” I said.

She pouted a little and then went over to my makeup table and started putting on my boysenberry lipstick. “Maybe I should reinvent myself,” she said. “I could make myself into the kind of girl that Nate would go out with.” She picked up a black eye-pencil and began to draw heavy outlines around her eyes with little wings at the edges. “I could probably learn to skateboard. How hard could it be?”

Marla and I looked over at her. She looked like a blonde raccoon. “Why would you want to do that?” I said.

“Well, I have really good balance already,” she said. “Plus some of those tricks look pretty fun. You know, like, ollie. Kick-flip. I could totally do a kick-flip.”

“No, I mean, why would you want to reinvent yourself for a guy? Don’t you want a guy who likes you the way you are? Who likes what you’ve already invented?”

She shrugged. “I’m only sixteen. I don’t even know what I am yet.”

Marla and I looked at each other.

“Maybe I’m actually a punk rocker hiding inside a cheerleader.” Liz kissed the mirror and made a big pink lip-print in the corner. I’ve never wiped it off.

We made popcorn and watched Bring It On and talked about cheerleading for a while. I told them I was afraid of falling.

“How embarrassing would it be to fall flat on your ass in front of an entire stadium?”

“You have to have faith in your squad, Abby,” Marla said. “Someone will always be there to catch you.”

“Yeah,” Liz said. “We would never let you fall, Abby.”

And, you know, people can say that, and you hope that they’re right, and you want to believe them, but sometimes, there’s just not anyone there to catch you when you fall. I know it’s hella cheesy to say, but it’s another way that cheerleading is like life. And when you hit the ground, does it hurt?

Yes, it most certainly does.

That weekend, Liz, Marla and I went to a house party. It was a big party, the last big one before the holidays. I drank way too much. Jude was there. He was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and a hat. He looked really good. I avoided him for most of the night, although we had a few awkward moments where one of us caught the other one looking at the other then quickly looked away. Once I was good and buzzed, I sidled up to him on the couch. He was talking to Brett but I interrupted them.

“Hi, Jude,” I said, then burped.

“Hey, Abby.”

“I gotta get another beer,” Brett said, standing. “You want one?” He pointed at Jude.

Jude nodded.

“Where’s Carrie?” I said.

“She’s sick,” he said.

“Aw.” I pouted. “I hope it’s not an STI.”

“That’s not funny,” he said.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean for it to be,” I said. “I was serious.”

He shook his head.

The booze had emboldened me. I went for it. “Jude, why did you break up with me?”

He stared straight ahead. The muscles of his jaw clenched.

“Was it because I didn’t have sex with you?”

“No.” He rubbed his thumb against his palm.

“Because I was going to. I wanted to.”

“That had nothing to do with it,” he said.

“Is it because I’m not pretty enough?”

He turned to me, his eyes scanned over my body, my face. He shook his head, adjusted his hat.

“Well, why did you then?”

He sighed. “You’re hot as hell, Abby. But…you’re not a very nice person.”

My eyes stung. I felt acrid bile rising in my throat. “Oh,” I said, like an idiot. My stomach felt hard and hollow as though I’d been hit. I got up off the couch, went upstairs to the bathroom and threw up.

I’m not proud of this, but I ended up having sex that night, in the laundry room, with Chad Bennett. I don’t love Chad Bennett. I don’t know if anybody does. Maybe his mother. Maybe. He’s the biggest player in      and has probably slept with half the town. I won’t say he took advantage of me. I knew what I was doing. I think I wanted to get back at Jude. I don’t know. It was sloppy, it hurt and somehow my new red halter top got bleach stains all over it. At one point, Chad ran his hand across a sore on my inner thigh, then recoiled as if he’d been bitten. I felt so ashamed. But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was, we didn’t use a condom. For a smart girl, I can be a real moron sometimes. That was one of those times. I don’t know why we didn’t. My bag wasn’t in the room. He didn’t have one on him. It was so stupid. Afterwards, while he pulled his jeans on, buttoned his shirt, I blurted out, “Am I a nice person, Chad?”

He looked up at me, ran a hand over his face. “Yeah, baby. You’re real nice. The nicest.” He leaned in, kissed my lips. I closed my eyes. “I have to go,” he whispered. “Sorry.”

When I opened my eyes again, I was alone in the darkness of the laundry room, sitting on top of the dryer, the smell of bleach burning my nostrils.

Chad didn’t ask for my number, and I was glad. I didn’t care if I ever saw him again. Marla and Liz asked how it was as we stumbled back to Marla’s house in the pale light of dawn.

“I don’t think you really need to ask, do you?” I said. “You already know.”

They laughed and groaned because it was true. Both of them had already slept with Chad. I felt dirty and stupid. I wished I could do the night over again. I wished I could have my virginity back.

When I’m old and gray and looking back on my life, my greatest regrets, I’m pretty sure that one will be near the top of the list.

I was kind of a mess over Christmas break, obsessing over what Jude had said. Was it true? Was I a mean bitch? Did everyone know it except me? I didn’t think I was, but maybe I actually was. I thought about all of the times we made fun of people. We were just blowing off steam; we didn’t really mean it. Everyone did that crap. I’d been called bitchy before, sure, but, somehow, it wasn’t the same as what Jude had said. It didn’t bother me as much. I didn’t tell anyone what he had said. Not even Marla. I tried not to think about it and instead constantly checked myself for signs of an STI or symptoms of pregnancy. I’d send Marla and Liz desperate texts saying things like: WHY DID I DO THAT??? I’M SUCH AN IDIOT!!!

To which Marla would reply: At least you got it over with. Won’t be so much pressure next time.

And Liz would text back things meant to make me laugh, like: Mom?

Eventually, I just had to accept the fact that I had lost my virginity to Chad Manwhore Bennett. There was no going back in time. There was no un-toasting the bread.

Not long after that, in early January, I took a really bad fall during a football game that we were cheering at      High, an away game. I was climbing to the top of a pyramid to do a stunt; I was an alternate-flyer because Carrie was away that day. Who knew where she was. Probably with Jude Mailer. Probably being super nice to every living thing. But anyway, I was the flyer that day. Long story short, I had a very poor execution of a front-tuck-somersault from the top of a pyramid of human bodies and ended up falling, twisted and mangled, from about eighteen feet in the air. It was no one’s fault but my own. Nobody dropped me. It was the leprosy bug. Getting in my nerves, my muscles. I thought I could do it; I knew I should have been able to. I was nimble. I was lithe. I was agile as a cat. But that was the old me, before the leprosy got in and fucked up my shit. I know that now. Leprosy made me do it. I wonder how many things you could use that for?

Abby, your room is a pigsty!

Leprosy made me do it.

Abby, you killed your brother!

Leprosy made me do it.

Abby, you stole a truckload of diamonds!

Leprosy made me do it.

Maybe?

I broke my collarbone, my left hand (my dominant hand) and wrist, my right wrist, both ankles and my right foot. It seems weird that I would break so much, but I think that was the bug doing its work. The bones of my fingers and hands, toes and feet were already weakening. See, it literally eats you away, from the inside out. Liz said my head bounced off the ground when I hit it. I suffered a serious head injury and was in a coma for sixteen days.

Being in a coma is probably what being dead is like. It’s like a dress rehearsal for death. I didn’t have any dreams. I didn’t ever know when anyone was in the room with me or talking to me or sticking tubes in my arm or up my nose. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear any voices or see any bright light beckoning me toward it. I was just gone.

While I was in that hospital bed, my body seriously started to deteriorate. It was like my immune system just rolled over and gave up and said, “Okay, leprosy, you can take over now. We’re done here.” I developed more lesions. All over my face and body. And they had papules. My body blistered and boiled. I don’t want to describe it here in too much detail because you’ll sick yourself, but let’s just say I was disgusting.

Mom and the nurses kept putting the fungicide on me, three times a day, every day, but it wasn’t working. Obviously.

The attending doctor at the hospital, Dr. Neal, prescribed a steroid cream that the nurses put on me and this actually strengthened the leprosy bacteria and made it go into hyperactive mode; this is leprosy on steroids. So the spots multiplied again and started turning bumpy and some of the spots on my face turned into giant lumps, the size of walnuts. My lips grew thick and rubbery. At one time, I had wished that I had fuller lips, but not like this. This was grotesque. This was a nightmare incarnate. I guess that’s why they say be careful what you wish for…

When I came out of my coma, it was like waking up inside a terrible horror movie. And the monster was me.

My family sat in the hospital room, watching and waiting.

“Abby? Abby?” my mom said. “I think she’s awake.” She came and stood beside the bed and held my hand. I could see that she was holding my hand, but I couldn’t feel it. “Greg, go get the doctor,” she said. My dad hurried from the room.

“Mommy?” I said. My voice was scratchy and raw. It didn’t even sound like my voice.

“Oh, Abby! I’m here, sweetie. I’m right here. Everything’s going to be alright.”

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“You’re in the hospital, honey. You fell. Do you remember?”

I remembered everything, eventually. It came back slowly, over the next few hours. I felt a cold spike in my stomach when I remembered about Jude and Carrie, what Jude had said, and how I was only the flyer on the day that I fell because Carrie had been away. What if she had been there? Would I still be in the hospital? Broken and mangled? Who could ever know. And I felt an icy splintering in my guts when I remembered what I had done with Chad. I wondered if the whole school already knew. I wondered what he had said about me.

“You look like Pizza-the-Hut,” Dean said, grinning down at me. “Maybe you could actually get an acting career now.”

“Dean. Out. Now,” Mom said.

I looked down at myself. Both my hands and wrists were in casts, as well as my right foot and both ankles. Then I noticed all the new spots on my arms.

“He’s just glad to see you,” Mom said, brushing a tear away.

My face felt all tight and puffy. My lips didn’t feel right when I spoke. It was like that time the dentist had frozen my mouth and I couldn’t talk or drink properly. “Mom,” I said. “Show me a mirror.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Abby,” she whispered.

“Mom—”

“You’ve just come out of a coma. You’re probably in shock.”

“WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?”

“Shh, baby girl. It’s okay. You’re alright.”

“What happened? You have to tell me, Mom. Do I have AIDS? Am I dying?”

My mom looked around the room, frantic. “Your dad’s gone to get the doctor. They’ll be back any minute. He’ll explain everything.”

I started to cry. When you wake up from a coma and you can’t feel your fingers or feet, you have a broken collarbone, a broken hand, two broken wrists, a broken foot, and scabby, bulbous sores all over your body, you cry. It’s just what you do.

Dr. Neal had run a series of blood tests and a urinalysis to see what the hell was wrong with me, but of course everything showed up negative because the way to test for leprosy is from a skin scraping, a biopsy, which they hadn’t done. So, as usual, no one knew buck-all. Dr. Neal thought it was some kind of autoimmune response to the stress of the breakup, and then the bad fall, and that it would go away in time. They released me from the hospital after a few more days and I had to use a wheelchair to get around because of my broken ankles and foot. I slept on the couch downstairs since I couldn’t get up to my room. I couldn’t even get to the bathroom myself, because of my broken hand and wrists, I couldn’t wheel myself in the chair. Talk about embarrassing.

I spent most of my time on the Internet, trying to self-diagnose. Dean set up a speech-recognition program on my laptop for me so I didn’t have to use my hands to type.

For a while I was convinced that Chad Bennett had given me a nasty case of syphilis or a new STI that hadn’t even been named yet. Either that, or I had HIV or full-blown AIDS. That would be just my luck, the very first time I have sex, I would get AIDS. I hated myself. I hated Chad Bennett. I hated everyone in Texas. And everyone in the world, besides.

I was the most hideous creature to ever exist. The Elephant Man had nothing on me. My life was over. And I was glad. I would rather die than look like a circus sideshow for the rest of my life. This wasn’t supposed to happen. My senior prom was coming up in the spring and I was in the running to be prom queen! I cried under my blankets for most of the day, every day. I refused to leave the house or let anyone see my face. Even my family. Marla and Liz came over to bring me my homework and black licorice and magazines, but I told my parents I didn’t want to see anyone, so they never got past the front door.

“Is she contagious?” I heard Marla ask.

“We don’t know,” my mom said quietly.

“What’s wrong with her?” Liz said.

“We don’t know.”

“Okay…” Marla said. I could hear the doubt in her voice. “Well, tell her we love her,” she said. “And…we miss her.”

“I will, honey. Thanks.”

I heard Mom close the door softly behind them. She came into the living room and set the magazines and candy and pile of homework on the coffee table then sat down beside me.

“Are you sure you don’t want to see them, Abby? It might be good for you.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”

Mom sighed. “Okay.” She reached out to touch my hair and I flinched, turned away from her. She put her hands in her lap. “It won’t be like this forever.”

“Yeah, but what if it is?”

“It won’t be.”

“Okay,” I said. Then I covered my head with a blanket and curled up in a ball, letting tears slide over my face and soak into the couch cushions.

The next day, Dean helped me make a paper-bag mask to wear over my head, because I couldn’t cut the eyes and mouth holes properly with my broken hand.

We sat on the couch watching a horror movie. He looked over at me. “You know, I actually prefer this look for you,” he said. “I think brown is your color.”

I pinched him on the arm.

“Ah! Don’t touch me! I don’t want the hiv.”

Mom came into the room. “She doesn’t have HIV, Dean.”

“I don’t?”

“No. I just got off the phone with the lab. You tested negative for all STIs.”

“All of them? Everything? You’re sure?”

“Yes,” she said.

I put my paper-bag head in my hands and cried.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Dean said.

“No!” I yelled. “No one knows what’s wrong with me!”

“Maybe you were bad, and now you’re being punished for your sins,” Dean said.

“Dean. Abby’s not bad. You’re a good girl, Abby. None of this is your fault,” Mom said.

“No. He’s right. I’m bad. I’m a bad person. I deserve this.”

“Don’t say that. You’re a wonderful person.”

“No I’m not, Mom,” I sobbed. The paper bag was getting all damp inside from my tears. “I’m mean. I was mean to ugly people. And fat people. And losers. Dean’s right. I’m being punished!”

Dean nodded. “It’s true, Mom. It’s God’s will.”

“Enough of this nonsense,” Mom said. “We’re going to find out what’s wrong. And you’re going to get better. That is all.”

We all turned to look at the TV; a pretty blonde girl screamed and screamed and screamed as chunks of blood and viscera splattered across the wall behind her.

On top of all this, I was also recovering from a concussion. Which is, by definition, brain damage. Don’t worry, Dean had a field day with this one.

So when you’re recovering from a concussion, your brain does strange things. I couldn’t really read. The words would get all messed up on the page and nothing made sense. And I could only watch TV for an hour or so at a time before my brain started to hurt. For a couple of weeks, I couldn’t string sentences together and was stuttering all the time. I spent most of my time on the couch wrapped in my blankets, getting abused by Dean while he played video games.

