by Jodi Picoult
I’ve got to go. The words were in my mouth, smooth and round like cherry pits, but what came out was this: “I could help you.”
• • •
Stupid, stupid, stupid ass. That’s what I kept telling myself I was, once the back of my truck was loaded with three sheets of pressure-treated plywood and carpeting and I was headed to Piper Reece’s house. There was no real explanation for why I hadn’t simply turned my back and walked away from her except for this: in all the years I’d known Piper, I’d never seen her as anything but confident and self-assured—to the point where she was too sharp, too arrogant. Today, though, she’d been completely flustered.
I liked her better this way.
I knew the way to her house, of course. When I pulled onto her street, I experienced the slightest panic—would Rob be home? I didn’t think I could handle both of them at once. But his car was gone, and as I turned off the engine, I took a deep breath. Five minutes, I told myself. Install the freaking GFCI and get out of there.
Piper was waiting at the front door. “This is really so nice of you,” she said as I stepped inside.
The hallway hadn’t always been this color. And when I walked into it, I saw that the kitchen had been remodeled. “You’ve had some work done in here.”
“Actually, I did it myself,” Piper admitted. “I’ve had a lot more time lately.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over us like a shroud. “Well. Everything looks completely different.”
She stared at me. “Everything is completely different.”
I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “So the first thing you have to do is cut off the power at the circuit box,” I said. “I’m guessing that’s in the basement?”
She led me downstairs, and I switched off the breaker. Then I walked into the kitchen. “Which one is it?” I asked, and Piper pointed.
“Sean? How are you doing?”
I deliberately pretended to hear her incorrectly. “Just taking out the busted one,” I said. “Look, it’s that easy, once you unscrew it. And then you have to take all the white wires and pigtail them together into one of these little caps. After that, you take the new GFCI and use your screwdriver to connect the pigtail over here—see where it says ‘white line’?”
Piper leaned closer. Her breath smelled of coffee and remorse. “Yes.”
“Do the same thing with the black wires, and connect them to the terminal that says ‘hot line.’ And last of all, you connect the grounding wire to the green screw and stuff it all back into the box.” With the screwdriver, I reattached the cover plate and turned to her. “Simple.”
“Nothing’s simple,” she said, and she stared at me. “But you know that. Like, for example, crossing over to the dark side.”
I put the screwdriver down gently. “It’s all the dark side, Piper.”
“Well, still. I feel like I owe you a thank-you.”
I shrugged, looking away. “I’m really sorry this all happened to you.”
“I’m really sorry it happened to you,” Piper answered.
I cleared my throat, took a step backward. “You probably want to go down and throw the breaker, so you can test the outlet.”
“That’s all right,” Piper said, and she offered me a shy smile. “I think it’s going to work.”
Amelia
Okay, let me just tell you that it’s not easy to keep a secret in close quarters. My house was bad enough, but have you ever noticed how thin the walls of a hotel bathroom are? I mean, you can hear everything—which meant that when I needed to make myself sick, I had to do it in the big public restrooms in the lobby, which required sitting in a stall until I could peek left and right and not see any other pairs of shoes.
After I’d gotten up this morning and found a note from Mom, I’d gone downstairs to eat and then found you in the kids’ area. “Amelia,” you said when you saw me. “Aren’t those cool?” You were pointing to little colored rods that some of the kids had affixed to the wheels of their chairs. They made an annoying clicking sound when you pushed, which to be honest would get awfully old awfully quick, but—to be fair—they were pretty awesome when they glowed in the dark.
I could practically see you taking mental notes as you sized up the other kids with OI. Who had which color wheelchair, who put stickers on their walkers, which girls could walk and which ones had to use a chair, which kids could eat by themselves and which needed help being fed. You were placing yourself in the mix, figuring out where you fit in and how independent you were by comparison. “So what’s on the docket for this morning?” I asked. “And where’s Mom?”
