by Paige Rawl
I wanted to tell her how it felt the other night when I went out for smoothies with Mariah, and some girls I didn’t even know were whispering about me. I heard them say “AIDS” and “slut,” and I felt so ashamed. I wanted to tell her that I got a phone call recently from Yasmine, Madison, and Lila. I heard their voices over the phone. “You’re ugly,” I heard them say. “You’re too ugly to be in pageants.”
The three of them, my old friends, were all together. It wasn’t so long ago that we had been a foursome. And now I was just standing there, listening to them. I was trying to move on—God, I was trying so hard—but instead all I could do was hold the phone, picturing them all together.
I don’t understand what is happening to me, I wanted to tell Dr. Cox. I didn’t know why I found myself shaking sometimes, why I woke up in the middle of the night grinding my teeth and then could not fall back asleep. I didn’t know why I couldn’t seem to keep my eyes on my math workbook, why my head seemed to hurt all the time.
Dr. Cox watched me closely, waiting for my answer.
“It’s going okay,” I said. I shrugged and did not meet her eye. I knew it could be so much worse. No one was pushing me down stairs or pulling my hair. I knew that happened sometimes when kids got bullied.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
I’m rubber, you’re glue.
There was something wrong with me if I let their words hurt me, and I knew it.
“Paige?” Dr. Cox asked more softly.
And then her office was swimming. My eyes filled with tears. I could not hold them back anymore. They came streaming out of me, even as I sat there saying, “I’m okay. I’m okay. I swear, I’m really okay.”
A few days later, I was back in the bathroom again, music blasting. Rocking back and forth, back and forth.
In my hand was another note. Another one.
I’d seen my name on the bathroom wall today. PAIGE HAS AIDS. Slut. Go home.
And in my hands was this scrap of paper, which I’d found tucked into a notebook. It was torn from a spiral notebook, the edge still frayed.
Four words. Different words from the last note.
You bitch. You hoe.
Sitting there in the bathroom, I wasn’t paying attention to the music. I wasn’t thinking about school.
I was aware of that note, and of one other thing.
I was aware of my mom’s nail scissors, those tiny steel nail scissors with the sharp tip, which were in the top drawer.
I want to get the scissors I want to hold them I want to feel the steel, scrape the blade against my skin.
My wrists. I longed to put those scissors on my wrists.
I realized I had been longing for that for a while, the feel of steel on skin.
I rocked and rocked, tried concentrating on the chorus of the song. I hope you know, I hope you know that this has nothing to do with you, it’s personal, myself and I, we’ve got some straightenin’ out to do. . . .
But oh, my God, those scissors. The steel. The sharp edges.
Something was so wrong with me. It was so wrong, I knew, that I couldn’t stop thinking about them.
My mother was on the other side of the wall. I tried to think of what she would tell me right now if she knew what I was thinking about. I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t imagine her knowing, couldn’t even begin to think how she would react if she knew what I wanted to do.
I pictured Dr. Cox’s face, that look of concern she gave me the last time I was in her office. I felt so bad when I’d told her about everything, like I’d let her down.
She had taken such good care of me for so many years. I owed it to her to be happier, to live the life that she had been trying to keep me alive for.
The scissors the scissors the scissors.
I looked again at the crumpled paper in my hands. I squeezed into a ball. My body shook.
And then, just like that, I had the strangest sensation. It was as if none of this was real. Not the lined, frayed-edge note in my hand, or the scrawl in ball-point pen. Not the music around me, not the fluorescent light overhead.
Not even me. Even I wasn’t real—it was like I was watching myself from far away, watching a movie of a girl who couldn’t stop thinking about scissors and wrists.
I felt an instant calm.
I stood up and snapped off the radio, carried the note into my bedroom. I tore it into pieces, wrapped the pieces in a tissue, and threw the whole thing away. Then I lay down flat on my bed, arms and legs straight by my side.
My pageant crowns were on my dresser. My book bag lay on the floor.
I watched myself lying there. I did not move.
First Seizure
And then. Basketball season.
We cheerleaders had just changed into our uniforms. Most of the other girls were leaving the locker room, but I sat there on the bench. My stomach hurt.
Amber turned around as she went out the door. “Come on, Paige,” she called out. “Hurry up!”
I stood up, followed her up the gym stairs, my blue Wildcats skirt brushing my legs. The crowd in the bleachers was a sea of blue and white—students and teachers, parents and brothers and sisters and community members. So many of them, come to cheer on the team.
I couldn’t see my mom in the crowd.
My stomach. Oh, God, my stomach. I didn’t know if I was getting sick. I hoped not. The show choir trip to Walt Disney World was coming up soon. I could never go feeling like this.
The basketball team warmed up, each player taking turns with one layup after another. Kyle Walker ran toward the basket, sank one easily, and then passed the ball to Michael Jepson.
Michael Jepson. A good guy. It’s what everyone said.
People were still arriving at the gym, still buying their tickets on the other side of the double doors.
I craned my head to see if my mom was arriving, but I couldn’t see her.
On the far wall, above the basket, there was a wildcat face painted in blue. Its mouth was open in a roar. Closer to me was the scoreboard, the American flag.
