My Year of Epic Rock

by Andrea Pyros

  “I’m late; did I miss the bus? Sorry!” Ethan looked all rumpled and cute, like maybe he’d overslept. He had a faded light blue button down shirt on, untucked, and jeans that had holes in the knees, but definitely because he wore them a lot, not because he bought them that way. His hair seemed a bit wavier and longer than even when I’d stared at him the day before.

  “Normally I would be displeased at your late arrival, Mr. Chan, but I am far too busy enjoying this delicious cookie.” She pointed to the bag on her desk. “Would you like one?”

  Mrs. Cook gave him the “come here” sign with her hand. “Nina, you don’t mind if Ethan has one, do you?”

  “No, totally, I mean, my mom sent a ton, I could never eat all of these, and…” I stopped talking. Nothing I was saying was even a little bit interesting.

  Ethan took a Pumpkin Snickerdoodle. I just hoped he wouldn’t ask me what they were called. The shame of saying Snickerdoodle to him would have been too much for me.

  “Hey, this is good,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Mrs. Cook stood up and brushed a few crumbs off her shirt. “All right, you two, let’s get going.”

  We got on the bus, and Mrs. Cook took her seat in the front row next to Mr. Spies, the science teacher. Ethan and I looked around. Every single seat was taken, except for the two seats directly across from the teachers. The bus driver hopped on and took her seat behind the wheel, loudly slamming the door shut behind her. Mrs. Cook gestured for us to sit down in the two free seats.

  We looked at each other, shrugged, and sat. The bus smelled kind of weird, like from gas fumes or something. And the plastic seats were all cracked in spots and felt cold. It didn’t matter to me though.

  “Nina, hand that bag over here, please,” Mrs. Cook said, as the bus got going. She hadn’t been exaggerating about how hungry she was.

  “I don’t think I’ve been to a farm since I was a kid,” I said to Ethan, trying to find something to talk about. I hadn’t expected to sit with him—I’d been planning on sitting with some of The EpiPens, or maybe Jody. It was so surprising and exciting! I was still processing the fact that he was right up close next to me. I hoped he was psyched too, and not disappointed. I wished I’d practiced fascinating topics of conversation instead of worrying about blow-drying my hair.

  “My grandparents own a farm in Vermont,” Ethan said. “They make maple syrup and sell it to local stores near them. I go every year during sugaring season to help.”

  “Really? No way, that’s so cool,” I said. “I love maple syrup. I guess everyone loves maple syrup, right?”

  “Yeah, although sometimes when we’re visiting them, I get kind of sick of it after a while.”

  “I bet! Like, how many pancakes can you eat?” He didn’t say anything, so I added, “I can eat a lot of pancakes.”

  I imagined eating them with Ethan and laughing over each bite. Standing at the stove together, flipping them onto a plate like we were running a cute little café. Maybe when he and I got married, we’d go live on the maple tree farm and have pancakes every day for breakfast…

  “Here you go, Nina,” Mr. Spies handed me back my bag. He was holding two cookies in his other hand, with a third hanging halfway out of his mouth. He had a crumb on his chin. The bag felt a lot lighter.

  “Can I have another one?” Ethan said.

  “Sure!” I said, too cheerfully.

  “Ethan, what are you eating?” Josh called out from a few rows back.

  “SIT DOWN, MR. RICCI!” Mrs. Cook boomed back, not even turning around to look at Josh. I wondered how she could tell Josh was the one who said that, or how she knew that he was standing up. I smiled to myself. Ha! You can’t have a cookie, tiny jerk.

  “Remember how you used to scream ‘MONKEY!’ all the time?” I said to Ethan, after we had been quiet for a few minutes.

  “What? No, come on.” He started laughing. “I didn’t do that.”

  “Really, don’t you remember, in, like, first grade, anytime we lined up or went anywhere, you were all ‘monkey, monkey, monkey.’ And you’d get in trouble?”

