A Shot at Normal

by Marisa Reichardt

  My eyes dart around our house and land on the lawn, where the word anti-vaxxer has been spray-painted in the same scarlet-red paint across the grass. A for anti-vaxxer. I get it now.

  “Juniper?” Nico says.

  My name sounds far away and garbled.

  I shake my head. Tremble. Push the tips of my thumbs into the corners of my eyes to try to keep from crying. Our house. Our door. “Oh my god.”

  “Juniper, what’s going on?”

  “I need to go.” I run to my front door.

  “Juniper!” Nico drops his bike on the ground, and it lands with a clatter. He scurries behind me, but I manage to get inside and shut the door before he gets to me. I lock it, worried that if I don’t, he’ll turn the knob and come in after me. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even jiggle the handle. He knocks instead. Because he’s polite. He calls my name again.

  My dad comes in from the kitchen, dunking a metal tea steeper into a mug of steaming water. “Who’s at the door?”

  “Nobody.”

  Nico knocks again.

  “Doesn’t sound like nobody.” My dad pulls the door open. The scarlet A reveals itself to our living room in all its horrific glory, but my dad’s too busy looking at Nico on the front porch to notice. “Can I help you?”

  “Someone painted a giant A on your door,” Nico says, pointing.

  And that’s right when my mom comes down the stairs.

  “What on earth?” she shouts, rushing to the door. She touches her hand to the paint, and her fingertips come back tinged with red. “Russ! Our home has been vandalized! Who would do this? What does it mean?”

  My dad narrows his eyes at Nico. “Was it you?”

  Nico holds his hands up. “What? No way.”

  “Dad, why would he knock on the door to tell you about it if he did it?”

  “Who are you?” my dad says to Nico, his voice rising in that serious way he has.

  “Russ, this is Juniper’s friend. They were studying together at the school.”

  I look sideways at Nico like don’t you dare tell them we were watching a movie.

  “I’m Nico Noble,” he says, all calm and collected, and I remember him telling me he’s not weird about meeting parents. “I go to Playa and work at the library.”

  My dad gives him a half-hearted handshake. “Nice to meet you.” He turns to me. “So you two didn’t see who did this?”

  “I’m pretty sure we would’ve noticed someone defacing our front door,” I say.

  My mom paces, wringing her hands. “What do we do?” she asks my dad.

  My dad motions Nico into the house, then walks outside and bangs the door shut to examine it from a different angle.

  “Unbelievable,” he shouts from the porch, and comes back inside, the door slamming closed behind him.

  All the noise is enough to make Poppy and Sequoia come stumbling down the stairs together—Sequoia with his blue pajama bottoms pulled too far to the right, making them look twisted and uncomfortable. Their rashes have peeled, but their skin is still a little blotchy and pink. I stand in front of Nico, as if that’ll be enough to shield him.

  “Have you had the measles shot?” I ask him under my breath.

  His eyes crinkle in confusion. “Um, yeah. Why?”

  “Just … you should go outside. It’s a cesspool of germs in here.”

  “Honestly, Juniper,” my mom says, her arms flapping at her sides. “Nobody is contagious anymore.”

  My dad points his finger in the air. “I’m calling the police.”

  “Daddy, what’s wrong?” Sequoia asks, his voice cracking with fear. He pulls his stuffed animal closer. “Is someone getting arrested?”

  “God willing,” my dad says.

  “Mom?” Poppy says. “What’s happening?”

  “Come here.” My mom sits on the couch and pats the cushions on each side of her so they’ll sit down, too.

  “I’ll be right back.” I motion toward the door so Nico will follow me outside.

  “What’s the deal?” he says when we get to the sidewalk. “Why would someone do this to your house?”

  “Trust me, you don’t even want to know.”

  “Just tell me. I’m not that easy to shock. What’s going on?”

  “My parents are anti-vaxxers. With a great big capital A.” I gesture toward our vandalized front door. “It’s why I don’t go to your school.”

  He shakes his head, confused. “Wait. You’ve never had a shot for anything? Ever?”

  “Nope. That’s why I got the measles. And then my siblings got them.”

  He gasps. “No way.”

  “I thought you weren’t easy to shock.”

  “No. It’s just … pretty much everyone in town has been talking about the measles since that baby died. Everyone’s trying to figure out how she got it. They’re worried there’s going to be an outbreak, because a few others have already gotten sick.”

  “Yeah. She got the measles from me.”

  He shoves one hand into his pocket and the other through his hair. Takes a step back. “Jesus.”

  “It’s a lot to take in, I know.”

  “It’s just…,” he tries, flummoxed. “Yeah. It’s a lot.”

  I nod.

  He pulls out his phone.

  Glances at the time.

  He wants an out.

  I give it to him. “I should get back inside.”

  “Yeah. I should probably”—his eyes run across the word scrawled in scarlet paint in our grass—“go.”

  “Totally. I get it.”

  He takes another step back. Pulls his helmet free from the handlebar. Fastens it under his chin. A huge sticker of a film reel takes up the whole left side of it, and I miss the idea of him already. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  He flicks on his bike light. I hug myself around the middle to keep myself from crumbling as I watch him pedal away.

