begged when we got there. âDonât make me go in.â
âBut Kaz, your face.â Mom shook her head. âNomi canât ev en look at you.â
She was right. We had picked my sister up on the way and she was in the back seatâcovering her eyes.
âIâm fine, â I said. âReally.â
âHow would you know if youâre fine? Youâre not a practitioner. â
âWhat does that even mean? A âpractitionerâ? If youâd said âdoctorâ for once, then yes, youâd be right. I am not a doctor.â I pointed at the Beauhaven building. âBut neither is she!â
Mom shook her head. âIâm not hearing this. Tracey is wonderfulâand youâre seeing her.â
âI am not.â I turned and star ed grimly out the window. The sky above Beauhav en was bright blue and completely empty except for a few fluffy clouds and a flock of big black birds. They looked ominous. And hungry. I willed them to swoop down and devour the place, but they werenât into it. They just fl ew away.
âYouâre going in,â said Mom.
âWhy canât you just go in and leave me here? Iâll be fine!â
â Donât fight ,â N omi told us, speaking blindly from the back seat. âI tâs bad for Mom if you fight. St ress is bad and then sheâllââ
âI wonât.â Mom reached back to rub Nomiâs knee.
âWell, he should do what you say.â Nomi spoke as if I wasnât there. âHeâs supposed to know that stress is the problem.â
â Y ouâre eight! â I told her. âYouâre not even supposed to know the word âstress.â â
â Your face is gross ,â she retorted, which certainly shut me up. Mom tugged down the passenger-side sun visor and flipped open the mirror for me to see. The bridge of my nose looked like a deformed potato and the two dark puddles under my eyes were s welling into lakes.
âLooks worse than this morning.â
Mom smiled, vindicated. âGuess that means y ouâre coming in with us.â
(It did.)
Tracey was a thin blonde woman with faintly muscled arms. If you only saw her from behind, you might easily assume she was my age, a teenagerâuntil she turned around, that is. Then you noticed the fake tan she used to hide her wrinkles and the sagging, scrotum-like skin around her armpits.
âWelcome back,â she said to Mom, clearly happy to see her. âAnd whoâs this?â
âMy son, Kaz. As you can see, he might be in need of some of your magic.â
Why did she have to call it magic? All it did was highlight the obvious.
âWhat happened?â Tracey asked.
âHe was punched,â Mom said.
Tracey put her hands on her hips and regarded me with an almost obscene degree of sympathy. âAre y ou bullied at school?â
âIt happened at a party,â I said.
âWe have counselors here at the clinic.â
âNo, thank you.â
âYou realize it could be serious. If the bruising doesnât drain properly, thereâs always a danger of blood poisoning.â
Great. Scare tactics. I began to feel faint.
âOh my goodness! You can hardly stand!â
Nomi shook her head. âItâs what you said,â she whispered. âDonât talk about blood.â
Tracey nodded sagely and I sensed her writing hemophobia in a mental file.
âIâm fine,â I said. âSeriously.â
âPerhaps you could do something for him?â Mom said.
Tracey nodded. âOh, certainly. We could fit you both into the large treatment room.â
She led us into what looked like a regular doctorâs office, only with two beds instead of one . Once Mom and I were lying on them, Tracey opened a drawer in one of the cabinets and took out what appeared to be a shiny, silver, carrot-shaped dildo. âThis,â she said, holding it