Skin

by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

  SKIN

  Margaret K. McElderry Books

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real

  people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters,

  places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any

  resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is

  entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in

  part in any form.

  Book design by Yaffa Jaskoll

  The text for this book is set in Manticore.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Vrettos, Adrienne Maria.

  Skin / Adrienne Maria Vrettos.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When his parents decide to separate, eighth grader Donnie

  watches with horror as the physical condition of his sixteen-year old sister,

  Karen, deteriorates due to an eating disorder.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-0655-1

  ISBN-10: 1-4169-0655-X (hardcover)

  eISBN-13: 978-14424-4407-2

  [1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Anorexia nervosa—Fiction. 3. Family

  problems—Fiction. 4. Self-perception—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.V9855Sk 2006

  [Fic]—dc22

  2005001119

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  ADRIENNE MARIA VRETTOS

  For Miriam Cohen, who believed

  These are the things you think when you come home to find that your sister has starved herself to death and you have dropped to your knees to revive her:

  1. My sister is flat like a board. There’s fat guys in the locker room with bigger boobs than she has.

  2. When I scream my sister’s name into her face, I can hear my father’s voice in my own.

  3. Where is it you’re supposed to press? In the middle, on the side? Left or right?

  I choose middle. I put the heels of my hands, one on top of the other, on Karen’s chest. I can feel her ribs under the thick of her too-small sweater. When I press down, her head rocks a little, hanging huge on her neck. I feel nothing pulse against my hand. I count out, “One and two and three and four and five.” Something cracks under my palm and I yank my hands away, not because I broke her rib but because she did nothing. I broke her and she didn’t even flinch.

  “COME ON!” I scream. I shove my fingers into her mouth and pull it open. Her teeth move against my fingers. I suck in a breath and push it out, into her. Her chest rises. Fake alive. She doesn’t return my breath.

  “Karen?” I whisper.

  The front door crashes open and whacks me in the shoulder, knocking me away. I land on my side, my elbow smacking against the tile of the front-hall floor. When I look up at the doorway, I see God. I sit up, the arm with the bruised elbow limp and tingling in my lap. God is huge; he stands in the doorway and blocks the winter sun from slanting into the hall. He’s holding a box of fishing tackle. It takes me a second to realize it’s not God. But it is Elvis. Elvis is back. He is an EMT with a harelip and acne, and he has come to save my sister.

  I am in the center of his shadow, and when he steps into the house to drop his equipment at Karen’s side, the brightness of the sun surprises me, burning red-ringed white spots into my eyes before I can turn my face to where Elvis is pressing two fingers behind Karen’s jaw.

  I crawl toward him, my hurt arm curled against my stomach. I watch his face, trying to read what he feels beneath his fingers. I am whispering, “Please please please please please.”

  He moves his hand away from her neck and I choke on the air in my mouth.

  “How old is she?” he asks, and I know it’s a question meant to keep me from being strangled by my own throat, it is supposed to get air into my lungs and back out again.

  “Sixteen.” The word squeaks out and I am gulping air and I am saying too loudly, “She is sixteen and I am fourteen. I’m her brother.”

  “Turn on the light,” Elvis says, still not looking at me.

  I scramble up and switch on the front-hall light and press my back against the wall. Elvis sucks in his breath when the light hits my sister. I could gouge out his eyes for that. For looking at her and gasping. For making maybe the last thing she hears be some jerkoff gasping at the skin hanging loose off her bones.

  I’ve seen dead things before. I know a dead thing looks smaller than when it was alive. My sister looks like she could fold inside a paper cup.

  There is another EMT in the house now and she kneels next to Elvis so he can talk low into her ear. Behind them, in the kitchen, I can see the calendar that hangs by the phone. There is an empty square where today’s date should be. I know what was in that blank space, I know it was more than a number to show that today is February twenty-second. Months and months ago Karen and Amanda decorated that small square because today is the one-year anniversary of the day they met and became instant best friends. They had a whole celebration planned. Karen said, “Donnie, you have to play yourself in the historical reenactment of the first time I met Amanda.”

  It’s not till Elvis says, “Let us work, son,” that I realize I am walking toward the kitchen, toward the memory of Karen and Amanda bending their heads over the calendar on the kitchen table. I’ve stepped onto the bright orange backboard the other EMT brought in with her. She lays her hand on my shin and pushes gently. I lean back up against the wall. “Let us work,” she says.

  “Let us work” means “let us put our hands on her.” Let us open her eyes and let them slip shut again. Let us shine lights into her mouth and put our palms on her chest and press again and again and again until Elvis sits back on his heels and shakes his head and says, “Son of a bitch.”

