Death Spiral (11 page)

“Yeah, mate, there's just one problem,” Duncan says.

“What's that?” Jesse and I ask at the same time.

“It's like Anj said. I doubt you can just walk in on the medical examiner without an appointment.”

The lunch period must be almost over because the custodian's started to mop at the far end of the cafeteria. The group from the in-crowd table gets up and leaves as a single unit. Somewhere in that herd is a conductor whose winning smile and stellar personality coordinates the exodus, so not a single blond hair is out of sync or left behind.

“Well, I don't see how I'm going to get an appointment,” I say, slumping over the table and trying not to actually breathe the smell of Pine-Sol, garbage, and whatever food product was served today. “I can just imagine the call.” I clear my throat and talk into my fingers like a phone. “Yes, hello, I'm a sixteen-year-old whose mother supposedly died of a heroin overdose, and I don't believe it. I'd like to make an appointment to go over her autopsy report with the medical examiner.”

Duncan rocks his hand side-to-side in a not-too-bad-could-be-better kind of gesture. Then he breaks into his dimpled smile. “What about this? Good day. This is Dr. Bell from University of Glasgow.” He pours on the accent thick and lowers his voice. “I'm on sabbatical and I have an urgent medical matter I'd like to discuss with you concerning the toxicology report of a recently deceased woman who died while participating in a clinical trial.”

I nearly fall off my chair laughing. The voice and the content are so good that if I weren't looking right at Duncan, I'd believe the voice really did come from a doctor.

“Sounds good, there's just one problem,” I say, wiping a tear from my eye.

“What?” Duncan ducks as a cupcake sails over his head. The frosting glues the cupcake to the wall for a second before it slides to the floor like a slug leaving a trail of vanilla goo. Someone on the end of the cafeteria opposite the custodian yells “Food fight!”

“Say you do get me the appointment. What happens when I show up without Dr. Bell?”

“It's easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission,” Jesse says, tossing the rest of his sandwich into his backpack and kicking an orange that's landed at his feet back in the direction it came.

Anj rolls her eyes. “Which, you realize, is just a fancy way of saying this is a ridiculous idea and it'll never work.”

Jesse shrugs. “Never know unless you try.” A clump of spaghetti hits the wall to our right. “Now let's get out of here before this turns ugly.”

We slip out the back door just as a wall of teachers close in on the place.

A minute later the four of us are outside on the front steps where nobody will overhear the phone call. It's stopped snowing and turned into the kind of brilliant afternoon that looks warm and sunny when you're sitting in class dreaming of freedom, but the second you're outside you realize the sun's tricked you. It's the wind calling the shots.

“It's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” Duncan says, shivering in his t-shirt and jeans.

“C'mon, Dunc,” Anj moans, burrowing under his freckled arm. “You promised you'd help me make the Happy Cows flier.” She turns to me, her teeth chattering. “No offense, Faith. But Dunc really shouldn't be helping you. Impersonating a doctor is probably illegal. He could get deported or something. I mean it's not like I don't want to help, but—”

“Haud your wheesht, you!” Duncan interrupts. If he's speaking English, I have no idea what he's just said. I don't ask what he means though, and neither does Anj, but the vibe is enough to shut her up.

Jesse offers me his favorite orange pom-pom hat, which I gladly accept, pulling it low over my ears, while he whips out his phone and Googles the number.

“Here you go, Dr. Bell,” he says, handing the phone to Duncan. “The office of the Philly medical examiner.”

Duncan turns his back to the wind. We all freeze our butts off while we wait to see if Dr. Bell can land us an appointment.

A few minutes later he turns to us, goose bumps prickling his flesh, but smiling. “Pure deid brilliant! You have an appointment with Dr. Carlisle tomorrow morning at ten thirty.”

Anj drags Duncan back into school to work on her flier before I can say thanks. I'm about to follow and get to my locker before bio when a black Mercedes pulls up to the curb. A man with a buzz cut, wearing a navy jacket, tan pants, and shades gets out and starts walking toward us.

“Check out the FBI agent. You think we're under terrorist attack?” I say, pointing my chin toward the guy, expecting Jesse to laugh.

He doesn't laugh. He doesn't even crack a smile. He just stares at the guy and shrinks about two inches as he approaches. “Dad, what are you doing here?” he asks when the counterterrorist agent reaches us.

Doc?
I feel my jaw unhinge and straighten my skirt, as if straightening my skirt will cover the fact I'm wearing a five-dollar fake leather mini, orange pom-pom ski hat, and combat boots.

Doc gives a tight-lipped imitation of a smile and puts his hand on Jesse's shoulder. “What are
you
doing out here, son?” he demands, casting a disapproving look in my direction. “Don't you have class?”

“Yes…I mean, no,” Jesse stammers, wiggling out from Doc's grip.

