Poser (12 page)

We went wild! GOAL! And by Frey, a defenseman! It was almost too good to be true. Frey skated calmly back to his position like nothing had happened, but I could tell he was happy. Chan was body-slamming him, falling down, picking himself up and body-slamming him again. Chris and I leaned over the boards, banging them with our sticks like real hockey players.

Shay looked like murder at center ice. A real team player, I thought. A real buddy.

And can you believe it? We popped in two more goals that period! And Shay didn't score either of them! It was 4–3 as the final minutes ticked away.

I was actually on the ice for the last few minutes. Frey needed a rest, and Chris's asthma was acting up from all the excitement, so Coach called on Spin. The Spinster. The Spinmeister. Old Spineroo. I clambered out of the box, my heart pounding.

“What?” screamed Shay, flying past. “We're bringing on the losers now?? I'd take a dead body out here over that guy!”

I ignored him. You had to. I'm happy to say that I navigated over to my position without falling down. For me, that was quite an achievement.

I turned to see Danny McRea shoot from the blue line, a weird, rolling shot that hopped over Mr. Sharma's glove. It was a tie! 4–4! I prayed the puck would stay in their end for a while. There was only a minute and a half left. Our guys were scrambling to keep it near the teachers' net, and on the teachers' bench, Mr. Bruseker was practically bursting a blood vessel.

“Change lines! CHANGE LINES!” he screamed. “SUB!
SUB
!”

Out of the scrum, with seconds left on the clock, Ms. Borelli flipped the puck to center line, and Mrs. Walker tore after it. She managed to push it farther down toward the defense line. Jacob, the other defender, lunged toward it and missed, sprawling on the ice and sailing right into the boards.

The next bit is kind of a blur.

I was the only thing left between our net and the puck. How scary is that? I never realized defense was such a tense position. I always thought you were kind of safe, tucked away at the back, away from the drama at center ice.

Mrs. Walker skated toward the puck, panting, her eyes wild behind her thick glasses and her grill. Everyone was screaming—Shay, Mr. B., the guys on the bench, even some kids in the crowd who weren't throwing popcorn at each other.

I gritted my teeth and skated toward Mrs. Walker with my stick out. As I got closer, I saw that her freakishly fast skating was totally out of control. I saw panic in her eyes as she tried to slow down.

She came right at me like a tank on ice.

Like I said, this part is kind of a blur, but people have told me what happened. We crashed into each other in a flailing ball of arms and legs and sticks. And as we fell, Mrs. Walker's skates slipped completely out from under her, and her arms came straight out in a desperate attempt to balance herself.

And her stick crashed against my helmet. Upward. Hard.

There were two cracking sounds.

The first was my old helmet's rusted grill tearing off.

The second was my nose breaking.

* * *

I lay there bleeding all over the ice. You know the worst nosebleed you've ever had? Multiply that by about nine thousand. It's hard to imagine that a nose can bleed that much blood and still stay a nose, but, yep, as it turns out, it can. I've been told by kids who were up in the stands that all that blood looked very dramatic against the white ice. Not only did Mrs. Walker's stick break my nose, it split my lip. Lots of blood.

I heard people yelling. Someone—I think it might have been Mrs. Walker—was sobbing and saying, “Oh, NO! Oh, NO!”

I could see a circle of heads looking down at me. They all seemed to be talking at the same time.

“You saved the game, Spin! You saved the game!” That was Chan, sounding nervous.

“Wall of Pain, Spin! Wall of PAIN!” That was Chris Fedorek.

“Don't worry, Spin, we'll still go for pizza. We'll
still...go...for...pizza
.” That was Frey, booming right next to my ear and squeezing my arm painfully hard.

Did I mention I was bleeding all over the ice? There is a ton of blood in a head, I discovered. You'd think it would deflate or something, but it didn't. The blood that didn't gush out onto the ice welled up in my mouth, leaving that awful, metallic blood taste.

A lot of the guys started to look sick and turned away. Mr. Bruseker power-skated over to me with an ice pack, spraying me with shaved ice as he came to a perfect power-skating stop. Mr. O'Donnell and Ms. Fong struggled onto the ice in their boots and covered me with coats until the ambulance came.

