Meena Meets Her Match

by Karla Manternach

  “We’re all set, thanks.”

  The little girl next to Rosie starts to giggle. Rosie elbows her in the side.

  “Hands to yourself, please,” the teacher says.

  I walk backward into the hall. I feel the ice melting through my pocket as I ease the door shut. The last thing I see is the sorry look on Rosie’s face.

  When I turn around, Sofía has her hands on her hips. “I tried to tell you,” she says. “Come on.” She reaches over and grabs the slips out of my hand. “I’ll show you how to take them to the office.”

  I glare at the back of her head, her blue flower bobbing as she walks away.

  But I don’t say anything. I just reach into my pocket, grab hold of my icy chunk, and follow her.

  10

  The rest of the day, Mrs. D sends spies with me everywhere I go. She even has girls take turns walking me to the bathroom!

  I’m so sick of everybody following me around that I accidentally forget to come in when the bell rings after recess. I just lie down by myself inside the big tube slide all alone, breathing in the plastic air and trying to soak up the feeling of being surrounded by orange.

  I only stay in there for a couple of extra minutes. How am I supposed to know they lock the playground doors behind everybody, and by the time you walk around the whole building and get buzzed in the front entrance, they’re already so freaked out that you’re gone that they call a code yellow over the loudspeakers and even the janitor is looking for you?

  I get clipped down to Think About Your Choices for that.

  Then later, when I’m making my rain-forest diorama, I get into a tug-of-war with Lin over the green paint, and one of us ends up with splatters all over her clothes.

  Turns out it’s me.

  Why did she need green paint for her ocean anyway? Those dumb fish could have been any color.

  I get clipped all the way down to Last Chance—just one away from Go to the Principal, and nobody’s gotten that since Aiden taught some first graders to swear!

  It takes me all afternoon to clip back up. I have to make sure Mrs. D sees me helping Pedro pick up the papers he dropped and giving Nora the fuzzy beanbag chair at reading time, even though I totally had it first.

  But at the end of the day, my clothespin is right back where it started. Sofía’s is at the top, like always. She never ignores the bell or forgets the rules about sharing. Just looking at Sofía’s clip makes me write my spelling words all crooked.

  Mrs. D says Ready for Anything is a fine place to be. She says it means you’re doing what you’re supposed to.

  I think it might as well say Nothing Special.

  I squirm in my desk while I finish my words. I wish I could just go home and work on my valentine box. The clock ticks closer to three. But the bell keeps not ringing. I keep wriggling.

  Then finally we’re closing our notebooks, and Mrs. D is saying, “Don’t forget, tomorrow is our one hundredth day of school.”

  Well, that makes me feel springy again! My hand shoots up in the air and starts waving. “Can we do crazy hair again this year?”

  “You bet,” says Mrs. D. “And we’ll run a hundred-meter dash and try hula-hooping to one hundred, and we’ll eat a hundred M&M’s for a special snack.”

  Finally, stuff I’m good at!

  “What do you get if your hair is the craziest?” I ask.

  “You don’t get anything, Meena. It’s not a contest.”

  I peek over at Sofía and her blue-flower head. At least I can make my hair crazier than hers. It will be the craziest in our whole class.

  As soon as the bell rings, I dart out of there—away from my halfway-there clip and my not-good-enough writing and all the spies that follow me. I wave to Eli and race out of the building. I’m going to make this the longest, daydreamiest walk ever. I’ll think up something awesome for my hair while I look for beautiful trash. Maybe I’ll find new colors for my twist-tie collection or one of those red nets that oranges come in. Maybe I’ll find something so beautiful that it will spark a brilliant idea for my valentine box, and I’ll have to run the rest of the way home to work on it.

  Only, I don’t get to find anything because just as I’m skipping past the parking lot, I hear someone calling my name.

  I turn toward the sound. Mom is standing by our car, waving.

  The happiness leaks right out through my toes. I scuff my feet over to her. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “Taking you to the doctor,” she says.