  Because I’m not totally crazy, I didn’t admit to Ethan that I’d been thinking about him a lot lately, and I even went back to look at some class photos from past years that I’d shoved into a box on my bookshelf. When I saw our first grade picture, with him wearing his monkey T-shirt, a goofy grin on his face, it made me remember how when he’d see a photo of a monkey in a book, he’d get all excited and then he started making up words that had monkey in them. Like if we were reading about elephants, he’d yell, “Ele-monk,” or if we were doing math, and the answer was three, he’d scream, “THREE MONKEYS!” He got in trouble a lot. Ethan grew out of that phase a long time ago though.

  “Monkey!” he whispered in my ear, and I cracked up. His arm kept brushing against mine, and every time the bus ran over a pothole, our knees or feet or legs would bump. I noticed that he didn’t try to move away or act freaked out when we accidentally touched. The only bad thing about the whole ride was that it ended way too fast, and then everyone piled off the bus, and Shelley and Brianna and Josh caught up with Ethan, and he didn’t look back once to find me after that. It made all the cool stuff we saw at the farm a little less cool, and I spent half the time trying to eavesdrop on what Ethan was talking about and missed the whole discussion about how cows give birth. I hoped that wouldn’t be on the next science quiz.

  Because I was so distracted, what happened next isn’t that surprising. But understanding why doesn’t make it any less awful.

  Chapter 14

  So the farm owner, who said to call him Doug, was a former doctor who quit his medical practice to work on the farm. He looked old and dusty—the way I always think of farmers—and wore beat-up, worn-in jeans and heavy boots.

  Doug was telling us about how important dairy is, and how on those giant farms there are too many cows, so the animals can’t walk around in the fresh air or even get grass to eat, and they get injected with tons of medicine every day, whether they’re sick or not. It sounded sad. And unappetizing.

  Then Doug took us all back to the little farm stand that he and his family set up right by the side of the road so he could sell fresh milk to people driving by. His wife was there too, and their super cute college-aged son who was working behind the counter. He began doling out a sample-sized scoop of ice cream for all of us that Mrs. Doug, or whatever her name was, said was made right there on the premises.

  Here’s the thing: I always eat ice cream at home—like all the time, it’s not a big deal. I don’t usually eat it when they serve it at parties because without fail, it seems like the only flavor being offered is Peanutty Whipple Deluxe or something, with big chunks of nuttiness, but Farmer Doug said this was pure, straight-up, “classic” vanilla.

  I’d seen Tiernan say, “No, thank you,” when they offered him a sample. But Doug’s son was adorable and I felt dumb about saying no to him, so I didn’t. I just said, “Thanks,” and took my cup. I wasn’t going to have any, but it was just plain, creamy white—there was not a peanut in sight. It looked delicious. I saw everyone else digging in, and saying “Mmmm” and raving about how awesome it tasted and how they’d never buy ice cream from anywhere else again.

  The thought of throwing the cup away, untasted, and having to go eat another dry, crumbly cookie instead seemed beyond depressing to me.

  I hadn’t seen one chicken on our tour, so I felt pretty confident there were no eggs in the ice cream. I mean, why call it a “dairy farm” if it was a “chicken and cow” farm?

  I was bummed out thinking about Ethan and Shelley and whether he was into her.

  But really it was just that I was so sick of missing out on the all the fun.

  So I took a bite.

  And then another one.

  The ice cream was just as cold, creamy, sweet, and delicious as everyone was sayin
g. I couldn’t believe I’d almost passed it up out of fear.

  As I was digging in for a third time, I realized something wasn’t right about this ice cream. Because my throat felt itchy. And my lips started tingling.

  I didn’t move for a minute, hoping the feeling would go away, but it didn’t. I pushed up the sleeve of my sweater, my hands shaking from pure, total terror, and I could see red welts appearing—growing larger and then disappearing, like some alien was invading my body and trying to burst free from my skin.

  I yanked my sleeve back down and started running—away from my class and everyone, looking for a bathroom, or anywhere else where I could be alone and feel sick by myself, instead of in front of every single kid I knew.

