Confessions of a Teenage Leper Page 5

  “All of them? Everything? You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I put my paper-bag head in my hands and cried.

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” Dean said.

  “No!” I yelled. “No one knows what’s wrong with me!”

  “Maybe you were bad, and now you’re being punished for your sins,” Dean said.

  “Dean. Abby’s not bad. You’re a good girl, Abby. None of this is your fault,” Mom said.

  “No. He’s right. I’m bad. I’m a bad person. I deserve this.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re a wonderful person.”

  “No I’m not, Mom,” I sobbed. The paper bag was getting all damp inside from my tears. “I’m mean. I was mean to ugly people. And fat people. And losers. Dean’s right. I’m being punished!”

  Dean nodded. “It’s true, Mom. It’s God’s will.”

  “Enough of this nonsense,” Mom said. “We’re going to find out what’s wrong. And you’re going to get better. That is all.”

  We all turned to look at the TV; a pretty blonde girl screamed and screamed and screamed as chunks of blood and viscera splattered across the wall behind her.

  On top of all this, I was also recovering from a concussion. Which is, by definition, brain damage. Don’t worry, Dean had a field day with this one.

  So when you’re recovering from a concussion, your brain does strange things. I couldn’t really read. The words would get all messed up on the page and nothing made sense. And I could only watch TV for an hour or so at a time before my brain started to hurt. For a couple of weeks, I couldn’t string sentences together and was stuttering all the time. I spent most of my time on the couch wrapped in my blankets, getting abused by Dean while he played video games.

  “What does that say?” I looked at the red words on the TV screen, blurring and blending together.

  He looked over at me. “It says ‘Player One. Start.’”

  “Oh.”

  “I guess cheerleading really brought out your inner moron,” Dean said.

  “Shut it.”

  “I mean, we always knew you were a little dumb, we just didn’t know you were this dumb.”

  “Do you want to die?”

  “In real life or in the game?”

  “Life.”

  “Eventually, yes,” he said.

  “How about today?”

  “Today’s not good for me.”

  “Then sock a stuff in it.”

  He laughed. “I’ll get right on that.”

  It took about a month and a half for me to be able to read, speak and walk properly again. But it seemed like decades. My spots didn’t clear up, my joints ached and my face looked like a rotten cauliflower. Mom and Dad had talked with our family doctor, Dr. Jamieson, and together they’d decided that the best thing for me would be to go back to school after spring break, keep doing my normal routine as best as I was able, in order to avoid the major depression I was already inside of. I have absolutely NO IDEA how they thought that going to school looking the way I did could possibly help me in any way. And trust me, I fought with everything I had not to go. I even threatened to run away and join the Church of Scientology, which would be freaky as hell, obviously. But at least I’d have Tom Cruise to comfort me.

  “Abby,” Dad said. “This is your senior year. Your grades matter now more than ever. If you miss too much school, you won’t be able to get into a good college. You might not be able to get into any college.”

  “I don’t care about that,” I said.

  “Of course you do, you’ve always said you wanted to go away to college. You said you wanted to study acting.”

  Beside him, Mom nodded vigorously. “That’s what you’ve always said, honey.”

  “Well, obviously that’s never going to happen now,” I said, pointing to my face.

  “Never say never,” Mom said. “We don’t know how our lives are going to turn out. We have to keep our options open.”

  “But—”

  “Abby,” Dad said, “you’re four months away from your high school graduation. Do you really want to quit school now, when you’re so close?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, too bad,” he said. “I’m not letting you.”

  “DAD!”

  “You’ll thank me one day,” he said.

  “I won’t do it. I can’t go back. I can’t go to school looking like this.”

  “Abby,” Dad said. “Sometimes we just have to be brave.”

  I started to cry and they both gave me a hug and told me they loved me. I wanted to tell them that I hated them for sending me back to school, but I was crying too hard to speak.

  When school started again after the break, I went back. You think it’s hard having acne and braces and a stupid-looking haircut? Try being a high school leper.

  Marla and Liz came running up to me while I stood in front of my locker. I was trying to remember the combination to my lock. Marla’s auburn hair glinted in the sunlight that poured through the windows. Somehow, she had gotten prettier, while I, well, I had become Jabba the Hutt. “Oh my God, Abby?” Liz covered her mouth with her hands. Liz had cut her hair super short, dyed it a mahogany color and wore a gold hoop in the side of her nose. She looked a lot different. She looked great.

  “Hi,” I said.

  They didn’t say anything. They just stared at me, mouths open. Other kids were staring too. I wished I could dissolve into the floor. Maybe I should just get inside my locker and stay there until the last bell, I thought. I could probably fit, if I took out all my binders and textbooks.

  “Abby…” Liz said. “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows. I’ve seen a bunch of doctors. I’ve had blood tests and allergy tests and piss tests and no one knows anything.”

  “Oh my God,” Liz said.

  Finally, I got the right combo and opened my locker. The first thing I saw was the row of locker mirrors I had lined up inside the door so that I would have a full-length mirror in my locker. I shuddered. I was wearing a black ball cap, and a shitload of foundation to hide as much as I could, but Dean was right, my face looked like a three-day-old pizza. I’d had all my casts removed a few weeks before and I could feel Marla and Liz staring at the pale, wrinkled skin of my hands as I gathered my books.