  I’m telling you this because you didn’t ask. I’ve got it all here, growing like a tumor in my throat. I’m telling you because if I don’t, I will choke on it. Everybody knows what happened, but nobody asks. And Elvis the EMT doesn’t count because when he asked, he didn’t even listen to me answer because he was listening to my sister’s heart not beat with his stethoscope. I want to tell. It’s mine to tell. Even if you didn’t ask, you have to hear it.

  A car door slams, and w
hen I look outside, I see Mom come screaming up the front steps gripping her brown leather purse by the top of its strap like a weapon swinging from her fisted hand. Karen’s on a gurney now and Elvis is pulling the sheet over her face when Mom runs past me and launches screaming into the air. I look away when she is midflight, flinging herself over Karen, collapsing the gurney with her weight. Mom’s left index finger gets smashed in the workings of the gurney, and later Elvis puts it in a splint while Mom lies on the couch, her eyes open and not blinking.

  I am still standing by the light switch, and I am trying to remember when it was that Karen painted over that small square on the calendar.

  1

  Karen almost jerks my shoulder out of its socket dragging me out of the house and onto the front stoop. We stand huffing on the top step in the February air for a second. I nod at her, impressed. She nods back and bends over, hands on her knees. We’re like athletes. Sprint runners. Sprint runners specially trained to run into burning houses to rescue orphans. Except we don’t run into houses, we run out of them. And our house isn’t burning, at least not with fire. We’re out here because Karen freaks out when Mom and Dad fight. She always has. As soon as one of them so much as cocks an eyebrow, Karen is out the door. She grabs me by the wrist and drags me out after her. She’s done it since we were kids.

  She says she used to keep an old and smelly lunch box by the door, filled with a spare diaper, a bottle, a box of crackers, and these earmuffs that were shaped like teddy bears. She’d make me wear the earmuffs, even in summer, because I was always either getting or getting over an ear infection. She thought the teddy bears helped. Over the years we lost the earmuffs, but I kept the ear infections. We have much better provisions now. I reach over the side of the steps and slide out the loose brick. I pull out the tin box, replace the brick, and sit on the top step. Karen sits next to me and hands me my science book. She’d be the best and worst person to have with you if your house actually were on fire. She’d tear you out of the house before you got a whiff of smoke, but the only thing she’d rescue besides you is your homework.

  She opens her Spanish workbook, and I open the tin.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “Do we have any caramel chews left? Zip up your jacket.”

  “No caramel. There’s peanut, though,” I say, zipping my jacket to my chin and burying the bottom half of my face in its high neck.

  “Fine,” she says, reaching over and yanking my hood up over my head. She zips her own jacket and takes a handful of the peanut candies from me. I go to work on a half-eaten box of Valentine’s Day chocolates left over from last week. I can tell Karen’s listening to Mom and Dad, pretending to be reading. She would never bring us farther than the front steps. We go far enough so that we don’t have to see it up close, but we’re close enough so nothing really bad can happen. They know we’re out here.

  It’s already almost too dark to read my science book. I open it anyway and let my eyes unfocus on the page until the ink and the paper blend together. Then I slam the book shut and look at Karen. Her nose has turned bright red from the cold.

  “I’ll make you macaroni later,” she says, not looking up from the book that I know she can’t see. She used to tell me this to calm me down, to keep me from banging my fists and my knees against the front door, trying to get back in. She always made good on her promise. When they were done fighting, when Dad had sulked off and Mom had locked herself in the bathroom, we’d slink inside. Karen would make macaroni and we’d pretend it was just us living there.

  I rest my chin on the edge of my book and start thinking about how if I were in the woods, way up on a mountain, instead of on my front steps, this time of night would be really scary.

  Especially if something went terribly wrong with the mission that me and the rest of my highly trained team of secret service assassins were on. We made camp for the night in a small clearing, surrounded by towering pine trees that swayed and creaked in the cold wind. I am on first watch with Harley, the most loveable screw-up I’ve ever served with. Midway into our shift, I elbow him in the gut to wake him up and tell him I’m going to take a leak. I step outside of the circle of firelight and go to the edge of the woods. Midstream, the reflection of the fire suddenly disappears from the leaves I’m peeing on. I finish fast and turn around to whisper-yell, “H! You asshole. What’d you do? Piss on the fire? Harley? Stop dicking around and bring some wood.” I curse under my breath while I relight the fire. What I see as the fire slowly lights the camp makes me drop to the ground and pull out my gun. They’re gone. My whole team, all of them. Harley. Everybody. The tents have been slashed, the sleeping bags are empty, and there are drops of blood on the ground leading out of our campsite and into the woods. I remember Captain’s words during training. He called me the wild card, a loose cannon. If it were up to him, I’d be guarding some eighth-term-senator’s grandmother, not the president’s daughter. But it’s not up to him. Me and the president go way back, further back than I’d ever be able to tell a soul without turning up dead somewhere. The president wanted me on this, and now that his daughter has been kidnapped, it is up to me to save her. Captain would want me to do the safe thing: wait till morning. I can hear his raspy voice, There’s no telling what’s in these woods, soldier. “Only one way to find out,” I say aloud. I grab my night-vision goggles and my pack, and head into the darkness.