Shoes squeaked on the wooden gym floor.
The referee blew the whistle, and we took our places: feet wide, arms behind our back. We were ready.
Amber was right in front of me. I saw her, saw the crowd. I heard the noise. And that’s when it happened.
I felt a burst of heat in the middle of my body, felt it rush outward, all through me. Then, almost immediately, I felt a cold breeze, and I realized I was sweating. I started shaking then, really shaking, and it occurred to me my knees were weak, too weak to support my body.
How had these knees ever supported me?
Amber turned around to say something to me, but by that point, I could not hear her.
The world turned greenish gray, and all the commotion of the gym—the crowds, the whistle—got very far away. Amber narrowed her eyes and stepped toward me.
And that’s the last thing I remember. She just disappeared.
Everything in the world—the world itself—disappeared.
It really does happen that way. One minute, you’re looking at a painted wildcat face on a cinder-block wall, and everything is loud around you. And then the next thing you know, you are in a bed inside the emergency room, and someone has placed sticky things all over your chest, and these sticky things connect to wires, which connect to a machine that beeps and has lights.
I recognized Riley immediately.
Amber was by my side, along with my mother.
I had no idea how much time had passed.
God, my mother’s face was such a mess—it was blotchy and red, and there were tears rolling down her cheeks and clear fluid at the base of her nose. She must have wiped her nose, because there was a glistening horizontal streak across her cheek.
I blinked a couple of times. “What happened?”
My mother shook her head. “You had a seizure.”
“You scared me to death,” said Amber. “That
’s what happened.”
Okay, I thought. That explains something. I had been in the gym. And now I was here, and in between there was a seizure. But why—?
“Amber rode in the ambulance with you,” said my mom.
“They told me I wasn’t allowed to, but I got in anyway,” said Amber.
My mom reached over and put one of her hands on Amber’s.
“And then Amber insisted on being in the emergency room with you the whole time.” She turned to look at Amber. “I still have no idea how you got away with that.”
Amber shrugged. “I said, ‘What, you’re gonna leave a thirteen-year-old girl alone in a hallway in a hospital in the middle of downtown?’ They didn’t have any answer to that.”
My mother beamed at Amber. “She’s been a really good friend.”
“But why did I—?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet, Paige,” Mom said. “But you’re stable now. That’s what matters.”
Doctors ran tests. Blood work. Heart monitors. They looked at my eyes and asked me to move fingers and toes. They asked me if I recognized my mother, how old I was, what year it was. They put me inside a loud tube and made me lie perfectly still so they could take pictures of my brain. They made me stand with my eyes shut, made me squeeze fingers.
Then eventually, they sent me home.
Amber came home with us that night. My mom heated up some soup, and the two of them sat together in the kitchen as I crawled into bed. Then Amber spent the night in my room as I slept—“Just in case, Mrs. Rawl”—and she did not sleep at all.
In the morning, Amber went to school, and I went back to the doctors, where they told me what went wrong.
It was both a relief and not a relief, because nothing was wrong and everything was.
At the end of the day, when Amber showed up back at the house, I told her what the doctors had said. I told her the medical name for my diagnosis—psychogenic non-epileptic seizures—as well as the nickname. Pseudoseizures.
I told her what else we learned: that what happened to me in the gym is something that happens sometimes to returning war veterans, to mothers in child-custody battles, to anyone who is overextended, too deeply stressed for too long.
Amber was silent for a long time after I told her that.
“Well, fuck,” she finally said. “I didn’t know it had gotten that bad.”
Not Tell Them
And then we went to Walt Disney World, we flew halfway across the country to sing in the Magic Kingdom, and it was supposed to be so amazing.
And it was—at first.
The night before we left for the airport, Amber spent the night at my house. We woke up early, completely giddy—“It’s finally heeeere,” said Amber when my clock radio went off. My room was still dark, the shades still drawn, and I whispered in response, “Yessss.” We got ready together. (Straightening iron on my hair, loose ponytail for Amber. The gray hoodie for me, red one for Amber. Carnation Instant Breakfast for me, bowl of cereal for Amber.) My mom had signed up as a chaperone and was jumpy all morning—I figured she was just excited, too.
I was straightening up my bed, when I heard Amber shout, “Holy crap!”
Then she said, “No way. No freakin’ way!” And then she whooped, and my mom laughed out loud, and I came out to see what was going on.
There, right there in our driveway, was the biggest limousine I’d ever seen—gleaming and black, and wonderfully out of place in front of our little brick house.
“You’re kidding!” I said.
My mom beamed. “I thought we should go to the airport in style.”
I squealed, then threw my arms around my mom.
A limousine. Even the mom who always said yes, the mom who was always up for anything, could still manage to surprise me.
Moments later, the chauffeur loaded our luggage into the trunk, and we climbed into the back of the vehicle, where there were colorful lights and bottles of pop and water that we could just take, and tiny candies that we could eat. We put sunglasses on and leaned back in our seats.
“Dahling,” I said, drawing out my words. “I so love traveling in style, don’t you?”
