Forever Changes (2 page)

With traffic and parking and showing her little card and walking through all the concerned parents with their babies in the lobby (and Brianna knew some of them had kissed a salty baby and were praying, please God don’t let it be my kid), Brianna had forgotten all about calculating the impact of a Pontiac Sunfire on the surface of the Mystic River by the time she reached her doctor’s office and sat down to wait.

She was working on a Sudoku puzzle when suddenly Leila, her social worker, was looming over the edge of the paper.

Leila had on so much foundation that she smelled of it.  She was wearing a necklace with a huge gold circle that sat right at her collarbone.  Her hair was cut short, and she’d had her tips frosted.  On her left wrist, she wore a blue rubber “BREATHE” bracelet, like Brianna and her friends Melissa and Stephanie and about half the people in the waiting room here wore.

“Brianna!” she said. “We’ve really missed you at group!  Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.  I’ve just been busy.”

“Well, that’s  fantastic!  Because I know a lot of times after a big hospitalization like that, a lot of people get discouraged,  but I really admire the way you dove back into life.  You’re really courageous, you know.”

Brianna forced a polite smile onto her face.  “Well, thanks.”

“It’s my pleasure.  So listen, as you probably remember, we do have  a group meeting today, and I don’t know if you–”

“Can’t do it.  Cheerleading practice.  Our new coach thinks we should have double sessions just like the football team, and since I’m already missing the morning session, I can’t miss the afternoon too.”

Leila’s eyes got all moist and she said, “Cheerleading practice.” She paused for a second, took a breath, and said,   “Keep fighting, Brianna.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m always fighting,” Brianna replied in a flat voice.

If Leila noticed, she didn’t show it.  She said, “You certainly are, kid.  Well, listen, I have another appointment, but it’s really great to see you. I know you’re busy, but I am here to help you.  Feel free to call me anytime if you need something, or even if you just want to talk.”  Behind Leila’s professional warmth, Brianna could sense how Leila fed on kids’ pain and fear like a vampire, how much she needed for sick kids to tell her how scared they were.  It was creepy.

“Well, I do have a question, actually.” Brianna said.

“Shoot.” Leila said.

“What do you think happens when we die?  I mean, where do you think we go?”

She wasn’t really sure what made her ask that, but she thought, maybe if Leila told her anything that makes sense, she’d forgive her for being a creepy vampire,  for telling me to keep fighting, and maybe she’d even give group another shot after all.

Leila looked stunned.  “Uh, well, I, uh, of course, every tradition has it’s own … I mean it’s not really my role to … well, Brianna, I guess the best thing I can say to you is that I try to  focus on today, on living my life to the fullest while I’m here, and let the future take care of itself.”

Brianna smiled, told Leila thanks and thought, easy for you to say, lady.

Josette in phlebotomy.  Thank God.  Josette was an artist, whereas stupid Kathy couldn’t find a vein with a map and always left Brianna’s arms bruised.

“How that boyfriend of yours?” Josette asked as Brianna’s blood flowed through the thin plastic tubing and into the first of several vials.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Brianna said, smiling in spite of herself.

Josette eyed her critically. “Well,” she said, bandaging Brianna’s arm, “You’re better off.  Trust me.”

Brianna laughed and wished Dr. Patel had half the bedside manner Josette did.

On to Dr. Patel, who praised her for doing so much better.  She’d hated Dr. Patel ever since the beginning of summer, when she stood over Brianna’s bed and told Dad, “Unfortunately, she’s really taken a turn for the worse.”

First of all, duh, she wouldn’t be in the hospital with an oxygen hose up her nose if she hadn’t taken a turn for the worse.  But what had really hurt was the disappointed tone Dr. Patel had used.  Like Brianna had really let her down.  If she had been able to speak at that point, she would have told her that she’d done everything right—well, almost everything. Anyway, she’d pretended she wasn’t chronically ill and she’d kept a positive attitude, all that stuff that was supposed to keep you from dying, and it hadn’t worked.  It turned out Brianna’s lungs hadn’t cared about her attitude.

