What Happened to Lani Garver (14 page)

"Look." I put my hand up, like
stop.
"Sorry if ... I'm uptight right now. But I don't see what all good it's going to do me to talk to a bunch of people who are down on their luck. Like my mom said, what if their luck runs out? Do I need friends who could die?"

"That's not the point," she said. "We're all going to have our ticket punched. That's a fact of life. The point is to have people in your life who can relate to you, listen to you. If you had that, you wouldn't be sneaking around at a charity clinic. And I highly doubt you'd be eating like you were trying to disappear."

I shook my head, standing my ground. "I eat three meals a day, every day!"

"Consisting of?"

I might have believed her a little better about needing counseling if she wasn't bringing my eating into it. I recited my diet of fruit for breakfast, salad for lunch.

"But I eat plenty of dinner—anything I want! Noodles, gravy, potatoes..."

Lani had retrieved the flyer and tossed it back at me. I caught it as he said, "She eats a salad at eleven o'clock and then goes to cheerleading after school—"

I hurled it back, and this time his ducking mechanism worked, but he kept talking. "And she doesn't get done until six o'clock."

"And I suppose you use no-fat dressing," the doctor added.

"You guys, you don't understand," I heard myself saying. "Do you know how hard it is for a girl who's five ten to get on cheerleading? I had to do everything twice as good ...
Stop!
" I held my hands up defensively before they could start in on
Did I have to be a cheerleader? Did I have some sort of starlet complex?
Fortunately, they kept their huge mouths shut while I dropped my head onto my hands on the desk, trying to find words for this very important thought making my gut explode.

"I know ... who I am. I am Myra's friend. Eli's and Geneva's friend. I am Macy Matlock's
best
friend. They are not perfect people, but nothing in my life has made me feel so good as ... knowing who loves me. I want my life to stay as much like it is as possible. I don't want it cluttered with a bunch of talk about bad memories or family problems I can't help. Especially if I'm healthy, I don't want to make changes. Except ... okay. I'll eat more. I'll gain ten pounds back, okay?"

Dr. Lowenstein rubbed her eyes, like she was tired. I wondered how many people she'd seen that day.

"No, Claire, don't 'gain ten pounds back.' Just eat more. Eat some junk food. Eat French fries with your salad. Forget about what you eat, and just eat it. Stay off the scales, okay? If your pants don't fit, just go out and buy a bigger pair. Think you can do that? Because I'm doubtful."

"Why?"

She started to say something and stopped, glancing at Lani, who raised his eyebrows again.

"I trust this kid," she said to me, jerking her thumb. "He reminds me of one of our floating angels."

I felt surprised that even a doctor would take that concept seriously. Sounded like the type of legend that would float around the janitors and LPNs.

"I get the feeling he really cares about you. So, if he can report back to me that you passed this little test I'm going to give you, then I won't call your parents and lecture them about making you get some therapy. Who knows what can of worms a phone call home might open in some cases. Is that a deal? Because from my end, that's a supreme compromise."

"What do I have to do?"

"I want the two of you to go to a diner or an ice-cream parlor or something of that nature. And Claire, I want you to order a hot fudge sundae. I want you to eat the whole thing. If you can't eat it, or you don't want to, or you feel an urge to vomit afterward, I want one of you to be honest with me. We've got a big problem if you can't do that. We can't ignore it, not given your history. All right?"

I nodded, forced a grin on my face, and said, "Piece of cake."

She rolled her eyes at my bad pun, taking a big bite out of her sandwich, and I turned my eyes up to Lani and let my panic roll out of them. I had not eaten ice cream since July. The very thought was making my stomach ball up like a metal crusher eating a tin can. Yet, I couldn't say that. To say it would sound like an eating disorder. Which it wasn't.
Was it?

I shook my head the slightest bit, so he would see, but not her. As much as I shook my head, he nodded his. He smiled and winked in a way that was supposed to be reassuring, and I decided he would definitely sit there and not get upset, even if it took me four fucking hours to eat a thing like that. But as usual, I felt like I was surrounded by people who cared ... and yet I still had to do impossible things myself.

