A Shot at Normal

by Marisa Reichardt

“That baby didn’t get better.”

  “Please don’t misunderstand me. What happened with the baby you met is tragic and awful, but the likelihood of you, Juniper, contracting another rare disease is extremely unlikely. It’s okay to wait another what? Two years?”

  “One year, nine months.”

  “See? Not even a whole two years. I know that might seem like an eternity to you, but to an old guy like me, it’s not that long.”

  “But it isn’t only that. I want to go to a real high school. My dad homeschools us in the kitchen.” I shudder just thinking about it. “If I wait until I’m eighteen, it’ll be too late.” I don’t even get into the fact that convincing my parents to allow me to attend public school is a battle that will go way beyond my vaccinations, but fulfilling a school’s vaccination requirement would be a starting point.

  “You’re talking outside my area of expertise now. While I’m sympathetic to your situation, I don’t have any say in what school you go to, vaccines or no vaccines.”

  “What if I want to get a job? Do they check this stuff, too?”

  “Not vaccines, necessarily. But some food service jobs could require a TB test.”

  “Would you want me to have parental permission for a TB test?”

  He sighs. “Yes.”

  “How do I get around this?”

  “Hire a good attorney,” he snorts. He stands, and his stool glides across the floor and lands near the wall. “And for the record, I understand your concern with polio, but I’d push for a meningitis vaccination. Tetanus. Whooping cough. Honestly, those are more likely threats than polio.”

  “Great. That’s good to know. Maybe I’ll go step on a rusty nail so my parents will have to get me a tetanus shot so I don’t die.”

  “I’d advise against that, obviously.”

  “I’m not going to do it. Obviously.”

  “Listen, I need to get to these other patients. They’ve been waiting. But I wish you the best of luck, Juniper.” He puts his hand into the front pocket of his lab coat. “Here’s my card. You can contact me if you have more questions.” I take his card and study it.

  “Okay.”

  I grab my skateboard, and it bangs against my hip as I hurry through the waiting room and out into the street.

  ELEVEN

  There’s a Starbucks on the next block, and I go inside just to smell it. As the door whooshes shut behind me, I pat my pockets, hoping money will magically appear. It doesn’t. Only Dr. Villapando’s card. I left my backyard in a rush, taking nothing but my skateboard, which now dangles against the side of my leg, all awkward and dirty.

  I scan the café for an empty table. Maybe I can hang out for a little while even though I’m not buying anything. I can pretend I’m here to meet someone. Like a cute boy with golden hair and an ironic T-shirt. Or maybe I can make new friends.

  There’s actually a group of high schoolers doing homework at a long table by the window. Their laptops and phones are out. Their books are cracked open. Sugary half-drained Frappuccinos sweat condensation into rings by their elbows. If I sat down next to them, would they look at me funny? Would they tell me they’re saving the empty chair for someone better and make me leave?

  I take a few steps toward the studying students until my eye catches two trays filled with tiny paper sample cups. One has thumbnail-size squares of some kind of cake, the other, a frothy drink with a dollop of whipped cream and a crisscross of caramel drizzle on top. I stroll to the counter and ask the girl with the purple hair at the register what they are.

  “That’s iced lemon pound cake and our Ultra Caramel Frappuccino,” she says with a peppy smile. “Help yourself.”

  Frappuccinos and cake? It’s everything my dad hates, so I scoop them up eagerly. “Thanks.”

  I tip the square of lemon cake into my mouth. It’s too sweet and too tangy, with a chemical aftertaste. I wince and smack my tongue. Honestly, my mom’s lemon cake is way better, but I take another sample anyway. I wash it down with the Frappuccino. The creamy caramel clashes with the sour of the lemon, but I swallow them together like it’s the most delicious combination I’ve ever tasted.

  The girl with the purple hair says, “Good, right? Do you want to order one?”

  I shake my head no. “My dad says these are toxic.” I grab another drink. Toss it back.

  “Oh, um … okay.”

