Handle With Care Read online

  'I'm not!'

  Mom grabbed a stack of napkins and started mopping. 'I'm sorry,' she said to the waitress.

  'Now that' - the waitress nodded - 'looks more like three.'

  A bell rang, and she left to go back in the kitchen.

  'Willow, you know better,' my mother said. 'You can't get angry at someone because she didn't know you have OI.'

  'Why not?' I asked. 'You are.'

  My mother's jaw dropped. Recovering, she grabbed her purse and jacket and stood up. 'We're leaving,' she announced, and she yanked you out of your chair. At the last minute she remembered the drinks and slapped a ten-dollar bill on the table. Then she carried you out to the car, with me trailing behind.

  We went to McDonald's on the way home after all, but instead of making me feel satisfied, it made me want to disappear underneath the tires, the pavement, all of it.

  I had braces, too, but not the kind that kept my legs from bowing. Mine were the ordinary kind, the ones that had changed the whole shape of my head during the progression from palate expander to bands to wires. This much I had in common with you: the very second I got my braces, I began counting the days until they would be taken off. For those who've never had the displeasure, this is what braces feel like: you know those fake white vampire teeth you stick in your mouth at Halloween? Well, imagine that, and then imagine that they stay there for the next three years, with you drooling and cutting your gums on the uneven plastic bits, and that would be braces.

  Which is why, one particular Monday in late January, I had the biggest, soppiest smile on my face. I didn't care when Emma and her posse wrote the word WHORE on the blackboard behind me in math class, with an arrow that pointed down at my head. I didn't care when you ate all the Cocoa Puffs so that I had to have Frosted Mini-Wheats as a snack after school. All that mattered was that at 4:30 p.m. I was getting my braces off, after thirty-four months, two weeks, and six days.

  My mother was playing it incredibly cool - apparently she didn't realize what a big deal this was. I'd checked; it was right on her calendar, like it had been for the past five months. I started to panic, though, when it was four o'clock and she set a cheesecake into the oven. I mean, how could she drive me into town to the orthodontist and not have to worry if her knife slipped out clean in an hour when she tested it?

  My father, that had to be the answer. He hadn't been around much, but then again, that wasn't radical. Cops worked when they had to, not when they wanted to - or so he used to tell me. The difference was that, when he was home, you could cut the air between him and my mother with that same knife she was using to test her cheesecake.

  Maybe this was all part of a calculated plan to throw me off. My father was going to show up in time to take me to the orthodontist; my mother would finish baking the cheesecake (which was my favorite anyway) and it would be part of a big ol' dinner that included things like corn on the cob, caramel apples, and bubble gum - all forbidden foods that were written on the reminder magnet on our fridge with a fat X across it, and for once, I'd be the one everybody could not take their eyes off.

  I sat at the kitchen table, scuffing my sneaker on the floor. 'Amelia,' my mother sighed.

  Squeak.

  'Amelia. For God's sake. You're giving me a headache.'

  It was 4:04. 'Aren't you forgetting something?'

  She wiped her hands on a dish towel. 'Not that I know of . . .'

  'Well, when's Dad going to get here?'

  She stared at me. 'Honey,' she said, the word that's a sweet, so that you know whatever's coming next has to be awful. 'I don't know where your father is. He and I . . . we haven't . . .'

  'My appointment,' I burst out, before she could say anything else. 'Who's taking me to the orthodontist?'

  For a moment, she was speechless. 'You must be joking.'

  'After three years? I don't think so.' I stood up, poking my finger at the calendar on the wall. 'I'm getting my braces off today.'

  'You are not going to Rob Reece's office,' my mother said.

  Okay, that's the detail I left out: the only orthodontist in Bankton - the one I'd been seeing all this time - happened to be married to the woman she was suing. Granted, due to all the drama, I'd missed a couple of appointments since September, but I had no intention of skipping this one. 'Just because you're on some crusade to ruin Piper's life, I have to leave my braces on till I'm forty?'

  My mother held her hand up to her head. 'Not till you're forty. Just until I find you another orthodontist. For God's sake, Amelia, it slipped my mind. I've obviously had a lot going on lately.'

  'Yeah, you and every other human on this planet, Mom,' I yelled. 'Guess what? It's not all about you and what you want and what makes everyone feel sorry for your miserable life with some miserable--'

  She slapped me across the face.

  My mother had never, ever hit me. Not even when I ran into traffic when I was two, not even when I poured nail polish remover on the dining room table and destroyed the finish. My cheek hurt, but not as much as my chest. My heart had turned into a ball of rubber bands, and they were snapping, one by one.

  I wanted her to hurt as much as she'd hurt me, so I spat out the words that burned like acid in my throat. 'Bet you wish I'd never been born, too,' I said, and I took off running.

  By the time I got to Rob's office (I'd never called him Dr Reece), I was sweaty and red-faced. I don't think I'd ever run five whole miles in my life, but that's what I had just done. Guilt is a better fuel than you can imagine. I was practically the Energizer Bunny, and it had a lot less to do with getting closer to the orthodontist than it did with getting away from my mother. Panting, I walked up to the receptionist's desk, where there was a nifty computer kiosk to sign in. But I had only just settled my fingers on the keyboard when I noticed the receptionist staring at me. And the dental hygienist. And in fact, every single person in the office.

  'Amelia,' the receptionist says. 'What are you doing here?'

  'I have an appointment.'

  'I think we all just assumed--'

  'Assumed what?' I interrupted. 'That just because my mother's a jerk, I'm one, too?'

  Suddenly Rob stepped into the reception area, snapping a pair of rubber gloves off his hands. He used to blow them up for Emma and me, and draw little faces on them. The fingers looked like the comb of a rooster and felt as soft as a baby's skin.

  'Amelia,' he said quietly. He wasn't smiling, not one iota. 'I guess you're here about your braces.'

  It felt like I had been walking in a forest for the past few months, a place where even the trees might reach out to grab you and nobody spoke English - and Rob had said the first rational, normal sentence I'd heard in a long time. He knew what I wanted. If it was so easy for him, why did nobody else seem to get it?

  I followed him into the examination room, past the snarky receptionist and the dental hygienist whose eyes went so wide I thought they might pop out of her head. Ha, I thought, walking beside him proudly. Take that.

  I expected Rob to say something like Look, let's just get this over with and keep it strictly business, but instead, as he settled the paper bib over my shoulders, he said, 'Are things okay for you, Amelia?'

  God, why couldn't Rob have been my father? Why couldn't I have lived in the Reece household, and Emma could have been in mine, so I could hate her instead of the other way around?

  'Compared to what? Armageddon?'

  He was wearing a mask, but I pretended that, behind it, he cracked a smile. I'd always liked Rob. He was geeky and small, not at all like my father. At sleepovers Emma would tell me my father was movie-star handsome and I'd tell her it was gross that she even thought about him like that; and she'd say if her dad was ever in a movie, it would be Revenge of the Nerds. And maybe that was true, but he also didn't mind taking us to movies that starred Amanda Bynes or Hilary Duff, and he let us play with brace wax and fashion it into little bears and ponies when we were bored.

  'I'd forgotten how funny you can be,'