How We Roll

by Natasha Friend

  She looked at the words, and she imagined Nick Strout sitting in his wheelchair, frowning down at his phone with those dark, dark eyes, waiting for her reply.

  And she wrote back, A real jerk wouldn’t have apologized.

  CHAPTER

  7

  THREE WEEKS INTO SCHOOL, QUINN’S MOM MADE her an appointment at the Shoreline North Medical Center.

  “I won’t be at lunch today,” Quinn informed the girls during PE. “I have a checkup.”

  “Ortho?” Ivy asked.

  It was a logical guess. Quinn’s classmates seemed to get pulled out of Gulls Head High School all day long for orthodontist appointments. But Quinn, whose teeth were naturally straight, didn’t want to lie. So she said, “Doctor.”

  This was the truth. Quinn was getting a checkup, and she was seeing a doctor, just not a pediatrician. She was seeing a dermatologist, like she’d seen Dr. Hersh back in Colorado, once when her hair first started falling out, and then again six months later.

  Unlike Dr. Hersh, Dr. Kudirka of the Shoreline North Medical Center was a woman. She had flowing brown hair, and she didn’t wear a white coat. She wore jeans and a lavender T-shirt that read, DERMATOLOGIST BY DAY, CAT LOVER BY NIGHT.

  “Nice to meet you, Quinn,” Dr. Kudirka said, holding out a hand for Quinn to shake.

  “Nice to meet you, too.”

  Quinn sat on the crinkly paper of the examination table, bareheaded. Mo sat on a chair in the corner, holding Guinevere in her lap like a small dog.

  “So,” Dr. Kudirka said, glancing at her clipboard. “You noticed your first bald patch fifteen months ago?”

  Quinn nodded. Four hundred and twenty-nine days, but who was counting?

  “And it took about eight weeks for the hair to fall out completely?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you noticed any regrowth since then?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  Dr. Kudirka flicked on a light that hung down from the ceiling like a spider’s leg. She put on a pair of magnifying glasses just like the ones Dr. Hersh had worn. She peered at Quinn’s scalp.

  After a minute she said, “I don’t see anything.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Not yet. No.”

  “Not yet,” Quinn’s mom repeated. “So there’s still a chance the hair could grow back?”

  “That’s the good news about alopecia areata,” Dr. Kudirka said, removing her glasses. “It’s cyclical. No matter how widespread the hair loss, most hair follicles stay alive and are ready to resume normal hair production whenever they receive the appropriate signal.”

  The appropriate signal. Quinn wondered what this was but didn’t ask. She had been sending signals to her hair follicles for over a year now. She had been speaking to them softly. Grow, grow, grow. She had been singing to them sweetly.

  “The course of the disease,” Dr. Kudirka continued, “is different for everyone, but we have every reason to hope that Quinn’s hair will grow back. We just can’t predict when that will happen or how long the regrowth will last.”

  “I see,” Quinn’s mom said.

  “I know it’s frustrating,” Dr. Kudirka said, “but all we can really do at this point is wait.”

  We, Quinn thought. Like Dr. Kudirka was planning to sit around all day with Quinn and her mom, the three of them watching Quinn’s hair follicles hibernate.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Mo said, as soon as they were alone in the room.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I was hoping…” Mo’s voice trailed off.

  “I know,” Quinn said. “It’s fine.”

  She pulled a roll of wig tape out of her pocket. She ripped off a piece with her teeth. Then another. After three weeks of dealing with Guinevere, Quinn was practically an expert.

  “Do you need some scissors?” Quinn’s mom asked.

  “No.” It felt good to use her teeth. It felt good to rip and tear.

  “You don’t have to go back to school,” Mo said. “We could go out for ice cream.” Like Quinn was still a little kid. Like ice cream could fix anything.

  “Sure,” Quinn said, slapping the wig tape onto her scalp with unnecessary force.

  “Would you like that, honey?”

  “I said sure.”

  *   *   *

  On their way to the lobby, Mo’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen before answering. “Sabine? Is everything okay?”