“What does that say?” I looked at the red words on the TV screen, blurring and blending together.

He looked over at me. “It says ‘Player One. Start.’”

“Oh.”

“I guess cheerleading really brought out your inner moron,” Dean said.

“Shut it.”

“I mean, we always knew you were a little dumb, we just didn’t know you were this dumb.”

“Do you want to die?”

“In real life or in the game?”

“Life.”

“Eventually, yes,” he said.

“How about today?”

“Today’s not good for me.”

“Then sock a stuff in it.”

He laughed. “I’ll get right on that.”

It took about a month and a half for me to be able to read, speak and walk properly again. But it seemed like decades. My spots didn’t clear up, my joints ached and my face looked like a rotten cauliflower. Mom and Dad had talked with our family doctor, Dr. Jamieson, and together they’d decided that the best thing for me would be to go back to school after spring break, keep doing my normal routine as best as I was able, in order to avoid the major depression I was already inside of. I have absolutely NO IDEA how they thought that going to school looking the way I did could possibly help me in any way. And trust me, I fought with everything I had not to go. I even threatened to run away and join the Church of Scientology, which would be freaky as hell, obviously. But at least I’d have Tom Cruise to comfort me.

“Abby,” Dad said. “This is your senior year. Your grades matter now more than ever. If you miss too much school, you won’t be able to get into a good college. You might not be able to get into any college.”

“I don’t care about that,” I said.

“Of course you do, you’ve always said you wanted to go away to college. You said you wanted to study acting.”

Beside him, Mom nodded vigorously. “That’s what you’ve always said, honey.”

“Well, obviously that’s never going to happen now,” I said, pointing to my face.

“Never say never,” Mom said. “We don’t know how our lives are going to turn out. We have to keep our options open.”

“But—”

“Abby,” Dad said, “you’re four months away from your high school graduation. Do you really want to quit school now, when you’re so close?”

“Yes!”

“Well, too bad,” he said. “I’m not letting you.”

“DAD!”

“You’ll thank me one day,” he said.

“I won’t do it. I can’t go back. I can’t go to school looking like this.”

“Abby,” Dad said. “Sometimes we just have to be brave.”

I started to cry and they both gave me a hug and told me they loved me. I wanted to tell them that I hated them for sending me back to school, but I was crying too hard to speak.

When school started again after the break, I went back. You think it’s hard having acne and braces and a stupid-looking haircut? Try being a high school leper.

Marla and Liz came running up to me while I stood in front of my locker. I was trying to remember the combination to my lock. Marla’s auburn hair glinted in the sunlight that poured through the windows. Somehow, she had gotten prettier, while I, well, I had become Jabba the Hutt. “Oh my God, Abby?” Liz covered her mouth with her hands. Liz had cut her hair super short, dyed it a mahogany color and wore a gold hoop in the side of her nose. She looked a lot different. She looked great.

“Hi,” I said.

They didn’t say anything. They just stared at me, mouths open. Other kids were staring too. I wished I could dissolve into the floor. Maybe I should just get inside my locker and stay there until the last bell, I thought. I could probably fit, if I took out all my binders and textbooks.

“Abby…” Liz said. “What happened to you?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows. I’ve seen a bunch of doctors. I’ve had blood tests and allergy tests and piss tests and no one knows anything.”

“Oh my God,” Liz said.

Finally, I got the right combo and opened my locker. The first thing I saw was the row of locker mirrors I had lined up inside the door so that I would have a full-length mirror in my locker. I shuddered. I was wearing a black ball cap, and a shitload of foundation to hide as much as I could, but Dean was right, my face looked like a three-day-old pizza. I’d had all my casts removed a few weeks before and I could feel Marla and Liz staring at the pale, wrinkled skin of my hands as I gathered my books.

“Are you okay?” Marla said.

I looked at her. I looked down at myself, then back at her. “I don’t know,” I whispered.

“Jesus,” Marla said under her breath. Then the first bell rang.

“We gotta go, Abby,” Liz said. They began backing away.

“Okay. See you at lunch?” I said.

“Yep,” Liz called over her shoulder as she and Marla half-walked, half-ran down the hall. I slammed my locker and went to the girls’ bathroom where I locked myself in a stall and cried for the entire first period.

It took everything I had to go to my next class, English, where I sat beside Leanne Sarsgaard. Leanne was also on the cheerleading squad. She had violet contacts and the longest legs in town.

“Hey, Abby,” she said as I sat down.

“Hi,” I said, pulling my cap lower.

“Did you have a good break?” She smiled at me.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Hey,” she said, “I heard you got AIDS, is that true?”

“No,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “I was just wondering because I know you were with Chad a while ago, and then he and I got together over spring break, and I was just wondering if I should get tested. Do you think I should get tested?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you think Chad gave it to you?”

“Gave what to me?”

“AIDS.”

“I DON’T HAVE AIDS!”

Of course, that was the moment that Mr. Wilkes walked in and the whole room got quiet, so everyone heard me.

“That’s good news, Ms. Furlowe,” Mr. Wilkes said, nodding. The class tittered. “Okay, welcome back, people. Please take out your books. We’re looking at Hamlet’s soliloquy today.”

I looked over the famous speech while my eyes blurred with tears. Not to be, Hamlet. Not to be. There is no more question. There are no more reasons to be.

I didn’t know if I was the kind of person who could kill myself, but some things are worse than dying.

At lunch I got fries and a Coke and went to sit with Marla and Liz at our usual table. I set my tray down beside Marla’s. She looked up at me, then quickly looked away.

“Hey,” I said.

They said hi to me then stared at me while pretending not to. It was weird.

“How was your spring break?” I said.

“Sucked,” Liz said.

“Probably not as bad as mine did,” I said.

“Yeah.” She looked down at her sandwich.

“So what do the doctors think it is?” Marla said.

“I might be dying. I don’t know,” I said.

“Oh my God! Abby!”

“That might be preferable to this actually,” I said.

They stared at me some more as I tried to eat.

“What?” I said.

They both looked down. Then at each other. “It’s just…” Liz said.

“It’s just that we’re not used to seeing you like this,” Marla said.

“You’re usually more…upbeat,” Liz said.

“Ugh.” I put my head down on the table. “I’m a hideous beast. What am I going to do?”

They looked at each other. Then back at me.

“I used to feel really ugly before I got my braces off,” Liz said. “I hardly even smiled for three years.”

I lifted my head. “This is nothing like having braces, so don’t even try to compare it to that,” I said.

“Sorry.”

“You’ll get through this, Abby,” Marla said. “You’ll be back to your old self again in no time.”

“How do you know?”

She bit her lower lip. “And, hey, in the meantime, there’s always makeup,” she said.

“Do you have any idea how much makeup I’m wearing right now?” I pointed to my face. “It doesn’t help!”

“Abby—”

“Okay, it helps a little bit, but not enough.”

“What about plastic surgery?” Liz said.

Marla elbowed her in the ribs.

“Ow! It was just an idea. Or, or, what about, like, those Mission Impossible masks that look like a real face? You could get one of those made, like how your face used to be.”

I put my forehead back down on the table. “I just wish I didn’t have to go to school,” I said. “I wish no one would see me like this.”

One of them patted my arm. I’m not sure who because I had my eyes closed. Then Liz said, “Abby, sorry, but we really have to go.”

“What?” I sat up. “Why?”

“Yearbook committee meeting.”

“Yearbook? Since when do you care about the stupid yearbook?”

“Turns out Liz has a natural flair for photography,” Marla said. “And Nate Russell spends an awful lot of time in the darkroom.”

Liz grinned.

“Plus,” Marla said, “people on the yearbook committee get to select and edit the photos that go in, so it’s pretty much guaranteed that there won’t be any bad, embarrassing pictures of us in there.”

I nodded. “That’s pretty smart, actually,” I said.

“Right?”

“Promise me that you’ll only use old photos of me, from before. Nothing from how I look now.”

“Of course,” Marla said.

“I don’t want people to remember me like this.”

“They won’t,” Liz said. “They’ll only remember your profound hotness.”

“Promise,” I said.

“Totally.”

Marla nodded.

“We should go,” Liz said.

I sighed.

They stood up and gathered their things.

“I’ll text you later,” Marla said.

Liz waved as they walked away.

The cafeteria was noisy and full of students, and I had never felt more alone.

I ate my fries like a slow, dumb cow. I tried not to think about anything. It hurt too much to think about anything. My friends had moved on. They didn’t need me anymore. Maybe they never had. My heart lay shattered inside my chest.

“Scabby Abby eats lunch alone now?” Dean sidled up to me.

“Don’t call me that,” I said.

“What should I call you? Princess Pus-face?”

“Fuck off.”

Dean chuckled and stole one of my fries. Because my brother’s a dumbass, he failed fourth grade, which is why we were in the same grade even though he’s a year older than me.

“Hey,” he said, “I heard Mom and Dad talking about going to Mexico for their anniversary. We should have a party.”

Normally, I would’ve been all over that. I loved having parties. And we’d had some killer parties in the past. But everything was different. No one would want to make out with me; that was guaranteed.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not—”

“Aw, c’mon, Abs. This is just what you need. It’ll cheer you up,” Dean said. “We can get a keg. It’ll be great.”

“When are they going?”

“Two weeks from now,” he said. “As long as you don’t get any worse.”

I nodded.

“Don’t get any worse, Ab.”

“I’ll try.”

“No, try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”

“Whatever, Yoda.”

He did another Yoda impression. We sat together for the rest of lunch, and he made stupid jokes and told me a bunch of gossip that he was probably making up. Usually I wanted to be as far away from Dean as possible, but that lunch hour, I was so, so glad that he was sitting right beside me.

We all ate dinner together that night. Dad made his famous spaghetti and meatballs.

“How did it go at school today, Abby?” Dad asked.

I glared at him. “How do you think? I look like a freak.”

“Abby,” Mom said.

“What? It’s true!”

She shook her head.

“Mom,” Dean said. “It’s true.”

“See!”

“Did you go to all your classes?” Dad asked.

“Almost.”

“Did you see your friends?”

I sighed and pushed a meatball around on my plate. I’d been checking my phone all night. Marla hadn’t texted and neither had Liz. They probably wanted nothing to do with me. And why should they? I’d only rain on their pretty parade. “I don’t think I have any friends anymore.”

“That’s not true,” Dad said. “We’re your friends.”

“Dad! Come on. You’re not my friends. You’re my family.”

“Same thing.”

“No. No, it’s not the same thing. Those are two different things. That’s why there are different words for them. Because they’re different things.”

“Well, I can hang out with you. That’s what you do with your friends, isn’t it? Hang out?”

“Dad, I don’t want to hang out with you,” I said.

“Why not?” He looked hurt.

“Because you’re my dad!”

He cleared his throat and concentrated on wrapping his spaghetti around his fork.

“What happened with your friends?” Mom asked.

“Just forget about it. I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

Mom sighed. “Things will get easier, Abby.”

“The whole school thinks I have AIDS.”

“You don’t have AIDS,” Mom said.

“I know that.”

“How was your day, Dean?” Dean said. “Fine, thanks for asking.”

“Sorry, Dean,” Mom said. “Why don’t you tell us about your day?”

“Well, I got asked about a billion times if Abby has AIDS. Most of the time, I said no.”

“Dean!”

“Just kidding. About fifty percent of the time I said no.”

“Dean!”

He laughed.

“You didn’t,” I said.

“No,” he shook his head. “I didn’t.”

“Good.”

He shrugged. “I told them you have syphilis.”

I flew at him, swinging. Dad had to pull me off him. He sent us both to our rooms for the rest of the night. I wasn’t sorry. I wished I’d hurt him. I should’ve stabbed him with my fork. Or my knife.

The next morning, I wouldn’t talk to Dean. I wouldn’t even look at him.

At lunch I walked into the cafeteria alone holding my tray. I passed the tables of geeks and mouth-breathers I had shunned since junior high. They glared and snickered at me, whispering to each other and shifting so that it would be clear there was no room at their table for me. I passed the table of fat girls: Larissa, Tracy and Heather. Also known as Lard Ass, Tubby and Heifer. They glanced up at me, shook their heads pityingly, and went back to their food. I passed the table of acne-plagued math geeks, people I had only ever been fake-nice to in case I needed to copy their calculus notes or physics homework. Brian Tate moved his backpack off the seat beside him and smiled up at me, his mouth a gleaming pocket of metal. His zits oozed as I stared at him, trying to decide if I’d really sunk this low, if this was where I belonged now.

Then, Jordan Lee swooped into the spot. “Hey, guys,” he said in his nasally ten-year-old’s voice. “What’s the haps?”

Brian gave me a friendly shrug and I moved on. I walked to the farthest corner of the room, to the table reserved for total social rejects, and sat by myself while I pretended to read Hamlet. Dean didn’t come sit with me. I kept an eye out for Marla and Liz but I didn’t see them. I had texted them to meet me at my locker before lunch.

They didn’t.

They didn’t even look at me or say hi to me in the halls when we passed each other between classes. They looked right through me. Like I didn’t even exist.

I was devastated. Obviously.

“Hey, Abby.”

I jumped a little as Dustin Lorimer sat down beside me. I shielded the side of my face so he wouldn’t see the crusty pink bumps around my hairline.

“Oh, hey, Dustin. How’s it going?” I said.

We talked a little about spring break and what he had done (gone skiing up in Whistler and stayed up there in a cabin with his family), what I had done (recovered from several bodily injuries and a brain injury on account of my fall).

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” he said.

“I was in a coma for sixteen days,” I said.

He asked me what that was like and I told him. I didn’t know why he was being so nice to me. I kept expecting him to stand up and point at me and yell FREAK! But he never did.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I’ve been better,” I said.

He nodded. “It looks like you still have some scrapes from the fall,” he said, pointing to his own cheek.

I looked down. “Those aren’t from the fall.”

“Oh,” he said.

I looked back up at him. He had such kind eyes. The color of Werther’s Originals.

He looked at a spot on the table where someone had carved A.L. + W.S. inside a heart. He traced the heart with his finger. “My sister was sick,” he said, nodding. “Nobody knew what it was for a long time. She kept getting misdiagnosed, misdiagnosed, meanwhile, she got worse.”

“What did she have?” I asked.

“Crohn’s disease,” he said.

“Oh.”

He nodded.

“Did she have to get surgery?”

“No. Surgery doesn’t cure it. There is no cure.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling like an idiot. “That sucks.”

He nodded.

“Is she alright, though?”

