Blues for Zoey (8 page)

25

I
t
Run
s
i
n
t
h
e
F
amily

I didn
't sleep well that night. When you're lying
alone in the dark, it's hard to ignore the lingering throb of a smashed face. But
that wasn't the real reason. In tr
uth, I couldn't stop thinking about Zoey.

In the
morning, bleary-eyed, I did a Yellow
Pages search for people named Zamani. There we
re forty-one listings, with addresses all across the
city. I knew it would be stupid to
dial at random. I recalled Calen's advice from the night before:
Girls hate needy
.
Anyway, do people who play music in the st
reet get their names listed in the phone book?

So I just sat there with a face like a junkyard, scanning up and down the addresses. I was still reading the list when a taxi rolled up out front. Through the window, I saw Mom ease herself out of the back seat.

After an attack, she prefers silence at home. For a day or so, she's kind of out of it, almost like she's still asleep. She hates it when Nomi bounces to the door, leaping up, hugging her, yapping like a puppy.

M
om's feet dragged up the stairs. The entranceway
door opened and closed. I heard a shuffling as she
took off her shoes and pulled on her slippers.

“Kaz?”

“I'm here,” I said through the bedroom door. I didn't want her to see my face. “How're you feeling?”

“Tired.
Ironically
. Where's your sister?”

“She slept over at a friend's. Katie's mom'll bring her home this afternoon.”

“I'm going to lie down for a while.”

I waited, but I didn'
t hear the sound of her door. When I peeked into the hall, she was still standing ther
e.

“The kraken wakes,” she said dully. Ther
e was a weak smile on her face. I wasn't sure if she meant me or her.

“You okay?” I asked.
“You want something to eat?”

“Not yet, first I'll—
Kaz, your face
!”

“Yep, I know
. I was sort of there when it happened.”

“When
what
happened?!”

“Just some guy I
know. He punched me.” I didn't
tell her it was Topher. She might want to
call his parents. That wouldn't be pretty.

“P
unched you?
But why
?!”

I explained as much as I could, careful to leave out references to parties,
girls, beer, et cetera. There wasn't much left after the self-censorship. I
t was simply an argument that got out of hand.

“I should have been here,” she croaked. “If I'd been with you, I would've—”

“Mom, stop it. Even if you weren't in the hospital, it's not like I would have asked you to come along.”

“But look at you!” She leaned forwar
d, peering into my face. My nose was about two
inches too wide and purple blotches pooled under my eyes. “There was blood, wasn't the
re?”

I shrugged.

“Did you … ?”

“Pass out? Of course.”

Mom laughed sadly. “Passing out at the worst possible time.
Runs in the family.” She pulled me into one of those head hugs your mom gives y
ou when she thinks you're still five.

“
Ow
! My face!”

I pushed her away and the nubs of bone in her shoulders jabbed my hands. They were way too pronounced.

“It looks worse than
it is,” I told her unconvincingly. “I feel fine
.”

Mom shook her head. Her eyes we
re wet. “Later, we'll have Mr.
Rodolfo lend us his car. We'll all
drive up to Beauhaven. You let Tracey ha
ve a look at you for once. She'
ll fix us both up, you'll see.”

26

Beauhaven

One side effect of her illness is
that Mom isn't allowed to have a driver'
s license. So whenever we drive up to the Beauhaven Center, it
's 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, there's no such place as
East
Olsten, but that doesn't seem to bother the people of West
Olsten.

Never go there, by the way.

I'm sure there are a zillion places in the city—maybe e
ven right in Evandale—where 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 false—the 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). It's 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 hadn't gotten any yet.)

Tracey, the woman who ran B
eauhaven, was a “reiki specialist.” 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.

“Please,” I begged when we got there. “Don't make me go in.”

“But Kaz, your face.” Mom shook her head. “Nomi can't ev
en
look
at you.”

She was right. We had picked my sister up on the way and she was in the back seat—covering her eyes.

“I'm fine,
” I said. “Really.”

“How would you know if
you're fine? You're not a practitioner.
”

“What does that even mean? A ‘practitioner'? If you'd said ‘doctor' for once, then yes,
you'd be right. I am not a doctor.” I pointed at the Beauhaven building. “But neither is she!”