  “Who’s that?”

  Up, up out of the woods and back to where my butt has frozen to our top step, Karen’s actually looked up from her book to watch a crooked rust-red pickup truck that’s parking at the house across the street.

  “Must be the new people,” I say. Mom said someone had moved in. I just assumed it was another old couple, like the one who lived there before. The two of them had looked like brother and sister; twins even, except they were married. Creepy.

  A really big guy in a parka you’d wear if you were climbing polar ice caps is getting out of the driver’s side of the truck. He looks like one of those guys that builds houses. Or tears them down. Either way, he’d do it with his bare hands. He stretches when he’s out, and sees us watching from across the street. He waves.

  “Hiya.” His voice rolls like rocks across the street. The passenger-side door opens, and a soccer ball falls out and rolls under the truck. The big man picks it up. Karen and I are both watching to see who gets out. I’m hoping for a kid my age, someone I could hang out with all weekend, till school on Monday when he finds out I’m a leper and pretends not to know me. The truck door opens farther and someone gets out. It’s not a kid my age. But it is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Roll your eyes if you want. You think of a better way to say it when you see someone and every single part of you stops for a second, and then starts up again, but in a way that will never be the same.

  Karen’s already standing. She pulls me up by my jacket sleeve.

  “Hi. I’m Karen,” she calls as I stare at the girl crossing the street toward us. Her hair’s pulled back in a ponytail and she’s wearing a soccer uniform under her jacket. She’s been sweating.

  “This is Donnie,” Karen says, nudging me with her elbow. “Did you just move in?”

  “Yep. I’m Amanda. You live here?” Her socks are doubled down, showing her shin guards. She’s got a scab the size of a dime on her right knee. The skin around the scab is lighter than the rest of her.

  “Yep,” I say. I can’t look her in the eye. So I look at her chest until Karen elbows me in the ribs.

  “Yeah, we live here,” Karen says, as if my answer wasn’t good enough. I hate it when she does that.

  “So . . . what are you guys doing out here? Aren’t you cold?” Amanda asks, resting the toe of her cleat on the edge of the step. I stare at the lines of her leg muscle and wonder how Karen will answer this one. From inside we all hear Mom yell, “The hell I don’t!”

  “Family tradition,” Karen says quickly. Good answer. Amanda nods and smiles.

  “What gr
ade are you in?” Karen and Amanda ask each other the question at the same time and laugh.

  “I’m in tenth,” Karen says.

  “Me too,” Amanda says. “I start at Kennedy on Monday. I just met with the coach for the indoor league.”

  Karen nods toward me. “He’s in—”

  “I’m in eighth,” I interrupt, and Karen snorts. Amanda smiles at me and I try to tuck my entire head inside my jacket.

  “Dad and I just got Chinese food if you want to come over. It’ll be warmer inside than out here.”

  “Sure!” I say. That’s a lie: I don’t say it, I practically scream it from inside my jacket.

  Amanda and Karen both look at me.

  “Sure,” Karen says. “Thanks.”

  I don’t notice that it’s gone quiet inside till Mom opens the front door and comes out wearing her stupid fake smile and talking in her stupid fake voice.

  “Hi there! I’m Karen’s mom.”

  Apparently Karen’s an only child.

  “You must have just moved in across the street.”

  “Yes ma’am. My dad and I did.”

  “Well, tell your dad we would love to have the two of you over for dinner sometime real soon.”

  Okay. Thanks.”

  Mom’s eyes are red-rimmed and glassy. Through the door I can see Dad pacing. He’s not done yet. We all stand there for a second, looking at our feet.

  Amanda says, “I actually just asked if. . . they wanted to eat at our house tonight. We’re having Chinese. There’s plenty.”

  I hold in my mouth the taste of Amanda including me, and watch Mom.

  “Well, sure, Karen can eat at your house. Donnie, you don’t want to hang around girls all night, do you? You’ll stay here with us.”

  I look back inside the house. Dad’s standing still now, watching us from the living room. I look back at Karen, trying to grab onto her with my eyes. I think Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me. She leaves me.

  “Okay. Bye, Mom. I’ll be home later.”

  “Nice meeting you, Donnie,” Amanda says.

  I watch them walk down the driveway; their heads already tipped toward each other, Amanda linking elbows with Karen as if they’ve been best friends forever. I’m left to follow Mom into the house as she is answering Dad’s demand, “Who was that?”