  My whole body wilts like lunchroom lettuce. “I was going to look for trash.”

  Mom opens the car door. “Sorry, hon. We were lucky to get you in.” She looks me up and down. “What happened to you?”

  I forgot about the green paint.

  Oh, and the mud.

  Dad is already in the front when I climb in. “What’s the word, hummingbird?” he says.

  I slump in my seat.

  “Everything go okay today?”

  I scowl. “I got clipped down again.”

  “Something to do with your clothes, I’m guessing.” He turns all the way around and looks at me with a very serious expression. “So where are you now? Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’?”

  I smile a little.

  “Put Me on the Curb?”

  “Dad.”

  He points a finger, but his eyes are twinkling. “You’d better watch yourself, young lady. Sounds like you’re On a Ski Run to Smackdown.”

  • • •

  Dr. Suri smiles at me when she comes into our little exam room.

  At least one of us is happy to be here.

  Last time I saw her, she was totally taking Mom’s side on the more-vegetables-less-screen-time thing, but I’m trying not to hold that against her.

  “I hear you had some excitement over the weekend,” she says.

  I kick my heels against the exam table while Mom and Dad tell her about my seizure. I start out listening, but then I get distracted thinking about what I could do with those jars of cotton balls and tongue depressors. Plus, I can’t stop looking at the bright red liner in the garbage can. I wonder where you even get trash bags that color.

  When they’re finished, Dr. Suri turns to me. “Mind if I check you over?” she says.

  I shrug. She shines a light in my eyes and ears. “What does that tell you?” I ask.

  “That you don’t eat enough dark leafy greens,” Dad says.

  She feels the sides of my neck.

  “That tells her you leave your socks all over the house,” Dad adds.

  I grin. “I get hot feet.”

  She taps a little hammer on my elbows and knees.

  Dad leans closer. “Now she knows you forget to flush.”

  “Dad!”

  I’m still giggling when Dr. Suri says, “Okay, you can hop down.” I go and punch Dad on the arm while the doctor brings up a picture on a screen. “So here’s what I can tell you,” she says, turning the screen to us. “This is from the CT scan they did at the hospital.”

  I stop laughing. It’s an X-ray of a skull. My skull.

  Dad nudges my shoulder. “Check it out. That’s pretty cool, huh?”

  But it isn’t cool. It’s creepy. Looking at it makes me think of dead people. It makes me think about being a dead person. It makes me want to climb onto somebody’s lap, only I’m nine, so I don’t. Instead I take a step back and put my hand over the pocket of my jeans to make sure my beads are still there.

  The doctor points to a blurry white smudge at the edge of the picture. Then she touches her finger to the top of my head and lets it rest there. “This is the spot we’re looking at,” she says. “Right about here.”

  Her hand is warm, but a little shiver ripples down from the place she’s touching. When she moves her hand away, I reach up to feel for myself.

  There’s nothing there. It’s just hair and a dried-up splatter of green paint. “I don’t feel anything,” I say.

  “That’s because it’s on the inside.�
��

  Nobody says anything. I hear the clock on the wall.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  Mom clears her throat. “What is it?” she asks. Her voice is almost a squeak.

  “It might be nothing,” Dr. Suri says. She’s quiet for a few ticks. She looks from Mom to Dad and back again but not at me. “Or it might be something else.”

  I start to feel shaky. I turn and stare at that white shadow in the X-ray. How did I get something in my head? The doctor starts talking again, but I can’t hear what she’s saying because there’s a rushing sound in my ears and my throat is closing. I reach into the deepest part of my pocket, grab a fistful of beads, and squeeze them so tight that I can feel them making dents in my skin.

  My heart is pounding through to my fingers. And I do climb onto Mom’s lap. Even though I’m nine.

  “Do you understand what Dr. Suri is telling us?” Mom finally asks.

  I take a gulp of air and shake my head.

  “She says lots of people have spots like this.” Mom starts stroking my hair. “She says it could just be the regular shape of your skull. It might not be a problem at all. But if it isn’t—” She stops.