“Why it’s the only way to travel,” said Amber, her nose high in the air.
When we rolled up to the airport, we felt like celebrities.
“Don’t look around to see if anyone’s watching us,” said Amber. “Just look like we do this all the time.”
“Right,” I said.
And that’s what we did. The chauffeur opened the doors for us, and we stepped out of the limousine, staring nonchalantly into the air, as if we did this sort of thing—riding in a limousine, jetting off to Florida—every other week. I felt everyone’s eyes on us.
In Florida, Amber and I shared a hotel room. My mom stayed in a different room, on a different floor, with another chaperone. Amber and I could barely sleep, we were so excited. In the dark, the light coming through the crack in the curtains, we talked about the plane ride down, about how the Clarkstown kids had taken up half the plane. We talked about what it might be like tomorrow, when we sang in the park, about how this whole thing was a dream come true.
I mean, we were here. In Orlando, Florida. We were in our own hotel room. We were going to sing in Walt Disney World.
In the morning, we knocked on the door of my mom’s hotel room. I expected that she would be as giddy as we were. But instead, her jaw was clenched tight, and her neck was splotchy, the way it became whenever she was angry. “Jeez, Mom. What’s up?” I asked as we walked down the hallway.
“Nothing,” she snapped.
I’m telling you, no one on this planet is worse at hiding her emotions than my mom is.
“Come on, Mom. What’s going on?”
When she didn’t say anything, I glanced at Amber.
“Mom?”
“I got a phone call last night, that’s all,” she said. “A prank.” I swear, it looked like steam might start coming out of her ears, like what happens to cartoon characters when they get angry.
“What, in your hotel room?” asked Amber. My mom nodded, her nostrils flaring. Whatever it was, she was furious about it.
We entered the hotel lobby, which was packed with Clarkstown kids. My mother surveyed the crowd.
“What did they say?” I whispered.
My mom pressed her lips together, her eyes darting from face to face. God, she was really mad.
“Mrs. Rawl?” said Amber. “Was it kids?”
“Oh, yeah, it was kids all right. Boys.”
Her eyes narrowed as she watched a group of boys making cups of hot chocolate. Near them, a man in a business suit tried to maneuver his way through the crowd toward the coffee machine. I felt sorry for that man. I felt sorry for anyone who was staying in the hotel who wasn’t associated with Clarkstown. We were so loud.
“Mom, seriously. What did they say?”
But then Mrs. Kay was at the front of the room, waving her hands to get everyone’s attention. “The shuttles are here to take us to the park,” she called out. “Please get on in an orderly fashion and remember that you are representing your school.”
We began walking toward the buses.
“Mom? What did they say?”
She frowned. “They said, ‘Is it true your daughter has AIDS?’ And they were laughing like it was all a big goddamned joke.”
“Oh, Mrs. Rawl,” said Amber.
“Then they called back again. When I picked up, I said I was going to have the call traced, so they hung up. Yeah, real funny. My daughter is HIV positive, and you think it’s just hilarious.”
We got onto the bus and sat down.
Two rows behind us sat Michael and Kyle, who were laughing with some other boys.
My mom pressed her lips together tightly, and then said loudly—so loudly that everyone around us could hear—“If I find out who was calling the room and talking shit, there is going to be trouble.”
Amber burst out laughing, but I cringed. “Mo
m . . .” I hissed.
“I’m sorry, but I’m pissed.” God, her voice was so loud. “Little jerks.” She shouted that last line into the air.
I met Amber’s eyes, and she smiled at me, clearly amused by my mom. The bus rumbled into motion. The other kids started talking, but none of us spoke until we were near the park, until we could see bushes trimmed into the shape of animals.
That’s when my mom looked at me. Her face had changed by now. There was less anger, more sorrow.
“Is this what it’s like, Paige?” she asked. And I knew what she was thinking: if they would treat a parent this way, what must it be like for me, when parents weren’t around? I could tell she was worried now.
The bus slowed down as we approached the gate. Her question hovered in the air. Is this what it’s like now?
I shrugged. “I dunno. Sometimes. It’s okay.”
We sang outside, on a big outdoor stage. In front of us were many chairs in neat rows. And the funny thing was that almost nobody was in those chairs. The entire area was near empty. It turns out that when people travel to Walt Disney World, they are more interested in the rides than in hearing a bunch of middle school kids from Indiana sing.
We sang “Blue Skies” and “Pennies from Heaven” and a song about rejoicing in the brand-new day. We waved our arms and spun and wove in and out of one another as we sang. And the whole thing was a bit like the opening number of a pageant, except for the fact that we were outdoors instead of in a hotel room, and so few people were watching. My mom took pictures; I saw her out there, holding up her phone, and the sight of her alone, all of those empty chairs around her, made me so sad.
I wished that they hadn’t done it, those boys.
I wished that they had left my mom alone.
It was one thing to call me names, to keep things kid to kid. But this was my mom, and all she ever wanted was to make me happy, and it was like they were saying to her face, “You can’t.”
My mom was right. Some line had been crossed. Everything was unhinged.
That evening, I had another seizure. I was in the hotel room, can of Coke in my hand.