“I don’t know—I guess at one of the other meetings,” you said, and then you beamed at me. “We’re going swimming. I’ve already got on my bathing suit.”
“That sounds kind of fun—”
“You can’t come, Amelia. It’s for people like me.”
I knew you didn’t mean to sound like such a snot, but it still hurt to be cut out. I mean, who else was left to ignore me? First Mom, then Emma, now even my little disabled sister was dissing me. “Well, I wasn’t inviting myself,” I said, stung. “I have somewhere to go anyway.” But I watched you wheel yourself into the pack as one of the nurses called the first group of kids to head toward the pool. You were giggling, whispering with a girl who had a bumper sticker on the back of her chair: HOGWARTS DROPOUT.
I wandered out of the kiddie zone and into the main hallway of conference rooms. I had no idea what presentation my mother was planning to attend, but before I could even think about that, one of the signs outside the doors caught my attention: TEENS ONLY. I poked my head inside and saw a collection of kids my age with OI—some in wheelchairs, some just standing—batting around balloons.
Except they weren’t balloons. They were condoms.
“We’re going to get started,” the woman in the front of the room said. “Hon, can you close the door?”
She was, I realized, talking to me. I didn’t belong here—there were special programs for siblings like me who didn’t have OI. But then again, looking around the room, I could see there were plenty of kids who weren’t as bad off as you were—maybe no one would know my bones were perfectly fine.
Then I noticed the boy from yesterday—the one who’d come over to get that little girl Niamh when we were still registering. He looked like the kind of guy who would play the guitar and make up songs about the girl he loved. I’d always thought it would be amazing to have a guy sing to me; although what on earth could he find interesting enough about me to write a song about? Amelia, Amelia . . . take off your shirt and let me feel ya?
I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me. The boy grinned, and I lost all sensation in my legs.
I sat down on a stool beside him and pretended I was far too cool to notice the fact that he was close enough for me to feel his body heat. “Welcome,” the woman at the front of the room said. “I’m Sarah, and if you’re not here for Birds and Bees and Breaks, you’re in the wrong place. Ladies and gentlemen, today we’re going to talk about sex, sex, and nothing but sex.”
There was some edgy laughter; the tips of my ears started to burn.
“Nothing like beating around the bush,” the boy beside me said, and then he smiled. “Oops. Bad metaphor.”
I looked around, but he was very clearly speaking to me. “Very bad,” I whispered.
“I’m Adam,” he said, and I froze. “You’ve got a name, don’t you?”
Well, yeah, but if I told it to him, he might know I wasn’t supposed to be here. “Willow.”
God, that smile again. “That’s a really pretty name,” he said. “It suits you.”
I stared down at the table and blushed furiously. This was a talk about sex, not a lab where we got to do it. And yet, no one had ever said anything to me even remotely resembling a come-on, unless Hey, dork, do you have an extra pencil? counted. Was I subliminally irresistible to Adam because my bones were strong?
“
Who can guess what your number one risk is if you have OI and you have sex?” Sarah asked.
A girl’s hand inched up. “Breaking your pelvis?”
The boys behind me snickered. “Actually,” Sarah said, “I have talked to hundreds of people with OI who are sexually active. And the only person I’ve ever known to break a bone during sex did it by falling off the bed.”
This time, everyone laughed out loud.
“If you have OI, the biggest risk in sexual activity is acquiring a sexually transmitted disease, which means”—she looked around the room—“you’re no different from someone without OI who has sex.”
Adam pushed a piece of paper across the table to me. I unfolded it: R U Type I?
I knew enough about your illness to understand why he’d think that. There were people who had Type I OI who went through their whole lives not even knowing it—just breaking a few more bones than ordinary folks. Then again, there were other Type I’s who broke as many bones as you did. Often, Type I’s were taller, and they didn’t always have those heart-shaped faces that you saw on Type IIIs, like you. I was normal height; I wasn’t in a wheelchair, I didn’t have any scoliosis—and I was in a session for kids with OI. Of course he thought I had Type I.
