Sweetblood (9781439108741) (13 page)

Maybe my bottle of insulin went bad. I return to my room and do another blood test.

439.

That's good. It's coming down. The insulin is working. I
check the clock.
7:21
. Ten minutes to catch my bus. My life is ruled by digital displays.

I dress. Hmmm. Shall I wear black, or black?

I choose black.

As I am pulling on a pair of black jeans my eye catches the chrysalis hanging over my desk. I take a closer look. It's darker now, like the skin of a ripe avocado. I can see the shadow of striped wings through translucent green. The gold dots are brighter.

I think that something will be happening soon.

Going to school when I'm sick is a lot like going to school when I'm not. The major difference is that usually when Mr. BoreAss talks chemistry it makes my head go numb. Today, he makes my head pound. In fact, it feels like a bunch of insane, invisible dentists are drilling tiny holes in my skull, all of them making that dentist drill sound that is all Es:

EEEEeeEeEEeEeeeeeeeeEEEeEEEeeEEEeeeeeeeeeeeEEEE…

“Lucy?”

I look up.

“Are you all right?” BoreAss's eyes are boring into me. What did I do? Was I making dentist-drill sounds? Have I turned into a bat? Did I remember to get dressed before I came to school? Everyone in the classroom is looking at me. I stand up, knocking my books to the floor. Something is horribly wrong. I don't know what it is but somehow I know I want a glass of orange juice worse than anything in the world. I step away from my desk and say, “I'm a little thirsty….”

Then I am a cartoon coyote falling from a cliff, only instead of the bottom of a canyon, it is the linoleum floor rushing up at me.

Bad Girl

I rise from the dead in the nurse's office. My mouth is full of orange-flavored sweetness and Mrs. MacDougal, squinty-eyed and intense, is bending over me like a vampire about to enjoy a meal. I push her away and sit up. A knot of pain rattles my forehead. Everything is in hard and hurtful focus.

“Please lie down, Lucy,” she says. “An ambulance is on the way.”

“Don't need an ambulance. I'm okay.” I wipe my chin with the back of my hand. It's all sticky.

“I'm afraid you've reacted to your medication,” says Mrs. MacDougal. “I gave you some glucose syrup.”

“It's called
hypoglycemia,
” I say. “No big deal. I'm fine now.” Except for my pounding head and a terminal case of embarrassment. Passing out in front of everybody. I knew I should have checked my blood sugar again before class.
How many units did I take? Thirty? Too much, too much.

I want desperately to be at home, in bed, wrapped around my own pillow with my headphones on listening to Patti Smith or Johnette Napolitano, two women who know what it's like to be as pissed-off as I am.

“Please lie down….”

“I'm fine, I told you.” I stand up. MacDougal looks frightened. I
hate
it when people are afraid of my diabetes. She thinks I'll fall down in her office and she will be held responsible.

I hear a siren.

“No way I'm going to the hospital,” I say, starting for the door.

Mrs. MacDougal grabs my wrist and gets in my face with her squinty eyes and tough-love voice. “Young lady, I want you to sit down right now. You've had a nasty fall, and you clearly do not have your diabetes under control. You are going to the hospital.”

I jerk my arm away from her and push the door open and run down the hall.

“Lucy!” MacDougal calls after me but I ignore her.

Lockers like metal coffins line the empty hallway. If I keep moving my feet I will arrive at the front foyer. The glass doors will lead me out onto the street. The street will take me home. I am almost to the foyer when a rhinoceros appears before me. It is Gruber, the vice-principal, in his rhino-gray suit. He wears gray like I wear black. His arms are out, his legs bent, and his head is tucked down between his shoulders. Reliving his days as a high school football hero. Is he going to tackle me?

“Hold on there, Ms. Szabo,” he says in his gravelly voice.

I dodge to the left but he is too quick for me; his right
arm wraps my waist. I strike out, hitting him with my fists.

“Let me go you pervert!” I yell. He pins my arms to my sides. “Get your hands off me! Rape! Rape!” He scrunches up his face at my screaming but won't let go. “I'll sue! Help! Help!”

The hallway is filling with people. I see Dylan. I see Fiona Cassaday.

“Please calm down, Ms. Szabo,” says Gruber.

I suck in a deep breath and shout, right in his stupid little ear, louder than I have ever shouted anything before.

“LET GO OF ME!”

Gruber shudders, but I am still his prisoner.

Of course, when they get me to the hospital all they do is give me about a thousand dollars' worth of tests I don't need then send me home and tell me to monitor my blood glucose more closely. Like I couldn't have figured
that
out…

My mother's knuckles are white on the steering wheel, and the windshield wipers are slapping back and forth, and the world is gray on gray.

So I had an insulin reaction. She should be used to it by now.

I'm never going to school again.

Talk about embarrassing. The whole school watching me wrestle with Gruber, screaming hysterically. The paramedics hauling me off. I'm sure they all think I've been institutionalized, wrapped in a straitjacket, locked in a padded room, doped up on lithium and Prozac. Maybe electroshocked and lobotomized, too. Actually, I think I'd rather have a lobotomy than go back to school.

My mother is talking. She talks a lot when she's nervous. I tune in to see what she's babbling about.