So Brianna had lain in the bed with a terrible attitude, an attitude that only got worse as the days stretched into weeks. Only Melissa and Stephanie had come to visit her every day, and all those other people, people like Brian or Cathy or Emma who would smile in her face and write stuff in her yearbook like, “I’m always there 4U” turned out not to be there 4 her at all.  She knew it was incredibly boring  to be stuck in a hospital room, but only Melissa and Stephanie had gotten how their being bored for one hour made the other twenty-three bearable for her.   It turned out that being popular was just about as useful when things got bad as a positive attitude.  When you’re at the very edge of existence, you’ve got only the lungs you were born with and the people who really love you, and everything else is
i;
 
i
for illusion,
i
for the square root of negative one, an imaginary number.  You can pretend it exists to solve certain problems, but the bottom line is that it’s not real.

And yet, here Dr. Patel was praising her for doing better, and she couldn’t help but be proud of herself. It was as if getting better was a decision Brianna had made, as if Dr. Patel were the teacher, and Brianna had studied real hard for the recovery test and gotten an A.

         At home, Brianna flopped on the couch, hoping to make up some of the sleep she’d lost this morning.

She drifted in and out of consciousness until the dialogue on TV faded into background noise, and she sank gently into a  nice nap.

Her phone yanked her back up into groggy consciousness.  She looked at the screen.  Ashley.  Annoyed, she hit the button to silence the phone and rolled over on the couch.

Except now she couldn’t sleep.  Ashley hadn’t visited in the hospital, of course—she couldn’t put herself at risk like that—but she’d sent mail every day.  Postcards or letters on Hello Kitty stationery. She always wrote the right thing, because who knew better what the right thing was than someone who’d been there? So instead of, “You mean so much 2 me,  we will B friends 4 Ever,” Ashley had written stuff like, “Went swimming in the lake today and swallowed so much gross water I ended up puking. Mom had a complete fit,” and “I’m actually really nervous about starting at BHS, even though I know it’s going to be a blast.”

And Brianna had repaid her by ducking her.  Why?  She told herself it was just because Ashley was so much younger than she was, but that wasn’t really it.  No, the real reason she hadn’t been calling Ashley was Molly.  Because with Molly gone, that put Brianna in the Molly role and Ashley in the Brianna role, and if that was true, then Brianna would be following Molly into the ground.

She knew it was stupid.  School was starting tomorrow, and she’d have to see Ashley in the hall, and she pretty much had to call her.  Ugh.  Once I make this call, she thought, I’m back in it, back to being the CF mentor, back to trying to be brave to set a good example for Ashley, back to feeling like I let Ashley down whenever I have a setback.  She thought about how she would have felt if Molly had stopped calling her.  Bad.  She dialed Ashley’s number.  She felt guilty when she heard the delight in Ashley’s voice that it was her calling.

“Oh My God, Bri, how are you?”

“Great.  I just got back from seeing our pal Laxmi Patel.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I needed the okay to get back to school, and of course a little pat on the head for doing well.”

“I hate that,” Ashley said.  “She acts like you’re a puppy who learned a new trick if your numbers are good.”

“Yeah,” Brianna said, “and she acts like you’re a puppy who peed on the rug if  they’re bad.”

Ashley laughed.  “Hey, so we had our freshperson orientation this morning.”

Brianna remembered parading through the halls in small clusters, getting schedules, and feeling sick and terrified the whole time.  “How scared were you?”

“I wasn’t really that scared. I mean, I’ve heard so much about it from you that I … yeah, okay, it was really scary.”

“Well, the good thing is after a week you’ll be just as bored and grumpy as the rest of us.”

“I can’t wait.  Hey, can I ask you about my teachers?  We got our schedules today.”

“Sure.” Brianna was enjoying this.  As much as she didn’t want to feel like Molly, it was kind of fun to feel like an expert. Even though it did put pressure on her, it was nice to be looked up to, even if she felt like she hadn’t done anything to earn it except be born earlier.

“Okay.  So for English I have Ms. Beekley?”

“She’s nice, but hard.  She makes you read a ton.”

“Well, that’s okay.  What about, uh, Ms. Kelemanik for math?”