  EIGHTEEN

  My stomach revolts a few hours after I’ve fallen asleep. I wake up sweaty and rush for the bathroom. I worry for a second that I have another deadly virus I should’ve been vaccinated for, but throwing up pizza is an instant reminder that it’s only because my body isn’t used to eating things like greasy pepperoni and sausage.

  I’m sure the stress of the scarlet A on our front door didn’t help, either.

  After Nico left, a police officer was a towering presence in our living room, taking statements and scaring Sequoia by being there. My brother kept eyeing the handcuffs dangling from his belt. And the gun in his holster.

  “Where does this go from here?” my dad asked as Officer Cooper closed up his little notepad and shoved it into the front pocket of his shirt.

  “We’ll put our feelers out,” Officer Cooper said. “If I were to guess, I’d chalk this up to the local youths. You live across the street from the high school. It’s a small town. Word gets around.”

  “And you want to go to school with these people!” my dad said to me. Like the sole act of sitting in a math class across the street would make me complicit in vandalism.

  When I’m done being sick, I flush the toilet and brush my teeth with the DIY toothpaste my mom mixes herself in order to avoid toxic triclosan and fluoride. It’s flavored with cloves and leaves my mouth tasting like pumpkin pie, which makes me want to barf all over again. Why can’t she use peppermint like everyone else?

  I go downstairs for a glass of water to wash out the taste and notice a scratching sound coming from the front door. Unbelievable. I know my parents would want me to call the police or come get them first, but if it’s some local teenager from the school across the street, as Officer Cooper suggested, I want to catch them in the act. I quickly pull the door open. My mom screams and drops the scrub brush she’s holding. It lands with a splat in the bucket of soapy water by her feet. I flick on the porch light. It doesn’t light up the whole house like a spotlight, but it illuminates things enough for me to be able to see my mom’s
face.

  “It’s just me, June.” Her voice catches.

  I scurry outside, shutting the door behind me. “What are you doing?”

  She retrieves the brush from the soapy water and scrubs at the red paint splattered across our front door. “I need to get this cleaned up before morning. Before the neighbors see.”

  “They probably already saw.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Maybe our neighbors are the ones who did it.”

  “That’s unconscionable.” She sniffs.

  “Are you crying?”

  “I’m having a moment.”

  “What kind of a moment?”

  “The kind of moment where I feel like I’m in middle school all over again and people are making fun of me in the hallways.”

  “That happened to you?”

  “Yes, Juniper. Every day.”

  “That’s really awful, Mom.”

  “It is. Or it was.” She clenches her eyes shut, like she can convince herself not to cry if she just concentrates hard enough. “But even when things were at their worst back then, nobody came around vandalizing my house.”

  “Is there another scrub brush somewhere?”

  “Under the kitchen sink.”

  “Do you want some help?”

  “That would be nice. Two of us will finish it faster. Your dad’s going to get up early with the lawn mower to see if it’ll help with the yard. It’s too dark right now.”

  I go to the kitchen, grab the scrub brush, and down a glass of water. Then I return to my mom and plunk the brush into the soapy bucket.

  “How about I take the right side and you take the left?” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “Teamwork.” She dunks her brush in the bucket. Rinses it. “What are you doing up, anyway?”

  “I was sick.”

  She looks at me, concerned. “What kind of sick?” The fact that I hear an edge of panic in her tone is interesting. Like maybe she really does stay awake at night worrying that Poppy, Sequoia, and I could’ve ended up like Baby Kat because of the choices she’s made.

  “Puking sick.”

  She reaches for my forehead to check my temperature but remembers her hands are wet and soapy.

  “I’m not sick sick. I think I ate a little too much.”

  “What did you have for dinner, anyway? You weren’t here.”

  “Pizza.”

  “Pizza!” She spits the word out in horror. “What kind of pizza?”

  “Real pizza. From this place in town called Arnoldi’s.” I want to twist the knife even more. “With pepperoni and sausage.”

  She throws her hands up in exasperation, and water goes splattering against the wood wall behind her. “Well, there you go.”

  “It was really good.”

  “It made you sick.”

  I think of Nico and the way his shoulder felt against mine. And the way he whispered in my ear. And the way his hair flopped all over the place. And how he made my insides fizzy. I think of how good it was, even if it was for only one night. Even if I’m never going to see him again.

  “It was worth it.”

  NINETEEN

  A few days later, my mom and dad take Bessie in for new brake pads. Instead of doing homework, I scramble to the phone attached to the wall in the kitchen and start dialing.

  “Burns, Menendez, and Watson,” a bright voice chirps from the other end of the line. “How may I direct your call?”

  “Is there anyone there who would talk to me about suing my parents?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  The woman laughs so loud through the receiver it practically shatters my eardrum. “What’s wrong? Your mom took your iPhone away because you missed curfew?”

  My face heats with anger. “No. I have a serious issue to discuss. About vaccinations.”

  “Sorry. We don’t represent minors.”

  I collect myself and try again. “May I please talk to someone who might be able to send me in the right direc—”

  She hangs up on me.