I scribbled on the other side of the paper and passed it back: Actually, I’m a Gemini.
He had really nice teeth. Yours were kind of messed up—that happened a lot with OI kids, along with hearing loss—but his looked all Hollywood white and perfectly even, like he could have starred in a Disney Channel movie.
“What about getting pregnant?” a girl asked.
“Anyone with OI—any type—can get pregnant,” Sarah explained. “Your risks would vary, though, depending on your individual situation.”
“Would the baby have OI, too?”
“Not necessarily.”
I thought of that picture I’d seen in the magazine, of the lady with Type III who’d had a baby in her arms nearly the same size as she was. The problem wasn’t with the plumbing, though. It was with the partner. Every day wasn’t an OI convention; each of these kids was probably the only one with OI in his or her school. I tried to fast-forward you to my age. If I couldn’t even get a guy to notice my existence, how would you—tiny, freakishly smart, in your wheelchair or walker? I felt my hand rising, as if a balloon were attached to the wrist. “There’s just one problem with that,” I said. “What if nobody ever wants to have sex with you?”
Instead of the laughter I expected, there was dead silence. I looked around, stunned. Was I not the only person my age absolutely positively sure I was going to die a virgin?
“That,” Sarah said, “is a really good question. How many of you had a boyfriend or girlfriend when you were in fifth or sixth grade?” A smattering of hands rose. “How many of you have had a boyfriend or girlfriend after that?”
Two hands, out of twenty.
“A lot of kids who don’t have OI will be put off by a wheelchair, or by the fact that you don’t look the same way they do. And it’s totally clichéd, but believe me, those are the kids you don’t want to be with anyway. You want someone who cares about who you are, not what you are. And even if you have to wait for that, it’s going to be worth it. All you have to do is look around you at this convention to see that people with OI fall in love, get married, have sex, get pregnant—not necessarily in that order.” As the room broke up laughing again, she began to walk among us, handing out condoms and bananas.
Maybe this was a lab after all.
I had seen couples here who clearly both had OI; I’d seen couples where one partner did and one didn’t. If someone able-bodied fell in love with you, maybe it would take some of the stress off Mom, eventually. Would you come back to a convention like this and flirt with a kid like Adam? Or one of the wild boys who rode his wheelchair up and down the escalator? I couldn’t imagine that was easy on any account—not practically, on a daily basis, and not emotionally, either. Having another person with OI in your life meant you had to worry about yourself and about someone else.
Then again, maybe that had nothing to do with OI, and everything to do with love.
“I think we’re supposed to be partners,” Adam said, and just like that, I couldn’t breathe. Then I realized he was talking about the stupid banana and condom. “You want to go first?”
I tore open the foil packet. Can you see someone’s pulse? Because mine was certainly banging hard enough under my skin.
I started to unroll the condom along the length of the banana. It got all bunched up on top. “I don’t think that’s right,” Adam said.
“Then you do it.”
He peeled off the condom and tore open a second foil packet. I watched him balance the little disk at the top of the banana and smooth it down the length in one easy motion. “Oh, my God,” I said. “You are way too good at that.”
“That’s because my sex life consists entirely of fruit right now.”
I smirked. “I find that hard to believe.”
Adam met my gaze. “Well, I find it hard to believe you have a hard time finding someone who wants to have sex with you.”
I grabbed the banana out of his hand. “Did you know a banana is a reproductive organ of the plant it grows on?”
God, I sounded like an idiot. I sounded like you, spouting off your trivia.
“Did you know grapes explode if you put them in the microwave?” Adam said.
“Really?”
“Totally.” He paused. “A reproductive organ?”
I nodded. “An ovary.”
“So where are you from?”
“New Hampshire,” I said. “How about you?”