“Yes or no? I assume you know if you have a class or not? It's not a difficult question.”

“It's lunch, Dad.”

At that moment the blond from the photo on Jesse's phone tumbles out of the car. She runs to Jesse and throws her arms around him. With her pouty red lips, tousled blond hair, and tight black turtleneck clinging to her curves, she's even sexier in person than in the photograph. I've gone rigid. A step away from rigor mortis. I can't do anything but stand there and stare like an idiot. Everything about me suddenly feels wrong—my height, my clothes, my dark hair, skin, and eyes.

“Hey, Tia,” Jesse says, returning the girl's hug.

“Hey, Tia, nothing.” She smiles and plants a kiss on his cheek, leaving a big red lipstick stain. “I was supposed to wait in the car and surprise you, but I couldn't stand waiting another second!” She nods in my direction. “Who's that?” she says, as if I'm mute and can't answer for myself.

“My friend, Faith,” Jesse mumbles, his arms still around Tia's stupidly small waist.

“Oh,” she says, ignoring me. “I have so much to tell you!”

“Tia got into Stanford,” Doc says, somehow managing to make this sound like a criticism of Jesse.

“That's great, Tia,” Jesse says, beaming into her pretty face. “I'm psyched for you.”

“I couldn't wait to tell you. Premed. I've already decided. I know I wasn't supposed to arrive until tomorrow, but when I found out I was so excited, I had to come a day early. Let's go.” She takes his arm and leads him toward the car. “Your dad's signing you out early. We're going to celebrate. He's taking us to the city, and tonight we're having dinner at Rittenhouse Square.”

Jesse peels himself away from Tia and comes back to the top step where I'm still standing. “I'm sorry, Faith.”

I soften. Sorry works. It's a start anyway.

“But I have to go.”

I feel like someone's knocked the wind out of me, but I play it cool. “Yeah, whatever,” I say, reaching for the lighter. “See you later.”

I start down the steps, my shoulders straight, trying to project a confidence I don't feel. Jesse calls after me, but I don't stop. I keep walking until Jesse, Barbie, and Doc are out of site.

Only then do I sit on the edge of someone's lawn and cover my face with my hands, my feelings tumbling from jealousy to hurt to anger. I have no right to be jealous. New Boy and I aren't a thing. I've known him for less than a week. The disappointed ache in my gut tells me this is a lie, though. How long you've known someone doesn't matter when you have a real connection—or thought you did.

But it's not just plain old petty jealousy getting to me. It's that New Boy's not who I thought he was. Why's he acting like such a shallow charmer and a flirt, not to mention a chameleon? He doesn't want to go to the Ivy League, but he'll do the interview. He doesn't want Harvard, but he won't tell Doc.

And then there's this business about Tia not being his girlfriend. What a cowardly load of crap. Uh, hello? You don't go around hugging someone who isn't your girlfriend like that unless you want to get arrested.

I thought I understood New Boy. Worse, I thought I could trust him.

Now I'm not so sure.

Eleven

I wave hello to Mrs. Dunnings as I walk down Aunt T's street. She throws me her usual sour look, and Rosy, the rodent mutt, growls. Great. Now even dogs are shunning me. The second I get home, however, I'm flooded with dog love as Goldie, Sam's Irish wolfhound-golden retriever mix, bounds across the yard to greet me.

“What are you doing here, girl?” I say, staggering backward as she flings her paws onto my shoulders and slobbers my nose.

Goldie barks and runs off to get her ball. It's then I notice both Aunt T's car and Sam's pickup parked in the driveway. Sam must be in between one of his overnight shifts at the fire station, but what's Aunt T doing home this early?

I throw the slobbery tennis ball Goldie's dropped at my feet and watch with serious dog envy as she chases it across the grass. Imagine being that happy just from chasing a ball. While Goldie settles on her stomach to chew her prey, I trudge up the porch steps, hoping Aunt T and Sam are busy in the bedroom or taking a walk, so I can avoid conversation.

No such luck.

The door to the kitchen is open. I see them at the table, Sam on the far side in jeans and a blue flannel button down. Aunt T, still wearing her name tag pinned to her blazer, sits across from him.

“Faith,” Aunt T calls as I tiptoe past the room. “Come in. I need to talk to you.”

I plaster on my happy face and head onto the stage for some playacting. “You're home early,” I say when I get into the kitchen. The false cheer in my voice makes me sick. I might as well add
golly gee, Auntie T, good to see ya!

I wait for Aunt T to explain why she's home early, but she just exchanges glances with Sam who gets up as if he'd been about to leave, which, judging from the barely eaten plate of food in front of him, I'm guessing he wasn't.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

He scratches the gold-gray bristles on his chin and looks at Aunt T again. “I'm taking Goldie for a walk.”