The Indian-summer sun shone hot on my face as we wandered onto Pine Street. I inhaled a huge breath of warm air, trying to clear my head. For lack of any other way to express utter relief and complete humiliation, I cracked up laughing.

Lani put his arm around my neck, pulling me close to him and kissing me on the side of the head. It was another of those overly old gestures that made me feel in the twilight zone with someone's dad disguised as a kid—someone who was trying to say, "You're okay, no matter what stupid things you do."

I found his waist under his jacket and rested my arm there. It felt surprisingly okay to grip hold of a person who wasn't my boyfriend, without any opposite-sex mini spazzes. At least, none were coming from him. He was babying me, and after a couple of minutes, it turned me kind of stony. I accused him of babying me, but he just laughed.

"Relax. Maybe you need it."

"What about you?" I thought of his life, how he could dole out something that he was probably in desperate need of himself.
Maturity thing. Even if his shaving hormones are strangely whacked, he's eighteen, at least.
"Come on. How old are you?"

"Why must we go there?"

"Because. If you don't tell me, I'm going to start believing you're one of those floating angels. Born a bazillion years ago," I joked. But after hearing even the doctor mention it, I had gotten curious enough to want to see that very old book of his. "You're just like ... slightly overly wise, something. Just enough to put me on edge. I want to see that book and look at the pictures. I want to make sure you're not in it."

"There're other ways to get to know me," he said. "You can hear me ramble on about Hegel sometime. That would explain a lot. But I would say you're too keyed right now to do Hegel."

"You're right."

"You could meet some of my, uh, non-sick friends sometime, if you want."

"You got normal friends?" I asked, and almost died. One of my famous Claire statements.
Doyee.

He just laughed. "People don't have to be desperate to want my company, you know. Wherever I've been, there were always a couple girls I got very tight with. And most of the time? They're not what you would classify as dorks. They're not the cool
est
but—"

"Like me," I said suddenly.

"Yeah. A lot like you. But last year was a very cool year."

"I thought you lived on the street last year," I said.

"Yup." He went on to say that some of the teachers at his school probably guessed he was homeless, and a lot of the kids knew, but they didn't bust on him. He had gotten accepted to an art school and just showed up every day. It was called the Creative and Performing Arts High School of Philadelphia, and it was a public school, but something called a magnet school, which they only had in big cities. He said he showed up on the last day of auditions to get in, had played the drums, and was accepted in the instrumental department.

He giggled more as we walked. "I remembered hearing about the place back from when I lived in Cheltenham. The kids there used to call the Creative and Performing Arts High School 'Homo Heaven,' which is so not accurate. Yeah, there are some gays, but in a school where people
perform
and don't just
be,
there are more intense ways to look at people. What you look like is less of an issue. Sometimes having serious problems is actually a good thing."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "In our school, you don't want to announce your serious problems. People will yack and hold it against you."

"Have you heard the expression 'You got to pay your dues to sing the blues'?"

"Yeah..." It took me a minute to remember where I'd heard that. My dad used to spew it at me when he stuck the guitar in my hand before he left for work in the mornings. I would be all
So much bullshit to make me feel better.
"So ... you had friends from your school who've been through bad things?"

"Lots."

"You mean illnesses?"

"Maybe. Don't always know."

"But if you don't know, then how can you know what they've been through?"

"A lot of times it shows up in how they perform."

My glance shot up to him. He nodded. "It's almost like a cause-and-effect thing. You watch someone act a drama part extremely well ... dance an awesome ballet ... play a great instrument ... A lot of times that horrible thing that happened to them somehow translates into talent. You wanna go to South Street? School should let out in an hour or so. I'd love to see my friend Ellen. I can call her on her cell phone. She'll come down there."

My eyeballs almost blew out of my head. I had totally forgotten about South Street—a place that was, like, art-and-music central—where my dad used to take me on days when I was feeling good. He'd said he was too old for the place anymore, but taking me there helped him remember to stay young.

