Extraordinary October. Diana Wagman
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on the only cot holding her stomach and groaning. Luisa was definitely faking—she stopped suffering long enough to wink at me—but Ms. Raynor listened to the kid vomiting, looked at me, then looked at Luisa and said, “I’ll call your parents.”
“No, my sister,” Luisa said. “She’s the only one around. My folks are at work.”
I didn’t think Luisa had a sister.
“Fine.” Ms. Raynor picked up the phone.
“I can use my cell,” Luisa smiled, weakly. “You’re so busy.”
“Thank you.”
Luisa immediately started texting. Grinning instead of groaning. As Raynor turned to me, Luisa gave me a secret thumbs up.
The nurse frowned at my one bare foot. “What’s wrong with you?”
I noticed the hem coming out of her uniform and her hair falling out of her bun. Her eyes were red and dripping. As if everything about her was unraveling.
“Something bit me,” I said. “Or maybe a bee sting?”
“You’re not supposed to be barefoot in school.”
“I wasn’t. I mean it crawled inside my boot I guess. I itch all over.”
Raynor took my foot into her lap and peered at the bottom. I was glad I’d cut my toenails.
“I don’t see anything,” she said. “You say you itch?”
“Like crazy. Everywhere.”
Her breath on the bottom of my foot was agony. My leg was twitching in her lap and I was scratching my arms so hard I was leaving red welts.
“Could be body lice,” she said.
Body lice? I’d had head lice in first grade. Now there was body lice?
“Or mange.”
Wasn’t that what stray dogs got? “Wait a minute,” I said.
She inspected my arms, then lifted my T-shirt and peeked at my stomach. “No rash,” she concluded. “Could be viral. Or an iron deficiency. Still, I think you should go home.”
“Really,” I said. “None of those sound very good.”
She leaned toward me and whispered, “Are you pregnant?”
“No!” I practically shouted. Unless you could get pregnant from a fantasy life.
The puker came out of the bathroom wiping his mouth. Poor little guy, probably a 7th Grader. He tried to smile at me and his teeth were bright white in his truly green face. I smiled back. I felt bad for him but the throw-up smell was overpowering.
“I’ll go wait out front,” I said.
Raynor sighed. “I’ll call your parents. Fetterhoff, right?”
“Right.” I was surprised she remembered.
“I know your dad,” she said. “Say hi to him from me.”
Outside, Luisa was sitting on the front steps waiting for her ‘sister’ and spinning a Frisbee on one finger. She was beautiful and ultra fem, and for some reason she always had a Frisbee. She was also kind of a friend of mine. She seemed to turn up wherever I was and more than once had steered me out of trouble. Last winter I’d been coming home late and I got off the bus in the dark and I was sure someone was following me. Someone big. Someone creepy, although I never saw him (or her). Out of nowhere Luisa had driven by and picked me up. And over spring break I’d gone to the “party of the century” at someone’s house and these older kids had crashed. I don’t drink—thanks to my dad being an alcoholic—and this guy kept trying to get me to have a beer. Just a sip. Come on. Just one. It got harder and harder to say no and then Luisa arrived, put her arm around me and told the guy to crawl back under his rock. That’s exactly what she said, “Crawl back under the rock where you came from, troll.” And he did go away. She and Jed, her boyfriend forever, gave me a ride home that night too.
I sat down beside her on the steps. She smiled at me, tossed her shiny dark hair over one shoulder and crossed her long smooth legs. I heard the rumble of dual headers and Jed’s cherry red, souped-up classic Charger turned up the driveway.
“Your sister sure has changed,” I said.
Luisa laughed. “I know, right?” She tossed Jed the Frisbee through the open window and scampered into the car. They zoomed away.
A cool wind blew. People say you can’t tell which season it is in Los Angeles, but I knew it was definitely spring. There was a freshness in the air, the promise of warmer days to come. Daffodils in the grocery store and even a few in people’s yards. I liked sunshine. I liked being able to be outside and go barefoot year round. I took my other boot off. I turned my face up to the sun. I wasn’t wearing a sweater and the breeze soothed my scratched, red skin. And then I realized I didn’t itch anymore. Not at all. Not my foot, my back, or my arms. It had stopped as suddenly as it began.
I was contemplating going back to class when my dad drove up. His car was not cherry red nor was it classic, it was just old and needed a wash. Which it would never get unless my mom or I did the washing. Plus I couldn’t help but notice it was crooked, definitely tilting lower on the driver’s side. I guess I’d never really looked at it coming toward me before. It made me sad to see the car like that. It hit me again everything that was wrong with my dad. He was fat. Truthfully, he was obese. Way over 300 pounds. He met my mom and he gave up drinking and then they had me, and in the early pics he looks pretty good. But he was just substituting sugar for alcohol and now, eighteen years later, it had caught up with him. He couldn’t walk more than ten feet—worse than that he could hardly breathe. He couldn’t fit in a seat on an airplane or in a movie theater. He had to stop working and our family finances had seriously suffered. My mom wanted him to get the lap band, but he promised he’d do it himself. He told us over and over he got sober by himself, he could go on a diet. He could do it. He could give up sweets. And then what, I wondered, take up heroin?
“Hey Pumpkin.” He hollered out the window.
I hated his nickname for me—another October reference. I waved and gathered my stuff, trudged down the steps and into the car. “Hi,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”
He backed down the school’s long driveway because it was too uncomfortable for him to crank the wheel enough to turn around. Through the windshield I saw the mystery guy with the blue eyes come out the front door with Principal Hernandez. They shook hands and seemed to be agreeing about something. My dad screeched to a stop to avoid a car behind us, and Blue-Eyes looked up. I cringed, hoping he didn’t see me, but it looked like he did because he turned away from Hernandez and watched me until we went around the corner. Great. Just great.
“So Birthday Girl, what’s wrong?”
My eighteenth birthday was four days away, but my dad had been calling me Birthday Girl for two weeks. It was a way bigger deal to him than it was to me. He kept reminding me that soon I’d be able to vote, buy cigarettes, and join the armed services. So what. At that particular moment in my life, I have to admit I wasn’t very excited about it. Another milestone I’d be celebrating with just my parents.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I think something bit me.”
“An itch, huh?” It seemed to interest him. “Bad?” I nodded. “Really bad?” I nodded again. “Where did it start?”
“My foot. Then everywhere.”
“Your back?”
“Everywhere, Dad. I mean everywhere.”
He nodded, even smiled. “Fascinating.”
“To you, maybe.”
“Have you had lunch?” he asked.
“It’s 10:00 in the morning.”
“If your stomach’s not