I held my breath, thinking maybe he was from Bankton, too, and in the high school, which was why I hadn’t met him yet. “Anchorage,” Adam answered.
It figured.
“So you and your sister both have OI?”
He’d seen me with you in the wheelchair. “Yeah,” I said.
“That must be kind of nice. To have someone in the house who gets it, you know?” He grinned. “I’m an only child. My parents took one look at me and broke the mold.”
“Or the mold broke.” I laughed.
Sarah passed by our table and pointed to the banana. “Wonderful,” she said.
We were. Except for the fact that he thought my name was Willow and I had OI.
A makeshift game of condomball had broken out, as groups of kids batted the inflated condoms around the room. “Hey, isn’t Willow the name of that girl whose mom is suing because of her OI?” Adam asked.
“How did you know that?” I said, stunned.
“It’s all over the blogs. Don’t you read them?”
“I’ve . . . been busy.”
“I thought the girl was way younger—”
“Well, you thought wrong,” I interrupted.
Adam tilted his head. “You mean, it’s you?”
“Could you just kind of keep it quiet?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not something I feel like talking about.”
“I bet,” Adam said. “It must suck.”
I imagined how you must be feeling. You’d said a few things in our room, in those gray minutes before we fell asleep, but I think you kept a lot to yourself. I considered what it would be like to be noticed for only one trait—like being left-handed, or brunette, or double-jointed—instead of for the whole of you. Here was Sarah talking about finding someone who loved you for who you were, not what you appeared to be—and your own mother couldn’t even seem to manage it. “It’s like tug-of-war,” I said quietly, “and I’m the rope.”
Underneath the table, I felt Adam squeeze my hand. He threaded our fingers together, his knuckles locking against mine. “Adam,” I whispered, as Sarah started to speak about STDs and hymens and premature ejaculation, and we continued to hold hands under the table. I felt as if I had a star in my throat, as if all I had to do was open my mouth for light to pour out of me. “What if someone sees us?”
He turned
his head; I felt his breath on the curve of my ear. “Then they’ll think I’m the luckiest guy in this room.”
With those words, my body became electric, with all the power generating from the place our palms touched. I didn’t hear another word Sarah said for the next thirty minutes. I couldn’t think of anything but how different Adam’s skin was from mine and how close he was and how he wasn’t letting go.
• • •
It wasn’t a date, but it wasn’t not a date, either. We were both planning on going to the zoo for that evening’s family activity, so Adam made me promise to meet him at the orangutans at six o’clock.
Okay, he asked Willow to meet him there.
You were so excited about going to the zoo that you could barely sit still the whole minibus ride over there. We didn’t have a zoo in New Hampshire, and the one near Boston was nothing to write home about. We’d been planning to go to Disney’s Animal Kingdom during our vacation at Disney World, but you remember how that turned out. Unlike you, my mother was practically a china statue. She stared straight ahead on the minibus and didn’t try to talk to anyone, as opposed to yesterday, when she was Miss Chatty. She looked like she might shatter if the driver hit a speed bump too fast.
Then again, she wouldn’t be the only one.
I kept checking my watch so often that I felt like Cinderella. Actually, I felt like Cinderella for a lot of reasons. Except instead of wearing a glittery blue dress, I was borrowing your identity and your illness, and my prince happened to be someone who’d broken forty-two bones.
“Apes,” you announced as soon as we crossed through the gates of the zoo. They’d opened the place for the OI convention after normal business hours, which was cool because it felt like we’d been trapped here after the gates had been locked for the night, and practical because I’m sure it was—well—a zoo during the day, and most people with OI would have been bobbing and weaving to avoid being knocked by the crowds. I grabbed your chair and started to push you up a slight incline, which was when I realized there was something really wrong with my mother.
She normally would have looked at me as if I’d grown a second head and asked why I was volunteering to push your chair when usually I whined bloody murder if she even asked me to unlatch your stupid car seat.