I lay there with my shaved head and my bloody broken nose and my bloody split lip and thought that I'd done a pretty good job of making sure I couldn't model with Chad and Clarissa the next day.

And I'd done it without even trying!

I started to laugh. Somehow, at that moment, it all seemed very, very funny. Hilarious, even. I laughed and shuddered and blew bloody nose bubbles.

“He's shaking! He's having a seizure or something,” Danny blurted out.

Shay, who gets very faint at the sight of blood, I learned (interesting piece of information to store away), peered down at me. He looked horrified.

Then he leaned in closer and said, “What the...he's, he's LAUGHING!”

Shay's voice sounded really high and nervous and
amazed
.

He turned to the other guys and shrieked, “He's lying here with his face beat to a pulp, bleeding all over the place, and this
sick freak
is LAUGHING!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

NOT EVEN LYING ABOUT BEING IN THE HOSPITAL

I've lied about being in the hospital so many times that it actually feels kind of familiar.

I lied about getting my appendix out. And my tonsils. And my wisdom teeth. And there was that unfortunate episode of the fake-infected ingrown toenail, but that was a mistake. That was before I became a semiprofessional liar. I kept forgetting which foot it was supposed to be and limping on the wrong side. I look back on that lie and just shake my head.

Stick to the basics, that's what I've learned. Anything out of the ordinary gets noticed. Too much detail is suspicious too.

Anyway, the hospital was pretty much like I'd imagined it. The beds with wheels, the smell of medicine, the doctors with white coats, the long, boring hallways painted in those hospital colors. Hospital blue-green. Hospital peachy-beige.

But being a patient wasn't at all what I'd imagined. I'd always thought it would be an exciting, dramatic adventure with doctors and nurses rushing around, praising you for your bravery, and friends and family offering you sympathy and candy. But it's actually more about needles, the smell of cleaner, boredom, lights on at night, bloody nose dressings and mushy food.

I will never eat applesauce again.

Oh, and the nurses weren't all in white. I thought that was some kind of a law or something. Turns out, they wear hoodies and uniforms in all sorts of colors and patterns. Who knew?

I was in a room with four beds. Slow week for sickness, I guess, because there was only one other kid and me. His name was Brandon, and he had just had an operation. He mostly slept and moaned. His mom and dad were really nice, cheerful people, so it couldn't have been anything serious.

Mom and Macy were both sitting beside my bed when I woke up. Macy looked terrible, huge and blotchy and red, with mascara and tears running down her cheeks. She had her hand over her mouth. Mom was very pale.

“Beauty Boy!” they both exclaimed with relief as my eyes fluttered open. I honestly think they expected me to be dead.

But hey, I promised you at the beginning of the book: nobody dies. It would really suck if I lied about that, wouldn't it?
And then, I died. From all the blood loss. The end.

“Ssshhhh,” I said, pointing over at the next bed.

Poor old Brandon's going to be telling his family that he shared a room with “Beauty Boy” and his family will say “That's nice, honey” and then seriously worry about him and talk to the doctors about adjusting his medications. Mom stood up and pulled the big curtain around my bed, like that would keep Macy's booming voice in.

“Oh, look at your poor, beautiful face,” Macy whispered hoarsely, starting to cry again. Macy's whisper was another person's shout.

I got Mom to find a mirror, and I looked at my face. I did look pretty rough. Actually, I looked like a dollar-store Halloween mask, like something that would scare small children. I had two black eyes. The rest of my face was one big blackish-bluish bruise, and there was a line of black stitches down my swollen upper lip. My nose was swollen to probably twice its normal size. My chin had a big red scrape. Oh, yeah, and I was bald.

“How do you feel?” Mom whispered. She looked very worried.

I tried to speak, but my voice was just a croak. Mom held out a glass of water with a straw in it. Drinking was quite a challenge, because I had to breathe through my mouth. I dribbled disgustingly.

“You had emergency surgery on your nose and some stitches on your lip, and you got a concussion,” Mom explained as I snorted and tried to suck through the straw. She teared up. “Oh, BB, you're a mess!”

