The Art of Getting Stared At (11 page)

The bus ride to and from the hospital takes longer than my meeting with Nurse Jeffries, which is over in five minutes. “I spoke briefly with administration after you emailed.” She's a plump, British woman with springy grey curls and owlish glasses. “And they were open to your proposal.”

“Excellent!” Her office door is open. I hear the
clack clack
sound of a cart being rolled down the hall. I smell soup; tomato maybe.

“But only if you focus on the clowns and avoid close-ups of the children.”

My heart sinks. That would totally defeat the purpose. “I need shots of children laughing. I was hoping to show the resiliency of kids even in the face of illness.”

“We would have to get permission from every single patient guardian for that. And you would also have to provide us with detailed information—where the video would be shown and in what context, that kind of thing.”

That'll take time I don't have. The video has to be finished and ready to go in just over two weeks. “What if I were to take brief crowd shots and then focus on one child only?”

Nurse Jeffries frowns. “Just one?”

“I have a good relationship with Jade and her family. I wonder if I could arrange to shoot them?” It's not exploitation if Jade wants to do it. It might even give her a much-needed psychological boost.

“You need to approach them directly. If they agree, then I'll take it to administration. You'd still have to sign papers releasing the hospital from any responsibility for the final product but it certainly would be a simpler solution.”

Simple is good. “I'll talk to Jade and her parents and get back to you later this week.” I stand. “I assume Jade's in the same room?”

“Yes. 307.”

In the hall, I weave around the lunch cart and wave to Leslie at the nurses' station but I don't stop. I'm too busy thinking about what I'll say to Jade and her parents.

As I near her room, I hear Jade's familiar voice. Smiling, I stop in the doorway. Jade rests in a nest of pillows. Her eyes and lips are downcast. My smile dissolves. She's picking absently at the white hospital blanket. She looks pale and lost and defeated. Her parents, Denver and Latanna, sit on either side of her bed.

I'm about to say hi when Jade looks over. I give her a tiny wave and force myself to smile again but she doesn't smile back. She stares right through me like I'm not there. That's when I realize: she knows me in my wig and costume as Miss Cookie, not in my jeans and green hat as Sloane.

Feeling foolish, sad, and uncertain, I drop my hand and walk quickly to the elevator. It's not the right time. I'm scheduled to read to the kids next Monday. I'll ask her then. But as I get on the elevator and the door closes behind me, I can't help wondering if the time will ever be right? If Jade's laughing days are over?

“I
have
to see your mom before she leaves,” Lexi says a few hours later when we get off the cable car at the turnaround and head for Market Street. We weave around a group of Spanish-speaking tourists, and then pass a flower stand overflowing with buckets of colourful autumn blooms. “I need her to look at my thumb.”

A woman carrying a Neiman Marcus bag cuts between us. The downtown streets are crowded with shoppers and it's another minute before I can answer. “Good luck. She's working in emerg for the next couple of days. And she's leaving early Saturday morning.”

“Then I'm coming over tomorrow. Look at this.” She sticks her thumb under my nose.

“Yeah, so?” I sidestep a busker blocking part of the sidewalk with his open guitar case.

“Seriously. Look.” She thrusts her hand under my nose again. “The cut won't heal. And isn't that a red streak? Heading up my wrist?”

The cut on Lexi's thumb looks like a perfectly normal, three-day-old cut on its way to healing, but worrying about someone else's problem, even an imaginary one, is a welcome distraction from thinking about Jade or my hair. “Yeah. You probably shouldn't wait. You should go to the clinic right away and get it checked.”

I've been checking out my own treatment options lately too, reading up on cortisone, PUVA treatments, drugs with names I can't pronounce. I want to be informed when I see the specialist.

“It's
that
bad?” Lexi jerks to a stop and stares at her thumb. “Really?”

“It could be staph.” I keep walking. “You could lose your thumb. Your whole hand even.”

“I knew it!” She moans. “Oh my
God
!”

I start to laugh.

She runs to catch up. “You're jerking me around.”

“Only a little.”

“I don't know why people won't take me seriously.”

“Maybe because you're a hypochondriac?” I'm still laughing. Lexi is so fun to tease. “Isn't Miles always saying so?”

She sniffs. “Don't bring up his name. We broke up an hour ago.”

And an hour from now, they'll be back together.

“My health isn't funny,” she adds. “You shouldn't be laughing.”

“Think of it as research,” I say as we push through the doors at Anthropologie. “For our laughter video.”

While Lexi heads off to collect her check, I wander through the clothes until I find the hats. When she returns a few minutes later, I'm trying on a brown pageboy with a fine weave of yellow and rust silk around the brim.

Lexi meets my gaze in the mirror. “What is up with you and hats all of a sudden?”

Alopecia is what's up.
I stare at my reflection. It actually looks okay. And it comes down far enough on both sides of my head to cover the spots. “Since I have to do this laughter flash mob thing, I think it's time for a new look.” I struggle to keep my tone casual. “I'm getting another hat.”

“You can't.” Lexi plucks the pageboy off my head and puts it back on the shelf.

I'm so stunned it takes me a few seconds to realize a chunk of spray-encrusted hair is out of place and one of my spots is showing. Quickly I cover it up. “What do you mean, I can't?”

“You aren't a hat person.” Lexi grabs a newsboy cap in a pale blue houndstooth and wiggles it onto her head. She twists from side to side, studying her image in the mirror. “They don't really suit your face.”

My nerves jangle. I hadn't expected resistance. At least not from Lexi. “A good salesperson could find the right hat to suit my face.” I survey the store. “I'll go talk to Tannis.”