  Sabine was a name Quinn had been hearing a lot lately. Sabine says to focus on the positive. Sabine says to put play on the schedule. Sabine says to set small, measurable goals.

  “Can you hold on a sec, Sabine?” Mo said. To Quinn, she whispered, “It’s Sabine, from the Cove.”

  Like there was any other Sabine.

  “She has to talk to me about Julius … Here.” Mo rifled through her purse and came up with a ten. “Why don’t you find the café and get yourself something to eat? I’ll join you as soon as I’m finished.”

  “Fine,” Quinn said, taking the ten bucks like everything was cool—who cared about ice cream? Who cared about Julius ruling the world?

  “Sabine?” Mo pressed the phone to her cheek. “What’s going on?”

  *   *   *

  If the Shoreline North Medical Center had a café, it was in some top-secret location Quinn didn’t know about. She wandered from floor to floor. Radiology. Pediatrics. Obstetrics. Health and Wellness. There was no food to be found. Not even a vending machine.

  Quinn didn’t really care. She wasn’t hungry anyway. She was too busy thinking about her stupid bald head. She didn’t want to think about it, but she was. And, as always, thinking about her stupid bald head made her think about that One Stupid Night and how it had ruined everything.

  In the weeks that followed gives new meaning to the word head, Quinn kept thinking it would blow over. She would wake up each morning saying to herself, “Today will be different. Today, Paige and Tara will act normal. Today, the girls on my team will forget what happened and we’ll go back to just playing basketball.” Quinn kept waiting for someone to text her, to show up at her locker, to ask her to hang out after practice. But nothing happened. Life as Quinn McAvoy had known it was over. In the course of one night, she had become Pluto: a has-been planet, too dwarflike and unimportant to hang with the other celestial bodies. She never mentioned this to her parents. Once, when they were having dinner, Mo looked at her across the table and said, “Are you okay, honey? You seem tired.” Quinn had almost said it then. I’ve been downgraded, Mom. I’m Pluto. She had been about to open her mouth when Julius noticed a green pea in his mashed potatoes and flipped out. White Wednesday, Mo! White Wednesday!

  Fast-forward six months. The morning Quinn’s parents loaded up the U-Haul to make the trip from Boulder to Gulls Head, Quinn ran into Ethan Hess. Of course she did. It was Murphy’s Law that on the same day she was moving away she would bump into the one person in the universe she least wanted to see, in the soda aisle of Lucky’s Market.

  She hadn’t wanted to see him, yet there he was, reaching for a Dr Pepper. And she wasn’t about to let this moment pass her by, so she headed straight for him. “That’s what liars drink, huh?”

  Ethan had looked up, surprised. “Quinn?”

  “Oh, now you know my name?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  He looked so stupid all of a sudden, standing there with his floppy hair and his too long, too low shorts. Quinn had the crazy urge to pull down those shorts right there, in the middle of Lucky’s Market, because that was what he deserved. But she restrained herself. She said, “I’m moving today.”

  “Yeah.” Ethan nodded like a floppy-haired bobblehead. “I heard something like that.”

  “Is there anything you want to say to me before I go?”

  “I…”

  She opened her arms wide. “Here’s your chance.”

  “Um,” he said, looking aro
und like he was afraid someone might see him talking to G. I. Jane and think he was a loser.

  “It’s just you and me, Ethan,” Quinn said quietly. For a second, she let herself remember the first five minutes in Paige’s bathroom, when the two of them been talking and laughing and she had actually hoped he would kiss her.

  “Look, Quinn,” he said. “I’m—”

  “Dude!”

  Suddenly, it wasn’t just the two of them. John Kugler appeared out of nowhere. The same John Kugler who, just days before, had ripped the Colorado Rockies cap off Quinn’s head in the middle of assembly and started a game of keep-away.

  “What are you doing with the Head?” John smirked. “Coming back for more?”

  “Yeah,” Ethan muttered. “Right.”

  “Dude.” John held out his hand for a high five.