  “Don’t worry. That won’t stop me. But I’ll order when my boyfriend does. He’s always running late, so if I order now I’ll end up finishing before he gets here.” I shrug as if to say, Boyfriends. Aren’t they annoying but also the best?

  I grab another square of cake and a drink. Purple Hair holds her index finger up as if she’s going to say something—probably that there’s a one-sample-per-customer limit and I need to slow my roll—but I walk away before she gets to it.

  Once again I ponder sitting with the group of students at the long table. If they become my new friends, we could go to the beach and the movies and thrifting at the secondhand shops downtown with the money I make from my allowance and the farmers market. But they look too serious right now, all wrapped up in writing essays and doing math. I don’t want to interrupt and annoy them like Sequoia does to me when we’re studying in the kitchen, so I slide into the chair of a table in the back instead. I scan Starbucks. There’s a woman in a business suit at a table by the door. She’s typing away on her laptop, and I smile when she recrosses her legs and I catch a glimpse of her feet. It’s the flip-flop lady from the farmers market.

  One of the students from the long table glances my way. Instead of smiling and being cool, I nervously look away. My table is near the restroom, and I can hear the toilet flush through the door. Gross. A guy walks out, patting his wet hands against the front of his jeans to dry them. Gross again.

  I decide to feign interest in the flyers on the corkboard above my head while I wait for my fake boyfriend. They’re mostly local ads for fundraisers and lost pets fringed with tear-off phone numbers along the bottom.

  But then another flyer catches my eye.

  Candlelight Vigil at the Pier for Katherine St. Pierre

  There’s a picture of Baby Kat in the center of the page. The same photo from the newspaper. That bow in her hair. The date for the vigil is tonight at seven o’clock.

  I glance over my shoulder at everyone here. Nobody’s looking at me. Not even that student who made eye contact with me before. Nobody knows anything. But even though my photo is nowhere on that flyer, the idea of it might as well be a police sketch of me. A spotlight shining. This is the girl who gave that baby the measles. Are these flyers up all over town? I want to make them disappear. I want to disappear. Every time I turn around, I’m reminded, and the ache in my chest hurts all over again.

  Please join us for a community gathering to honor Katherine St. Pierre. Rev. Charles from St. Mary’s By-the-Sea will lead attendees in prayer. Candles will be provided.

  I rip the flyer down with so much force that the thumbtack holding it in place rockets toward me. I scramble across the floor and pick the pin up before someone steps on it. Because what if they’re like me and they’ve never had a tetanus shot? After I push the tack back into the corkboard, I fold the flyer into fourths and shove it in my pocket along with Dr. Villapando’s card. Then I stand up and grab my skateboard.

  My parents will be worried. It’s getting dark. If they’d let me have a phone like a normal person, I could text them. I could tell them how I have to go to the pier. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s that I need to pay respects or apologize or tell someone who I am.

  But I have to go to that vigil.

  TWELVE

  I stayed in Starbucks long enough for the smell of coffee to cling to my sweatshirt and my hair. The salty ocean air by the beach doesn’t do anything to tame the scent as the wind whips around me.

  I hop off my board and study the crowd gathered around a small pop-up stage at the mouth of the pier. It’s the same stage the mayor s
tood on to sing the national anthem before the Fourth of July fireworks. The same stage local first responders stood on in May, a month after we moved here, to talk about earthquake safety. It’s a stage made up of about six planks that snap together, small enough to set up and disassemble easily.

  There are mostly grown-ups here. Or parents with little kids. A few elderly folks. Nobody seems to be my age. And I worry that makes me stand out more.

  A little girl in a blue dress offers me a gap-toothed smile and an unlit candle, with a doily attached at the base, from the handful she’s carrying like a bouquet of flowers. I take it, not sure what to do, since I don’t have anything to light it with and neither does she.

  As I wander closer to the stage, I notice people are quietly tipping their lit candles to the wick of the person standing next to them. And so on. I take my place in a row near the back and wait for the flame to get to me.