“But you didn't finish your food.”

“You can save it for me, Rock Star,” he says, tousling my hair. “I'll eat it later.”

I shrug. “If you say so.” I slip into his seat and reach for the basket of muffins that look far too healthy to taste good.

The second the front door closes, Aunt T turns to me. “I got a call from a company called PluraGen today,” she says. “Ring a bell?”

My hand freezes in midair. “I don't think so.”

“Well then let me refresh your memory. They're in charge of a clinical trial for a heroin addiction treatment called RNA 120, and you were at the clinic that's been hired to administer the treatment yesterday.”

“Oh, that PluraGen!”

I turn and focus my attention on a bird that's landed in the maple tree outside the window…too small to be a robin…wrong season for warblers…not the right behavior for a nuthatch…. My aunt's voice breaks into my avoidance strategy.

“Okay, Faith. No more looking out the window and evading the topic. You skip school. You go to a methadone clinic, and I only learn about it when I get a call from a biopharmaceutical company.
What
is going on?”

She sits down and strokes Felix, who's jumped into her lap, and waits for me to speak. Other than the lines of strain on her forehead, her expression is unreadable. Forget lying. She already knows I was there. The crystal prism hanging in the window casts rainbows of light on the walls and ceiling as I tell the story about going to Melinda's place, then to the clinic and meeting with Dr. Wydner.

“I never knew about the clinical trial until I talked to Melinda,” I say quietly. “It was some secret Mom was keeping from me.”

I squeeze the lighter and wait for Aunt T to have a shit fit about me digging around in the past and looking for an explanation for something she believes has already been answered.

“I knew,” she says instead.

I break off a piece of muffin and bring it to my mouth. “You knew what?”

“About the clinical trial.”

“What do you mean you
knew
?” I sputter, gagging on a walnut piece.

Felix jumps off her lap, and Aunt T gets up to pour herself a cup of coffee without answering. I look down, my face burning with shame. How could I lie to my aunt, the one person I have in the world? No sooner do I have this thought than anger swoops in to take its place. She knew about the clinical trial and she didn't tell me! How could she keep that a secret?

“Last summer your mother told me about a new drug treatment for heroin addiction,” she says, bringing her coffee back to the table. “She said it was in phase one of a clinical trial study and she was going to sign up, but insisted she didn't want you to know about it. She didn't want to give you false expectations. She made me promise not to tell you.”

“So you listened to her and kept it a secret, even after she died?” My feelings go supernova as all the anger, disappointment, and hurt from the past two months fuse. The combined energy is more than I can contain. I push back from the table and jump to my feet, sending the chair clattering to the ground and terrifying Felix, whose claws scrape the floor before he gets enough purchase to flee.

Aunt T's grip on her mug tightens, but her voice stays calm. “I told her you should know, but she wouldn't be persuaded. Once she died, I didn't see the point in telling you.”

“It's always a lie isn't it? First her and now you.”

“It's not a lie,” Aunt T murmurs.

“Oh yeah, and how do you figure that? Mom was farming herself out to some drug company to test a drug that's never been used on people before and nobody thought to tell me?”

“I tried to reason with her, Faith. You don't have to believe me, but I'm telling you the truth. You know how she was in the end, completely irrational. She wouldn't go to the doctor. She even stopped participating in the clinical study. Stopped getting her treatment. She said the drug was making her sick. It was another excuse, just like every time she tried to get clean and couldn't do it.”

For a second I think I see tears beading in Aunt T's eyes, but she turns away and when she looks at me again, her eyes are dry.

“Anyway, that's behind us.” She reaches to the floor for her work bag and brings out a folder. “I got a call from a woman in the legal department at PluraGen this afternoon. Apparently you made quite an impression on the doctor administering the trial.”

“What do you mean?”

“He put in a call to the company on your behalf. Look. They faxed me this.” She puts on glasses, opens the folder, and hands me a sheet of paper with the name PluraGen printed in the upper left hand corner.

The antique clock by the stove chimes the hour. I pick up my chair, drop back into the seat, and read.

Compensation Structure for Human Research Subjects in Clinical Studies

PluraGen will arrange for medical care for any injury or illness that occurs while participating in one of our clinical studies. Dependents of study participants who incur disability or death may be eligible for compensation.

“Apparently your mother checked the box on her application that said no dependents, so until you showed up at the clinic, you didn't exist,” she says when I look up. “I was listed as her emergency contact, so they called me to see if I knew anything about you.”

I crumble the edge of the paper in my fist. “She said I didn't exist?”