  “Are you okay?” Marla said.

  I looked at her. I looked down at myself, then back at her. “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  “Jesus,” Marla said under her breath. Then the first bell rang.

  “We gotta go, Abby,” Liz said. They began backing away.

  “Okay. See you at lunch?” I said.

  “Yep,” Liz called over her shoulder as she and Marla half-walked, half-ran down the hall. I slammed my locker and went to the girls’ bathroom where I locked myself in a stall and cried for the entire first period.

  It took everything I had to go to my next class, English, where I sat beside Leanne Sarsgaard. Leanne was also on the cheerleading squad. She had violet contacts and the longest legs in town.

  “Hey, Abby,” she said as I sat down.

  “Hi,” I said, pulling my cap lower.

  “Did you have a good break?” She smiled at me.

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Hey,” she said, “I heard you got AIDS, is that true?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said. “I was just wondering because I know you were with Chad a while ago, and then he and I got together over spring break, and I was just wondering if I should get tested. Do you think I should get tested?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Do you think Chad gave it to you?”

  “Gave what to me?”

  “AIDS.”

  “I DON’T HAVE AIDS!”

  Of course, that was the moment that Mr. Wilkes walked in and the whole room got quiet, so everyone heard me.

  “That’s good news, Ms. Furlowe,” Mr. Wilkes said, nodding. The c
lass tittered. “Okay, welcome back, people. Please take out your books. We’re looking at Hamlet’s soliloquy today.”

  I looked over the famous speech while my eyes blurred with tears. Not to be, Hamlet. Not to be. There is no more question. There are no more reasons to be.

  I didn’t know if I was the kind of person who could kill myself, but some things are worse than dying.

  At lunch I got fries and a Coke and went to sit with Marla and Liz at our usual table. I set my tray down beside Marla’s. She looked up at me, then quickly looked away.

  “Hey,” I said.

  They said hi to me then stared at me while pretending not to. It was weird.

  “How was your spring break?” I said.

  “Sucked,” Liz said.

  “Probably not as bad as mine did,” I said.

  “Yeah.” She looked down at her sandwich.

  “So what do the doctors think it is?” Marla said.

  “I might be dying. I don’t know,” I said.

  “Oh my God! Abby!”

  “That might be preferable to this actually,” I said.

  They stared at me some more as I tried to eat.

  “What?” I said.

  They both looked down. Then at each other. “It’s just…” Liz said.

  “It’s just that we’re not used to seeing you like this,” Marla said.

  “You’re usually more…upbeat,” Liz said.

  “Ugh.” I put my head down on the table. “I’m a hideous beast. What am I going to do?”

  They looked at each other. Then back at me.

  “I used to feel really ugly before I got my braces off,” Liz said. “I hardly even smiled for three years.”

  I lifted my head. “This is nothing like having braces, so don’t even try to compare it to that,” I said.

  “Sorry.”

  “You’ll get through this, Abby,” Marla said. “You’ll be back to your old self again in no time.”

  “How do you know?”

  She bit her lower lip. “And, hey, in the meantime, there’s always makeup,” she said.

  “Do you have any idea how much makeup I’m wearing right now?” I pointed to my face. “It doesn’t help!”

  “Abby—”

  “Okay, it helps a little bit, but not enough.”

  “What about plastic surgery?” Liz said.

  Marla elbowed her in the ribs.

  “Ow! It was just an idea. Or, or, what about, like, those Mission Impossible masks that look like a real face? You could get one of those made, like how your face used to be.”

  I put my forehead back down on the table. “I just wish I didn’t have to go to school,” I said. “I wish no one would see me like this.”

  One of them patted my arm. I’m not sure who because I had my eyes closed. Then Liz said, “Abby, sorry, but we really have to go.”

  “What?” I sat up. “Why?”

  “Yearbook committee meeting.”

  “Yearbook? Since when do you care about the stupid yearbook?”

  “Turns out Liz has a natural flair for photography,” Marla said. “And Nate Russell spends an awful lot of time in the darkroom.”

  Liz grinned.

  “Plus,” Marla said, “people on the yearbook committee get to select and edit the photos that go in, so it’s pretty much guaranteed that there won’t be any bad, embarrassing pictures of us in there.”

  I nodded. “That’s pretty smart, actually,” I said.

  “Right?”

  “Promise me that you’ll only use old photos of me, from before. Nothing from how I look now.”

  “Of course,” Marla said.

  “I don’t want people to remember me like this.”

  “They won’t,” Liz said. “They’ll only remember your profound hotness.”

  “Promise,” I said.

  “Totally.”

  Marla nodded.

  “We should go,” Liz said.

  I sighed.

  They stood up and gathered their things.

  “I’ll text you later,” Marla said.

  Liz waved as they walked away.

  The cafeteria was noisy and full of students, and I had never felt more alone.