“She has a lot of pain. But I think she’ll be able to get it under control. She’s not supposed to drink is the thing.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. But she does, once in a while, and then it flares up really bad and so…” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“How did they finally find out what she had?” I said.

“They did a biopsy of her colon, I think.”

“Is that when they scrape a little piece off and then study it under a microscope?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Hm,” I said. Then the bell rang.

“Well, I’ll see you around,” Dustin said. He gave me a small smile and took off. It was a pity smile, I was pretty sure of that.

No one had ever really given me a pity smile before. I was usually the one giving them out. I promised myself that when I got better, if I got better, I wouldn’t do that anymore.

I skipped the next period and called my mom at work. She’s the manager of an office supplies store downtown.

“Hello?”

I could hear the photocopier running in the background. “Mom. Have I had a biopsy?”

“A biopsy?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I need one. Right away. Maybe of my colon.”

When I got home, I texted Marla and Liz: WTF???!!!??? Liz texted back: Sorry. Really busy with yearbook and studying.

So you can’t even say hi to me in the hall???

Sorry, Abby.

Marla didn’t text back at all.

Mom booked me in for a biopsy and I had it a few days later. Dr. Neal scraped some cells from my arm and some from my leg and some from the inside of my nose. He gave me a nod and said the lab would call when the results were in.

School sucked more than anything has ever sucked before in the history of the world. I hated myself and the way I looked and the way everyone looked at me, or didn’t look at me. I felt bad for all the kids who had lived their whole lives ugly. It was a terrible way to go through the world. People looked right through you. Or immediately away. Good-looking people have so many more advantages. And they don’t even realize it because things have always been that way for them. People really give them the benefit of the doubt. And all of the other benefits too. It’s so unfair, there should be a law against it. No discrimination against uglies. But then people would have to identify as ugly. And that would be a whole other thing.

Later that week, I came home early from school because I just couldn’t stand it anymore. When I walked into the house, Dean was on the couch making out with someone.

“Well, well, well,” I said. “What do we have here?”

They both turned to look at me. And the person beneath him was a boy.

It was Aaron Forsythe.

They both had their shirts off. Dean stood up and put his shirt back on. He was clumsy and soft. His face flushed scarlet. Aaron sat up, all casual, buckled his studded belt, and said, “Oh, hey, Abby.”

I started laughing. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t funny. I think, sometimes, people laugh when they get a real surprise. That was a real surprise.

Dean coughed into his hand. “What are you doing home?” he said.

“Um, I live here?” I said.

Aaron reached for his pack of cigarettes on the coffee table and lit one.

“You can’t smoke in here,” I said.

Aaron just stared at the wall like he hadn’t heard me. He blew smoke rings that floated toward the ceiling like weightless sugar doughnuts. Dean stared at the pack of cigarettes. Then he took one out and stuck it behind his ear. “C’mon, Aaron,” Dean said. He started walking toward the screen door in the kitchen. Aaron looked sidelong at me and then at Dean, then got up and followed Dean. They went out to the backyard, slamming the screen door behind them.

I laughed again, shook my head and went up to my room. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering how many other things I didn’t know about Dean. I wondered if I would tell my parents. And I wondered who else knew besides Aaron.

Awhile later, there was a knock on my bedroom door. I jolted awake. I had dozed off staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my ceiling, trying to decide if they were nerdy or cool.

Dean stepped inside my room. “It’s dinner,” he said.

I rubbed my face. It was itchy and hot. My left eyelid felt scaly. I covered it with my palm for a moment.

Dean’s eyes flicked from the edge of my bed to me. “Ab,” he said.

“What?”

“Are you going to say anything?”

“Yeah. I’m going to say a lot of things. I know a lot of words,” I said. “Some in Spanish too.”

“No, I mean…You know.”

“No. What, Dean?”

“C’mon, you know what I’m talking about.”

“What? That you’re gay?”

Dean blinked hard. “I’m not.”

“You’re not gay?”

He shook his head.

“So. Then…What? You’re bisexual?”

He pressed his lips together.

“Come on, man!” I said. “You can’t even make up your mind about who you want to sleep with? Pick one!”

“Abby—”

“What? What do you want, Dean? You want me to tell you that it’s okay to screw Aaron on our couch? It’s not okay. It’s not okay to screw anyone on our couch. Guy. Girl. Donkey. No! Nobody! I have to sit there! Now where am I going to sit? It’s gross! You’re gross!”

“You’re one to talk,” he said. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

I picked up a glass on my bedside table and whipped it at his head. He ducked and it shattered against the wall.

He opened the door to leave. “Just keep it to yourself, okay?”

“Why should I?”

“Because,” he said. “You’re my sister.”

Then he left, and I rolled over and cried into my pillow.

That night at dinner, Mom and Dad announced that they were going to some fancy-schmancy all-inclusive resort in Mexico for their anniversary. They had been married for twenty years, which was longer than my entire lifetime and impossible to imagine.

Mom stretched her arm across the table and squeezed Dad’s hand. “We’d planned on going for two weeks,” she said. “But I don’t feel good about leaving you guys for that long, now that Abby’s…”

“Abby will be fine, Mom. Go, enjoy yourself. You kids deserve it!” Dean said.

I stared at my plate.

“No,” Dad said. “We’re going for a week. That’s enough.” He smiled at Mom and she smiled back. They weren’t happy smiles.

Dean cleared his throat. “And when were you planning on going?”

“This Friday,” Dad said.

“Absolutely no parties while we’re gone,” Mom said.

“Of course not!” Dean said.

“I mean it, Dean,” said Mom. “Auntie Karen’s coming by to check on you and she’ll tell me everything.”

“Great,” Dean said.

Auntie Karen is Dad’s younger sister. She’s a documentary filmmaker. Last time she had come to check on us while Mom and Dad were away, she bought us a case of beer, so her swinging by wasn’t too much of a threat.

“Did the lab call today?” I said.

“No, sweetie,” Mom said. “Dr. Neal said they probably wouldn’t have the results until sometime next week. It could even be the week after that, depending on how backed up they are.”

I nodded.

“And if anything happens while we’re away and you need us to be here, you just call and we’ll be on the next flight home, okay? That’s no problem.”

“Okay,” I said.

I could hear the clock in the hall ticking. I was still hungry, but I didn’t want to eat anymore. My food suddenly looked revolting. The pork chop especially.

“You’re going to get better, Abby,” Mom said. “You might not believe it now, but you will.”

“This too shall pass,” Dad said, nodding.

I wondered who they were trying to convince. Me or themselves.

Dean had invited a whole schwack of people to the party at our house Saturday night. I texted Marla to invite her and she wrote back: Sorry. Can’t make it this Saturday. Have fun:)

The smiley-face was the worst.

Liz said: Have to babysit.

Yeah, right. She never babysat on a Saturday night if there was a party. She always said that having a rich social life was more important than having extra spending money.

I sat on my bed and stared at my phone. I thought about inviting Dustin, but I figured he would probably be there anyway, since he was a friend of Aaron and Aaron was my brother’s boyfriend. Or something. I hoped that Jude and Carrie wouldn’t come. And I also hoped that nobody would come. It was too hard for me to have people see me now. They used to smile when they saw me, strangers too. Guys were constantly checking me out. Now, people looked away or, worse, stared, and sometimes pointed. Just being alive was humiliating. I so badly wanted things to be like how they were before. I wanted to be beautiful again. I wanted my friends back. I had gone from being one of the hottest girls in school to one of the ugliest people in Texas, and maybe all of the United States, in a matter of months. It was devastating. Obviously.

Dean wasn’t what I would call popular, but he knew everybody, and everybody kind of liked him. Or at least tolerated him. Or thought he was funny. I don’t know. He was a jackass and he knew it. For some people, that kind of person is easy to be around because they never pretend to be something they’re not. They don’t pretend to like you when they actually don’t. You know they don’t like you because they don’t like anybody. They’re not fake. Or, it’s a different kind of fake. I’m not sure.

Saturday afternoon was difficult. I went back and forth between being excited that we were having a party and trying to decide what to wear, to feeling like a hideous beast and deciding to stay locked in my room all night where no one could see me. I was beyond the help of makeup by this point. Only a full face-mask would save me, and it was too late to tell everyone it was a masquerade party and it would be too freaky for me to be the only one wearing a mask. Although I did consider wearing this old Phantom of the Opera mask that Mom had in her bottom drawer. But it creeped me right out when I tried it on and looked in the mirror, so I put it back. My lips were puffier than any Botox botch job you’ve seen, and I had bumpy red-and-white patches all along my hairline, behind my ears and a big oozy one on my left cheek. There were a bunch of scaly patches on my feet, legs, arms and hands, but I could keep those covered up easily enough.

I tore through my closet, pulling out everything with a hood or high collar. Dean burst into my room as I was trying on an old striped turtleneck.

“Hey! Knocking? Ever heard of it?”

“Abby.” Dean walked in and grabbed my phone off my dresser, held it out to me. “You need to invite some of your girlfriends or else this is going to be a total sausage party.”

“Isn’t that what you want?”

“Abby! Come on!”

“Well? Isn’t it?”

“For one, it’s none of your business, okay, so you can just forget about what you saw the other day. And for two, nobody likes a party with just guys. It’s weird. It’s like a golf tournament or something.”

“What, you don’t want a hole in one?”

“Abs! Come on! Call your bitches!” He shoved the phone into my hand.

I stared at it.

“You know, the redhead and the short one you always hang around with.”

“They’re not coming,” I mumbled.

“Well, maybe that’s because you haven’t called them!”

I shook my head.

Dean stared at me.

Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. I shrugged and threw the phone on my bed.

“Because of…” He pointed to his face.

I nodded.

“Those little bitches.”

I nodded.

“Do you want me to beat them up?”

“Yeah.” I stepped into my closet so he wouldn’t see my face. I was about to crumble. My best friends in the whole world had abandoned me when I needed them most. I had always thought that it would be a boy who broke my heart. But I was wrong.

People started showing up around nine. At first I stayed in my room but kept the door open so I could hear. I couldn’t hear very well because of all the voices mixing together and the music on top of that. But if I sat right outside my door, I could peer over the banister and see what was going on and hear a little better. I wanted to go downstairs in the worst way, but there were so many people down there, people who knew me, knew how I was before, and I would’ve been ashamed to be around them. To have them see me like that. It made me sick to my stomach to think of them looking at me, pointing at my face, whispering about me once I turned my back. I couldn’t bring myself to go downstairs, as much as I wanted to.

Nobody even asked where I was, even though most of the people there knew I was Dean’s sister, knew it was my house too. It was like I didn’t even exist anymore. It was like I was a big ugly smudge on someone’s notebook that they had gone ahead and erased. These were the beautiful people; I was dead to them now.

At one point I really had to pee. I knew that people had been coming upstairs to use the bathroom; there was even a lineup for it at one point. I so did not want to run into anyone but finally I couldn’t hold it anymore. I bolted to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I peed, washed my hands, and then, in case I saw anyone on my way back to my room, I put an avocado face-mask on, spreading the green goo over everything but my lips and eyes. I opened the bathroom door a crack and peered out. Nothing. Then I opened it wider and stepped out, right into Dustin Lorimer’s chest. I let out a little shout and he laughed in surprise, catching me by the shoulders. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said.

“Hey, Dustin.”

“You alright?”

“Yeah. You just startled me is all.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay.”

“Nice, um…” He pointed to his face.

“Oh, yeah. It’s very hydrating. Would you like to try some?”

He smiled. “Maybe some other time,” he said.

“Alright. We can arrange that.” I grinned at him, suddenly bold, since my face was covered in avocado and the lights were dim.

He asked me how I was doing and why I wasn’t joining the party.

“I’m not feeling that well,” I said and coughed into my sleeve.

“That’s too bad. Missing your own party.”

“Yeah, well, it’s more of a facial-mask and mani-pedi night for me.”

He looked confused.

“Um, manicure-pedicure?” I waved my fingernails at him, my chipped bronze polish catching the light.

“Right,” he said. “Gotta stay on top of that stuff.”

“Totally.”

“But you should come downstairs. Even just for a bit. I think the beer pong’s started. That’s your game, isn’t it?”

I did kick ass at beer pong. “I really can’t,” I said. “I’d like to. But I can’t.”

He nodded. “Okay. Well…” He gestured to the bathroom door.

“Right. It was good to see you, Dustin.”

“You too, Abby. Hope you’re feeling better soon.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Have a good night.”

“I already have,” he said.

We smiled at each other. Then I went back to my room and sat with my back against the door, wishing I could go downstairs. Wishing I was the kind of person who didn’t care what she looked like, didn’t care what other people thought of her. But I did, I did.

I hung out for a while in my room, painted my toenails black, then crept back out to the landing to listen to the party. Around midnight, it started pouring rain. It was, like, buckets and buckets of rain hitting the roof and the windows. There was lightning and thunder too. I could hear people saying it was just like Tropical Storm Allison, but nobody there could probably even remember Allison since we were all babies when it happened and some people at the party hadn’t even been born yet. I heard Dustin say that he was going to get his car to high ground so it didn’t float away, then he left and a bunch of other people did too, probably to do the same thing. Dean yelled after them, “Don’t go! Don’t leave! We’ll survive this together! We’ve got to stick together! We’ll build a raft!”

He took off his belt and waved it over his head. “We can use this!” He was super drunk and being even more obnoxious than usual.

Looking through the banister, I could see Aaron on the couch, macking on a petite brunette junior who had just transferred to our school from Calgary. I watched Dean watching Aaron. Aaron put his arm around the girl’s shoulders and she snuggled into him. Dean stared at them and took another drink. He was drinking Wild Turkey, straight from the bottle.

The party dragged on and on. If I had actually been down there, it probably would’ve gone by fast, but since I couldn’t go downstairs or talk to anybody, it felt never ending. The lights flickered for a moment when a big crash of thunder thudded through the house. Some girls screamed. I hoped that the power would go out because then it would be so dark that no one could see me and then I could go downstairs and party with everybody. But the lights never went out for more than a millisecond. Jason Redpath and a tall girl I didn’t know came upstairs, probably looking for a place to make out, but I scooted back into my room and shut the door before they could see me and moved my chair up against the doorknob.

Mom and Dad wouldn’t let us have locks on our bedroom doors because they said it wasn’t safe. What if something happened to you? How would we get in? But at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be locked inside the sanctuary of my room, away from every pretty, happy person at that party, away from the whole world. I didn’t want anyone to come in. Ever.

