I’m on my way to have my blood drawn, and seriously, I may throw up or pass out. The first time they took my blood was when I had a hundred-and-two fever for almost a week and was exhausted so everyone thought I had mono. I turned white right after, so they had to put cold compresses on my head until the blood came back to my face.
The second time they took blood was before I had my tonsils out and I threw up all over the waiting room of the lab. It’s not that having blood drawn hurts that much. It’s just a sickening thing to see that maroon-colored liquid oozing out of your arm and filling those glass tubes and knowing it’s being sucked out of your veins like your life is being drained away.
But now, instead of dwelling on losing consciousness, I’m obsessed with replaying Amber’s speech. I can’t believe someone who keeps her thoughts under lock and key had the nerve to stand up and say what was on her mind. And also because what she said blew my mind.
Amber Augusta Bennington, the girl I always envied, the icon of beauty and perfection, stood up and told the whole class she envied me? That was a mind-blower. Unlike David, Amber didn’t take my picture. But what she did give me was her picture of me—in words, as hard to believe as it is for me.
So, crazy as it is, I go into the lab with a new feeling in my gut. I see myself from a different perspective. The word “empowered” crosses my radar screen, the brainy equivalent of hotness. Other people want to be like me? Even envy me? Before today, thoughts like that never entered my mind. While music blasts on my iPhone, I stretch out my arm and focus on being in another sphere.
You can do this, Allie.
The needle stings, but I deal. A few minutes later, I walk outside into the cool air of a blindingly sunny day. I think of Mel and Katrina. They both went through this. Now I’m one step closer. Next week is my appointment with the medical photographer. Those pictures will be one set I definitely won’t want to see.
David and I are supposed to get coffee after school, but we don’t. It’s one of those days when the sun is out, the temperature is mild, and it feels like the entire earth is in bloom. So many people are on the streets that it looks like the whole world canceled work.
“Let’s hang at the park,” David says.
For the next two hours, we revisit our childhood. We sit on the cool metal swings and see who can swing the highest. We wait in line with two-year-olds to have a turn going down the slide. We sit on the seesaw and each of us tries to bump the other one up into the air like a missile, and then we run to the parallel bars and use our hands to cross them, even though I can’t get to the end and David can.
“I’ll walk you home,” he says as we head for the path through the park. By the time we reach my block we’re starved, so we stop for pizza.
“Is it okay if I order pepperoni?”
He cocks his head to the side. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I thought the pepperoni might adulterate it.” I’m deadpan. “Maybe it isn’t the way purists order pizza.”
“It’s totally different from coffee with all the additives,” he says. The word comes out as if he meant cyanide. “Pepperoni is definitely allowed.”
It’s four thirty in the afternoon and we’re at Ray’s Pizza. We’re swiveling left and right on squeaky stools like we’re dancing in place to the music. We’re facing a wall of mirrors, and we’re watching the pizza maker using his clenched fist like a pottery wheel to miraculously spin out a pizza crust from a mound of dough.
David is not wearing eye makeup today. His long eyelashes are a curious mix of brown and blond like some of them got sun bleached, and some didn’t. He has amazing eyes. They’re brown flecked with green, and I swear they change color with his moods, getting deeper when he’s serious or angry, and almost electric green when he’s laughing or fooling around.
There’s a tiny yellow dot of pizza oil on the side of his lip that I’m tempted to wipe away as an excuse to touch him. He’s drinking Coke from a can and staring at me over the rim. The light beams he’s sending out are going through my pounding heart, every one a bull’s-eye, sending tiny shock waves through me. The corners of my mouth turn up.
Yes, I have a definite crush on him.
He smiles and nods ever so slightly while he drinks.
He knows.
I don’t have to say things for him to figure them out. We seem to communicate chemically on some deep, instinctual level.
Stealthily, he slides his camera out of his pocket and snaps my picture. Just one. No long continuous string of clicks. He looks down at it with a half smile on his face and holds the camera out to me.
I look at it and sit up straighter on the stool. “Not bad.”
“Wrong,” he says, shaking his head. “Beautiful.”