  I thought I heard someone call my name, but I didn’t turn around. I had my bag with me. If I could make it someplace private, I knew I could use my EpiPen on myself. I’d never done it before, stabbed myself in the leg with a needle, but I had to do it now.

  Hurry, I thought to myself. Hurry hurry hurry.

  I didn’t see a bathroom anywhere, and I was starting to feel dizzy and hot, so I sat down behind the barn where we’d had our tour. I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my EpiPen, but my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t seem to uncap it. The Epi dropped to the dirt softly.

  It was hard to take a breath—I heard gasping and realized it was coming from me.

  Oh, no. Oh, no.

  And then I heard a boy’s voice say, “Nina? Wait, I’m getting Mrs. Cook,” and then I can’t remember what happened next, but suddenly I heard more people yelling and a lot of footsteps in the dirt and I think Tiernan telling someone, “She’s got food allergies!” and Farmer Doug was sticking a needle into my leg and putting his hand on his wife’s arm, looking her in the eye, and telling her very calmly, “Call 9-1-1.”

  Then, in what felt like only a few seconds, I could breathe again. I took a gulp of air. My hands were shaking so much I had to squeeze them together in front of me to try to get them to stop.

  “I feel sick,” I said, looking up at Farmer Doug. I realized Mrs. Cook was down on the muddy ground next to me, patting my back. She smelled lemony and her earrings made a quiet little jingling noise when she moved her head.

  Doug stood up, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “It’s the epinephrine. It makes you feel jittery. Some people throw up.”

  That got my attention. Everyone in my class was already staring at me. I couldn’t imagine the deafening screams of horror if I hurled in front of all of them.

  “Move, everyone, let’s move it along,” Mr. Spies said, guiding people away. “Let’s give Nina some space.”

  I stared down at the ground, hearing people whispering, “Is she all right?” and “Oh my god, I totally thought she was going to die,” and “What’s wrong with her?” but I refused to look at them. My lips felt weird. I went to touch them, and my hand reached them before I expected it to. They were bigger than normal—they must have totally swollen up.

  I heard a siren and looked to see an ambulance coming up the road. I slunk lower against the firm wall of the barn, appreciating the sensation of the wood digging into my back. Farmer Doug walked over to talk to the woman who got out of the ambulance driver’s seat. Then he motioned over in my direction. Another person had hopped out of the passenger side of the ambulance and grabbed a stretcher from the back. Then they both came jogging up to me.

  “I’m fine!” I said to them as they approached. They ignored me, strapping a band around my upper arm to take my blood pressure. They listened to my heart. Finally they popped the stretcher open and lowered it so it was almost at ground level.

  “I can walk,” I insisted. This was getting more mortifying by the second. Maybe I’d fall backward into some cow dung for the ultimate indignity. I wondered if I could offer to work at the farm in exchange for living there so I’d never have to go back to school again.

  “It’s okay, Nina,” said Mrs. Cook, more kindly than I’d ever heard her speak before.

  I put my still-shaking hand on my forehand and took a deep breath, grateful and surprised to find air still coming in so easily.

  I’d never take breathing for granted again.

  The EMTs counted, “One, two, three,” and lifted me on to the stretcher, strapped me in, put a blanket over my legs, and pushed me past the gawking faces of my entire class and into the ambulance. When the doors finally shut, Mrs. Cook still by my side, I threw up all over the blanket.

  “What’s a little vomit between friends?” the guy EMT said cheerfully, whisking the gray, scratchy cover off me.

  “Is she all right?” Mrs. Cook looked worried.

  He was taking my blood pressure and waited a second before replying.

  “She appears to be. Are you having any breathing difficulties?” he asked me.

  “No, actually, that made me feel better,” I admitted. I hate throwing up. It’s so hideous. I once heard a comedian make a joke about how barf always looks like someone had eaten peas and carrots, which is so true. Yuck.

  “What day is it?” the EMT asked me, shining a small flashlight in my eyes.

  “Wednesday. Really, I’m fine.”

