Skin (8 page)

“Do you have anything in hazelnut?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?” I practically shriek.

“That brings us back to brown tones, though. But here.” She rolls a tube across the glass counter to me. “This one is right for you. Why do you want hazelnut?”

“It’s my mother’s favorite flavor. And my mother loves me.”

“She’s not the only one.”

“How do you know that?”

“Jesus loves you.”

Oh my God. I’d be offended if I wasn’t so stupefied. For all she knows, I’m Buddhist or something. “And here I thought you were a classic alternative type.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

I stare at Slinky—at her dyed black hair and purple lipstick. “How old are you?”

She smiles. “Older than you. I have a son.” Her whole face softens. “Take the Hazelnut. Then come back and tell me how it worked.”

“I’ll take both.” And I don’t believe she’s much older than me. A son, huh? Wow. On an impulse, I add, “And some purple nail polish, please. The color you’re wearing.”

“Hazelnut lipstick with purple nail polish? Crazy. But, hey, that’s how we got our motto.”

I DO MY HOMEWORK between sneaking looks at pictures of people with vitiligo on the Internet. I’m using Dad’s computer—so I won’t even think about IM-ing. And I put my cell in a drawer. No distractions. Vitiligo. It’s awful how many pictures there are.

Some are of naked people, but none of them are erotic. Vitiligo makes you look so ugly, no one could get turned on. A lump forms in my throat, so big my ears ache. I’ve been telling myself vitiligo is just lack of coloring, so no matter how far it goes, it can’t look that bad. But it does. I can’t understand how—but it does. It’s revolting. A little shiver hums inside me, elusive and eerie.

Normally, I would be ashamed of myself for thinking this way, for being such a shallow jerk. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t think this at all. Normally, I would have empathy. If it weren’t me, I could look and be kind, charitable. But it is me.

My head is muck.

I’m not prepared for this.

Well, who could be?

Only I’m the girl who’s always prepared. I work at it. I want to be ready for whatever’s coming next. I always just assumed what was coming next was good.

But it isn’t.

I can’t deal with this right now. I can’t deal with anything.

I go to the kitchen phone and punch out the numbers.

“Hello?” It’s that high-pitched four-year-old voice I know too well. Shouldn’t she be in bed by now?

“Hi, Sarah. It’s Sep. How you doing?”

“I’m in trouble.”

“What a surprise.”

“At school.”

“As good a place as any.”

“Know what I did?”

“You can tell me later. Can I talk to your mother?”

“I bit Clancy.”

“You’re four, Sarah. Almost five. You know biting is antisocial.”

“What’s
antisocial
mean?”

“You can guess.”

“Bad.”

“Right.”

“He deserved it.”

“I’m sure he did. But that doesn’t matter. When people are rotten, we try to help them, not bite them.”

“No one helps me.”

“That’s not true. Besides, no one bites you, either.”

“Clancy did.”

“Oh.” This changes things. A little. “Did you bite him back? Is that what happened?”

“No. I bit him first. He bit me back.”

I stifle a laugh. “Can I talk to your mother now?”

I hear the phone clatter, probably falling to the floor.

“Hello, Sep? Is that you?”

“Do you still need a sitter for tomorrow night?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still paying two dollars more an hour?”

“Yes.”

“Plus a five-dollar bonus at the end of the night?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

“Thank you! Can you be here at seven?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you, I’m so grateful. And you’ll have plenty more parties you can go to. You’ll see.”

Right. “See you tomorrow, Mrs. Harrison.”

I take a bath because it’s easier to inspect myself in the bath than the shower. With a hand mirror, I examine every inch of my body I can possibly see.

I get out and towel off and sit on the sink with my rear to the medicine cabinet mirror and use the hand mirror to see the center of the back of my head and neck.

This is dumb.

I go to my room, clutching that hand mirror, and check myself out top to bottom in the full-length mirror inside my closet door.

There are no other white spots on me. Yet.

I fall in bed. All at once I realize I haven’t called Devin. I was going to. I promised myself I was going to tell her everything. But I’m in bed now. And I feel like a heap of heavy dung. I couldn’t get up if I tried. But I don’t try.

My stomach burns like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Flames shoot up the center of my chest. I’ve heard about heartburn in TV commercials. I’m giving myself indigestion. I’m becoming certifiable, like Slinky said.

And I’m going to be very ugly very soon.

IN THE MORNING I put on the blue lip color. I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between lip color and lipstick beyond the fact that one is skinny, so you get less for your money.

Silver Plum. It isn’t actually very blue. And it is actually very pretty.

Suddenly I’m furious. I don’t even know why. I jam the top on the lip color so fast, I catch it wrong and break off the tip. More money wasted.

“Cool lipstick,” says Devin, first thing.

“It’s a disguise.”

“Maybe. Or maybe you’re becoming someone else.”

“Have you been doing mind probes again?”

She laughs.

“I got something for you, too.” I hand her the purple nail polish.

“How come?”

“Just ’cause I love you.”

“Thanks. I love it.” Devin puts it in her pocket. “And I love you, too. Hey, you’re not going to believe this: I heard someone talking about you. In a good way.”

There goes that heartburn. “Who?”

“Well, actually, I didn’t hear it. Rachel did. And she told me.”

I like Rachel; she loves Mamma’s spinach pie. “So…? Out with it. Who was talking about me?”

“Guys. They were listing girls. And your name came up. I told you it was possible. You have to learn to trust me.” Devin talks. On and on.

