Free My Life in Black and White by Natasha Friend Page B

Kamath a tiny nod. “Okay,” I told her. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”

 

Burnt Toast
     
    FUN HOUSE MIRROR . That’s what I thought when I saw myself. No way can this be real. No way in hell. Fun house mirror.
    It came from this movie I saw once, a true story about a kid who was born with some freaky disease that made his head grow out of control. It kept growing and growing, and he looked more and more deformed, until finally his brain gave out and he died. That isn’t the saddest part of the story, though. The part that rips your heart out is when his mom takes him to the fair and he goes into one of those fun houses with all the mirrors—the kind that make everyone’s face look warped and hideous. Only for this kid, it’s the opposite. When he enters the fun house and sees his reflection, it’s like some kind of sick joke. He looks normal.
    I hadn’t thought about that movie in years, until the moment in Dr. Kamath’s office when I saw myself. Despite all the ice and anti-inflammatory meds, the right side of my face was still swollen almost beyond recognition. Puffy and purple as a plum, zigzagged all over with stitches. And right in the middle, the tour de force: a square of graft skin so black and crusty it looked as though a miniature slice of burnt toast had been stapled to my cheekbone.
    “Oh my God.”
    “Alexa,” Dr. Kamath said gently. “The sutures will dissolve, the swelling will go down, and the bruises will fade. Keep that in mind.”
    Something came out of my mouth, a cross between a whimper and a moan. I didn’t even sound human.
    “Listen to me, Alexa. I know the doctors told you already, but I’m going to say it again. It’s perfectly normal for the graft to look this way now…. Scabbing is … Color changes are … It’s actually a sign of … In a few weeks…”
    Dr. Kamath’s lips kept flapping, but the words no longer registered. I was thinking back to the morning of ninth-grade yearbook photos, when I woke up with a zit on my nose and flipped out. I spent half an hour covering my face with my mother’s foundation and powder so my picture would be perfect.
    A zit.
    A single zit, the size of a poppy seed, which would be gone in two days.
    If I could go back in time, I would slap myself so hard my head would spin.

 

Just Shoot Me Now
     
    WHEN I GOT home from the hospital, the number of reflective surfaces in my house seemed to have multiplied. Not just mirrors, but things I’d never noticed before. Computer screens, shiny countertops, glass doors, spoons, even the well-buffed mahogany of the dining room table. As I walked around the house, they all seemed to be saying the same thing: look, look, look .
    The best place to be was my room, which only had one mirror, and that I had already taken off the wall and shoved in my closet, so … problem solved.
    I lay in my bed, wearing the same pajamas I’d worn yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.
    Outside my window, the ice-cream truck jingled.
    In an alternate universe, Taylor and I would be dashing across the lawn in our bathing suits, dollars in hand. Instead, here I was on this beautiful August afternoon, staring at the ceiling. The same ceiling that Taylor helped decorate. One night when she was staying over, we’d pulled a stack of magazines out of my closet— Rolling Stone and Seventeen and Elle —and we’d cut out pictures and made a giant collage, right there over my bed. I remember the two of us standing on pillows, pounding the ceiling with our fists to make the tape stick.
    Tear it down, my brain said. Rip the whole stupid thing down right now . But my body wouldn’t listen. It was too tired, too comfortable lying here under the covers, with the fan blasting.
    Any second now, my mother would poke her smooth, blonde head through the door, insisting that I get out of bed. Take a shower. Grease my face. Because the graft didn’t have sweat or oil glands it had to be lubricated, twice a