I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. I must have dozed off for a while because when I woke up, the rain had stopped and the only sound was a CD skipping on Mom and Dad’s ancient stereo downstairs. I opened my door a crack and looked out. I couldn’t see anyone so I stepped out onto the landing and peeked over the banister. The rosy light of dawn seeped through the windows. A guy with no pants on was passed out on the couch; a blonde girl with huge boobs was asleep in the rocking chair, her mouth hanging open; and Aaron and the Canadian brunette were wrapped in a blanket on the floor. I tiptoed down the hall to Mom and Dad’s room and pushed the door open with my finger. No one was in there. Thank God. Then I checked Dean’s room. It was also empty. I went to his window and looked out over our backyard. The lawn was a lake. It had rained a lot. Some people had parked in the back alley behind our house but I didn’t see Dustin’s car anywhere. I hoped it was okay. He drove a hybrid car: half-electric, half-gasoline. Some guys made fun of him for it, called him a tree hugger and crap like that, but I thought it was pretty cool. I stared out the window. A sodden black cat scrambled over the top of our neighbor’s fence. I watched as it shook itself off, spraying spirals of water into the morning air.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a patch of something red moving just inside the door of our shed. It seemed to be flailing, convulsing. I flashed on a memory of Dean waving his belt over his head. He had been wearing his red skate shoes. I got a queasy feeling in my stomach. I felt weak and sick. Something was wrong with the red thing, whatever it was.

I moved through the house like I was walking through Jell-O. Everything around me was slow and thick. Then I was standing in the shed.

Dean lay propped against a bag of soil, covered in vomit. His face was a pasty green. Pale chunks coated his mouth and chin and there were piles of puke on the ground beside him. His shirt and jeans were encrusted in what looked like pink oatmeal. The shed reeked of rotten milk, acidic orange juice and pee. Dean had pissed his pants! Loser! I covered my nose with my arm.

“Dean.” I nudged him with my foot. “Get up. You’re a mess.” I nudged him again, a little harder. “Dean!”

He didn’t move.

I knelt down and pulled open his eyelids. His eyes were rolled back in his head. I slapped his face. Once, twice, three times, hard. Nothing. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t moan. He didn’t move. “DEAN!!! WAKE UP!!!” I dug through the layer of puke on his neck to find his pulse. I couldn’t feel anything. Then I watched his chest and belly and put the back of my hand in front of his nose. I couldn’t feel anything. “Shit shit shit.” I looked around. There was no one outside, no noises even. There was only the steady drip of water draining from the eaves. Everything was in slow motion. This was it. This was the moment of truth.

I had fantasized many, many times about killing my brother, or him being in an accident, about what it would be like to be an only child, life without Dean. I knew it would be peaceful. Serene, even. I stared at him for a moment. I hated him most of the time, but when it came right down to it, I actually did love him and I didn’t want him to die. Not now, not ever.

I took out my phone. The battery was almost dead. I dialed 9-1-1, my hands shaking. I had just enough time to tell the operator I needed an ambulance and our address before my phone died.

Then I scooped the vomit out of Dean’s mouth, pushed him onto his back and leaned over him to do CPR. I knew how to do CPR because I’d had about five training courses in it, between babysitter training, lifeguarding, cheerleading camp, my first aid course and learning it at school, I was pretty sure I could do it on a real life person, not just a plastic dummy.

I tilted Dean’s forehead back to open the airway, plugged his nose and made a seal over his mouth with my own mouth, which is nothing like kissing so you can just stop thinking whatever you were thinking about me making out with my own brother. Ew. I gave him two breaths then started pumping hard and fast on his chest. What is the song? What is that stupid song? “Come on, Dean, what is the song?” I squeezed my eyes shut tight. Come on. I know this.

“Ah. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Something, something,” I whispered.

They say that if you pump someone’s chest to the tune of that Bee Gees song, it’s the right number of beats per minute to start the heart again. Disco saves lives. Who knew? I couldn’t remember all of the words. But I knew some of them. And I sang along as I pushed on my brother’s chest, again and again. “Now it’s alright, it’s okay, something something, other way….” Pump. Pump. Pump. Pump. Two breaths. “Stayin’ alive. Stayin’ alive.” I felt a sickening crack beneath my palms. I knew I had probably broken one of his ribs, but I didn’t stop. I was going to keep doing it until he came back to life or I died, whichever came first.

After four rounds of CPR, Dean began to splutter and cough. Relief flooded over me in a hot wave. I rolled him onto his side and shoved him into a sitting position. I leaned him against the wall. “That’s it. That’s it, brother,” I said. He vomited into his shirt. “Okay, well…that’s okay,” I said, nodding. He was breathing, that was the important part. I wiped my face with my shirt. He looked at me, drool running down his chin. His eyes were glazed and vacant.

“Can you hear me, Dean?”

He stared at me.

“Water. Do you want some water?”

He stared at me.

I ran into the house to get him a glass of water. The guy on the couch was stirring, and Aaron and Calgary were mumbling inside their blanket, but I didn’t care who saw me now. I had just saved someone’s life, everyone else was hung-over. Clearly, I was dominating here.

I raced back out to Dean. I held the glass to his lips but he didn’t take any water. He coughed and drooled some more. He smelled awful. I heard the sirens and ran out to the driveway. I led the two paramedics to the shed. They asked me a bunch of questions while they loaded Dean onto a stretcher. I told them I had found him about ten minutes ago, called them and then done four rounds of CPR, and he started breathing again on the fourth round. The bearded paramedic smiled. “Good job, kid. You just saved his life.”

The other paramedic nodded. “Well done,” she said. “You did exactly the right thing.”

“Okay,” I whispered, hugging my arms against my body. I didn’t tell them that I had hesitated for a split second when I first found him lying there, helpless and unconscious. But maybe those are the kind of secrets you take to your grave.

“You want to sit up front or in the back?” the blonde paramedic asked. They had already loaded Dean into the back of the ambulance.

I looked at the house, then back to my brother. “I’ll sit back here with him,” I said, and climbed in. The two of them got in the back and banged the doors shut. The driver took off, sirens wailing. They hooked Dean up to some machines, put an oxygen mask on him and stabbed an IV into his arm.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Epinephrine,” said the bearded paramedic. “Brings his heart rate up.”

“I think I broke his rib,” I said. “Maybe more than one.”

“Don’t worry about that. It happens,” he said. “You got his heart started again, that’s the important part.”

At the hospital, they put a tube in Dean’s throat that was hooked to a breathing machine. Then they put another suction tube up his nose that threaded back into his throat and down into his stomach, so in case he threw up again it would suck out all the puke so he wouldn’t choke on it. Basically, they inserted an alcohol vacuum. Nasty. They also put him on an IV with fluids and electrolytes and all the junk he would need to recover.

I took out my phone a bunch of times to text Mom and Dad. But I always kept putting it away again. I’m not sure why. It seemed like we had made it through the worst of it. He was in stable condition. He was going to be okay. Their coming back from Mexico now couldn’t possibly help anything. Plus, they’d be mad as hell that we’d had a party and gotten this far out of hand. Maybe I would never tell them. Maybe it would be another secret that Dean and I kept from them. I thought maybe, when we were old, like, thirty or something, and had moved out and gotten our own houses and everything, then we could tell them one time when we came to visit. And we could all sit around and laugh about it. About what a dumbass Dean had been. That seemed like a better time to tell them. Better than while Dean was being alcohol vacuumed. I looked at Dean, tubes running into his nose and mouth and arm. You’re an idiot, I thought. But I am so glad you’re alive. I brushed a tear off my cheek and blew my nose, then went to get a drink from the vending machine.

Around noon, I went home to have a shower and change my clothes. Everyone from the party had left, and of course no one had bothered to clean anything up. In the past, Marla and Liz had always helped me clean up after our parties. But that was before. There were cans and bottles and plastic cups and empty chip bags all over the place, and dirty smudges and footprints all over the floor. The house smelled like cigarette butts and stale beer and ass. I cranked the stereo and spent a few hours cleaning, then drove Mom’s car back to the hospital. They were going to keep Dean overnight to monitor him.

“Okay,” I said. “Call me when I can come and get him.”

They kept him Monday night too. I skipped school Tuesday to bring him home.

“Hey, Ab,” he said when I walked into his hospital room. His lips were white and cracked.

“Hey.”

“Are you here to bring me home?”

I nodded.

“Great.”

“Got a little problem though,” I said.

“What?”

“The hospital bill.”

“Oh.”

“If we don’t pay it now, it’ll go to Mom and Dad, and then…”

“Right.”

“Should we ask Auntie Karen?”

“No, no,” Dean said. “That won’t be necessary.”

I looked at him.

“Did you bring my wallet?”

“Yeah.” I took it out of my purse and handed it to him.

“Good.” He pulled out his yellow bank card and held it out to me. “Savings. One, nine, nine, nine.”

“Dean, it’s going to be thousands of dollars—”

“It’s okay.”

A nurse came in then to discharge him. “Alrighty then,” she said. “Let’s get you ready to go, shall we?”

Dean nodded then turned to me. “Just go pay. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” I went out to the reception desk, signed all the release forms and handed over his bank card. When I saw the amount being charged I held my breath, positive that the machine would beep, read Insufficient Funds.

But it didn’t.

It went through.

My brother was rich. Somehow.

We got in the car. I was angrier than I thought I would be.

“Were you trying to kill yourself?”

“No.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

He stared out the window. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Why? Because I’m straight?”

“No, because you’re shallow.”

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I knew he wasn’t just teasing or saying it to be mean. He meant it. And the worst part was, I didn’t even know if he was wrong or not.

We didn’t talk for the rest of the ride home. When we got back in the house, I heated up a can of chicken noodle soup and made us some toast. We ate together at the table, which we would never normally do if Mom and Dad weren’t there.

“This is good,” Dean said.

“Campbell’s.”

He nodded.

We slurped our soup for a few minutes.

“Where did you get all that money?”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“Like what?”

“Like, are we going to tell Mom and Dad about this?”

“Depends,” I said.

“On what?”

“Are you going to pull something like that again?”

He looked down at his hands. “It was an accident, Abby. I just drank too much, too fast on an empty stomach. It happens.”

“Yeah, you know what else happens, Dean? People die.”

He stared into his soup.

“You would’ve fucking died if I hadn’t found you when I did. Then what?”

“Then…you’d finally have some peace and quiet…? And a second closet for all your clothes?”

“Dean!” Tears stung my eyes. “This isn’t funny!”

“Okay, okay. You’re right. What do you want me to say? I’m sorry I scared you? I’m sorry I’m an idiot and thanks for saving my life?”

“That would be a start,” I said.

“I didn’t know that would happen, Abby. I really didn’t.”

“Well, it can’t happen again,” I said.

“Okay.”

“Because what if I’m not around next time to find you, then—”

“I said okay.”

“Alright then.”

He stirred his spoon around in his soup. “So what about Mom and Dad?” he said.

“What about them?”

“Are you going to tell them?”

“Tell them what? That you’re gay or that you tried to drink yourself to death?”

“I didn’t—I’m not—”

“Whatever.”

“So…?”

“So, what?”

“So, are you?”

“I don’t know, Dean. I don’t want to ever have to see you like that again, I know that for sure.”

“You won’t.”

I sighed. “If you can swear to me that you won’t ever do anything like that again, I won’t say anything about it to Mom and Dad. But if I even suspect—”

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Promise me.”

“Pinkie swear.” He held his pinkie out to me and I hooked mine around his. We shook, but I couldn’t feel it. I thought my hand was asleep. I flicked my wrist a few times and stretched my fingers back and forth. Dean looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

“Too much texting, I think. My hand goes numb sometimes. It’s kind of weird.”

“Maybe you just need a boyfriend,” he said. “Then you could give your hand a rest.”

My brother was back to his old self, for better or worse.

Auntie Karen came by the next day to check in on us. She brought us six doughnuts because, “Growing kids need doughnuts.” She doted over me like a fake mom and held her hand against my forehead and asked me how I was feeling about a thousand times. It was kind of funny because Dean was the one who had just had the near-death experience, but she didn’t even ask him how he was. She asked him how school was, which is not the same thing.

“Your mom and dad are really worried about you, Abby.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So worried they had to take off to Mexico for a week.”

“They’ve had this trip planned for years, Ab. Don’t hold it against them.”

“No. It’s fine. I get it.”

“Aww.” Dean made a big pouty-face at me across the table.

“Have your test results come back yet?” Auntie Karen asked.

I shook my head.

“When do you expect them?”

“Today? Tomorrow? Yesterday?” I said. “It’s impossible to know. They’re so vague.”

She nodded. “It’s always that way, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

“Oh, sweetie.” She leaned over to give me a sideways hug. She smelled like something citrusy, with peppermint mixed in. Her long brown hair fell into my face for a moment and I couldn’t see. She kissed the side of my head then leaned back in her chair, looking at me with her head tilted to the side. I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. Dean left the room.

“Oh, no. Abby. It’s okay. Don’t cry.” She got up and got me a glass of water. “Here.” She set it in front of me and I drank it between sobs. “What’s wrong? Was it something I said?”

I shook my head. “I just feel so…ugly!” I spluttered. “Look at me. I’m hideous!”

“No you’re not, Abby.”

“You’re just saying that. But it’s not true.” I folded my arms on the table and put my head on them.

“It is true because I know you and I know that inside you’re a beautiful person.”

“Arrgh!” I yelled into my arms.

“What?” She patted my back. “What is it, hon?”

“That just sounds so cheesy. And I don’t even think that’s true.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you are a good person, Abby.”

I lifted my head. “Yeah, but what if I’m not? What if I’m shallow and mean?” I wiped my nose on the back of my sleeve.

Auntie Karen stared at me, her eyes as blue and clear as beach glass. “Is that what you think?” she said quietly.

I nodded. Yes. No. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

The thing about Auntie Karen is that she’s technically an adult, but she still seems an awful lot like a teenager. I’m not sure why this is. She doesn’t have any kids of her own, so maybe that has something to do with it. She knew we’d had a party because she found a beer cap under her chair later that night. She held it up and raised an eyebrow at us.

“I wonder how that could’ve gotten there,” Dean said.

Auntie Karen shook her head and flicked the cap into the trash. But we also knew that she wouldn’t say anything about it to Mom and Dad. She could be counted on that way.

“I kind of feel like pizza and a movie tonight,” she said.

“That’s funny. You don’t look like pizza and a movie,” Dean said. “Abby, on the other hand…”

“Eat it, dick-breath,” I said.

Dean gave me the finger.

“Hey, hey, hey,” said Auntie Karen. “What’s all this about?”

“This is about Dean being a capital D douche-bag twenty-four seven, three-sixty-five. Also, he sucks off guys.”

Auntie Karen looked from me to Dean.

“You know,” Dean said, “pizza and a movie sounds pretty good. As long as it’s not some stupid chick flick.”