  “Wow, John,” Quinn had said, her voice thick with sarcasm. “You’re such a nice guy. You’re both such nice guys. I hope all the boys in Massachusetts are just like you.” She’d walked away to the sound of them cracking up, and even though she could tell that Ethan was only fake laughing, and she believed that he would have apologized if John hadn’t shown up, it still hurt.

  Even now, when Quinn McAvoy of Gulls Head, Massachusetts, thought about Ethan Hess or John Kugler or Sammy Albee or Paige or Tara or any of the girls on her basketball team, her stomach felt as holey as a hunk of Swiss cheese. Especially on days like today, when dermatologists in stupid T-shirts told her there was nothing to be done about her bald head, the dark thoughts swirled.

  What if the wig tape doesn’t stick?

  What if Guinevere comes flying off?

  What if everything that happened in Boulder repeats itself all over again?

  These were the what-ifs playing on the screen in Quinn’s brain when she passed a set of double doors leading into a room filled with light. The entire back wall was windows. Scattered all around were those brightly colored exercise balls, like the one Quinn’s mom used to bounce Julius up and down on when he was a baby. There were a few people working out on weight machines. A blond woman lying on a cushioned table. A boy, about the same age as Julius, holding on to two wooden bars, taking halting steps forward on short metal legs.

  It took Quinn a few seconds to register.

  She knew that boy.

  He was not the same age as Julius.

  His legs were just really, really short.

  Even though he was concentrating on the floor in front of him, he must have sensed her standing in the doorway because he looked up and froze.

  Quinn knew, without Nick Strout saying a word, that he wanted to run, or evaporate, whichever would make him disappear faster.

  This was the moment where, if Quinn were brave, she would rip Guinevere off her head and say, “Those are your legs? Well, this is my head.”

  But she couldn’t do it.

  She and Nick weren’t friends yet. Not really. In the weeks since his Instagram apology, things had improved. She would admit that. They said hi to each other in study hall now. Once, when Quinn asked Nick for a Post-it, he gave her one. But that was all. Even Quinn’s friendship with Ivy and Carmen and Lissa was too new, too unpredictable for her to bare all. Maybe there would be some magical moment in the future. Once she’d gotten to know everyone better. Once she knew she could trust them. But not here. Not now.

  Now, Quinn would do something encouraging, but far less dramatic than ripping off her wig. She would give Nick Strout a thumbs-up. And then she would hightail it out of there.

  CHAPTER

  8

  IN THE PARKING LOT OF THE COVE, while Mo was inside meeting with Sabine and Julius and whichever teacher Julius had spat on, Quinn took out her phone. She tapped on Instagram and sent a direct message to Nick.

  Sorry for surprising u like that. I didn’t know u would be in there.

  Then she replied to the group text from Ivy and Carmen and Lissa. All ok. Dr’s appt ran long. C u tmrw.

  A minute later, Quinn’s phone pinged.

  Instagram now

  gulls24qb sent you a direct message.

  Quinn tapped on Instagram again. She hit the mail icon.

  gulls24qb What were u doing there?

  Dr’s appt, Quinn wrote back.

  gulls24qb What kind of dr?

  Quinn thought for a second before she answered. Then she wrote, Dermatologist.

  gulls24qb Y?

  Quinn thought another second before answering. Skin stuff.

  It wasn’t even close to the whole truth. But Quinn didn’t want to get into that, so she wrote something that was related to “skin stuff” but had nothing to do with bald heads or amputated limbs.

  Did u know there’s this guy in California who can stretch the skin from his neck all the way over his mouth? Quinn sent this message without really thinking about how weird it was.

  Then a new message appeared.

  gulls24qb Random.

  So Quinn wrote another message, by way of explanation. My brother is obsessed w guinness world records. Trust me. They get way more random than that.

  gulls24qb How random?

  And Quinn wrote, IDK. Most toilet seats broken by someone’s head in 1 min?

  gulls24qb LOL.