“I don’t know.  She must be new.”

“Okay.  History with Mr. Sangermano?”

“He’s really nice.  But, you know, it’s still History.”

“I like history.”

“Whatever floats your boat.  What about science?”

“Stevenson?”

“I loved his class.  He hates boys, so they always get called on and the  girls always get good grades.”

“Cool. I can use an easy A.”

“Yeah, I think Stephanie got a B minus just for showing up in his class.  Best grade she got all year. Of course I had to actually do the homework, but that plus showing up got me an A.”

“Cool.”  Brianna gave cafeteria advice, and locker room advice, and homeroom advice.  Ashley wanted to know what Brianna was going to wear for the first day, and Brianna stopped short, realizing that this was the first year she could remember that she’d given absolutely no thought to that question.

“I don’t know.  I guess jeans and a t-shirt or something.  I honestly haven’t thought about it.”

“My mom promised to take me shopping tonight, so hopefully I can find something cute.  Except I now have these very attractive dark circles under my eyes from not sleeping because of the new meds, so I’ll have to find something that matches those,” Ashley said.

“I’ve been there. I keep hoping they’re gonna put me on something that gives me boobs, but no luck so far.”  Ashley laughed at this, and they said goodbye.

Well, Brianna thought, I’m a good person again. And it hadn’t really been that hard.  Except that she remembered calling Molly after orientation, and the way Molly had laughed, and her nasty sense of humor, and Brianna started to feel really, really sad.  She quickly called Melissa, asking, “Hey, what are you wearing tomorrow?”

School hadn’t changed.  The cafeteria floor still held its usual 8,040 blue-and-white linoleum squares, the door to the part where you got your food was still leaking foul smells, and, as always, there were a few kids eating those nasty muffins they sold in here in the morning.  Brianna spotted her friends.  Stephanie looked good even with her blond hair at shoulder-length, the shortest Brianna had ever seen it, and Melissa looked amazing with her long brown hair and her perfect body, flapping her hands around, her blue rubber bracelet wobbling on her arm as she did so.  And then, Brianna thought, there’s me, the stick figure who looks like a freshman.  One of these things is not like the others … Brianna got to the table and found that Stephanie had, as usual, eaten all the chocolate munchkins, so  Brianna popped a powdered one in her mouth while Melissa had one of her typical freak-outs.

“Oh my God,” Melissa said between big gulps of coffee, “Somebody remind me why I’m taking pre-calc.  I’m so nervous.”

“So you can, quote, study something besides cosmetology and not end up like my mom, unquote,” Stephanie said.

“Oh my God, Bri, promise me you’ll help me with math,” Melissa said.  “Please, it will wreck my college chances if I fail it.”

“I don’t know, Brianna might have her hands full, um, tutoring Todd,” Stephanie said, smiling.

Suddenly Melissa grinned.  “Tutoring?  Is that what they call it now? What exactly did you make sure he learned?”

“Okay, Mel, what did you learn in your
lifeguard training
this summer? I’ve never really heard of anyone being resuscitated in quite that way before.”

Melissa laughed.  “Hey, he was breathing hard at the end, okay? Seriously, Brianna, please, I’ll do anything, just promise me you’ll help me with pre-calc so I can go to college.”

Brianna nodded her head and grinned at her friend.  “Okay.  But only if you can get this bitch to stop eating all the chocolate Munchkins.”

The girls laughed. They watched as some dorky short guy in khakis and a tie came wandering toward their table.

“Who’s that?” Stephanie asked.

“New teacher,” Melissa said.  “You can tell by the terror in his eyes.”

“Why’s he coming over here?” Stephanie said.

“I don’t know,” Brianna said.  “But let’s do the party trick.”

Melissa and Stephanie nodded as the dorky short guy arrived at their table.

“Good morning!  I’m Mr. Michaels, new in the English department, and I guess I’m on duty here this morning,” the new teacher said, smiling.  His smile seemed genuine.

Melissa and Stephanie mumbled good morning, not returning Mr. Michaels’ smile.