  Everyone is quiet. Nobody says if it isn’t . . . what?

  The rushing sound in my ears gets louder. My face feels hot. My hands feel cold.

  The spot isn’t nothing. It can’t be. It gave me a seizure, didn’t it? Something makes my arms herky and jerky in the morning. Something made me dizzy from the flashing lights.

  So it’s something. In my head. It must be.

  My teeth start to chatter. Dad leans in close. “We’re going to do some tests,” he says, “to see if that spot is a normal part of your skull.”

  Tears start to form in the back of my eyes. “Or if it’s something else,” I say.

  He starts rubbing my back. “We’ve got you, honey,” Mom says. “We’re going to figure this out, okay?” She presses her head against mine.

  I nod and take a shuddery breath. I try to concentrate my whole body on keeping the tears inside.

  “What kind of tests?” I say.

  11

  We’re all pretty quiet at dinner. Even though it’s taco night.

  Rosie is the only one talking. She stayed at Eli’s again while we went to the doctor. This time they set up blocks like bowling pins and watched Vernon knock them over.

  She’s pretty chatty about it.

  Usually I pile everything so high that my tortilla explodes when I try to close it, and I end up having to eat it with a fork, which is not even fair, because tacos are finger food.

  But I don’t think I can fit an explosion of taco inside me tonight. Not with how small my stomach feels. I sprinkle some cheese onto a tortilla and roll it up.

  “You want some salsa with that?” Dad asks.

  I shake my head.

  “How about a slather of guacamole? Green things up a bit?”

  I pick up my tight little roll and nibble at the end.

  I watch Dad drop a blob of sour cream onto his taco salad. It makes me think of the blurry white spot on the X-ray.

  The bite of taco sticks in my throat. I have to swallow hard to get it down.

  I don’t want to think about skulls and doctors and white smudges.

  So I think about my valentine box.

  It doesn’t matter if I’m in the mood to work on it. My box isn’t even close to finished. It has to be bigger. It has to be better. It has to beat Sofía.

  And I’m running out of time.

  As soon as we clear the table, I get my math homework over with and spread out my art supplies. Next I dig into my pockets and dump my new beads onto the table. They’re still muddy, but they might give me an Inspiration anyway. I prop Raymond up next to me so he can watch me work, then I look through the recycling bin and pull out some tomato cans. I rinse them and tear off the labels. When I set my box on top of the cans, they look a little bit like legs.

  I start gluing candy wrappers onto them to match the rest of my box. After her bath, Rosie comes and leans on her elbows beside me. Her hair is wet and smells like coconut. “Now what are you making?” she asks.

  I shrug. “I’m not sure.”

  “It looks like it’s breathing,” she says.

  I stop and look. The foil wrappers shimmer under the light. When I tilt my head to the side, the light shimmies over the top in a way that makes it look like the box is moving—like it’s taking a big breath in. When I tilt my head the other way, it looks like it’s letting the big breath out.

  I smile at Rosie. “You want to hand me a gold wrapper?” She sets Pink Pony on the table, reaches into the pile, and pulls one out. “I need a red one next,” I say. “Then a silver one.”

  She climbs up into the chair next to me and starts kicking her feet against the legs. Mom and Dad are washing the dishes at the sink. They’re leaning their heads close together, whispering.

  I bet they’re talking about me. I don’t want to hear what they’re saying. I concentrate on the crinkling sound the wrappers make. I try to listen to the little tune Rosie is always humming to herself.

  “Meena?” she says, handing me the next wrapper.

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you going to have another seizure?”

  I freeze. Did she really just ask me that? “I don’t know,” I say, my stomach tightening.

  “Will you have to ride in the am-blee-ance again?”

  Now I’m thinking of the muddy tracks on the floor and getting that ocean sound in my ears. “I don’t know,” I say again through clenched teeth.

  “Will you have to go back to the hospital?”

