Turtle Boy Page 11

  “You know what,” Mom says. “You want some ice cream? I won’t tell anyone.”

  The look on her face says she expects me to say yes. Maybe last year, I would have.

  “No thanks. I’m fasting.”

  “Who is this kid, fasting on Yom Kippur?” she remarks. “I was all ready to bust out the Ben and Jerry’s!”

  The next thing I know, she’s sped up the stairs and I’m alone in the kitchen.

  We’ve already been in Yom Kippur morning services for an excruciating hour when I decide to kill some time in the men’s room. I sit in the stall and practice drumming on my thighs with my open palms: botta-batta-botta-batta-botta-batta. It’s getting easier as my muscles learn to be relaxed and engaged at the same time. Eventually, I decide to head back to the sanctuary. I open the men’s room door, and there is Shirah, about to go into the women’s room.

  “Oh, hi,” I say.

  She stops and looks at me impatiently.

  “How’s it going?” I ask. Shirah and I haven’t spoken in so long, I don’t remember how to talk to her.

  “Will, what do you want?”

  “You gonna be at the break-fast?” I ask. After services, everyone breaks the fast on bagels and lox and onions and tomatoes and these little green things called capers, which taste a little like olives.

  “My mom and I are going to Madison to break the fast with my aunt and uncle,” says Shirah.

  Madison.

  “How long does it take to get there?” I ask.

  “About an hour,” she says. “Why do you care?”

  “That kid I visit in the hospital,” I say. “He wants me to go to Madison, this weekend, to see a punk band and get him drumsticks.”

  She laughs and I feel really silly.

  “I cannot picture you going to a punk concert,” she says.

  “He asks me to do all this crazy stuff,” I say. “I’ve smuggled Funyuns for him, and I set up a secret turtle terrarium in his room, and now he wants me to go to this concert and get him a pair of drumsticks.”

  “So go do it!” she says. “You’re making it sound like it’s impossible.”

  “How am I supposed to get to Madison?” I ask. “Plus, you know me—I hate crowds.”

  “Will,” she says, “if this kid is so sick that he needs a random Bar Mitzvah kid to visit him in the hospital, then you have to do this! You have to go! There’s even a bus. I take it all the time.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Because if you’re able to go to a punk concert,” she says, “and you could get this kid some drumsticks and you won’t do it just because you don’t like buses or crowds or whatever, then you’re so selfish, I’m glad we’re not friends anymore.”

  I’m stunned. I feel my pulse quicken.

  “I mean it,” she says.

  “I think you’re hungry,” I say. “Obviously, not eating is making you say dumb things.”

  “Okay, so now I need to eat?” she asks bitterly. “Is this the setup for another fat joke?”

  I’m shocked. I cannot believe she brought that up. Here. In synagogue. On Yom Kippur. I don’t believe in any of this Yom Kippur forgiveness, but still, I would never, ever bring up things she’s done wrong, right here, today. Is she trying to get me struck by lightning?

  Someone calls from the doorway of the sanctuary. “Shirah, you’re up. Time to open the Ark.”

  Shirah slips into the sanctuary and scampers up the three small steps to the wooden Ark; the Torah scrolls are placed inside.

  Then, just at the second she’s about to close the doors, she looks up and our eyes meet. She looks really angry. She closes the wooden doors on cue, but hard. There’s a bang of wood slamming shut and it zaps the room— anyone who was dozing is shocked awake. Even people who saw it happen are startled. And I feel her judgment rattle through me, shaking every bone.

  The next day, I climb onto the bus, and as usual, Shirah’s bag is on the seat next to her. Her face is turned to the window.

  “Shirah,” I say.

  She doesn’t budge.

  “Hey, kid,” says the bus driver, looking over her shoulder. “Sit down.”

  “Shirah, can we talk?”

  “So talk,” Shirah says.

  “Hey, kid,” says the bus driver, louder. “I can’t operate the bus while you’re standing!”

  Shirah grabs her bag and pulls it closer to her, creating a tiny ledge at the end of her seat. I squeeze in next to her.

  “Okay, listen,” I say. “I’m going to get those drumsticks for RJ. But…I don’t think I can do it by myself. Would you be willing to go with me? You don’t have to talk to me. You can ignore me the whole time. But I can’t do it alone.”

  Shirah continues to look at the seat in front of her.

  “If I say yes,” she says, “it’s only because I want to help that kid in the hospital. You don’t deserve any favors.”

  “Fine,” I say. “Don’t do it for me. Do it for him.”

  “What time is the concert?”

  “Eight,” I say. “We can get the tickets there.”

  She appears to be counting in her head.

  “Okay, on Saturday, we’ll catch the four-thirty bus downtown. You know where the park-and-ride is?”

  “I’ll figure it out,” I say.

  “Don’t be late,” she says.

  We sit for a minute in silence until she turns to me.

  “Are we done?” she asks.

  I nod.

  She makes a shoving motion toward me. I go sit with the sixth graders in the back of the bus.

  I have a problem.

  Mom is not going to let me get on a bus and go to Madison, even if Shirah’s mom lets her. And she’s not going to let me go to a punk concert, even if it’s an all-ages show.