Auntie Karen nodded slowly. Then she stood up. “No chick flicks, got it.” She put on her leather jacket and grabbed her purse. “Should I pick up some beer?”

“NO!” Dean and I both yelled.

“Okay, okay.” She backed down the hallway, hands in the air. “No beer. No chick flicks. No problem.”

She came back with a large pepperoni pizza and a bottle of Coke and we found Die Hard 2 on Netflix. The three of us sat on the couch and watched the movie while we ate all the pizza and drank all the Coke. Dean and Auntie Karen got into a contest to see who could burp the loudest. Dean won, but not by much.

There was nothing special about that night, nothing that stood out about it so much that I would remember every little detail. Except that I do remember everything about that night, because it was the last night I had of being a normal seventeen-year-old girl—if you could even call me that. It was the night before I found out I had leprosy.

Our home phone rang the next morning a little after 8:30 a.m. Dean and I looked at each other, then looked at the phone. I grabbed it off the wall while I poured milk on my Cheerios.

“Hello?”

“Hi, may I please speak to Miss Abby Furlowe?”

“This is Abby.”

“Hi, Abby. This is Michelle calling from Diagnostic Laboratories.”

“Yeah?”

“Your test results are in.”

“Okay…”

“So you need to make an appointment to see your doctor to discuss them.”

“Can’t you just tell me?”

“Sorry. We can’t give out results over the phone.”

“Why not?”

“It’s our policy.”

“But…okay, so I have to make a doctor’s appointment and take an afternoon off school, drive across town to go in and see him so that he can tell me? Instead of you just telling me right now on the phone?”

“That’s right.”

I sighed.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s our—”

“Policy. Yeah, you said that.”

“Dr. Jamieson has received your results. He’ll be able to—”

“Can you just tell me one thing? Am I going to die? Do I have, like, six months to live or something? Because, I think I should find out as soon as possible if that’s the case.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t actually know what the lab results are. All I know is that they’ve been sent to your doctor and you’re to meet with him to discuss them. At your earliest convenience.”

“That’s the thing, though. It’s not convenient.”

“Well…”

“Could you text me my results? That would be convenient.”

“No, I’m sorry. You need to make an appointment to see Dr. Jamieson,” she said.

“Okay. Then. That is what I will do.”

“Terrific.”

“Super.”

“Great. Well, take care, Miss Furlowe.”

I hung up.

“Good news?” Dean said.

I rolled my eyes at him. He shrugged, then got up to get his stuff ready for school, leaving his dirty breakfast dishes on the table.

I drank an entire pint glass of orange juice without breathing. Then I called Dr. Jamieson’s office. They’d had a cancellation that morning so there was a spot at 9:20 a.m. I skipped school and drove Mom’s car to Dr. Jamieson’s office. There was no way I could wait.

“Mycobacterium leprae,” Dr. Jamieson said, staring at the paper on his desk. “Bacteria that causes leprosy. Also known as Hansen’s disease.” He looked up at me and winced.

My body felt like cold concrete. A dark, bottomless pit sucked me down into it. The mother of all migraines attacked my brain. I wanted nothing more than to vomit. I wanted to vomit across Dr. Jamieson’s desk and all over Dr. Jamieson himself. A tiny little laugh escaped my mouth. But nothing was funny. Nothing would ever be funny again. I stared at my left hand on the arm of the chair.

“Will my fingers fall off?”

“No. But you will need to protect them from injury,” Dr. Jamieson said. He kept talking but I wasn’t listening anymore.

I had leprosy.

I was a leper.

There was nothing else to say.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting on my bed in my room. I don’t really remember how I even got home from the doctor’s office. I puked into my garbage can. Then I cried. I was hyperventilating, I smelled like vomit and I had leprosy. I don’t know if life gets any worse than that. I curled around my pillow and cried until my head felt like it had been run over and my pillow was soaked with snot and tears. I willed a sinkhole to open up beneath our house and suck me down into it. I waited for a while to see if that, or some other fluke disaster, would happen to spare me from this misery. Nothing happened. I finally had to get up because I needed to pee. Then I went to find the phone number of the hotel Mom and Dad were staying at. I wanted my mom.

“Hello?”

“Mommy?”

“Hi, Abby. What’s wrong, sweetie? What is it?”

I couldn’t form words around the lump jammed in my throat. How could I tell her I had the worst disease known to humankind? I couldn’t even breathe.

“You can tell me, whatever it is, Abby. You know you can tell me.”

“I have leprosy!” I bawled into the phone.

“Narcolepsy?”

“No—”

“That’s why you’ve been sleeping so much! You know, I used to work with a woman—”

“LEPROSY, Mom! Leprosy.”

“You…what?”

“I have leprosy.”

Silence.

“Mom!”

“What did they say?” Her voice was very tiny and she sounded so far away.

“I’m a leper!”

“Oh, Abby. You’re not a leper, honey.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of a leper. Someone who has leprosy. I have leprosy.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Abby.”

“YOU’RE SORRY!?” I started crying harder. It was a mad, manic crying now, the kind where it sounds more like laughter. My vision was so blurred with tears, I couldn’t see. Finally I caught my breath and swallowed and found that I could speak again. “Mom?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“We’re coming home tomorrow, Abby. We’ll figure it out, okay? Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”

“Dr. Jamieson said I have to go to Louisiana.”

“What? Why?”

“Because that’s where the treatment center is. They’re going to put me on drugs that kill the leprosy bacteria. But I have to live with a bunch of other lepers until the drugs start working!”

“Oh, Abby…”

“Is this real, Mom? Am I having a nightmare right now? You’d tell me, right? You’d wake me up—”

“Abby.”

“WAKE UP!” I pinched my arm, hard. “WAKE UP. WAKE UP. WAKE UP.”

“ABBY.”

“What?”

“Take a hot bath. Make it as hot as you can stand it. Stay in it for twenty minutes. Then put on your pj’s and get into bed. We’ll be home tomorrow as fast as we can, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I love you, sweetie. We’ll get through this. Don’t worry.”

“You’ll love me even though I’m a leper?”

“Of course I will. I’ll always love you. No matter what.”

“Okay.” I was crying again now, but it was different, softer, barely there crying.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered.

“See you tomorrow, Abby.”

“Bye, Mom.”

I hung up. Then I went to the bathroom and threw up again.

There’s that expression, “It’s not the end of the world.” But sometimes, it actually is. This was one of those times. I was a teenage leper. My life was over. I died that day. A part of me did, anyway. And for as long as I live, I’ll never be able to get it back. I’ll never be able to say, “I didn’t have leprosy. I was never a leper.”

Someone out there reading this might say, “There are worse things.” Maybe even you would say that. But I don’t believe you.

I had to check in to the treatment facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ASAP. Mom and Dad came home the next day, around noon like Mom had said, and we all cried together, except for Dad and Dean because guys don’t cry apparently. But I’ll bet you any money they cried afterwards. On their own. In private. Dad’s eyes were all puffy and Dean’s were pink and watery like Mom’s, so I could tell.

Probably guys cry all the time, or at least, a lot more than people think they do, it’s just that nobody sees them do it. Like a tree falling in the woods sort of thing.

I was up late that night. Super late. For some reason I was having trouble sleeping…Oh, right, I’d just found out I had leprosy and had to get shipped out of state to go take drugs that would kill the disease-bacteria living in my body. Talk about the vacation of a lifetime.

I got sucked into an Internet vortex looking at photos of people with leprosy and reading about leprosy and the treatment facility in Baton Rouge. I stared at the computer for so long, it felt like metal filings were being shoved into my eyeballs. I couldn’t read any more. I closed my computer and went to get a drink from the bathroom. I saw that Dean’s light was on, and because I was distracted, or I wasn’t thinking, or a combination of the two, I opened Dean’s door.

Dean was sitting at his computer, jerking off, with an open jar of peanut butter beside him and peanut butter all over his dick. There was another guy on his computer screen, an older guy.

“Jesus, fuck!” Dean saw me and jumped out of the chair. He turned off his monitor and grabbed a pillow and held it in front of him. “What do you want, Abby?”

“I, uh. Ha. I’m sorry.”

“Okay, okay. Get out!”

“It’s just…”

“WHAT?” Dean held the pillow to his crotch. He looked like Beaker the muppet.

I stifled a laugh. “What are you doing?”

“Just get out.”

I left and got ready for bed, trying to erase that scene from my mind. That is something a sister should never see her brother doing. But as Dad would say, there are no mulligans in the game of life. I listened to music on my headphones and told myself it had never happened. I was in bed, almost ready to turn off my light when there was a rap at my door.

“Yeah?”

Dean peeked his head in. “See? Knocking. It’s what people do,” he said, tapping his fist against the door frame.

“Come on in, Jelly,” I said.

“Don’t even.”

“PB, then.”

“Shut it, leper.” He was wearing plaid pajama pants and a gray T-shirt. He stood beside my bed with his arms crossed over his chest, looking awkward.

“What do you want?”

He eyed the end of my bed.

I scooted up and patted a spot for him to sit down. He hesitated, looked around. He sat at the edge of my desk chair, as if he couldn’t stand for it to touch him. His eyes drifted over me, then he stared at the wall above my head.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

“I’m a webcam boy.”

“Uhhhh…” I said, laughing. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve heard of the Internet, right?”

“Shut up. Just tell me.”

“So…people on the Internet pay to see me…you know. Do stuff.”

“For real?”

He nodded.

“Whoa.”

“I just got paid two hundred dollars for that.”

“The peanut butter?”

He nodded. “Last week I was paid four hundred dollars to eat a cucumber.”

“Naked.”

“Well, yeah, I was naked, and I know it’s kind of whacked, but four hundred bucks, Abby. I mean, it’s not that hard to eat a cucumber.”

“But what if next time they want you to do more than just eat it?” I said.

“I have my limits.”

“Everyone has a price,” I said.

“It’s not like that.”

“Okay, stop. Stop. You’re nasty. I don’t want to hear any more.” I clamped my hands over my ears. “La-la-la-la.”

“Listen. LISTEN. I’ve made enough to be able to move out this summer and afford all my own everything. A car too.”

“And that’s how you had enough to pay the hospital bill…”

He nodded.

“But isn’t it…gross?”

He shrugged.

“Ick.” I shivered. “I couldn’t do it. Aren’t the guys all old and creepy?”

Dean laughed. “Not always.”

“So they, like…”

“What?”

“They tell you to do stuff and you do it?”

“Yeah. Well, there’s a proposition and a negotiation that goes on.”

“Wow.”

“I mean, I won’t do everything. I’ve said no to stuff before.”

“I can’t—”

“It’s just until…I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You can’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“Okay.”

“Not ever.”

“Okay.”

“Even when we’re old.”

“Alright,” I said.

“It’s just that it’s so much money, you know? And it’s pretty easy. Like, no one we know can pay for all their own stuff, right? Even if they do have a job. I mean, you have to work A LOT to be able to buy your own food and rent and furniture and TV and car and all that. Insurance. Gas. Who do you know that can afford all that?”

“On their own? Hardly anybody,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“So you, like, take Paypal, or what?”

“Yeah, Paypal.”

“No way.”

“It’s true.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“The numbers don’t lie, baby.”

“You’re messed up.”

“I’ve made fifteen grand in the last four months. You have leprosy. Who’s winning here?”

I covered my face with my hands. “Good night, Dean.”

“Sorry. I mean, I’m sorry that you have leprosy and that you have to go to Louisiana…I feel sorry for anyone who has to go to Louisiana, actually.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I’m serious. It stinks there. Especially in Baton Rouge.”

“Whatever.”

“They have a chemical plant there or something.”

“So, is it, like, always the same guy or is it different guys, or what?”

“They’re usually different, but I have my regulars.”

“Jesus.”

“Jesus isn’t one of them, no.”

“But you never meet them in person, right? I mean…”

“It’s all from the comfort of my own room.”

“Wow.”

“Pretty easy, right?”

I stared at him. “Who else knows you’re doing this? Does Aaron know?”

“No. No one knows. Just you. And if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”

“Christ, Dean.”

“Some of them are actually really nice. I mean, we talk afterwards sometimes and…”

“Stop.” I covered my ears. “I don’t want to hear any more. For real this time.”

Dean’s face fell. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Good.”

He looked around my room. “You scared about tomorrow?”

I nodded.

He eyed my overflowing suitcase. “How long are you staying for?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “As long as I have to, I guess.”

“You’ll be living with other lepers, huh?”

“I guess.”

“What if you get it from them?”

“I already have it, idiot.”

“Yeah, but you could get it, like, twice as bad.”

“I don’t think it works that way.” I picked at my nails.

“Okay, I’ve got something to cheer you up.”

“What?”

“Why did they have to cancel the leper hockey game?”

I rolled my eyes. “Why?”

“There was a face off in the corner.”

“Dean—”

“Okay, okay. What did the leper say to the prostitute?”

I shook my head.

“Keep the tip!”

“Dean! You’re disgusting! Stop! Just get out!”

“You laughed! I saw you laugh a little bit!”

“Okay. Fine. Whatever. Just leave, alright?”

His smirk faded. “Alright. I might not see you tomorrow, so I guess I’ll say goodbye now.”

“Okay.”

“So…goodbye.” He stood up and looked like he wanted to hug me or pat my back or something. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to touch me. I had leprosy. I was untouchable. He folded his arms across his chest and tucked his hands into his armpits. He nodded.

“Bye, Dean.”

“Good luck down there.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe when you get back we could take a trip into the city. I was thinking you could help me pick out some things for my new place. You know, like, house stuff that goes together and looks good. You’ve always been good with that interior design crap.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sure.”

“Alright then. Well. Good night.”

“Good night.”

He closed my door and I was alone.

The next day, Mom and Dad drove me to the National Hansen’s Disease Clinic at the Ochsner Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My hands vibrated in my lap. I sweat through my T-shirt and my cardigan. I chewed off all my nails. We had to stop four times so I could pee and once so I could throw up. It was the longest seven hours of my life.

The plan was for me to get checked in at the clinic, do all my tests, take my first round of pills and whatever else they wanted me to do there, then get on the special bus to Carville, the old leper colony, twenty miles away, where I was to stay during my treatment. With other lepers.

“But if it’s really terrible in there, I can call, and you guys will come get me, right?”

Mom and Dad glanced at each other.

“Right?”

“You have to stay until the drugs take effect, Abby,” Dad said.

“Says who?”

“The doctors, the specialists, the government, us.”

Mom looked back at me.

“But what if it’s awful and I can’t stand to be there anymore? What am I supposed to do? Run away? Jump into a waterfall so they can’t track me like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive?”

“No,” Mom said. “You stay. Because that’s the only way you’re going to get better.”