“Honey, it's not like it sounds. She told me they were screening applicants and preferred those with dependents stick to more traditional treatment methods. She was desperate. You know just as well as I do that she'd already been through methadone twice and both times relapsed.” She lets the word “relapse” hang in the air like a bad smell, then says, “The amount isn't set yet. There's a process, a review board, but my understanding is that this could be enough money to start a college fund. All you have to do is sign a waiver saying you won't hold the company accountable for what happened and that no further compensation will be sought and the money is yours.”

The energy from my outburst has dissipated, leaving me inert and contracted. “So I have to agree not to ask questions and not to sue if I want the money?” I ask, sinking down into the chair.

“I guess you could interpret it that way, but why would you have to ask more questions or think you'd have to sue someone?”

Instead of answering, I glance at the paper again, at the paragraphs of disclaimers and clauses that you need a law degree to understand, and slip even lower into my seat. “It sounds like they're trying to buy me off.”

Aunt T laughs. “What would a company be trying to buy you off for? That doesn't make any sense. You have to stop being so paranoid.” She regards me for a moment, still smiling, but when she realizes I'm serious, the smile disappears. “It's a good policy, Faith. This could be good money.”

“Yeah, well a lot of things could be good money—selling dope to kids for example, and I think we both agree that's a bad idea.”

“Okay, let's forget the money for the second. Let's talk about college.” She reaches across the table, but I retract my hand before she can touch me. “You're a bright girl. You should go to university. I want to help you with tuition, but you know I hardly have any savings as it is.”

I run my fingers over the lighter and sigh. The black hole of my brain sucks me in further. Maybe Aunt T
is
right. Maybe I am being paranoid. God knows I could use the money for college. Isn't that what Mom would want me to do? Take the money and move on with my life? But then again, why do I care what she wants? Why would I listen to her when she said I didn't exist?

“I'll think about it,” I say and excuse myself to my room just as Sam returns with Goldie.

***

It's not until dark that I'm ready to talk to someone. Jesse's out with Tia, but even if he wasn't, after what happened today I don't really want to talk to him. I don't actually even want to think about him.

I pop my knuckles trying to decide if I should call Anj. She already knows what's going on. The relationship would've combusted by now if it were going to. I pop a final knuckle and dial her number.

“Turn down the music!” she shouts into the phone when she answers.

“Uh, what?” I say, looking at the level-two volume of nature sounds playing on my boom box.

“Not you…. Ugh…Chrissy! Will you turn down your music! Sorry about that. My sister has a new CD of some boy band, and she's been torturing me all night by blasting their pimply voices at my door. My parents are out and I'm babysitting, so if I don't show up at school tomorrow it's ‘cause I killed my sister.” The boy band blares in the background, so loudly I can make out the words—
baby, baby, oh yeah, baby
—followed by a shouting match and a door slamming. “Oh-kay, that should take care of it,” Anj says happily as the background noise ceases. I imagine her sister tied up and gagged in a closet. I'm about to ask if everything's all right on her end, but she speaks first. “So what's going on?”

I stretch out on my bed and stare at the yellow water stain on the ceiling. “Well, remember the methadone clinic we went to the other day and the clinical trial I told you about?”

“Uh, yeah. It's not like I'd forget that.”

“Well, it turns out that Dr. Wydner, the doctor I met at the clinic, is running the trial for some big company called PluraGen that manufactures the drug.” I quickly explain about the contract, the waiver, and the money before Chrissy can free herself from her hypothetical bondage and the music can start again.

“Sweetpea, that's great!” she says when I finish talking.

“You don't think it sounds a little…” I pause and search for the right word. “Suspicious?”

“Suspicious? Girly, you watch too many movies. Maybe this is just something good, and you don't have to ruin it by turning it into something bad like the world's some big, sinister plot against you. Maybe it's time to look ahead and stop looking at all the bad things that are behind you.”

A wave crashes on the CD player. The ocean stirs my agitation. I get up and start to pace. I stop in front of the window and gaze at the star-filled sky, at that silvery light from millions of years ago that's traveled through the vacuum of space to reach us, a cosmic reminder that no matter what, we're always looking back.

“Maybe,” I say, “but I still want to talk to someone at PluraGen before I sign. I was thinking of going over tomorrow morning before my appointment with the medical examiner. I Googled the company. They're not that far, just in King of Prussia. You think you could give me a ride?”

“I hate to go to King of Prussia and not visit the mall, but I can't miss first period.” She sighs dramatically as if the no-shopping-versus-driving-me conundrum is whether or not to nuke an enemy nation. “But I suppose I could take you and do retail therapy another time.” Before I can thank her, she says, “But there's one condition.”

“Let me guess? I learn the Arawak language on the way?”

“Gosh no. Not the whole language,” she says, sounding shocked. “Just five or ten words. I'll bring a vocab sheet in the car.”

For the first time all evening I smile. “Fine. A few words and you've got a deal.” I give her Aunt T's address and we hang up.