“So, uh, I just wanted you ladies to know that you dropped a couple of Munchkins on the floor there, and I just wanted to make sure you pick them up before homeroom, because, if I can speak frankly for just a moment, the lunch ladies here are terrifying, and they’re going to take it out of my a—um, hide if the caf is a mess after I’m on duty.”

They laughed, because the lunch ladies were really mean, and because the guy had almost sworn on the first day of school.

“I’ll just get those,” Brianna said, and as she leaned over to pick up the glazed and jelly-filled Munchkins, she knocked her purse off the table with her elbow.  The cheap magnetic clasp popped open as it always did when Brianna knocked her purse over.  The contents spilled out onto the floor, and Brianna bent down to start picking stuff up.  She watched as a dime rolled about fifteen feet across the floor and  wondered if there was any way to figure out how fast it had to be moving in order for it to stay rolling on its edge.  She didn’t even know what the variables were—maybe she’d learn that in physics.

Mr. Michaels froze.  Brianna knew she was being mean, but it was kind of funny watching him get flustered, as he faced two bad choices—either stand there and watch her pick stuff up by herself or violate the sanctity of a teenage girl’s purse.   Finally he bent down and said, “Here, I’ll give you a hand.”  Brianna kept glancing at Mr. Michaels as she pretended to fumble with change.  He was unfazed by the tampon, but made no move to pick it up.  She gathered the nearby change and picked up her phone.  She saw Mr. Michaels furrow his brow a little bit, wondering if he should take it away as the rules said he should but nobody ever did.  Then she saw the furrow get even deeper as he saw the cigarettes and Slimodex pills.

Brianna saw Mr. Michaels taking her in—the small, undernourished body, the slight cough that escaped her mouth at that point—and looking back at the pills and cigarettes and deciding that this poor anorexic smoker was really ruining her health.

“Okay, well, I’ll just be on my way now.  Nice to meet you all,” Mr. Michaels said as he practically ran to the other side of the cafeteria.

They waited until he was a respectful distance away and then just started laughing.

“He didn’t even let us whisper how worried we are about you,” Stephanie said.

“Yeah, I think we freaked him out,” Brianna said.  She tucked the two-year-old pack of cigarettes and unopened Slimodex pills back into her purse.  She imagined what it would be like to be the girl she pretended to be—deeply screwed up and destroying her body instead of having it destroy itself.  It didn’t seem all that bad.  Because if you were screwing up your own body, then at least you could stop.

They quickly got over the thrill of running the party trick on Mr. Michaels, and the conversation turned to college.  Brianna didn’t want to talk about college; actually, she didn’t even want to listen to anyone else talk about college.    But she  didn’t want to go walking through the hallways either.  She grabbed another Munchkin.  If you assumed it was a perfect sphere, you could probably calculate the volume, which might be interesting, but not as interesting as calculating the surface area.  Because then if you knew the size of one grain of powdered sugar, you could estimate how many grains of powdered sugar it took to cover the entire surface of the Munchkin.

She was so intent on the Munchkin that she didn’t even notice that Melissa and Stephanie had stopped talking.  They were giggling, and when Brianna looked at them, their giggles turned to laughter.

“What are you calculating this time?” Stephanie said.

She could tell them, but they’d just make fun of her.   “How early I have to get here to get a freaking chocolate Munchkin,” she said.

“Will you just get all chocolate next time?” Melissa said.  “Why do you even do this?  We always throw out the plain ones, but you keep getting the assortment.”

“But if I get a box of chocolate munchkins, I’ll eat them,” Stephanie said.

“Yeah,” Brianna said, “That’s kind of the idea.”

“For you, maybe, but some of us actually gain weight when we eat this stuff,” Stephanie said.  If it was anybody else, Brianna would have bitten their head off, talking about how she’d trade a big butt for being able to breathe, but with Stephanie she merely rolled her eyes.  Stephanie was tens of thousands of munchkins away from being fat.  In fact, if you gained a pound for every 3,500 extra calories you consumed, it might be possible to calculate how many munchkins Stephanie would have to eat every day to get fat if you knew how many calories were in each one.  Brianna might even go into Dunkin Donuts and ask, because a scrawny teenaged girl asking how many calories were in one Munchkin would make everybody there think she was anorexic.

