The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  I dragged a high chair over to the table so that you could reach it. A harried waitress tossed menus at us, with a pack of crayons for you. “Be back in a minute for your order.”

  My mother guided your legs through the high chair, which was an ordeal, because with braces your legs didn’t move that easily. Right away you flipped over your place mat and began to draw on the blank side. “So,” my mother said. “What should we bake when we get home?”

  “Donuts,” you suggested. You were pretty psyched about the pan we’d bought, which looked like sixteen alien eyes.

  “Amelia, what about you?”

  I buried my face in my arms. “Hash brownies.”

  The waitress reappeared with a pad in hand. “Well, aren’t you just cute enough to spread on a cracker and eat,” she said, grinning down at you. “And a mighty fine artist, too!”

  I caught your gaze and rolled my eyes. You poked two crayons up your nose and stuck out your tongue. “I’ll have coffee,” Mom said. “And the turkey club.”

  “There’s more than one hundred chemicals in a cup of coffee,” you announced, and the waitress nearly fell over.

  Because we didn’t go out much, I’d forgotten how strangers reacted to you. You were only as tall as a three-year-old, but you spoke and read and drew like someone much older than your real age—almost six. It was sort of freaky, until people got to know you. “Isn’t she just a talkative little thing!” the waitress said, recovering.

  “I’ll have the grilled cheese, please,” you replied. “And a Coke.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good. Make it two,” I said, when what I really wanted was one of everything on the menu. The waitress was staring at you as you drew a picture that was about normal for a six-year-old but practically Renoir for the toddler she assumed you to be. She looked like she was going to say something to you, so I turned to my mother. “Are you sure you want turkey? That’s, like, food poisoning waiting to happen . . .”

  “Amelia!”

  She was mad, but it got the waitress to stop ogling you and leave.

  “She’s an idiot,” I said as soon as the waitress was gone.

  “She doesn’t know that—” My mother broke off abruptly.

  “What?” you accused. “That there’s something wrong with me?”

  “I would never say that.”

  “Yeah, right,” I muttered. “Not unless the jury’s present.”

  “So help me, Amelia, if your attitude doesn’t—”

  I was saved by the waitress, who reappeared holding our drinks, in glasses that probably were see-through plastic in a former life but now just looked filmy. Your Coke was in a sippy cup.

  Automatically, my mother reached out and began to unscrew the top. You took a drink, then picked up your crayon and began writing across the top of your picture: Me, Amelia, Mommy, Daddy.

  “Oh, my God,” the waitress said. “I have a three-year-old at home, and let me tell you, I can barely get her potty trained. But your daughter’s already writing? And drinking out of a regular cup. Honey, I don’t know what you’re doing right, but I want to get me some of that.”

  “I’m not three,” you said.

  “Oh.” The waitress winked. “Three and a half, right? Those months count when they’re babies—”

  “I’m not a baby!”

  “Willow.” Mom put a hand on your arm, but you threw it off, knocking over the cup and sending Coke all over the place.

  “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?”

&nbs