“But what about…what about…my life?” I stared out the window as we passed another bayou.

“This is your life, honey,” Dad said. Then he turned up the radio and we listened to some old-timey blues. I watched out the window as swamps took over the land, and nobody said anything for about a hundred miles.

The people at the clinic were all pretty nice. They didn’t have leprosy. Not the workers anyway. And they didn’t call it leprosy. Not once. Hansen’s disease, they called it. A lady with Harry Potter glasses checked me in and I filled out the forms she gave me. Mom and Dad sat on either side of me in the waiting room, looking awkward. Dad pretended to read email on his phone, and Mom kept asking me questions. How did I feel? Was I too hot? Was I too cold? Was I going to be sick again? Did I think I was going to be sick again? Did I have a headache? A fever? A sore neck? Did I bring my toothbrush? My homework? My bathrobe?

“Mom,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Can we just not talk for a while?”

“Sure.” She nodded, folded her hands in her lap. “Sure.”

“Thanks.”

A short while later, I was called in to see the doctor.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Mom asked.

“Okay,” I said.

We followed the Harry Potter lady down the hall. She opened the door of a little room for us. “Dr. Mike will be in shortly,” she said.

Mom and I sat down on the faded pink chairs. There were a couple of old celebrity gossip magazines on a magazine rack. I reached for one, and then pulled my hand back. I didn’t want to touch them. People with leprosy had touched them. I knew I already had it, but I didn’t want to get it worse. Or get it again. Or whatever. Mom looked at me. She moved her mouth into some weird shape, which I guess was supposed to be a smile. Then there was a knock and Dr. Mike came in. He was around forty-five and had salt-and-pepper hair.

“Abby?” he said.

“Hi.”

“Hello, I’m Dr. Mike.” We shook hands. His eyes were the bluest shade of blue I’d ever seen. The kind of blue that pierces right into your heart.

“I’m Patricia, Abby’s mom.” Mom stuck out her hand to Dr. Mike.

He shook it and smiled briefly, the edges of his eyes crinkling. Then he washed his hands in the tiny sink, dried them on a paper towel, rolled it into a ball and tossed it into the garbage can. He cleared his throat and sat down across from us. Mom thought he was a babe, I could tell. She was blushing and fiddling with her hair.

“Abby,” Dr. Mike said, turning back to me.

“Hi,” I said again.

He nodded. “Hi.”

“So…” I said.

“So. It’s been confirmed that you have Hansen’s disease. I know this must be really difficult news to accept, but you need to know that there is a cure and that your condition has not progressed to the point of permanent disfigurement. However, most of the nerves in your hands and feet have been destroyed and we must consider this to be a permanent disability.”

I nodded and blinked away tears. Mom reached over and squeezed my hand.

“If you had been properly diagnosed sooner,” Dr. Mike said, “we could have prevented this much nerve damage from occurring, but there’s no turning back the clock on that.”

“So what is the cure?” I said.

“The treatment for Hansen’s disease is a course of MDT, multi-drug therapy. You’ll be on three different medications, starting today. In combination, they work to destroy the bacteria that causes the disease.”

“Mycobacterium leprae,” I said.

“Precisely.” Dr. Mike smiled and glanced at Mom.

“How long will I have to be here?”

“Well, after a few days of taking the medication, you won’t be contagious anymore, so you’ll be able to go about your normal activities. That’s the good news.”

“What’s the bad news?” Mom said.

“Well, some patients do have severe reactions during treatment, so we ask that you stay for at least four weeks so we can monitor your progress.”

I shot Mom a look. An entire month at a leper colony? He had to be kidding. I laughed a little to show him that I had a sense of humor.

Dr. Mike smiled at me and continued. “During that time you will be instructed in foot care and hand care, learn how to prevent injuries, and if anything should arise, we’ll be right here to help you through it.”

He wasn’t kidding.

“And how long will I be on the medication for?”

“Twenty-four months.”

“Two years?!”

He nodded.

“I’ll be almost twenty!”

“That’s still very young, Abby.”

“No it isn’t!”

He and Mom smiled weakly at each other.

“So, what do I…?”

“You’ll be staying down the road at Carville, and you’ll be bussed here to the clinic five days a week. Here, you’ll work on rehabilitation. Getting strength back into your body. Practicing walking and using your hands and fingers in ways that won’t cause further damage. Dangers to look out for. We’ll get you fitted for orthotics right away.” He glanced down at my feet.

“What about meals?” Mom asked.

“There’s a fully staffed kitchen at Carville, so all of your meals will be provided. There are also nursing staff on-site.”

“And I’ll be living with other…other lepers?”

“There are two long-term residents at Carville, plus a number of other out-of-town patients like yourself, staying temporarily. You will have a private room. Like a dorm room.” He smiled. Like I was supposed to be excited about that. “There’s something else you should know, Abby.” He cut his eyes at Mom. “The people here at the clinic, and at Carville where you’ll be staying, don’t take kindly to that word. And we certainly never use it here at the clinic.”

“What word?”

“Leper. Leprosy.”

“Huh?” I looked at Mom. She gave me a mini-shrug.

“Some people find it extremely offensive,” Dr. Mike said.

“Who does?”

“People who suffer from Hansen’s disease.”

“You mean leprosy.”

“It is now called Hansen’s disease, and those afflicted by it are called Hansen’s disease sufferers or Hansen’s disease patients.”

“Lepers.”

“No.”

“What’s the difference what you call it? It’s still the most disgusting disease known to humankind!” I put my head in my hands, pressed my fingertips into my eyes. I could call myself whatever I wanted, it didn’t change the fact that I was a leper, and in the eyes of my (former) friends and classmates, I always would be.

“Dr. Rodriguez will talk more about it with you tomorrow,” said Dr. Mike, gently.

“Who’s that?”

“She’s the clinic counselor.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll meet with her once a week as part of your therapy. More often, if you choose.”

Mom nodded like this was the best idea she’d heard in ages.

“Do you have any questions?”

“How could I have gotten this?”

Dr. Mike sighed. “Transmission is very difficult to pinpoint. Dr. Rodriguez will talk to you more about how, when and where you might have come into contact with the bacteria.”

“Am I going to lose my fingers?”

“Not so long as you’re cautious and you take very good care of them.”

I nodded, holding back sobs. Mom squeezed my hand again.

“You’re going to be okay, Abby,” Dr. Mike said. “That’s the good news.”

“Thank you,” Mom said.

He smiled without any teeth and then scribbled some stuff down on a chart. My chart. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered.

Dr. Mike nodded at Mom, then left the room. The door closed behind him with a click.

I stood up and so did my mom. She put her arms around me. She let me tuck my face into the crook of her neck and I let myself be held. She swayed back and forth, rocking me like I was a baby, and I cried like one.

Nobody said much on the drive to Carville. We passed miles of brown fields, barren except for the stubble of sugarcane that had already been harvested. A heaviness hung over us, like I was going to prison or something. Even though I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, I felt guilty. I felt bad. I felt…unwanted in the world. I hoped that Dad wouldn’t cry when they dropped me off. I could handle Mom crying, but something about seeing your dad cry just makes you crumble inside. I don’t know why.

When we arrived at Carville, we had a guided tour of the grounds and inside some of the buildings. We learned that Carville used to be an old sugar plantation. It’s a ton of land with a bunch of old colonial buildings on it, settled on the banks of the Mississippi River. It was a leprosarium for over a hundred years. Before 1957, everyone in the United States who was discovered to have leprosy had to go there. Even if they didn’t want to. The police would actually arrest them and force them to go. Put them in chains and ship them there in a boxcar. They weren’t allowed to phone their families or have visitors or anything. And if they escaped, the police hunted them down and brought them back. They weren’t allowed to vote. Just because they had a disease. If a woman with leprosy got pregnant, she wasn’t allowed to keep her baby. The doctors back then did all sorts of experiments and research and eventually they actually discovered the cure—sulfone drugs—at Carville.

“Cell phone drugs?” I said.

“Sulfone,” said our guide. “With an s.”

Our guide’s name was Irma. She was the head of public relations at Carville and a former patient. But she didn’t live there anymore. She lived in Baton Rouge with her husband and her five kids and her dog, Beezley, who sometimes came to work with her.

I half-listened while Irma talked as she showed us around. She didn’t look deformed, except for her hand. The fingers were bent at weird angles, like a claw. But she kept it in her pocket most of the time, so I couldn’t get a real close look.

Irma told us that in the late 1990s, Carville was a prison for a few years. With real criminals, not just the lepers, and they all lived together. Now, it’s the National Hansen’s Disease Museum and a cadets camp for at-risk youth, a.k.a., juvenile delinquents, run by the military.

“What kind of, um, supervision will Abby have here?” Dad asked Irma.

“The cadets are supervised twenty-four hours a day if that’s what you mean,” she said.

Dad nodded.

“And Abby will be able to reach me or the other staff on duty at any time, should the need arise.”

Dad nodded again, then smiled at me awkwardly.

Irma led us up the stairs of a two-story red brick building. It looked like an old apartment building. There was a row of white doors, and she opened the first one we came to at the top of the stairs. “This is where you’ll be staying while you’re with us, Abby,” she said, and ushered the three of us inside.

“Wow,” Mom said. “It’s really nice, hey, Abby?”

Irma beamed.

“Whatever.”

Dad cleared his throat and set my luggage down. The suite was nothing to get excited about. It wasn’t exactly what I had hoped my first apartment would be like, if you know what I mean. Since it was in a leper museum. There was a double bed on an old cast-iron frame, a small wooden table and a dresser, and a hot plate, mini-fridge and toaster oven beside a little sink. There was a tiny bathroom that had only a shower, no tub. The suite smelled like mothballs and Comet.

“There are two other out-of-town patients staying in this building,” Irma said. “I’m sure you’ll meet them soon.”

“Oh, that will be nice for you to have some people to talk to,” Mom said.

I glared at her and blinked. She was acting like I was getting dropped off at summer camp, like I was here for fun.

“Well,” Irma said, “I’ll leave you to say your goodbyes. Dinner is served at six-thirty in the mess hall, Abby. You remember how to get there?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Just give me a shout if you need anything. I’m in the building next door in the front office.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

Mom and Dad thanked her and both of them shook her claw-hand, and then she left.

“Well, Abby,” Dad said.

“I think it would be easier if you guys left really fast now. Without dragging it out,” I said.

“Can we at least give you a hug goodbye?” Mom said.

“You probably shouldn’t,” I said. “You don’t want to get it.”

“I already hugged you before anyway,” Mom said.

“I know. But you shouldn’t have then, either.”

“I don’t care,” she said, coming at me, arms wide. She squished me into her.

Then Dad came and put his arms around the two of us. We stayed like that for a moment, gently swaying back and forth. Dad kissed me on the top of my head. “Love you, kid.” He barely ever said that, so it was kind of nice to hear it.

“Me too,” I said.

Then the hug broke apart and Mom was wiping her eyes with her sleeve. Dad was all welled up, about to spill over.

“Okay, go on. Get out of here,” I said.

Mom opened the door. “Love you, Abby. We’ll see you next week for visitor’s day.”

“Sunday,” I said.

She nodded. Then, they were gone.

I sat down on the bed. I had never been that alone before.

The bedspread was white and scratchy. The wooden flooring was old and dinged up. I wondered about all the feet that had walked across that floor. Leprous feet. It gave me the heebie-jeebies to think about it. I wished that I had someone to talk to. I really wanted to text Marla and Liz. But I wouldn’t let myself. Not after that kind of betrayal. If people do something like that, they’re not your real friends anyway, so good riddance to bad rubbish.

I still missed them like crazy though.

I flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling tiles had tiny flecks of gold in them that sparkled when the light hit them just right. I thought about calling Dustin. I was pretty sure I had his number. I looked through the contacts in my phone.

Yep, I had it.

My fingers hovered over the screen. Before I could make up my mind whether to call him or not, there was a knock at the door.

“Um, come in?” I sat up.

A pretty young woman opened the door. Her black hair was in a cute bob and she wore a cream-colored pencil skirt. “Hey,” she said, “I’m Jane. I’m staying in the room next door.”

“Oh, hi,” I said. “I’m Abby.”

She moved to cross the floor and shake my hand, but I got weird about it and shoved my hands in my pockets. I don’t know why I did that. She had leprosy, so what? I had it too. She stepped back. “I just thought I’d introduce myself.” She shrugged. “But if you’re busy—”

“No, cool. Yeah. Thanks. I mean, it’s nice to meet you.”

She sniffed the air. “You want to go for a walk or something? Let this place air out a little?”

I laughed. “Yeah. That’s probably a good idea.” I opened the windows and we left the room.

Jane was from New York City. She was twenty-seven years old. She’d first been diagnosed when she was eighteen. We walked in the tall grass along the fence line.

“I come here every year for my complete checkup,” she said. “And to get a refresher in my physio exercises and stuff. It’s been dormant for two years now, but it can come back, so I always make sure to come back to Carville.”

“It can come back?” I said. “Like, you mean, after it’s cured?”

“Yep. Mine did. It just lies dormant in your cells, but it can rear its ugly head again any old time it wants.”

“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.”

“Mmhm.”

“For real, though?”

“Sorry, girl.”

“That sucks.”

“It’s pretty rare for it to happen. I mean, it probably won’t happen to you. Want to see the hole in the fence?”

“Um…okay?”

“Come on!”

We walked a little farther. A man with a hunched back was mowing the grass about fifty yards away. I wondered if he had leprosy.

“There it is!” Jane pointed to a section of the nine-foot wire fence.

“Um,” I said, looking closer. “There’s no hole there.”

“Yeah, but there’s a tunnel underneath.” She knelt down and swept some dirt away, then lifted up a piece of plywood that had been covered in dirt. “See?”

I peered down into the small, dark hole. It barely seemed big enough for a person to fit through.

“In the early days, when they weren’t allowed to leave, someone found this spot where the fence didn’t go down as far. They dug underneath it and made a tunnel through to the other side so people could sneak out without getting caught.”

“Really?”

“Sure. You could go to Baton Rouge for the night, party, spend the night there even, and come back in the morning. No one would ever know. Obviously it’s not the same fence from back then, but they recreated the hole in the same spot as part of the museum.”

“Wild.”

“Get this,” she said. “Are you a romantic?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, anyway. The people who met in here and wanted to get married would sneak out through this hole and catch a ride into town to get married.”

“Why wouldn’t they just get married here? There’s a church and everything.”

“They weren’t allowed! People with leprosy weren’t allowed to marry each other!”

“Oh.”

“And if they were already married, to someone on the outside, who didn’t have leprosy, their husband or wife wasn’t allowed to come here and live with them. They could only visit.”