We walked back down Pine Street to Fifth, then cut to South and found a café, near the corner, with outdoor tables. Lani went inside and left me sitting in one of the plastic chairs, zoning in on the strange-looking, artsy types passing by. There was the parade of black ... black leather jackets, black lipstick, black eyeliner, jet black hairdos, but also blasts of color that left me staring. Bright pink and purple hair spikes. Blazing blue, penciled eyes. Most of the people looked college age, and I remembered the University of the Arts being about eight blocks over. I wondered what these people looked like when they were my age.... When in their lives had they started getting this twitch to look different?

I thought Lani had gone into the café to call his friend, but he came out with a couple of hot fudge sundaes and dropped one in front of me. I pushed on my stomach.

"Dr. Lowenstein didn't say
now,
like
today.
I just want to sit here and relax and watch the sights."

"So, watch the sights. It will help you relax, and you'll be able to eat better."

I had already eaten half that egg salad sandwich before leaving Dr. Lowenstein's office, trying to prove something to her, I wasn't sure what. I think I was trying to get her to ease up on the hot-fudge-sundae issue, which she hadn't done.

"Not to waste your money, Lani, but I'd have a much better shot at eating a whole sundae at night. Like, when it's my dinnertime and my gut is used to moving food through."

I watched him gaze at me and realized how much like an eating disorder I was making this thing sound. Plus, I had not told the whole truth to Dr. Lowenstein. The time I ate mayonnaise, I did feel sick after, like I'd eaten a whole stick of butter. And now that I'd eaten half that egg salad, my gut was busy fighting off Mayonnaise Hell. I cast a glance at the whipped cream, then Lani pressing his fingers together in front of his lips and watching me over the top of them.

He dropped them finally and said, "You keep wanting to know my age, well, I'll tell you this much. When you're homeless, people melt into each other, when you're not doing those boxes every day, like
sophomore, junior, graduated.
Everybody sort of becomes one thing. Even that line between grown-up and kid gets lost. I don't have that problem a lot of kids seem to have ... I'm not immune to grown-ups. I have grown-up friends. Not that Dr. Lowenstein is exactly one of them."

I shrugged, didn't get it.

"I'm saying that the whole concept of ratting out to a grown-up is kind of lost on me. And if you can't eat that, I will have no problem calling her."

I returned his even gaze. With as much style and grace as I could muster, I made an evil face. Not a single movement stirred from the return-stare factory.

"I don't want to know your age. It doesn't matter." I swiped up the spoon, pumped my face full of whipped cream, and tried to focus on my irritation as opposed to my stomach. "Because you're just plain
old.
You remind me of my
dad.
You're an old
fart.
"

"I'm an old fart," he agreed, and started eating.

"There's another reason why it would be very hard for a kid to be friendly with you." I swallowed more whipped cream. "You're, like,
invasive.
"

"Yup, I'm invasive."

"And you have no shame."

"No shame. Look at this guy coming. He's rich." Lani pointed with his spoon at one of the more radical facepiercings I had seen all day. The guy had, like, nine little rings through his lip, a couple on his eyebrow, and a chain running from his ear to the middle of his cheek.

I laid the spoon down to stare. A few of these older kids looked like they'd had the kitchen drawer thrown at their faces. This seemed like the perfect place to make a huge confession. "I've always had this secret thing for black leather..."

Lani's eyes lit, like this was kind of interesting.

I thought he was missing the point. "You don't understand. Nobody on Hackett ever wears black leather anything. So ... where did this love of black leather come from?"

"From
Claire.
" He shrugged, and I wondered if I had to dance on the table naked to shake him up. He asked, "Well ... what kind of black leather?"

My eyes scanned the people walking past, and I heard myself giggle. It was daring, trying to define my own weirdness instead of pretending it didn't exist. "I haven't seen it yet. I mean, not the type that goes with chains or black lipstick. I really couldn't see myself as a vampire type. And I don't like those black motorcycle-gang outfits. And there's those crunchy black leather jackets with the huge zippers that a lot of gay people wear. That's not it, either." I scratched my head in confusion.