  Did everyone here know Katherine St. Pierre? Has an overwhelming hurt taken over their guts and their bones? Or is that only me? I tuck myself in. Hide in the crowd. The sun has set. A late September harvest moon is out. It’s big and bold and bright orange, like it’s meant to glow for Baby Kat along with all these candles.

  Eventually, as my candlelight flickers, a woman in a clergy robe stands up to talk. She says things into a microphone about how a parent’s heart knows love instantly, and that even though Katherine St. Pierre wasn’t here for long, the pain of her loss is undeniably enormous. She calls on the community at this time. To ask us to love and support not only the St. Pierre family, but anyone around us who might be hurting. She encourages us to reach out to our neighbors and friends. And then there’s a prayer. And some songs sung by a kindergarten class from Playa Bonita Elementary School.

  They open the mic to anyone who wants to come up and say something, and a few people step forward.

  There’s not a lot to say. Katherine St. Pierre was only six weeks old. Nobody can talk about her favorite songs or the things she liked to do. If she was good at soccer or ice-skating or drawing pictures. Only her family can say how much they miss her. How empty their house must feel. How they probably keep the door to her room closed because of the reminders.

  I imagine that. Coming home to a house with a room and a crib and a baby blanket and a stroller. It has to make the loss even worse. To see the signs of her everywhere, even though she’s gone.

  The woman next to me keeps sniffling and holding tight to her son, who has tangled himself around her leg. He’s little and only comes up to the top of her hip, making him younger than Sequoia but old enough to be singing with those kids onstage. I take a couple of steps away. Like I should give this mom and her kid distance from someone like me. What would she do if she knew who I was and what I did?

  What would this whole crowd do?

  Mob mentality.

  My dad had me write a paper about it last year. I didn’t entirely understand the point at the time, but I do right now. I attempted to dissect Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and how an entire town went along with the ritual of stoning a woman to death for no other reason than the fact that everyone else was doing it. It was what they’d always done because it was what they’d always known.

  What if that happens now?

  What if someone from the hospital is here? Recognizes me? Calls me out? What if someone read the notification the CDC representative from the hospital said she was going to put in the newspaper and figured out who I am? What if I’m pushed to the ground? Kicked and trampled? Destroyed?

  Maybe that’s what I deserve.

  Because this town seems like it was better off before I got here.

  I grab my board and roll away from the crowd to hover on the outskirts, mapping out an escape route in case someone figures out who I am.

  A stern voice booms behind me. “Hey! You!”

  I turn. Freeze. A police officer and his flashlight are in my face. His name tag says ALVAREZ. I’m pretty sure I start shaking. My upper lip trembles. Why did I come here? Was I secretly hoping I’d be caught?

  “Do you have a helmet?” he says. “Anyone under eighteen is required by law to wear a helmet while biking or skateboarding in Playa Bonita.”

  I shake my head. How do I tell him I took off in a fit of fury, leaving my annoying parents in my dust? I barely had time to grab my board, let alone a helmet. “It’s at home. I left in a hurry. I guess I forgot.”

  “Technically, there’s a ticket and a fine for that.”

  “How much?”

  “Presumably enough to make you not forget your helmet again.” He turns off his flashlight. “I’ll let you off with a warning tonight. Considering you came down for a good cause.”

  “I appreciate that. Thanks.”

  I wobble on my board. Realize I should get off it altogether. I disembark and let it dangle from my fingertips as my other hand grips my melting candle, the wax dripping onto the doily.

  He looks at the checkerboard Vans on my feet. Assesses. “You haven’t been drinking or anything, have you?”

  “Just Frappuccinos. Well, samples of Frappuccinos.”

  He smiles and pats his stomach. “They’re pretty good, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, they are.”

  My voice quivers.

  The pain in me breaks.

  Because sometimes, someone says something so simple, at just the right moment, and it makes all of you want to open up. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly why I imagine myself sitting down on my board and spilling my guts. But I’m also done with this night.

  I want to leave.

  I tighten my grip on my board.

  Blow out my candle.

  “Will you be able to get home okay?” he asks.

  “Yep.”