  “Tomorrow after school, don’t take the bus home,” Mom says as I set the table for dinner. “You have an appointment with the orthodontist.”

  “What? No! That’s not for two more weeks!”

  “A slot opened up,” she explains. “He’s doing molds and fittings in one visit.”

  And so it begins. Stage one: braces. Stage two: surgery. Stage three: whatever shreds of dignity I have left are pulverized when I have to eat my lunch at school through a straw. And that’s assuming I survive surgery.

  I put the plates down, nearly dropping them on the table. My head swims, and I rub my temples.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Will,” she says. “It really is. Also, this weekend, we’re going to La Crosse to help Aunt Mo move into her new condo. It’ll take most of the day.”

  The concert! La Crosse is almost three hours to the west. I need to get forty-five minutes south. That’s the wrong direction! I’m going to blow another task on RJ’s list!

  * * *

  • • •

  I’m in the orthodontist’s chair. Near my head, he’s using a metal spatula to smear pinkish putty into a pair of U-shaped trays.

  “Open big,” he says.

  I think the tray is going to fit around my teeth, like sliding a shoe onto a foot, but it’s nothing like that. It feels like my entire head is being crammed into a shoe. He’s mashing the tray up against my jaw and working it around.

  I feel like I’m drowning in cement. I start to gag and thrash around.

  He sits down next to me, ignoring my waving hands: “Twenty seconds, buddy. Try panting like a dog.”

  I try it, but it makes me gag again. My stomach convulses and my head is spinning and tears are flowing out of my eyes and the orthodontist starts counting down.

  “Ten…nine…eight…”

  I wave my hands more violently, clipping his glasses. They fly off his head and clatter onto the floor.

  “Whatever, good enough,” he says. He yanks the tray out
of my mouth. Giant ropes of drool flow from the tray and land on the green paper bib on my chest. I’m panting now, for real.

  “Fantastic job, buddy,” he says flatly, putting his glasses back on. He’s obviously annoyed, but it’s not my fault. I didn’t ask for any of this. “The good news is we got a good impression.”

  I’m too wobbly to refuse the bad news.

  “The bad news,” he continues anyhow, “is we still have to do the lower jaw.”

  * * *

  • • •

  After two hours of pain and pulling and pushing and stretching, along with cold bursts of air and water, the orthodontist sits back and pulls off his blue latex gloves.

  “Okay, go have a look. They look really cool,” he says brightly.

  “No thanks,” I say. I don’t want to see. He follows me out to the waiting room, where Mom is sitting. I hope she doesn’t ask me to smile.

  “How’s it feel, Will?” she asks.

  “Awful,” I say. It feels like my mouth is being folded in half in the wrong direction.

  “He can take something for the pain,” says the orthodontist. “No hard foods for a few days. Soup, applesauce, that sort of stuff. By the weekend, he should be fine. And, Will, if you get any hot spots from the metal rubbing on the insides of your cheek, you can stick some of this on the brackets.”

  He gives me a bag full of strips of white wax and a pamphlet with all the dos and don’ts of braces.

  He turns to Mom. “In about a month, you’ll want to pay a visit to Dr. Haffetz and see if Will’s ready to go forward with the surgery.”

  Silently, I count the weeks remaining until that very real terror comes to my life: ten.

  That’s seventy days.

  Ever since my appointment with Dr. Haffetz this past summer, I’ve tried to keep the surgery pushed far, far out of my mind. But now it’s here. All the things he told me, the things they’re going to do to me—they’re all back from deep freeze.

  Break jaw hinge.

  Move jaw forward.

  Transplant bone from hip.

  Wire teeth shut.

  Eat through a straw.

  “You’re quiet,” says Mom. “You okay?”

  “Remember this summer,” I say, “when the doctor said that the surgery is risky?”

  “That’s not what he said,” she says. “He was just explaining that with any surgery requiring anesthesia, there’s always a teeny risk. But you don’t need to worry about it. Thousands of people all over the world have surgery all the time.”

  I take a deep breath. “But sometimes…”

  We both know where I’m going with this. The one person in thousands who died was Dad. His hernia operation wasn’t supposed to be a big deal, but something went wrong during the surgery, and he never came home. If it could happen to him…

  “You’re going to be fine,” says Mom, her voice becoming tense. “What happened to your father has nothing to do with you.”

  We ride for a while longer without talking. We didn’t talk about Dad, but we sort of did, and now, it’s in the car with us.

  “I feel sick,” I say.

  “This happens when you’re anxious,” she says. “Open the window to get some fresh air and think about something else.”

  It’s probably the right advice, but I don’t follow it. I think about Dad dying. I count ten weeks until my surgery, over and over, all the way home.

  At dinner, my face hurts too much to eat. Mom makes me a smoothie and doesn’t even try to sneak kale into it. It’s mainly yogurt and frozen berries. It would taste good if I weren’t so miserable.

  Now I’m lying in bed, my mouth full of pain. It hurts when I open my mouth. It hurts when I close my mouth. It hurts when I’m just lying here, thinking about how much it hurts.

  How am I supposed to go to school tomorrow in this condition? I start wondering if I could leverage this to stay home. Maybe for a day. Maybe even two?