Mom shook her head. “I'm not hearing this. Tracey is wonderful—and you're seeing her.”

“I am not.” 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 weren't into it. They just fl
ew away.

“You're going in,” said Mom.

“Why can't
you just go in and leave me here? I'll be fine!”

“
Don't fight
,” N
omi told us, speaking blindly from the back seat. “I
t's bad for Mom if you fight. St
ress is bad and then she'll—”

“I won't.” Mom
reached back to rub Nomi's knee.

“Well, he should do what
you say.” Nomi spoke as if I
wasn't there. “He's supposed to know that stress is the problem.”

“
Y
ou're eight!
” I told her. “You're not even supposed to
know
the word ‘stress.' ”

“
Your face is
gross
,”
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.

“Looks worse than this morning.”

Mom smiled, vindicated. “Guess that means y
ou're coming in with us.”

(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 teenager—until 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.

“Welcome back,” she said to Mom, clearly happy to see her. “And who's this?”

“My son, Kaz. As you can see, he might be in need of some of your magic.”

Why
did she have to call it magic? All it did was highlight the obvious.

“What happened?” Tracey asked.

“He was punched,” Mom said.

Tracey put her
hands on her hips and regarded me with
an almost obscene degree of sympathy. “Are y
ou bullied at school?”

“It happened at a party,” I said.

“We have counselors here at the clinic.”

“No, thank you.”

“You realize it could be serious. If the bruising doesn't drain properly, there's always a danger of blood poisoning.”

Great. Scare tactics. I began to feel faint.

“Oh my goodness! You can hardly stand!”

Nomi shook her head. “It's what you said,” she whispered. “Don't talk about blood.”

Tracey nodded sagely and I sensed her writing
hemophobia
in a mental file.

“I'm fine,” I said. “Seriously.”

“Perhaps you could do something for him?” Mom said.

Tracey nodded. “Oh, certainly. We could fit you both into the large treatment room.”

She led us into
what looked like a regular doctor's
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. “This,” she said, holding it up
, “is going to do both of you a lot of good.”

I swear, I almost cracked up
. “I don't think this is a treatment I need
.”

“Lie down,” Mom told me. “You have to relax.”

“How can I? What's she gonna do with
that
?”

“Your mother's right,”
Tracey said. She rested the weird-looking thing on her desk and lit a match. “Lie back, relax. Y
ou'll be fine.”

She flipped open the fat end of the carrot-slash-dildo. It was hollow. She lit some shor
t sticks of incense and dropped them inside. There were holes all over
the surface, cut in the shapes of stars and crescents. Sweet-smelling smoke streamed out.

“What
is
that thing?” I asked her.

“A reiki wand,” she said, as if it was the most common thing in the world. “J
ust relax, Kaz. You shouldn't speak while I treat
you. It can interrupt the energy flow.”

She loomed over me,
eyes closed in concentration, swishing the suspicious instrument back and forth. In the end, that was all she
did: wave her magic wand, filling the room
with smoke. She didn't even touch us.

When the incense finally burnt out,
Tracey stopped. “We'll give it twenty
to thirty minutes to sink in,” she said.
Then she left.

“Now what?” I whispered.

Mom hushed me with a finge
r. “Do what she said. Relax. Let it sink in.”

I tried
to relax, I really did. Just as I was
nodding off, I sat up, wide awake. I was angry.

“This is stupid.”

“Kaz, lie do
wn. This is the most important part.”

“I can't do this.”

“
Please
. It can
't hurt.”

“Are you paying for this?”

“It's worth it. It
really is.”

Suddenly, I was choking on the incense. “I need some air.”

I jumped off the table and stomped out of the room, feeling like my suspicions about Beauhaven had been spectacularly confirmed. At
the same time, however, I was mad
at myself. A part of me had hoped that everything Mom had told me about this place was true. Maybe it would work.
Maybe it was a miracle cure.

Unfortunately, that hopeful part of me had faded away, a bit like scented smoke, wafting through the holes in a magic dildo.