“—Rita Steiner said her daughter is doing
so
well on her insulin pump….”

I was afraid of this: Sandy Steiner's mom has gotten hold of my mother and they are plotting to hook me up to a machine.

“I'm not going bionic,” I say.

She looks over at me. “Honey…?”

Now she wants me to explain bionic. Forget about it. I slump deeper and stare out into the pouring rain.

Shrink-Wrap

The shrink's bookshelves are full of toys and games. He has dolls and trucks and toy guns and robot action figures and board games and puzzles and a lot of things I don't recognize. I pick up something that looks like a Ping-Pong paddle with a hole in its center. I am looking at it when the door opens and Richard Carlson, M.D., steps in to the room.

He looks just like you would think: average in every way. I can't even tell how old he is. Somewhere between thirty and fifty. Sandy hair. Regular features. Average weight and height. He is wearing blue jeans to show me how casual and hip he is, and a tweed sport coat to show me he's a dork. He is holding a notebook with a green leather cover and a big friendly smile that didn't come with his face. I'm sure he practices it in front of a mirror.

“Hi,” he says, extending his free hand. “I'm Dr. Rick.”

He has a very soft, dry handshake.

“Lucy Szabo.”

He looks at the paddle in my left hand. “Do you know what that is?” he asks.

“No.” I put the paddle back on the bookshelf.

“Any guesses?” He is standing a little too close to me.

I back off a step. “It's a Ping-Pong paddle with a hole in it.”

“And what do you suppose it's for?”

“Is this part of the evaluation?”

Dr. Rick laughs, a little too loud. “Just a question.”

I do not like this Dr. Rick. “Why don't
you
tell
me
what it's for?”

“Tell you what. Why don't we sit down?” He directs me toward the two leather easy chairs.

“Which one is yours?” I ask.

“Take your pick.”

“Why? So you can analyze my choice?”

“So that you'll be more comfortable. Are you uncomfortable?” His eyes are lit up. I sense that making patients uncomfortable is what he does best. He enjoys it.

I choose the chair that I think
he
prefers. I do not like this Dr. Rick. I am glad that there is a coffee table between us.

“So, Lucy,” he says once we are settled. “I understand you've been having some problems at school.”

“Actually, they've been having some problems with me.”

He writes something in his green leather notebook. “Could you explain what you mean by that?”

I figure I should just cut to the heart of it. “Look, it wasn't my idea to come here. I'm getting some bad grades and I had an insulin reaction at school, I've got an English teacher with no sense of humor and a vice-principal who thinks he's still a football star. Other than that, everything
is fine. No problem. The only reason I'm here is to get the brain police off my case.”

Dr. Rick looks a bit startled. I've scored a point.

He says, “I hope you don't view me as one of the brain police.”

I say nothing. Let him work it out for himself.

He clears his throat. “I think I understand something of why your teachers have been having trouble.”

“What, I'm too surly and mouthy?”

“Lucy, I'm not going to beat around the bush with you.”

“Good. I hate bush beaters.”

“You're not a little kid anymore. You're making choices that will stay with you for a long, long time—”

BLAH BLAH BLAH
.

“—so let me put it to you as directly as I know how. What happens in this room today, and on any future visits, is far more important to you than it is to me. I get paid either way. Whether or not this is a waste of your time is strictly up to you.”

“Good,” I say.

He gives me a couple seconds of his superior look, then nods crisply, as if he's won his point back. “All right then. You say your parents and teachers are having some problems with you. Is there anything you can do to help them?”

“Help them what?”

“With the difficulties they're having with your behavior.”

“It's not my
behavior
that's bothering them. It's who I
am
.”

“Everything they know about who you
are
is based on what you
do
.”

This Dr. Rick has more moves than a spider monkey.

“Nobody wants you to change who you are, Lucy—”

“You're wrong about that.”

“—but maybe you can make some adjustments that would make it easier for them.”

“I could become invisible.”

He smiles with his mouth but not his eyes, then sets his notebook aside and sits forward, leaning his tweed elbows on his denim knees. In a way he reminds me of Wayne the butterfly man—except that Wayne, for all his weirdness, never made me feel like a
subject
. This Dr. Rick just wants to
evaluate
me. He wants to take me apart, like I'm a machine.

“Anything on a more practical level?”

I don't say a word. I'm not opening any doors for this Dr. Rick.

He opens his notebook. “Let me ask you something, Lucy,” he says as he makes a note. “What's the best possible result that you can imagine coming out of our meeting here today?”

I think for a moment. “I go home and you tell everybody that they should leave me alone.”

He nods slowly. “All right. What's the second best possible result?”

“Giant asteroid crashes into Earth.”

Dr. Rick sighs.

I almost feel sorry for him.

I refuse to talk to my mother about Dr. Rick.

“I'm sure he'll send you a complete report,” I tell her. I go upstairs to my computerless room and shut the door. The chrysalis is getting darker. I don't know if it's dying or hatching. I kick off my boots and crawl into bed with a book I picked up at the library. The book is called
The Stranger,
by Albert Camus. I picked it because I like the title and it is very short and the author is French.
Was
French. I think he's dead. I'm on page two when I hear the doorbell ring. A few seconds later my mother calls my name.