  And suddenly, an idea flows into my head, almost from my mouth itself.

  * * *

  • • •

  It’s Friday, and we’re eating soup for the second night in a row. My teeth still hurt too much to chew. I don’t talk much because I’m planning my next move.

  “Aunt Mo called,” says Mom. “She found other people to help her move, but she wants to have a party to celebrate her new place, and I think maybe she still needs my help. I wonder how you’d feel about staying at home alone tomorrow.”

  I literally cannot believe my ears. She solved my problem for me!

  “You’re going to a party?” I ask, shifting the topic away from my plan. “Like, with people?”

  “You’re always saying I need to get out and do things,” she explains.

  That’s not exactly true. I only said that one time. But now that she’s doing it, oddly enough, I forget completely about RJ, the drumsticks, my plan to get to Madison, the surgery, the braces, my chin—all of it. I just want to stay home and have Mom take care of me and make everything better.

  But that’s little me. Kid me. Real me has real responsibilities. To RJ and to myself.

  “Go,” I say. I manage to sound confident but not quite eager. “I got this.”

  Mom is quiet for a minute. She looks pained.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “I feel guilty, leaving you like this,” she says. “Maybe it isn’t right.”

  I shake my head vigorously, feeling the motion in my teeth and gums. “No, Mom, you have to go. I’m completely fine staying home.”

  “I could leave you my phone,” she says, more to comfort herself than me. “And if you needed to reach me, you could just text Aunt Mo. She won’t mind if I hang on to her phone for the day.”

  “I’m just going to eat soup and watch movies all day,” I say.

  “That sounds awesome,” she says.

  It does, I think. It does sound awesome.

  But that’s not what I’ll be doing tomorrow.

  * * *

  • • •

  The seats on a Marten’s Express aren’t like school bus seats or city bus seats. They’re more like airplane chairs. Two on the left of the aisle and two on the right.

  Shirah is sitting about ten rows back. Her backpack is on the seat next to her. At first, I think she’s going to make me sit alone, but when she sees me, she makes space. The bus lurches forward. My stomach drops like we’re on a roller coaster.

  “You okay?” asks Shirah.

  “Totally,” I say.

  I text Mom: Watching movies. Teeth sore but ok. How are you doing? Almost party time!

  Ha ha! Fun! she texts back, followed by way too many emojis, some of them seemingly random faces. Is she hiding in the kitchen, pretending to help so she doesn’t have to talk to anyone? She’s with Aunt Mo, who will take care of her. She’ll be fine. I shift around, anxious, until I bump elbows with Shirah. Now, I’m very aware of her body: where her knee is next to mine, where her arm is. She pulls out her headphones and is about to put them on when she suddenly says, “Oh, here,” and pulls out a small cellophane package. Inside are two small squishy yellow cylinders.

  “Earplugs,” she says. “To protect our hearing at the show. I’ve been streaming their music for days, and it’s definitely gonna be loud. But I have to say, their stuff’s really good. I’m excited. And I think it’s really cool that you’re doing this.”

  A smile escapes my lips.

  “Wait, look at me,” she orders. “You got braces?”

  I nod.

  “How much does it suck?” she asks, and then slips her headphones over her ears.

  Shirah has had braces for a while, and I sort of enjoy the fact that we have something in common. But she doesn’t need surgery. I’m tempted to tell her about it. I used to think of her as my
best friend, sometimes even my only friend, and it makes me sad that she doesn’t know this major thing about me.

  I catch a glimpse of her, headphones on, and I realize that there are a million things I don’t know about her too.

  It’s dark in here. There’s a pretty big crowd, mainly clustered near the stage. Most of the people look like they’re in high school—maybe RJ’s age. Shirah’s taller than I am, and she looks older than I do, so she probably feels like she fits right in. Then again, with everyone completely fixated on the stage, I could be wearing a gorilla costume and no one would notice.

  Two guys with flannel shirts and long hair come out onstage, and at first I think that’s the band, but the crowd barely responds. One of the guys picks up a guitar and plays a few chords, and the other guy bangs on the drum, over and over.

  “What are they doing?” I yell to Shirah.

  “Testing the volumes!” she yells back. “They’re roadies.”

  She gets out her phone and sets an alarm. “When this goes off,” she says, “we have to leave and get to the bus stop or we’ll miss our ride home. Got it?”

  I nod.

  Eventually, the already-dim room goes pitch-black, and a voice comes booming out of the speakers and says, “Hey, Madison! Mad Town! Mad City! Please make some noise for Dog Complex!”

  A swell of yelling washes over the room, and bass noise explodes in my chest. It’s so loud, it feels like my ears are going to bleed. I stick a finger in each ear and feel a bump from the side that almost knocks me off balance. It’s Shirah—she holds up her packet of earplugs, reminding me. We roll the foam into skinny tubes and ease them into our ears. The noise in the room goes shoooop as the plugs expand. It’s like I’m underwater. I can feel the crashing of guitars and the bass in my chest, and also in my teeth and jaw, which throbs to the pulse of the music. I hold my palms up to my cheeks and massage them, wondering how I’m going to make it through the show.