“I seem to have a slight scrape,” I said. Well, actually, what I said was more like “Oy sheem doo hab a shlide shgrabe,” but Mom and Macy understood. They burst out laughing.

It was a lame family joke. My dad, apparently, once came in from some yardwork with a huge cut all down his arm, only noticing it when Mom screamed that he was bleeding. “I seem to have a slight scrape,” he said and went off to get fourteen stitches. Anyway, Macy stopped crying so loudly.

“This boy,” she declared to the entire hospital, wiping her eyes on a grubby hankie, “this boy is such a brave guy! The bravest, most generous guy in the world!” Good old Macy. She's kind of clued out about a lot of things, but she's really not so bad.

“Thanks, Macy,” I croaked. I was barely understandable, but I'll translate for you. “Sorry about the shoot.”

Macy looked guilty and turned away.

“Luke,” said Mom, “Macy's new client is going to cover that shoot for you. We're done with shoots. Everything's settled. No more modeling. Macy had no idea how you really felt, and neither did I. Tell Macy this is what you want, because she needs to hear it from you.”

“Oh, yeah, it's what I want, Macy. Seriously,” I said. Then I thought I'd better make this completely clear while I was a sad and beat-up kid in a hospital bed. “I never want to model again. Ever again. Ever.”

Macy leaned over and grabbed me in a very painful hug. She's a strong lady, and did I mention I was bruised and had lost a
ton
of blood? I felt weak when she let me go, and I kind of slid, bonelessly, back onto the pillows.

“Oh, Beauty, we had such great times! So many! You've been such a STAR! Remember being King of the Toddlers? Or Santa's Cutest Elf?”

Does the humiliation never stop?

Yes, at three years old I was crowned King Toddler in the Eastview Mall fashion show. We still have the tiny cape and crown to prove it, if you can actually imagine I'd make something like that up. And, yes, little-known Christmas fact: I was also Santa's Cutest Elf when I was seven. Ho, ho, ho.

Macy sat down heavily on the side of the bed, jarring my bruised arm with the IV in it.

I winced, but she was busy reminiscing.

“Oh, so much to remember, Beauty!” she sighed, shaking her head, the tears welling up again.

I wasn't concentrating too well, because she'd made such a slant in the bed that I was struggling not to roll right into her.

“I guess I gotta say sorry, BB,” she said, looking down at her huge hands, clasped in her lap. “I thought your getting all crabby lately was just...you know... teenage stuff. Attitude. Hormones! I thought you were just frustrated with all the piddly little shoots, waiting for me to get you that big campaign that you deserved.”

My mom, who was standing by the window, said, “We should have figured out why you were so unhappy, Luke. I'm sorry too.”

I'd have appreciated all of this much more if I hadn't been bumping and jolting to Macy's every move.

“But all good things come to an end, as they say, right?” said Macy. “You'll always be my little BB, and I'll always be your auntie who loves you...” She kissed my bald head, got up and stumbled from the room.

“Ummm, what was all that about?” I asked.

“Macy's feeling bad,” Mom explained, sitting down on the chair by the bed. “Models by Macy is really taking off. She's already got that new client. I think you know him. Cody something-or-other. Anyway, she's decided to move to Toronto. Where the action is, she tells me. But I think she feels like she's letting you down.”

Letting me down? Letting me
down
? The relief was huge. I hoped Models By Macy would be a huge, huge success. I hoped Cody would do a movie and make himself and Macy a million bucks. I told Mom to tell Macy that I wished her all the best. And the funny thing was, I did! She worked hard. She had a big heart. So long as I wasn't involved, I
did
wish her the best.

“Mom...” I said, struggling to sit up. My head pounded alarmingly, so I inched back down onto the pillow. “Mom,” I whispered, “what about us? What are we going to do without the modeling money?”

“We'll be fine,” Mom said, smiling. She looked happy and relaxed. I was glad to see it. I mean, her only child had almost died from blood loss, but I was glad to see she wasn't dwelling on it.

“I've had quite a day. I went to Red Plush this morning—had my résumé with me and this little speech planned about my retail experience and my business-admin course. Red says, ‘Hey, Spin's Mom, you ever seen
All About Eve
? Pull up a chair, sweetie.'”