Skin (24 page)

If this is crazy thinking, well, it’s the best I can do.

And so the regimen begins. I buy tan and brown and olive turtlenecks. That way if some of the cream gets on them, it doesn’t show that easily. Black and white were disasters. Luckily the weather has changed, and turtlenecks make sense now.

I put the seahorse stamp in my bottom drawer, along with the green ink. And I get a star stamp and blue ink. So that takes care of the back of my hand.

I wear my lipstick, of course.

And I paint the worm on my face with Dr. Ratner’s miracle cream.

I am completely hidden. And better dressed than ever before. And I’m the one who thought vitiligo victims were ridiculous to go into hiding. In fact, I thought the word
victim
was melodramatic. I knew nothing.

I march to school in disguise. I march home in disguise.

No one knows.

For now.

In the first days Devin asked me a dozen times why I dumped Joshua. But then she stopped, like she just forgot it. She’s too busy with Charlie. They text each other maybe twenty times a day. Maybe nine hundred. She doesn’t have time to think about me.

Just like I was too busy to think about her the whole time I was with Joshua.

Guys do that. They slide into a girl’s life like a thick layer of honey, blocking off the air.

Honey. I could smear myself with honey and go lie outside and see if Dad’s fox comes to eat me.

He’s still around, that fox. He ate Sarah’s dead mouse—when?
God, it was three weeks ago already. I put it on a brick in the backyard, and the next morning Dad was so excited. He told all of us he saw the fox run up to the brick, snatch something, run halfway back to the bushes, stop to chew up the mystery meal, then disappear.

Mamma asked who put a brick in the middle of the yard. But I wouldn’t fess up. I don’t know why. These days I hardly talk, but I did then. I was happy then. I was with Joshua.

Anyway, Dad now leaves treats for Foxy on an irregular basis. He’s convinced himself that the fox will come consistently if the food appears less than consistently. He thinks any wild animal will instinctively resist a regular food source that obviously isn’t natural, otherwise they’d risk becoming tame, and tame foxes have no place in this world.

I don’t know how Dad arrived at his reasoning. He’s wrong. In Biology we’re now on evolution and heredity, and Mr. Dupris told us canines are the earliest known mammalian carnivores. Mr. Dupris turns out to love foxes. One of his favorite experiments is by these scientists from Harvard who are studying foxes in Siberia. They’ve found out foxes can be tamed. No one expected that—they thought domestication had been bred into wolf-descended canines over centuries. But now they think a dog’s sensitivity to
human emotions has nothing to do with biology. Maybe it’s just that when you aren’t afraid of someone, when you don’t have to fight them, you can understand them better. At least if you’re a canine. Maybe this fox has Dad all figured out, and he knows that if he keeps coming around, Dad will put out food now and then.

Poor Dad. I think it’s the fox who has tamed him. But I haven’t told him; it would mean talking.

I’m grateful to know all this about foxes. I do my biology homework and then I do extra—extra reading, extra surfing the Internet. Biology is my lifeline. When I’m reading biology, I can pretend I’m still me.

I often watch for the fox now, though I’ve never seen it. I stand in the kitchen, drinking my new favorite tea. It has toasted rice in it, and the smell almost calms me. I bought it when I went with Rachel, of all people, to Chinatown in Philadelphia last Saturday. She’s taking cooking and she needed ingredients for a Szechuan dish. I don’t know why I accepted her invitation. Probably just out of surprise. Rachel is on a definite path: she’ll be a science major in college, then go to medical school, then be a neurologist. Her father decided all that before she was born. So where this cooking class fits in, I don’t know. Most of the kids who take it are not on the college track. Maybe it’s just ’cause she loves to eat as much as I do, or as much as I used
to. She talks about food like some people talk about love. Whatever. That’s where I found this tea. It’s Japanese and it’s become my habit.

But Rachel is not my friend. I don’t talk to her.

Devin and I walk to school, and others join us, but I’ve taken to eating a bagel as we walk, so my mouth is too full to talk.