  He taps his head. “Next time, a helmet.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  THIRTEEN

  I stand in front of my house and stare at the orange-yellow glow of the living room lamps lighting up the downstairs windows and the stained-glass cutout at the top of our front door. It’s cozy. Warm. Safe.

  Home.

  Even after what happened before I bolted through the back gate and skated to the urgent care clinic.

  Inside, my dad is probably sitting in his comfy chair, reading a mystery. Dun dun dun. And my mom is checking on Poppy and Sequoia or writing in her dream journal. My family. So familiar in their funky ways. It’s funny how I can feel two things at the same time. That I can love them but not like them right now.

  I brace myself and go inside.

  “June!” My mom hangs up the phone in the middle of a conversation—probably with the missing persons department at the police station. She rushes to me. Draws me up in a hug.

  But my dad is mad. I can see it in the creases on his forehead. “Where have you been?” he says. “We were worried sick. It’s one thing to take off in a huff to clear your head. It’s another thing to disappear for hours. You left without a flashlight or money or a helmet.”

  “Believe me, I know. The police weren’t happy about it, either.”

  “The police!” my mom shouts. “What are you talking about?”

  “I got stopped by a cop for not having a helmet.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” my dad mutters.

  “Don’t worry. He let me go with a warning.”

  “Well, good for you.” My dad yanks the band loose from his man bun and refastens it. A nervous habit. “This is unacceptable, June. We’re still getting settled here. It’s not like before, where you knew everyone in town. You can’t go traipsing all over Playa Bonita with no thought to the fact that your parents are at home worrying about where you are and who you’re with.”

  “Ha! Right. Who would I be with? You just said it yourself: Everyone I know is six hours away from here. I don’t even have a phone to keep in touch with them. I go to school in our kitchen instead of across the street. I have zero social life.”

  My dad talks right over that complaint. “It’s Sunday night. You
know Sunday night is family night.”

  “Poppy and Sequoia are sick in bed. What would we be doing for family night? Taking each other’s temperatures?”

  “Where did you go?” my mom asks.

  I consider lying but settle on the truth. “I went to the vigil at the pier. The one for the baby who died.”

  “Oh, June! Why would you do that to yourself?”

  I toe the frayed edge of the throw rug. The one my grandma once told me my mom learned to walk on. “I needed to be there.”

  “You did not,” my dad says.

  “It doesn’t seem like the best idea,” says my mom.

  I remember the candles and the people and the songs and the prayers. I also remember the guilt and the sadness. “I’m glad I went. It helped me figure out some stuff.”

  “What stuff?” My dad spits out the words like they taste bad in his mouth. Also? I’m sure he wants me to use more sophisticated vocabulary than stuff.

  “I decided something tonight, and I think it’s important you know it, too.”

  “Go ahead,” my mom says.

  “I want to be vaccinated. Any shot I haven’t had, I want to have it. Meningitis. Tetanus. Whooping cough. Whatever I need.”

  “Your mother and I chose not to have you kids vaccinated,” my dad says. “That’s the end of the story.”

  “But what if my choice for my body is different than yours?”

  “I’d say you’re sixteen and don’t get to decide.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “Language,” says my mom.

  “The consequences of vaccines are SIDS, seizures, autism, paralysis—” my dad goes on.

  “The consequence of no vaccinations is death!” I shout. “And autism has been totally disproven. Are you even aware of a thing called science?”

  “Science can be wrong.” My dad paces the worn hardwood floor like he’s giving me a kitchen school lecture. I’m waiting for him to roll out his chalkboard. “Research backfires. Look at the drug recalls happening all the time. Something that’s supposed to help you not have a heart attack ends up giving you cancer. There was a drug in the sixties called thalidomide that was supposed to help pregnant women not have morning sickness, and guess what? It ended up causing birth defects. Babies were born with malformed limbs.” He angles a hard stare at me. “Something might look good on paper or in the lab, and then ten, twenty years down the line, lo and behold, science was wrong. Nothing is guaranteed, and the only way your mother and I have to protect you is not to put any of it into your body in the first place.”