bedroom door. I didnât want her to see my face. âHowâre you feeling?â
âTired. Ironically . Whereâs your sister?â
âShe slept over at a friendâs. Katieâs momâll bring her home this afternoon.â
âIâm going to lie down for a while.â
I waited, but I didnâ t hear the sound of her door. When I peeked into the hall, she was still standing ther e.
âThe kraken wakes,â she said dully. Ther e was a weak smile on her face. I wasnât sure if she meant me or her.
âYou okay?â I asked. âYou want something to eat?â
âNot yet, first Iâllâ Kaz, your face !â
âYep, I know . I was sort of there when it happened.â
âWhen what happened?!â
âJust some guy I know. He punched me.â I didnât tell her it was Topher. She might want to call his parents. That wouldnât be pretty.
âP unched you? But why ?!â
I explained as much as I could, careful to leave out references to parties, girls, beer, et cetera. There wasnât much left after the self-censorship. I t was simply an argument that got out of hand.
âI should have been here,â she croaked. âIf Iâd been with you, I wouldâveââ
âMom, stop it. Even if you werenât in the hospital, itâs not like I would have asked you to come along.â
âBut look at you!â She leaned forwar d, peering into my face. My nose was about two inches too wide and purple blotches pooled under my eyes. âThere was blood, wasnât the re?â
I shrugged.
âDid you ⦠?â
âPass out? Of course.â
Mom laughed sadly. âPassing out at the worst possible time. Runs in the family.â She pulled me into one of those head hugs your mom gives y ou when she thinks youâre still five.
â Ow ! My face!â
I pushed her away and the nubs of bone in her shoulders jabbed my hands. They were way too pronounced.
âIt looks worse than it is,â I told her unconvincingly. âI feel fine .â
Mom shook her head. Her eyes we re wet. âLater, weâll have Mr. Rodolfo lend us his car. Weâll all drive up to Beauhaven. You let Tracey ha ve a look at you for once. Sheâ ll fix us both up, youâll see.â
26
Beauhaven
One side effect of her illness is that Mom isnât allowed to have a driverâ s license. So whenever we drive up to the Beauhaven Center, it âs always me behind the wheel. The center is two hours away, in an almost-suburban town called W est Olsten. As far as I know, thereâs no such place as East Olsten, but that doesnât seem to bother the people of West Olsten.
Never go there, by the way.
Iâm sure there are a zillion places in the cityâmaybe e ven right in Evandaleâwhere you can get retired hippies to ram-slash-dribble homeopathic smoothies down your throat, but if y ou asked Mom, nowhere was as good as Beauhaven.
As soon as you pull into the parking lot, everything looks falseâthe marble pillars (which ar e actually textured cement); the roof of wooden shingles (which are obviously plastic); the pair of potted evergreens on either side of the entrance (both of which are polyurethane Christmas trees). Itâs all synthetic cra p, crafted to give the opposite impression: that B eauhaven is fully in touch with the all-natural world.
Out front is a sign painted with the Beauhaven logo. A cartoon daisy, with the initials BC . Below it is the familiar slogan:
The Beauhaven Center
Get W ellness!
(Mom had been trying for two years, but she hadnât gotten any yet.)
Tracey, the woman who ran B eauhaven, was a âreiki specialist.â For Mom, this was crucial. Reiki came from Japan and so did she, at least in a roundabout way. According to her logic, if anything was going to work for her, it would come from her ancestral homeland.
âPlease,â I