“That would suck.”

“I know, right?” She ran her fingers along the edge of the hole. Her left ring finger was just a stub, but you could hardly notice because she was so pretty and perfect and put together.

“How do you know all that?”

“Oh, I’ve read about it,” she said. “Plus, two of the old-timers still live here. They have lots of good stories.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Grace and Lester. I’ll introduce you later. They’ve been here for over sixty years, from back when it was mandatory to stay here. Then, when it changed, the government gave them a choice to leave and have their freedom, or stay here and have everything provided, at no cost to them. They chose to stay.”

“That’s crazy. I would never stay here if I had the choice.”

She shrugged. “This is their home.”

“It used to be a prison,” I said.

“It used to be death row,” Jane said. “Only the people sentenced to die here didn’t commit any crime except getting the disease.”

We took a left away from the fence and walked along a gravel path that seemed to have no end.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Nowhere in particular,” Jane said. “Just walking. I thought we’d walk around for a bit and then go to the mess hall. It’s not long now till dinnertime. That is, if you want to keep walking…?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said.

“I’ll show you the lake.”

“Okay.”

“It’s called Lake Johansen. Named after one of the first doctors here.”

“You really know a lot about the history here. Are you one of the other guides or something?”

“Nope. Like I said, I’ve read about it. There’s not too much to do around here so there’s a lot of time to read. I mean, there’s the lake and a golf course and a church, but I don’t really peg you as a golfer.”

I laughed. “Nope. I’ve never played.”

“Never?”

“Mini-putt.”

“Oh, we’ll get out there,” she said. “It’s actually really hard, golf. That’s what people don’t realize. I mean, it looks pretty relaxed, driving those carts around or walking, getting someone else to carry your bags…but, it’s actually super difficult.”

“My dad plays. It can’t be that hard.”

Jane laughed.

We rounded a corner and saw about fifty cadets in khaki pants and green shirts doing some kind of drill. We stopped for a moment, watching them.

“ATTENTION!” a guy in camo yelled from the front. They all saluted him.

“Intense,” I whispered.

“That’s the youth-at-risk program,” Jane said.

“Is it all guys?”

“Mostly. I think there are one or two girls.” We kept walking.

“So, are they, like, criminals? I mean, young offenders, or…”

“Not yet,” Jane said.

We walked past them but kept our distance. I stared, I couldn’t help it. There was one guy in the front row, he was a mega-babe. He was taller than everyone else and had sandy-brown hair that hung past his ears. We locked eyes. My first thought was, How can I find him and talk to him? And my second thought was, STUPID! Dumbdumbdumbass idiot! He knows why you’re here. He knows you’re a leper. Why would he even want to be in the same room as you, let alone talk to you? He wouldn’t. It would never happen.

A deep shame burned through me; I wanted to melt into the ground. I wished he’d never seen me. I wished he would have never known. By this point, I was staring at the ground, but I took one last glance at him, and he was still looking at me. Damn. Jane cut her eyes at me.

“You like a man in uniform?”

“I’m not totally opposed to a man in uniform,” I said.

She laughed. “So you’re in school still?” She steered me left at a fork in the path.

“Yep.”

“What grade?”

“Twelfth.”

“Ahh, a senior.”

“Mmhm.”

“You like high school?”

“Yeah, I mean, I did. I used to like it, before I got sick.”

Jane nodded. “You were popular, right?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“That’s hard,” she said. “You know what no one ever tells you about high school?”

“What?”

“That it repeats over and over again, throughout your whole life.” She tucked her hair behind her ears.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying that being an adult is the same as being in high school, except with money. Life is perpetual high school.”

“No,” I said.

She nodded. “It’s true.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You’ll see.”

“But—”

“Let me guess, you were one of the most popular girls in school, one of the most beautiful, all the guys wanted to go out with you, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“But pretty close, right?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well, listen. Girls who get by on looks and luck alone get a real shock once they get older. Their looks don’t get them what they want all the time anymore. It’s the brainy girls who get the best jobs and the great husbands, because those girls are relying on something that lasts, something of real value. So now, in your senior year, you get Hansen’s disease. Not the worst thing in the world. Not the worst timing either. Because now you can start working on other aspects of yourself,” Jane said. “Not just focusing on your appearance all the time.”

“What makes you think you know so much about me?”

“Look at me,” she said. “Do you think I’m so different from you? I was exactly where you are now, ten years ago.”

We walked in silence for a while. Songbirds chirped in a tree above us. I kicked at a rock in the path. I looked at Jane out of the corner of my eye. She looked like someone who told the truth. I didn’t know whether or not to be offended by what she’d said. But as far as I could tell, she was my best chance at social interaction, and I didn’t want to buck it up and be a loner for the next four weeks.

“Someone should make a movie like that,” I said. “Where the characters repeat high school until they’re old. Sort of like Groundhog Day, except the characters actually age.”

“That could be funny,” Jane said. “I’d watch it, for sure.”

“What’s your job?” I said. “I mean…do you have a job?”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “I’m a waitress at Junior’s.”

“What’s Junior’s?”

“Sorry. Junior’s Most Fabulous Cheesecakes and Desserts. It’s in Brooklyn.”

“I like cheesecake.”

“Most people do. Hey, you should come in next time you’re in New York. I’ll give you a slice on the house.”

I laughed. “I’ve never been to New York.”

“Oh, honey.”

“I was planning to go to L.A. for university, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen now. I mean…because of…”

“Well, I always say there are two kinds of people,” Jane said.

“Yeah?”

“L.A. people and New York people.”

“What about Austin people?”

“Honey, nobody gives a rat’s pitoot about Austin people.”

I laughed. “You’re probably right.”

“There’s the lake.” She pointed to a small man-made lake in the middle of the field. Some ducks floated on the surface and willow trees leaned over the edge, dipping their branches in the water.

“Nice,” I said.

“There’s a little rowboat you can take out on it if you want.”

“Yeah?”

“Might have a hole in it though. I’m not sure.”

“Huh,” I said. “Seems…risky.”

“Hey, they gotta keep it interesting around here somehow, right?” Jane maneuvered us toward a huge white building. “Ready for dinner?”

“Is it edible?”

“Most of the time.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “Come on.”

The dining hall was full of cadets when we walked in. There were over a hundred of them in there. They made a terrible racket that bounced off the high ceilings. Jane led me down the aisle between the rows of long tables. In the corner closest to the kitchen was a table that had a sign that said RESERVED on it. Jane walked to the other side of the table, taking long elegant strides. She pulled out a chair.

“Um,” I said. “Are you sure we can sit here? It says reserved.”

She sat down. “Abby. Who do you think it’s reserved for?”

“Oh. Right.” I took a seat, feeling sheepish.

Most of the cadets were already eating, but some were still in line, waiting for their food. He was in line. Tall guy. From before. On the field. We locked eyes for the second time that day. He grinned at me. I turned away, scratching my neck.

“Sorry, what?” I snuck another peek at him.

“I didn’t say anything,” Jane said. She followed my line of sight. “Oh no. Don’t even.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I don’t want to know. I mean, I do want to know, but not right now. It’ll spoil my appetite.”

I looked at her and she made a goofy face. I couldn’t help laughing.

“Oh look, here come Grace and Lester,” Jane said. “You’ll love them. They’re so sweet.”

I turned around. An ancient gray-haired couple ambled into the dining hall. They both wore huge sunglasses. The man had a white cane that he whacked around and the woman clung to his arm, her humped back rising almost above her head. “Jeez,” I said. “Talk about the blind leading the blind.”

Jane turned to me, sharp. “Yeah, they’re blind. They got Hansen’s disease before there were sulfone drugs. The bacteria attacked the nerves in their eyes. You’d be going blind too in the next few years if it weren’t for the drugs.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

“It’s okay,” Jane said. “You’re just young…and stupid.” Her mouth twitched into a half-smirk.

“It’s true that I’m young,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “Come on, let’s get in line.”

When we lined up, the three cadets ahead of us skooched in closer to put distance between us and them. They eyed us up and down and whispered to each other. It hurt, but somehow having Jane there with me made it hurt less.

“If they’re scared of getting close to us, I’d hate to see what they’re going to be like in Afghanistan,” she said.

“I guess they’ll still piss their pants,” I said. “Just more frequently.”

“More fervently,” Jane said.

“So will all of them be in the military eventually?” I said.

“Not all, I don’t think. But a lot of them, if they’re not in jail,” Jane said, shrugging.

A boy ahead of us laughed and his buddy stuck out his tongue as if he were gagging on it.

“What do you have to do to land in here anyway?” I said.

“Basically you have to be more of an asshole than the people around you deem necessary. From what I’ve ascertained, these guys are the cream of the crop.”

My cadet was about ten people ahead of us. I could see the back of his head, towering above everyone else’s. He had a pale scar on the back of his neck in the shape of a crescent moon. I wondered how he got it. I wanted to trace my finger over it.

“Grace! Lester!” Jane called. She waved, senselessly. “I’m saving you a spot in line.”

They both smiled and made their way toward us. As they got closer, I could see that Grace’s nose had been re-sculpted before advances in plastic surgery. It looked like someone had stuck a small pinecone where her nose used to be. The nostrils were all wrong too. She was brittle and mangled. It was hard to look at her. I shivered. Both Lester’s and Grace’s hands were gnarled and crab-like, but it was hard to tell if that was from the disease or old age or arthritis or what. They looked to be about a hundred years old.

“Grace, Lester, I want you to meet Abby. She’s a temporary resident. Abby, this is Grace.”

“Hello.” Grace extended her hand, nearly hitting me in the boob.

I grabbed her hand and shook it gently; it was as dry and papery as an onion-skin.

“And this is Lester,” Jane said.

“Tabby?” Lester thrust his strange hand toward me.

“Abby,” I said.

“Gabby?”

“ABBY!” Jane yelled in his ear.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He tapped his hearing aid. “Battery’s going on me again,” he said. “Abby, it’s a real pleasure to meet you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

“Where are you from, Abby?” Grace asked.

“Texas,” I said.

“Oh! We just love Texans. Are you a rancher?” Lester asked.

“No,” I said, giggling. “I’m a cheerleader. Well, I was, before…”

“No kidding,” Jane said, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, my. How wonderful,” Grace said.

“Can you do backflips and everything?” Jane said.

“Well, I can’t do everything, but I can do backflips, yeah.”

“Do one,” Jane said.

“Right now?”

“Right here. Right now. Show us.”

Lester nodded and Grace clapped her hands together.

“I…I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not warmed up.”

“Aw, come on,” Jane said. “Just one. One measly backflip. I’ll let you have my dessert…”

“Oh yes, come on, please,” Lester said.

“But you can’t even see it,” I said.

“But I’ll know,” he said. “I’ll know you did it.”

“Come on!” Jane said.

I looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. “Fine.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Hold this.” I handed it to Jane.

“Yay!”

Grace squealed, clenching Lester’s arm.

There was a wide space around me with no tables and no cadets. I took a little run down the aisle and did a front flip (to warm up) and then a standing backflip. Then I raised both arms in a finishing stance, just like I would have at a real game.

The entire dining hall exploded into applause, people whistled and cheered. I took a little curtsy, scanning the crowd for my cadet. He was watching from a nearby table, a lopsided smile on his face. A warm glow swelled up in me. I made my way back to Jane. She slapped me on the back, giddy with laughter. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” she said, chuckling.

“That was really something,” Grace said.

“But you—”

“I could feel it,” she said. “In here.” She placed her gnarled hand over her heart.

After dinner, Jane and I walked Grace and Lester back to their cottage. They were all still laughing and going on about my backflip. Jane said I should audition for Cirque du Soleil.

“Yeah. Right. Because I want to spend my whole life surrounded by freaks,” I said. “That’s my idea of a good time.”

They all looked away. Well, Lester was kind of half-looking at me, but he wasn’t seeing me, obviously. I thought about saying sorry to them, but then that would be like admitting that I was calling them freaks. So I said nothing. Lester began to whistle a sad little tune. We walked on as the light faded, the pecan trees casting long shadows over the grass.

“Well, this is our stop,” Lester said as his cane slapped against the wooden gate in front of their place. Jane and I said good night to them and went back to our apartment building.

“Want to come in for a tea or something?” Jane asked.

I yawned. “I’m actually pretty tired. I might just crash.”

She nodded. “You’ve had a big day.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“What time does the bus take us to the clinic again?”

“Nine a.m. sharp.”

“Early.”

“Breakfast is at seven-thirty.”

“Ugh. I might just grab something to go.”

“Well, I always say there are two kinds of people,” Jane said.

“Yeah, you said—”

“Morning people and night people.”

“Oh.”

“I guess we know which category you’re in.”

“What about afternoon people?”

“Afternoon people don’t stand a chance.”

“Huh?”

“Think about it,” Jane said. “Everything of consequence happens either in the morning or at night. Nothing important ever happens in the afternoon. People take naps in the afternoon.”

“The afternoon is Austin,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.

“Good night, hon.”

“Night, Jane.”

Even though I was super tired, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep. The bed was like a cement platform and the blanket was like a burlap sack. I tossed and turned for what felt like hours. I couldn’t get comfortable. I realized that I might never be comfortable again. There are those Buddhist sayings, “All life is pain. Life is suffering.” I’d never paid much attention to them before. But what if they were actually right? People say life is short. But what if they’re wrong? What if the truth is, life is really, really long? Excruciatingly long. Then what?

When I stepped out of my apartment the next morning, I was met by a yellow wall of fur. This scrawny yellow Lab swarmed my legs, jumping up to lick my face and barking in a friendly, needy way.

“Hey, buddy,” I said, kneeling down to pet him. He went crazy, panting and pawing my thighs and trying to lick my face. I laughed, pushing his head away.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Irma ran out of her office, waving her arms, yelling. “Beezley, get down here! You git! You no-good, filthy animal!”

“It’s okay,” I called to her. Beezley nuzzled my neck. “It’s actually kind of nice,” I said quietly. I petted Beezley some more and then stood up and started to climb down the steps. Beezley followed me every step of the way until we were down on the ground, and then Irma grabbed his collar.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He isn’t usually like this.”

“It’s alright,” I said.

She scolded him and he wagged his tail, panting and grinning.

“Did you sleep okay?” Irma asked.

“Yeah,” I lied. “Pretty good.”

“Anything you need?”

A new face. A new body, I thought. A dog who will love me when humans no longer can. “No,” I said. “I’m okay.”

“Okay, well, just let us know if you think of anything,” Irma said.

“Thanks,” I said. “Will do.”

Beezley’s tail slapped against her leg as she dragged him back toward her office.

I gazed after them for a moment, then made my way toward the mess hall for breakfast.