I should interrupt her. Say I have something to tell her.

But I don’t, and Becca joins us. And now it’s two motormouths.

As we reach school, I compose my face. Casual is the rule. “Oh, Becca, I meant to tell you, I’m sorry, but I can’t make it tonight.”

“You’re not coming?” Becca catches me by the elbow. “Really? You’re not going to some other party, are you?”

“Of course not. I just can’t do a party tonight.”

“Did you get grounded? You! I can’t believe it! What did you do?”

I’d laugh if I wasn’t so sad. “Mamma’s never even heard of grounding.”

“Sep, you’ve got to stop calling your mother ‘Mamma.’ I’ve been telling you that since sixth grade.”

“Yeah, right, I’m hopeless.”

“Wow.” Becca steps back and studies my face. “You’re really upset. What happened?”

“I got to run. I hope the party’s great.” I hurry to my locker.

Devin’s at my side. “How could you do that?”

“What?”

“How could you not tell me? I was counting on going with you. You knew that. I can’t believe you did that.”

“I’m sorry. It just happened. Last night.”

“What? What happened?”

My throat has done that shut-trick again. It’s been doing that a lot. It feels like it’s closed to the size of a straw. Maybe I’ll suffocate. “I can’t talk now.”

“You can’t talk ever. I texted you last night, but you never answered. I tried Wednesday night, too. I keep telling myself you’re not trying to avoid me. I keep smiling and joking with you. But now this. You just flaked out on
me. Parties aren’t any easier for me than for you, you know. I act excited because you’re supposed to act excited. But you know how I’m really feeling. So what’s the matter, Sep? You’re supposed to be my best friend. What’s going on?”

I have to tell her. But not here. I would rather someone stab me through the eyeball than cry in the school hall. “Drop it, okay?” I stash my backpack and grab my stuff for Bio and English.

“All right. I get it, Sep. I get this message loud and clear.”

I turn, but she’s disappeared in the hall crowd.

What a jerk I am.

In Bio Mr. Dupris tells us enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. That means they speed them up. He shows us a picture of a white cat with blue eyes. He calls it an albino.

I sit up straight so fast, I smash my knees on the underside of my desk.

“Is something wrong, Sep?” Mr. Dupris looks worried.

I feel myself flush. Find something to say. Fast, girl. “I thought albinos had pink eyes.”

“Most do. But in some albino cats, the eyes can be blue. This cat is missing an enzyme that would catalyze the reaction that would allow the amino acid tyrosine to produce melanin. Melanin is responsible for skin pigmentation.”

So that cat is white because he’s missing an enzyme. “What enzyme?” I blurt out.

“Good question, Sep. Tyrosinase.” Mr. Dupris looks proud of himself. “And the enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction that breaks down proteins into their component amino acids is called proteinase—or protease, for short. Can you see the pattern?”

A half-wit could see the pattern. No one answers. We’re not half-wits.

“You take the name of the substance that the enzyme acts on and you attach the suffix
-ase
, and, presto…” Mr. Dupris snaps his fingers. “You’ve got the enzyme name. It doesn’t work all the time, but it comes close.”

Mr. Dupris should date Mrs. Reynolds, the Latin teacher. She’s always going bananas over analyzing words. But she’s married. And probably thirty years older than him. Maybe forty. Still, they could be open-minded about it.

“Now look at these photos.” Mr. Dupris shows two more photos. “Here’s a black cat. And here’s a black cat, but with some red hair right there.” He taps the photo. “They’re the same cat. When they changed the cat’s diet so that it had very little tyrosine in it, some of his hair turned red.”

Dr. Ratner said my hair wouldn’t change color. Or, rather, he said it was rare—and only in patches.

But then, I’m not a cat.

I have nine hundred questions. But this class is about enzymes, not about pigmentation. That was just an example to make Mr. Dupris’s point. I suck in the sides of my cheeks and try to listen. We’re having an enzyme quiz on Monday.

English class is interminable. Mr. Batell has a gravelly voice that makes me think of grating off all my skin, and that idea makes me even jumpier.

I gobble my lunch as I walk. Joshua didn’t come talk to me at lunch yesterday, which probably means he’s moved on, and Devin sure isn’t about to invite me to sit near her, so what’s the point of going to the lunchroom? I go directly to the library.

Cats that are missing tyrosinase are not only albino, if they have blue eyes, they are also often deaf. And it isn’t even all white cats with blue eyes—because lots of other things can cause white hair and lots of other things can cause blue eyes.

White connected to deafness.

Nothing I read said I might go deaf.

I close my eyes. Someone coughs. Someone turns a page. A chair leg scrapes the floor. Birds and people do their
thing outside the window. The librarian speaks softly. The air itself seems to make noise. What’s silence like? Constant silence?

I open my eyes and type again. Fast. My fingers fly. It turns out a mutation in tyrosinase is responsible for albinism in humans, too. In pretty much anything that can be albino, in fact. Even plants. But whiteness from vitiligo has nothing to do with any mutation or malfunctioning of tyrosinase.

So much for that.

Still, if I want color, I might try increasing my tyrosinase. Tyrosinase contains copper. I search around a bit. Nuts and oysters contain a lot of copper. So does organ meat—but I will never eat organs, yuck. Maybe I should learn to like oysters. And I love nuts. Especially Brazil nuts.

Only now I find articles about high levels of copper in our blood being connected to depression, bad PMS, learning disabilities, senility, and schizophrenia.