  I guess I thought when I got to the hospital, twenty young and attractive doctors and nurses would rush out to treat me, and there’d be all this screaming and doors being flung open, like on TV, but when the EMTs wheeled me into the emergency room, they unstrapped me, lifted me off the stretcher, and stuck me on a bench in a busy hallway. No one looked that attractive, and one doctor even had a mustard stain on his dingy-looking white coat.

  “Wait here,” the first EMT said to me, like I really had anywhere else to go.

  Mrs. Cook followed her to the front desk, where they started talking to someone behind the desk. Then Mrs. Cook came back with a nurse, and they escorted me to a bed in another room where there were other people on beds with thin light blue curtains half pulled around them for the bare minimum of privacy.

  “How are you feeling now? Okay?” Mrs. Cook asked, once I was settled in and the nurse had checked all the same stuff the EMTs had just done earlier. “Your mother is on her way.”

  Mom! She was going to be furious. I felt like throwing up again.

  Mrs. Cook must have seen my face, because she tried to distract me by talking about her cat. She took out her wallet to show me a picture of him.

  “Here he is; this is Ghost.”

  “He’s cute,” I said, trying to be polite. I closed my eyes.

  “You must be tired,” Mrs. Cook said.

  That was the last thing I heard before falling asleep, waking up when I heard my mother say, “Nina.” She was standing right by my side and leaned over to give me a too-hard hug.

  I started to cry. “Hi, Mom.”

  “What happened?” She was looking at my face with a worried expression.

  “I ate some ice cream. I’m so sorry. It had eggs, I guess. Unless there was a nut in there, but I don’t think so.” I was still crying.

  “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.”

  “It was vanilla, we always have that at home, and they said they make their own ice cream…”

  “The school is so sorry, Mrs. Simmons,” Mrs. Cook said. “I wasn’t aware of Nina’s allergies. I try to be on top of these things, truly.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Mom said.

  She was right.

  It was totally mine.

  “Can we go home?” I asked, pulling on my mother’s sleeve like a little kid. “I just want to go to bed.”

  “No, we have to stay here for a full four hours. They need to watch you and make sure you don’t suffer a second anaphylactic attack.”

  Four hours. Miserable and smelling of barf.

  For a second, it looked like Mom was going to cry herself, but she rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath. She stood up
and faced Mrs. Cook.

  “We’re fine here. Thank you so much for making sure Nina got the medical attention she needed. Can I call you a cab?”

  “No, it’s quite all right,” Mrs. Cook said, shaking Mom’s hand. “I’ve already called my husband, and he said he’ll come and get me when I’m ready. Please don’t worry about me, just take care of yourself.” Mrs. Cook gave me a hug. She must have been scared too. I felt bad, freaking out a pregnant woman.

  Mom sat down on the foot of the bed and picked up the phone next to it.

  “Dave? Yes, she’s here. She’s fine. Absolutely fine. Don’t worry. Hang on, let me ask her.”

  Mom turned to me. “Do you want Dad and Jackson to come and keep us company?”

  I shook my head no. Making a family party out of my awful day didn’t seem like such a great idea.

  After she hung up, she just stared at me.

  “What?” I said. “What are you looking at?”

  She took a loud, deep breath. The “I am going to kill you” breath she takes, like the time I shoved Jackson down half a flight of stairs and she sent me to my room for about eighty hours so she could cool down.

  “What were you thinking? You could have died!”

  “I know, Mom. I totally blew it.”

  “I was so terrified when they called me and told me you were being taken to the hospital.”

  Way to make me feel more awful.

  “Mom, I know. I know.”

  Then Mom was crying. “I hate these damn allergies. I just hate them.”

  That wasn’t the way she normally talked about them. Usually Mom is always like, “It is frustrating, but it’s not the end of the world.”

  “They’re not your allergies, Mom. They’re mine. I’m the one who gets to hate them. You can eat anything! Dad can eat anything! Jackson can eat anything!”

  “You think I like worrying about you every time we go out to a restaurant? Or get on an airplane? Or you go to a slumber party?”

  A nurse came over and started talking my blood pressure again. Neither Mom nor I said anything until she jotted something down on a folder on the foot of my bed and walked away.