“That’s twisted,” Brianna said.

“No,” Melissa said, “I think the bear claws are twisted, not the munchkins.”

“Ha ha,” Brianna said flatly.  Stephanie punched Melissa in the arm.

“Mel, that was a sucky joke even for you,” Stephanie said.

“Yeah, well.  Good thing I’m cute,” Melissa retorted.

The bell rang, signaling the official start of the school day. Reluctantly, Brianna got up and faced the long march to homeroom.  Lots of people smiled and waved, but since the crush was on in the halls, nobody really had time to stop and talk, which was good.

Jim, Mike, and Kendrick stood in the hallway.  As girls walked by, they said either “Yes” or “No” really loud.  “Pelletier!” Jim called out, “We need a new nose tackle this year!  You goin’ out for the team?”  This joke never got old to him.  One way or another, he’d make it several times a football season.  “Pelletier!” He’d call out, “We need you!  Rico’s out for the season!”

And Brianna, understanding that this was a gesture of affection, that it meant that Jim thought of her differently than he thought of all the other girls, had never been annoyed by it before.  Today, though, it just seemed tiresome.  Yes, Jim, she wanted to say, it certainly is amusing that I am underweight due to my fatal condition.  You know what else is funny?  My pancreas doesn’t function properly!  And, get this—the tissues in my lungs are shot to hell! Yuk yuk! Instead she smiled politely and said, “Okay, Jim.  See you at practice.”

He laughed like this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.  She turned away as some chubby goth girl Brianna didn’t know walked by in black miniskirt and black tights around her very thick legs.  “Oh No!” Jim and Mike and Kendrick all said, then started laughing.

Brianna turned into homeroom and wondered if these guys,  her friends, were always this dumb and cruel.  Had they gotten worse, or had she just gotten a clue?

Ms. Vincent, looking bored and obviously calculating how many hours she had to continue teaching until she could finally retire—at 6 hours a day and 180 days a year, Brianna figured maybe 5,400 more hours—handed Brianna her schedule, saying without enthusiasm, “Welcome back.  Any questions on your schedule need to go through guidance.”  Nice to see you too, Brianna thought.

She looked at her schedule.  Brainiac math, normal everything else.  She wondered how that would look to MIT if she did decide to humor Dad and go to their info session.

She guessed she’d probably look pretty good. She’d been getting letters and brochures from all kinds of engineering schools since she’d taken the SAT, and she knew she could squeeze out a killer “I’m a courageous kid with CF” essay without even really trying.  If she wanted to.

That, not her grades or her course load, was the problem.

“Hey Brianna,” Adam Pennington said, “taking AP calc?”

“Yeah,” Brianna said.  Adam was a nice guy, but he looked really young and didn’t party or do sports, and Brianna was the only non-misfit she knew who would talk to him.  They had been alphabetical-order and math buddies since the ninth grade, and they were always the ones who looked pretty much the same after every summer vacation.  Except this September, Adam’s face seemed to be clearing up, and, while he’d looked about thirteen last June, he now looked nearly sixteen.

“Have you heard about Eccles?”

“I mean, I know he’s kind of a freak, I see him walking around the halls and talking all funny.”

“He was in a band!”

Brianna looked at Adam blankly.  About fifteen percent of the senior class were in bands, and it wasn’t really surprising to find that the old fat guy that everybody said smoked enough weed to get the entire senior class high had once been in a band.

“I mean, a real band!  With records and groupies and everything!  My cousin told me! There’s even a Pearl Jam song about him!”

“No there isn’t,” Brianna said.

“Yeah, there is—I guess Eddie Vedder used to like vacation here or something.  I can’t remember the song.”

“Hmm.  Well,  I’m gonna have to stay skeptical.”

“Dare me to ask him about it?”

“You mean in class?”

“Yeah, sure.”

They sat in homeroom for another ten minutes while Ms. Vincent read something off of a piece of paper in a monotone voice and nobody listened, and then they all filed into the halls.