  I jump off my chair. “I don’t know, Rosie!” I’m yelling now, grabbing my hair. “Stop talking about it!”

  She starts to cry. “Hey!” Mom drops the dish towel and comes over. She wraps Rosie up in a hug. “What’s going on?”

  I shove my chair toward the table. “Make her stop asking me,” I yell.

  “She’s just worried about you, Meena.”

  She is. I know she is. But I’m worried about me too! I can’t get enough air, and there’s so much noise that I cover my ears, only I can still hear everything—the ocean crashing and Rosie crying—and the next thing I know my fingers are climbing up and feeling around my head, and I imagine another sound, too—my doctor’s voice. This is the spot Right about here.

  Then another sound breaks through, louder than all the rest. It’s clapping. It’s Dad making three big claps in the air.

  “Come on,” he says. “Into the living room, everybody. It’s story time.”

  He puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me into the other room. I slump into the middle of the couch and hug my knees to my chest.

  We haven’t read stories together this whole year—not since I started third grade and said I was too big for it. But we all go straight for our old spots. Mom sits next to me with Rosie in her lap. Rosie buries her face in Mom’s shoulder and whimpers. Dad grabs our big, blue Winnie the Pooh book from the shelf and squeezes in on my other side. He doesn’t even ask what story. He just turns right to the one where Pooh tries to steal honey from some bees.

  “Once upon a time,” Dad says, “a very long time ago now, about last Friday . . .” At first that’s all I hear. I’m curled up into a ball that’s too small and too tight to let in anything else, so his words just flutter down like leaves and land in a soft pile on top of me.

  My grip around my legs loosens. My chest starts to let in more air, and the steady sound of Dad’s voice gathers into words. When Pooh falls in a gorse-bush and Rosie leans in to look at the pictures, I rest my head against hers. When Pooh rolls around in the mud to look like a storm cloud, Mom reaches for my hand. When Pooh grabs hold of a balloon and floats up into the tree, Dad puts his arm around me.

  For a little while, everything feels just like it’s supposed to. I keep that feeling tucked up inside all the way to the end of the next story. When Mom carries Rosie up to bed, I get Pink
Pony from the kitchen and set her next to Rosie’s head on the pillow. I smooth out Pink Pony’s mane. I smooth Rosie’s hair. Then I slip under my own covers.

  It’s not until I’m lying there in the dark, listening to Rosie sleep-breathe, that I remember the white spot on the X-ray again. I hold on tight to Raymond and try to think about other things. Like my valentine box. Or about what kind of crazy hair I’ll do tomorrow. But I can’t get my mind to stick there. Every time I start to feel sleepy, Rosie’s questions pop into my head and wake me right back up.

  Are you going to have another seizure?

  Will you have to ride in the ambulance again?

  Will you have to go back to the hospital?

  Each question zaps like a shock to my chest—like when I’m making popcorn and the first kernel bursts, then another, and then a bunch of them at once. And pretty soon the bag is filling up and turning and steaming until it just can’t hold another single piece.

  When my body is too full for one more scary thought inside me, I creep down the stairs.

  Mom and Dad are sitting at the kitchen table with their hands folded, like they’re waiting for something. I can hear Rosie breathing loud and clear through the baby monitor on the counter. I look over and see my empty bed on the screen, and I realize that they must have seen me coming. They’re waiting for me.

  “What’s up, honey?” Mom says.

  I shift back and forth on my feet. “Will I have another seizure?” I ask them.

  Dad reaches over and crooks his finger around my pinky. “We don’t know,” he says.

  “What if I do?”

  “Then we’ll deal with it together,” Mom says. “We’ll do whatever we can to keep you safe. Okay?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and nod. I want that to be enough. It’s just . . . what if there are things they can’t do? Things nobody can?

  “Come on,” Dad says, standing up. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

  We go up the stairs again. He lifts up the covers for me. I climb back in.

  “You want me to stay for a while?” he asks.

  I can’t think of anything more babyish than having someone stay with me while I fall asleep. But I let out a big breath and nod.