  The thought of Nick Strout laughing out loud made Quinn want to keep going. So she picked up one of Julius’s books, which were sitting in a stack in the backseat, and she began flipping through, looking for the strangest records she could find.

  Longest distance keeping a table lifted w teeth. Longest metal coil passed thru nose & out mouth. Most wins @ the world beard and mustache championship.

  Quinn decided to stop there, in case Nick was starting to think she was a freak.

  It took a few minutes, but then he replied.

  gulls24qb There’s a world beard and mustache championship?

  And she wrote back, Apparently so.

  gulls24qb I can’t believe those r real records.

  And she wrote back, Ikr?

  Quinn realized—after her mom and Julius got back in the car and they all drove home—that she and Nick Strout had just broken their very own record. Longest conversation.

  CHAPTER

  9

  QUINN WAS BOTH SURPRISED AND NOT SURPRISED when Nick was at the beach the next morning. “Hey,” she said, skidding to a stop on the sand and hopping off her skateboard.

  “Hey.”

  She knew not to smile. She knew not to stare. She knew that the last question in the world she should ask was Why are you in your wheelchair if you have prosthetic legs?

  She had only one option: act normal.

  Quinn dropped her backpack on the ground next to her skateboard. She dribbled to the foul line. Bounce, bounce, catch. Bounce, bounce, catch. She sank her ten free throws. When she dribbled back and Nick was still sitting at the end of the court, she said casually, “You want to pass?”

  He shrugged. “Okay.”

  She bounced the ball between them, nice and easy.

  He caught it and fired back a bullet.

  “You have good hands,” she said. Soft pass.

  “I used to play football,” he said. Hard pass.

  “Oh yeah?” Medium pass.

  “Quarterback.” Hard pass.

  “I can tell.” Medium pass. “You want to play a lightning round?”

  “What’s that?” Hard pass.

  Quinn held the ball to explain. “It’s this thing we used to do at my basketball camp. Our coach would pass someone the ball and fire a question at the same time, like, ‘What’s your favorite color?’ And that person had to pass the ball back right away, answering the question. Want to try?”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s your favorite color?” Quinn said as she passed the ball.

  Nick caught it, passed it back. “Green.”

  “Favorite food.” Pass.

  “Tacos.” Pass.

  “Chicken or beef?” Pass.

  “Either.” Pass.

 
; “Favorite animal.” Pass.

  “Cheetah.” Pass.

  “Ice cream?” Pass.

  “Oreo.” Pass.

  “Candy.” Pass.

  “Black licorice.” Pass.

  “Seriously?” Quinn held the ball.

  “Yeah.”

  “No one likes black licorice.”

  “I do.”

  Quinn smiled. She passed the ball back. “Favorite movie.”

  “Fletch.” Pass.

  “Song.” Pass.

  “‘Till I Collapse.’” Pass.

  “Why don’t you have an accent?” Pass.

  “What?” Pass.

  “A Boston accent.” Pass.

  “We moved here from Michigan.” Pass.

  “Oh yeah?” Pass.

  “Where people say their Rs.” Pass.

  Quinn smiled. “How old were you?” Pass.

  “When I moved?” Pass.

  “Yeah.” Pass.

  “Six.” Pass.

  “What happened to your legs?”

  Nick made a loud, and kind of hilarious, HO sound as he caught the ball.

  Quinn waited.

  He passed the ball, but he didn’t answer.

  She passed it back, waiting.

  “It was a party,” he said finally. Pass.

  Quinn nodded. Pass.

  “We went snowmobiling.” Pass.

  Pass.

  “Tommy was driving.” Pass.

  Tommy was driving? Pass.

  “I was on the back.” Pass.

  Pass.

  “We hit a patch of ice and flipped.” Pass.

  Pass.

  “I got trapped underneath.” Pass.

  Quinn held the ball. Her brain was still back on Tommy was driving.

  “I had a bunch of surgeries, and then I got this infection, and the tissue in my legs started dying, so—” Nick made a double chopping motion through the air. “That was it.”