I walk home with Owen on Wednesdays, but I make a point of not speaking. If he’s noticed, he hasn’t given any sign of it. He simply talks the whole time. I don’t know why he doesn’t simply walk alone. Being with me is no better.

And I don’t know why Rachel invited me that Saturday. But when I didn’t accept her next invitation, she didn’t ask again.

Joshua texts me every night. It takes all my self-control not to answer. Once I wrote him a letter. Not an email message, a real letter. On lined paper. I kept changing my wording and having to start over again. Computers really are better than longhand. But I didn’t want something electronic. I didn’t want something repeatable. It was a onetime message. And I thought I finally got it right. I thought the words on the paper would make him understand, and make him feel better. Because I know he has to be a mess now. And that kills me. But then I ripped it up.

I can’t go there. Just seeing there’s a message from him
makes my chest squeeze so hard it hurts. Joshua Winer will never make me laugh again. We won’t share food. We won’t babysit Sarah. We won’t… well, we won’t anything. There will never ever be anyone like Joshua again.

I plague myself with questions. What if I told him? Would he dump me because I’m not beautiful? I don’t think so. I think he’d do something worse. Stick it out with me and have to listen to all the nasty things people are going to say and just swallow his anger.

And his embarrassment.

Good God. I will never, never, never make Joshua embarrassed. Whatever is going to happen to me—and that’s the real kicker in all this, I have no idea how far this will go—but whatever does happen, Joshua must not feel the fallout. This is my problem, not his.

And he deserves someone better than a blotchy mess.

I didn’t contact the Changing Faces support group. I was going to. I went on the Internet to check them out. Then I found a blog called “I have vitiligo” and the big headline on it was “Vitiligo and Suicide.” Teens wrote in about feelings of depression, thoughts of suicide. One guy called it “white leprosy.” I found a YouTube video about a young man who committed suicide because he felt his vitiligo made him look like a monster. And I stopped.

I feel sorry for people who think about suicide. I really
do. But I don’t want to know other people with vitiligo. Not until I’m strong enough to be able to help someone else, and not so weak I could be dragged down by someone else. So, for now, no support groups.

But I’m not alone. I have a fox. No boyfriend. No life. Just a fox. A fucking invisible fox.

TIGHTS, LEOTARD, BLACK SNEAKERS, black scarf. My face is blackened. I have on ears and a tail and whiskers. I pad into the kitchen where everyone else has gathered.

“Oh.” Dad looks at me and his mouth stays open just a little. “Pina, you’re so… grown-up.”

“Yeah, a grown-up pussy.”

“Dante!” Mamma clears her throat. But her eyes are on me, not him. “Well, Pina, you are eye-catching.”

“No shit,” says Dante. “She’s going to collect the catcalls tonight.”

“That’s enough, Dante.” Mamma glares at him.

“I don’t really understand why teenagers go trick-or-treating,” says Dad.

“The guys do it for candy—and to get an eyeful of girls who flash their bodies, like Sep’s doing tonight. You’d be amazed what low-cut costumes the most mousy girls put on.”

“Your sister’s isn’t low-cut,” says Dad.

“Nope. But Slut’s still strutting her stuff.”

“Stop it, Dante.” Mamma drops onto a chair. “Just stop that kind of talk. Well, Pina.” She shuts her mouth, though. Nothing else to say?

All right then. “If everyone is through, I’d just like to say thank you for the compliments.” I take my tail and twirl it at them. “You’ve got your ordinary clothes on, Dante. Going as the imbecile you are?”

He pulls an inflated red balloon out of his paper bag. “Ta da.”

“An imbecile with a balloon.”

“My ball of fire.” Dante smiles. “I look like an ordinary soul, but I throw fireballs.”

“Pathetic,” I say. And I take a paper bag with handles and go to meet Becca and Rachel. Devin is off with Charlie tonight, but we three girls will prowl together.

For no reason in particular, I go out the back door and turn my face to the sky and stand there a long time just letting the twinkling stars mesmerize me. The air is crisp
but the cold we had all week has gone suddenly. No need for a jacket, which is good, because Dante is right: tonight I strut my stuff. Defiantly, in fact. Being in costume is liberating. Everyone’s in costume tonight, not just me.