Lexi whirls around. “Tannis has terrible taste. You know that.”

I also know Tannis racks up the most sales of any part-timer and Lexi is trying desperately to catch up. I shrug. “Yeah. Well. I'm getting a hat. Either I pick it out or I have help. And if you won't help me ...” I let my voice trail away.

“A hat isn't enough.” She eyes my baggy jeans and beige hoodie. “You need a do-over, Sloane. New clothes, proper makeup.”

“Now you sound like Kim.”

“Kim's right.”

Heat hits the back of my neck. “I don't
think
so.”

Her eyes widen. “Whoa! Don't take my head off.” She puts the cap down and picks up a white beret.

I study the hats in front of me, wondering which one will do the magical trick of hiding my secret. “Then don't turn me into a statistic.”

She stares at me like I just beamed in from Mars. “What are you talking about?”

“Statistics show most women under twenty-five spend
more time worrying about makeup and clothes than watching the news.”

“So?”

“I have way more depth than that.” I don't have time for makeup and clothes. I don't have time for my hair either. At least I didn't until I started losing it.

Lexi tilts her head to the left, examining the fit of the beret. “That's just stupid.”

“No, it's not.” I pick up a leopard print cloche and turn it from side to side. It's kind of out there. Especially with the bright pink ribbon. I put it back down. “We all have one bit of weirdness.” When she doesn't answer, I lean close and whisper, “Some of us would walk around in mummy bandages all year if they could.”

She giggles. But after a minute, she says, “Come on, Sloane. You said yourself you've got the laughter flash mob to lead and everybody will be staring at you. It only makes sense to make the best of what you've got. I don't see what the big deal is about wearing a bit of makeup.”

“I wear lip gloss. I even put on mascara this morning.” At least I tried to. It's not my fault the stuff in the tube had hardened into a lump. “Just because I don't bathe in makeup like Kim.”

“That's what this is about, isn't it? You don't want to turn into your stepmother.”

For a second I can't speak. I finally manage to say, “No, that's
not
what this is about. I'm nothing like Kim and I never will be.” And thank God for that.

She puts the beret back. “That's why you dress like a slob.”

Her words suck the oxygen out of me. “I
don't
dress like
a slob. My clothes are never ripped. They're always clean. I shave my pits. I wear deodor—”

She shakes her head. “I can't believe it's taken me this long to figure it out. You go out of your way to be plain because Kim goes out of her way to primp.”

My palms are suddenly sweaty. I rub them against my jeans. “Don't be stupid. It has nothing to do with Kim. I refuse to obsess about my looks. I never have and I never will.” Losing my hair is different. Anybody would freak over that. No girl wants to be bald.

“Right.” She laughs. “You obsess just like the rest of us. Only you obsess about being different.”

If she only knew.

“I'm telling you, Sloane, if you buy a hat and the rest of

you looks like shit, people will stare for all the wrong reasons. You need to look halfway decent for the video.”

She's right. I hadn't thought of it because I hadn't wanted to think about being in front of the camera. “So help me find a hat and I'll look at jeans.”

“
Buy
jeans. And some blush.”

“Look.”

Lexi crosses her arms and glares at me.

“Okay,
fine.
Buy.” I reach for a tweedy plum fedora with a tiny froth of feathers tucked into a wide black ribbon. “What about this one?”

Eight

M
andee is standing by the water fountain when I walk into school Wednesday morning. “You look different,” she says.

My heart plummets. The only new thing I'm wearing is the hat. Everything else Lexi insisted I buy is on my bedroom floor. What looked good in the store mirror looked terrible in mine.

“It's the new hat.” I tilt my head. “You like it?”

Mandee straightens and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “It's not just the hat. It's something else.”

My stomach muscles clench. I lost a crap ton more hair in the shower this morning. The spot above my neck is bigger. And the “maybe it is, maybe it isn't” spot on my crown is more noticeable too. But you can't tell while I'm wearing the hat. I checked. “No other changes,” I lie. “I'm still me.”

“I dunno, Sloane.” She peers into my face. “It's like you're trying to be pretty or something.”

I laugh. “No.” I don't do pretty. That was obvious half an hour ago when I tried on the new super skinny jeans Lexi
picked out. I looked like a try-hard. A wannabe member of the Bathroom Brigade. “I just bought a new hat, that's all.”

Plus two pairs of jeans, four tops, a pair of leather shoes, and some designer hairspray that's supposed to work for sensitive, damaged hair. At the price I paid, it better keep the rest of my hair on my head too.

Mandee looks at my feet and smiles. “At least you're still wearing those ugly black boots.”

I smile back. “Yep.” My feet aren't the problem here. Or so I think until Lexi confronts me at my locker a few minutes later.

“Why are you
still
wearing those ugly black boots? What happened to the turquoise ballerina flats we picked out?” She eyes my old jeans like they're radioactive. “And I thought you were going to wear the new jeans and that pretty tulip cardigan today?”

I spin my combination. “I have a busy day remember? Isaac and I are scouting at the Embarcadero and then shooting at the zoo. I wanted to be comfortable.”

“You're not even wearing that blush I bought for you. You need to try harder.”

That's harsh. I whirl to face her. “And you need to drop it.”

Hurt flashes in her dark eyes. “Fine.” She crosses her arms. “I'm only trying to help.”

My breath hitches. I know she is. “I'm sorry, Lexi, really. It's just ...” I gesture to my head. “I'm wearing the new hat, okay? Maybe I'll wear the shoes tomorrow. We'll see.” I grab my math book and slam my locker shut. “Have you seen Harper?”

“We both have socials next. Why?”

“I need to talk to her.” I start walking.