My first day of therapy at the clinic went pretty much as you’d expect. I got fitted for orthotics and was told by Charlotte, the physiotherapist, that I should wear them all the time inside the special support shoes they gave me. The shoes were brown and shaped like livers and literally the ugliest footwear in existence.

“So, you’re saying I have to wear these all the time?”

“All the time.”

“What about at the beach?”

“Definitely at the beach.”

“What about when I want to wear heels?”

“You shouldn’t ever be wearing heels, Abby.”

“But…I’m…I have to.”

“Why do you have to?”

“Because. I’m seventeen.”

“Look. This is what happens to people with nerve damage in their feet and ankles like you have. They step off a curb the wrong way and break their ankle, but because there’s no sensation, they don’t feel it. They don’t know they’re injured. And so they keep walking on the joint, doing more and more damage to it. In some cases, it gets so bad that the foot needs to be amputated.”

“Ugh!”

“That’s right. See, that’s what most people don’t realize about the effects of Hansen’s disease. It’s not the disease itself that causes people to lose digits and limbs, it’s the absence of sensation that’s the most dangerous.”

“Pain,” I said.

“Yes! Pain! Pain is a great gift. Healthy bodies experience pain. Pain keeps us safe.”

“I have pain.”

“I know you do, Abby,” she said gently.

“Just not in my feet and hands.”

She nodded. “That’s why you have to be so careful to protect them and keep them out of harm’s way. These shoes are one way of doing that.”

I knew I would still wear my flip-flops at the beach. I knew I would still wear heels to dress up. But I just nodded and said okay because I knew that Charlotte was trying to help me, and that’s what she wanted to hear. We talked about ways to protect my hands and fingers. Like don’t stick them into boiling water (duh!); be extra-vigilant when using scissors, knives, and sharp tools; wear mittens and gloves in the fall, winter, and early spring, even if you don’t think it’s cold, even if you think you don’t need to. Frostbite is the number one reason people with the disease lose fingers.

She gave me a stress ball with a yellow happy face on it and had me squeeze it twenty-five times with each hand. I was supposed to do that four times a day. Then Charlotte wrapped both my feet and hands in hot, white towels and gave them all a little massage. It was no Pink Orchid Day Spa, but it felt pretty nice.

“Thanks,” I said when she was finished.

“You’re welcome. I’ll just let you rest here for a few minutes.”

“Okay,” I said.

She dimmed the lights as she left the room and I dozed off. I don’t know how long I was out for. The next thing I knew, a short, round woman was knocking on the wall beside my head.

“What? Oh. Sorry. I—”

“Abby?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Dr. Gabriella Rodriguez.” She extended her hand and I unwrapped the towel from mine and we shook. Her nails were painted green and she wore chunky silver and turquoise rings on each of her fingers.

“Hi,” I said.

“I’ll be your counselor while you’re here.”

“Okay.”

“Would you like to step into my office?” It was one of those questions that’s not really a question at all. Adults are always pulling stunts like that. Pretending you have a choice when you actually don’t. Giving you a false sense of power so you’re not crushed by the reality of your situation.

“Uh, sure,” I said. I unwrapped the rest of the towels and followed her down the narrow hallway into a tiny office. It seemed more like a storage closet than an office. There were no windows. Just a bunch of those cheesy motivational posters that all the school counselors have. A poster of a guy climbing a mountain that said, “Go for the Summit!” A poster of a runner breaking through a finish-line ribbon that said, “Success Is Never Giving Up!” I thought these posters were cruel and totally inappropriate for Dr. Rodriguez to have in her office, considering that people with leprosy would probably never run a marathon or climb a mountain or do any of the other junk in the pictures, like fly in a rocket ship (“Reach for the Stars!”) or become a professional figure skater (“Live Your Dreams!”). I positioned myself in the chair so I wouldn’t have to look at them.

“Would you like a glass of water or anything?” she asked.

“A double shot of your best bourbon.”

She raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“Hehe. Just kidding,” I said.

“Umhm.”

I crossed and uncrossed my legs.

“So, Abby,” Dr. Rodriguez said. “How are you feeling?”

“How am I feeling? Really?”

She spread her arms as if to say, bring it on.

“I’m a teenage leper. I mean, does it get any worse than that?”

“Hansen’s disease patient,” she corrected.

“You know, I really don’t see what difference it makes what you call it. Changing the name of it doesn’t make it any easier. It doesn’t make it go away.”

Dr. Rodriguez sighed. “The word leper has a long, awful history, Abby. Think about that word; it’s a noun.”

What was this, English class?

“Yeah…?”

“So it objectifies people. It labels them as their disease instead of a person suffering from a disease. They become identified as nothing more than the disease. Think about it. We don’t call people who have chicken pox ‘chicken poxers.’ We don’t call people living with HIV ‘HIVers.’ They’re people first. The word leper robs Hansen’s disease sufferers of their identity. Someone might be a mother, a wife, a knitter, a golfer, an astronaut, a dog-lover, but if we call her a leper, we reduce her to just that one thing.”

“Exactly,” I said. “It takes over. It trumps all the other things.”

“Not necessarily.”

“You know what? I have the disease, okay. You don’t. I think that gives me the right to call it whatever I want. If I want to call myself a leper, that’s my business.”

“Fine.” She folded her hands together. “But please know that the L-word is not used here in the clinic or at Carville. And if you do use it, people will be deeply, deeply offended and hurt.”

“Okay. I get it.”

“Alright. So, Abby.” She reached for a pen and piece of paper and slid them across her desk to me. “I’d like you to make me a list.”

“Uh. What kind of list?”

“A list of all the emotions you’ve experienced since you were first diagnosed with Hansen’s disease.”

“Oh boy.”

She slid across the entire stack of paper. “Use as much as you want,” she said. “I’m just going to refill my coffee, and I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t worry if you’re not finished by then. Take as much time as you need.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Good.” She moved toward the door.

“Dr. Rodriguez?”

“Yes, Abby?”

“Would you bring me a coffee too, please?”

“How do you take it?”

“Lots of cream, lots of sugar.”

“You got it.”

Then she was gone, and I was left staring at the blank sheet of paper in front of me.

I sat for a minute, not writing anything. I reached across the desk and took a red Sharpie out of Dr. Rodriguez’s pencil cup. I clicked the lid on and off for a while. Then I started writing.

This is what my list looked like:

My Emotions after Diagnosis

- shock	- grief	- GROSS
- anger	- depression	- hopeless
- RAGE	- helplessness	- failure at life
- why me?	- mad	- rejected
- unfairness injustice	- UNCLEAN!	- heartbroken
- SCARED!	- wanting to die	- WHY???!!!
- fear	- HORROR	- afraid
- hate everyone	- sadness	- disgust

When Dr. Rodriguez returned, I was staring at the poster of the rocket ship, wishing I was on it, going to another planet, living a different life, any other life but mine. I wouldn’t even mind having another disease. Gonorrhea, maybe. Or some form of non-fatal cancer, even. Just not leprosy. Anything but leprosy.

She placed my coffee in front of me.

“Thanks,” I said. Steam rose from the mug. The mug had a rainbow on it and said “Where there’s rain, there are rainbows.” I wanted to throw it against the wall and see it shatter into Skittles.

“May I?” Dr. Rodriguez reached for my list.

I nodded.

She peeled it off the desk and sat down heavily in her chair. I watched her face as she read through it. She was half-smiling, which I didn’t think was very respectful since none of it was funny. She placed the sheet of paper between us and looked up at me. “I want to tell you that all of these emotions are completely normal and valid.”

“Okay.”

“Would you like to talk about any of them?”

“Not really.”

“What would you like to talk about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Anything at all. Doesn’t have to relate to Hansen’s disease.”

“Why did this happen to me?” I burst out crying.

I guess making a list of intense emotions somehow unlocks them. Tricky, Rodriguez. Real tricky.

She pushed a box of Kleenex across the desk and I grabbed a handful. I wiped my face and blew my nose. Dr. Rodriguez cleared her throat. “Have you ever come into contact with a nine-banded armadillo?”

“What? That’s a joke, right?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She explained that about a third of new cases of Hansen’s disease in the United States, the cases where people hadn’t contracted it from somewhere abroad, occur in Texas, Florida and Louisiana. They think because those states have a high population of armadillos. And, like I told you before, armadillos can transmit the disease to humans (and vice versa).

I sifted through all of my memories. I’d seen them dead on the side of the road lots of times, but I couldn’t remember ever touching one. I knew kids at school made fun of people who ate them. Rednecks ate them. Had I ever eaten armadillo meat?

My heart seized, remembering the church barbecue. “Oh, God!”

Dr. Rodriguez nodded slowly.

“I might have eaten one. But that was ages ago! I was only nine or ten.”

She nodded. “Hansen’s disease has a very long incubation period. Typically, five to twenty years.”

I stared at her. She blinked, meeting my gaze. This was all real and no one was joking. That was the unbelievable part.

“FML,” I said.

“Pardon me?”

“I want to see a lawyer,” I said.

“Why is that?”

“I want to sue the church for damages.”

“That’s an understandable response, Abby. However, I have to say, there would be no way to prove that you did indeed contract the disease that day.”

“It had to be that day. I’ve had no other contact with an armadillo. I’ve never met another person with lep—, uh, Hansen’s disease.”

“You could have met someone with an active case and not have known it.”

“But—”

“Abby. The important thing now is for you to focus on your rehabilitation and recovery.”

“But—”

“While it’s a perfectly legitimate response for you to be angry and want to seek retribution, I don’t think getting involved in a legal battle against the church is going to do us any good at this point.”

“Us?” Why was she saying us? It was me who had leprosy. Not us.

“I’m part of your recovery team, Abby. Everyone on staff here is. You’re not alone in this, okay?”

“Whatever.”

She sighed. “You’re not going to believe me right now, and I don’t blame you, but you are going to be alright. You’re going to survive this and you’re going to be stronger for it.”

“Yeah? Well, what if I don’t want to be stronger? What if I want to go back to being a little weakling? A little weakling who didn’t have leprosy.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not really an option, is it?”

“No mulligans,” I mumbled.

Dr. Rodriguez brightened. “Are you a golfer? There’s a beautiful course at Carville.”

I folded my arms and put my head down on her desk and cried. Fucking armadillos.

At dinner I sat at the reserved table again with Jane, Grace, Lester and the other temporary resident, Barry, who was a fat, balding man with orange plastic glasses that made his eyes look like enormous beetles. He was one of those men who could be twenty-five or forty-five, but it was difficult to tell. Life hadn’t been easy on him, that much was clear. I mean, obviously. He was here. He kept his hands in his pockets most of the time, but I saw them when he ate, and they were mitten-hands: normal thumbs with stubby fingers. Lester tried to engage him in conversation, but he only grunted and shoveled forkfuls of food into his mouth. You’d think he had gone weeks without eating, the way he pounded it. It was spaghetti Bolognese and watching the red sauce dribble down Barry’s double chin was making me lose my appetite. Sure, he couldn’t help having leprosy, I could forgive him that, but couldn’t he at least have table manners? His BO wafted across the table. I put my head down and wished to be anywhere but here.

Jane elbowed me in the ribs and I looked up. My cadet was walking by. He looked right at me and smiled. I smiled back and he smiled bigger. Maybe there was some of the old me left after all. The girl who could turn heads, the girl who could capably flirt, before she turned into a social pariah, a horror show.

Then his buddies at another table called to him. That’s how I learned his name: Scott. He nodded to his friends and went to join them. Jane whistled low through her teeth. “Somebody’s got it bad,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. I concentrated on trying not to blush.

“You have to find a way to talk to him,” Jane said.

“No.” I shook my head.

“Yes.” She nodded.

“Why would he want to talk to me? I mean, bad acne is one thing, but this?” I pointed to my puffy, bumpy pizza face. “This is on a whole new level.”

“Yeah, but maybe he also knows that you’re going to recover and that you’re probably not contagious anymore. Maybe he’s forward thinking.”

“I thought I was still contagious for another week,” I said.

“You’re missing my point.”

“What is your point?”

“My point is that you have to talk to that hottie!” She slapped my arm playfully.

“There’s no point.” I turned back to my spaghetti. “He’s probably just taking the piss.”

“Huh?”

“You know, making fun. Pretending to flirt with me to make his friends laugh. Besides, he’s a criminal. Isn’t that the reason these guys are here? To keep them out of juvie?”

“You’ve got too many excuses, girl.”

“Those aren’t excuses. Those are legitimate reasons.”

Jane raised a meticulously tweezed eyebrow at me.

“Jane. Look. It’ll never happen. You don’t meet someone you’re going to be in a relationship with at a lep—” I coughed. “At a place like this.”

Lester cleared his throat.

“Where do you think Grace and Lester met?” Jane said.

I looked at the old blind couple, snuggled up beside each other slurping their spaghetti, two peas in a pod. “That’s different,” I said.

“Why?”

I lowered my voice. “Because they both have it.”

Jane eyed my cadet. “He’s got some kind of problems,” she said with a shrug. “Else he wouldn’t be here, doing baby-army camp.”

I watched Scott from across the room. He tilted his head back and let out a big belly laugh at something another guy had said. I could tell by the way he laughed that he wasn’t an evil person. Was it possible that his smiles for me were genuine? That he wasn’t just doing it to be cruel? What guy in his right mind would want to date a leper? It was wholly ridiculous. And yet…There it was again. That glance. That grin. Dammit.

“What have you got to lose?” Jane said.

She was right. From where I was, there was no place left to go but up.

After dessert, Jane and I left together. I stalled as we were leaving the mess hall, pretending to tie my liver-shoe, so that I’d be going through the doors at the same time as Scott. I accidentally on-purpose brushed up against his arm as we passed each other. He didn’t jerk away like I’d expected him to. He turned to me.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he said, grinning.

“Hi.” I froze. “Ugh, I’m sorry. I hadn’t planned what to say to you beyond that.” Idiot.

He laughed. “I’m Scott.” He held out his hand. There was no hesitation. No flinching. No pulling it back and sliding it through his hair, saying, Psych! He knew that I had this terrible disease and he was going to shake my hand anyway. I took his hand. It was big and warm and strong.

“Abby,” I said.

“Great to meet you, Abby.”

I liked the way my name sounded in his mouth. I wished he would say it again.

“Dude! Let’s go!” His friend shoved him from behind and he was swept away from me in a sea of green and khaki.

His friends were razzing him, to be sure. I could almost hear them saying, Dude, that’s gross. You’re gonna get it from her! Are you stupid or something? What were you thinking? But he looked back at me and smiled, and I knew that whatever they were saying didn’t matter to Scott.

And not to me, either.