  “Well, that’s real professional,” I mutter as I stand there with the dial tone blaring in my ear.

  I slam the phone back on the hook and turn to the next page of the Yellow Pages. This copy is so old that half the legal practices don’t even exist anymore. After a few wrong numbers, the next person is nicer. She says she can take down my name and contact information and have someone call me back.

  “I need to talk to someone now,” I say. “I can’t risk anyone calling my house.” I sound like I’m in the witness protection program.

  “Well, you can try again tomorrow morning.” I can hear her tapping her fingers against her computer keyboard, like talking to me is secondary to forwarding an email.

  “Maybe,” I say, and hang up.

  So much for that one. I can’t exactly get up in the middle of Kitchen School to call my attorney.

  I continue to thumb through the Yellow Pages.

  Poppy waltzes into the kitchen. “Whatcha doin’?” she says.

  I slam the phone book shut. “Nothing.”

  “Sure.” She eyes the Yellow Pages.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I won’t.” She opens the fridge and pulls out a pitcher of fresh orange juice. Fills a glass. Takes a sip. Leans against the counter. Studies me. Sips again. “Need help with your nothing?”

  “No.”

  She takes another sip. Makes the same smug ahh sound my dad makes when he drinks his boring black coffee. I tap my fingers against the wall.

  “Why not?” she says.

  “Are you staying here all day or what?”

  “Depends. Are you?”

  “Not with you.”

  She lets out a dramatic sigh and finishes off her orange juice. “Fine.” She rinses out her glass and leaves it in the sink. “I’ll leave you alone to call your boyfriend.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Then who was that boy who came over here the other night? The tall one who looks like he doesn’t comb his hair.”

  “His name is Nico, and I’m sure he combs his hair. It’s just … floppy.” I get discombobulated remembering Nico and his floppy hair. I’m not sure my mouth can make words. I try anyway. “There’s a difference between a friend who’s a boy and a boyfriend, by the way.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And anyway, he’s neither. He doesn’t want to see me again.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “Why do you think?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “There was way too much drama here the other night. It scared him off. Our family is a freak show.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  I roll my eyes. “Can you please just go now?”

  She finally leaves. I shut the phone book. It’s outdated and useless. I need to figure out something else.

  TWENTY

  There’s nothing suckier than having to go back to the library after what happened with Nico, but my dead-end Yellow Pages calls have made it clear I need to get online if I’m going to find an attorney. I just have to be stealthy. So after the weekend, on Tuesday afternoon, one week after meeting Nico, I tiptoe around corners and peer into the computer lab to make sure he isn’t there.

  I don’t see him.

  The problem is, I don’t see anyone.

  The lab is completely empty.

  But the hours are posted by the door, so I know it isn’t closed.

  I pace back and forth. Do I go in there? Or will I get in trouble for not checking in with someone? Will I lose my lab privileges if I don’t hand over my library card to promise everyone I won’t steal a computer?

  I peer around the corner again. Still empty. Is he working or not? Because if he is, I can’t go in there. No way.

  I decide the front desk is my only option.

  “Hi, I’d like to use a computer, please.”

  “Oh, is nobody in t
here?” The librarian’s eyes dart around the library, past the bookshelves and the DVD rental section. “The attendant must’ve just stepped out for a moment. Would you like me to page someone?”

  “No!” I shout. I don’t mean to be so loud. “I’ll just wait.”

  I don’t wait in the lab. I wait behind a bookshelf around the corner. I can see the lab if I move two books aside. Not creepy at all.

  I scan the books along the shelves, pretending to be enthralled by the World War II collection in front of me. I run my fingers along the spines, reading the titles. I casually pull books from the shelves. I try to read the jacket copy, but my eyes glaze over.

  Finally, the person working the computer lab returns, and it’s not Nico. Thank you. I rush over, vowing to get my work done quickly in case Nico has the next shift or something.

  I give him my library card and ask for computer number seven, just for nostalgia’s sake.

  The guy working doesn’t look at my card and comment on my name or wait for me to tell him everything I know about the lottery in Bulgaria. He just slips my card into the corresponding slot and tells me to “get to it.”

  I sit down. My fingers quickly glide across the keyboard, pulling up a directory of local attorneys, all still in business, unlike the ones in our phone book at home. I send the list to the printer and log out. I wait until I hear the printer stop churning out papers before I get up and walk over to collect and pay for my copies.

  The guy hands my card back to me, and I stroll out of the library like the whole trip was painless.

  Maybe I can trick myself into believing it.

  I decide to reward myself by checking out the free samples at Starbucks. It’s only a couple of blocks away, and I enjoy the walk through town. The weather has cooled and it feels like fall. Crisp and clean.

  The café line is short, but there aren’t any free samples today. Thankfully, I have money left from the five-dollar bill I brought for printing pages at the library. I order a plain old drip coffee. Since they’re in the middle of brewing a new vat of it, I have to wait. If I were a normal person, I could scroll through my phone to pass the time like everyone else waiting for their drinks. But I’m not. I’m me. So I stand by the counter and watch the barista make foamy milk at the espresso machine instead.