  I ate my fries like a slow, dumb cow. I tried not to think about anything. It hurt too much to think about anything. My friends had moved on. They didn’t need me anymore. Maybe they never had. My heart lay shattered inside my chest.

  “Scabby Abby eats lunch alone now?” Dean sidled up to me.

  “Don’t call me that,” I said.

  “What should I call you? Princess Pus-face?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Dean chuckled and stole one of my fries. Because my brother’s a dumbass, he failed fourth grade, which is why we were in the same grade even though he’s a year older than me.

  “Hey,” he said, “I heard Mom and Dad talking about going to Mexico for their anniversary. We should have a party.”

  Normally, I would’ve been all over that. I loved having parties. And we’d had some killer parties in the past. But everything was different. No one would want to make out with me; that was guaranteed.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not—”

  “Aw, c’mon, Abs. This is just what you need. It’ll cheer you up,” Dean said. “We can get a keg. It’ll be great.”

  “When are they going?”

  “Two weeks from now,” he said. “As long as you don’t get any worse.”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t get any worse, Ab.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “No, try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”

  “Whatever, Yoda.”

  He did another Yoda impression. We sat together for the rest of lunch, and he made stupid jokes and told me a bunch of gossip that he was probably making up. Usually I wanted to be as far away from Dean as possible, but that lunch hour, I was so, so glad that he was sitting right beside me.

  We all ate dinner together that night. Dad made his famous spaghetti and meatballs.

  “How did it go at school today, Abby?” Dad asked.

  I glared at him. “How do you think? I look like a freak.”

  “Abby,” Mom said.

  “What? It’s true!”

  She shook her head.

  “Mom,” Dean said. “It’s true.”

  “See!”

  “Did you go to all your classes?” Dad asked.

  “Almost.”

  “Did you see your friends?”

  I sighed and pushed a meatball around on my plate. I’d been checking my phone all night. Marla hadn’t texted and neither had Liz. They probably wanted nothing to do with me. And why should they? I’d only rain on their pretty parade. “I don’t think I have any friends anymore.”

  “That’s not true,” Dad said. “We’re your friends.”

  “Dad! Come on. You’re not my friends. You’re my family.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No. No, it’s not the same thing. Those are two different things. That’s why there are different words for them. Because they’re different things.”

  “Well, I can hang out with you. That’s what you do with your friends, isn’t it? Hang out?”

  “Dad, I don’t want to hang out with you,” I said.

  “Why not?” He looked hurt.

  “Because you’re my dad!”

  He cleared his throat and concentrated on wrapping his spaghetti around his fork.

  “What happened with your friends?” Mom asked.

  “Just forget about it. I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

  Mom sighed. “Things will get easier, Abby.”

  “The whole school thinks I have AIDS.”

  “You don’t have AIDS,” Mom said.

  “I know that.”

  “How was your day, Dean?” Dean said. “Fine, thanks for asking.”

  “Sorry, Dean,” Mom said. “Why don’t you tell us about your day?”

  “Well, I got asked abo
ut a billion times if Abby has AIDS. Most of the time, I said no.”

  “Dean!”

  “Just kidding. About fifty percent of the time I said no.”

  “Dean!”

  He laughed.

  “You didn’t,” I said.

  “No,” he shook his head. “I didn’t.”

  “Good.”

  He shrugged. “I told them you have syphilis.”

  I flew at him, swinging. Dad had to pull me off him. He sent us both to our rooms for the rest of the night. I wasn’t sorry. I wished I’d hurt him. I should’ve stabbed him with my fork. Or my knife.

  The next morning, I wouldn’t talk to Dean. I wouldn’t even look at him.

  At lunch I walked into the cafeteria alone holding my tray. I passed the tables of geeks and mouth-breathers I had shunned since junior high. They glared and snickered at me, whispering to each other and shifting so that it would be clear there was no room at their table for me. I passed the table of fat girls: Larissa, Tracy and Heather. Also known as Lard Ass, Tubby and Heifer. They glanced up at me, shook their heads pityingly, and went back to their food. I passed the table of acne-plagued math geeks, people I had only ever been fake-nice to in case I needed to copy their calculus notes or physics homework. Brian Tate moved his backpack off the seat beside him and smiled up at me, his mouth a gleaming pocket of metal. His zits oozed as I stared at him, trying to decide if I’d really sunk this low, if this was where I belonged now.

  Then, Jordan Lee swooped into the spot. “Hey, guys,” he said in his nasally ten-year-old’s voice. “What’s the haps?”

  Brian gave me a friendly shrug and I moved on. I walked to the farthest corner of the room, to the table reserved for total social rejects, and sat by myself while I pretended to read Hamlet. Dean didn’t come sit with me. I kept an eye out for Marla and Liz but I didn’t see them. I had texted them to meet me at my locker before lunch.

  They didn’t.

  They didn’t even look at me or say hi to me in the halls when we passed each other between classes. They looked right through me. Like I didn’t even exist.

  I was devastated. Obviously.

  “Hey, Abby.”

  I jumped a little as Dustin Lorimer sat down beside me. I shielded the side of my face so he wouldn’t see the crusty pink bumps around my hairline.