And I’m not just me. I’m a cat. A witch’s black cat. If anyone crosses me, I’ll put a pox on them.

I’m happy.

Stars are good.

Halloween is good.

I lower my gaze and happen to glance toward the rear of the yard when, oh, something goes across the grass. It’s the fox! Our fox. And he’s bigger than I thought. I bet he comes up to my knees. The very tip of his tail is white. He bounces through the dewy blades over to Mamma’s fishpond and drinks. After a long while he straightens up and listens a moment, turns and looks right at me, then trots through the bushes.

He’s gone.

He wasn’t more than twenty feet from me.

Scraggly and wild. But he wasn’t the least bit afraid of me.

I twirl around with both arms extended and the paper bag flying. This will be a brilliant night, I know it.

Becca and Rachel are waiting on the corner when I get there.

“Late,” says Becca. She’s wearing an Eagles football uniform. She looks very butch. But I don’t think Becca is butch in the least. Maybe that’s why she can dare to dress like that—she’s got nothing to prove.

“I have a fox excuse.” This is not true. I am late because I stood looking at the stars for a long time. But a star excuse is nowhere near as sensational.

“What’s a fox excuse?” asks Becca.

“Foxy. He lives in our yard.” That is also probably not true. But who can blame me if the excitement of the moment makes me exaggerate?

“They have fleas,” says Becca.

Which is true. Red foxes typically take over woodchuck dens when they raise a litter. And woodchuck fleas torment them till the cold weather kills them off. But I don’t tell Becca it’s too late for fleas. That would mean talking more than I’m willing to.

“It’s too late for fleas,” says Rachel. Of course. She knows as much about foxes as I do—we’re both in Mr. Dupris’s class. She clasps her hands together in front of her chest. I’m not exactly sure what she’s dressed as, but it’s some sort of giant bug. She seems absolutely teeny inside those flopping wings and dangling antennae. Like a twelve-year-old. “Can I see him, too?”

“He doesn’t stay in one place long.”

“Don’t be mean, Sep,” says Becca. “If you’ve got a fox, share him with Rachel. She’s an animal lover, like you.”

And Rachel’s looking at me, all hopeful.

“My dad has seen him a number of times,” I say. “In the morning. But this is the first time I’ve seen him. Honest. I don’t know when he comes around.”

Rachel nods. “It must have been a fluke, anyway, because foxes aren’t nocturnal. Something must have disturbed him.”

“Maybe passing trick-or-treaters,” says Becca. “Come on. Let’s go gather the loot.”

“I have something for you first.” Rachel reaches in her bag and hands us each a little white half-moon.

Becca smells it and wrinkles her nose. “What is it?”

“Char sin bao. It’s Chinese.”

“Translate,” orders Becca.

“Steamed bun with barbecue pork inside. Eat it.”

Becca frowns. “Are you crazy, feeding us right before we’re going trick-or-treating?”

“I made them miniature so we wouldn’t fill up.”

“You made this cute, smelly, little thing?” says Becca.

“Go on. Eat it.”

We do.

Rachel’s pointy face squinches in worry, watching us.

“They’re great,” says Becca in surprise.

“Delicious,” I say. And it’s true. I haven’t enjoyed eating since I went into hiding, but right now I feel like I could eat a dozen of those little half-moons.

“All right, now we can trick-or-treat.” Rachel actually leads the way to the first door.

We get candy. All sorts. And packages of microwave oven popcorn. And one house hands out old comic books, classics. They’re in terrible shape or they’d be worth a mint. We eat as we go. I glance at the time; it’s only 10 p.m. and I’m already puked out.

“Becca, is that you? Nice costume. And who’s that cute little buggy and that hot cat?”

It’s Tom Clements. He’s on the football team. Trailing behind him are Martin Roper, Bill Brant, and Joshua Winer.

I stand stock-still. My body is leaden.

They’re all talking but Joshua. He’s looking at me. I manage to turn my head toward the street.