Sunny Sweet Is So Not Sorry (13 page)

The small crowd of people was slowly making its way onto the bus. I looked down at Sunny and then back at the hospital. I couldn't stop myself from hopping up and down and doing a couple of silly twirls with my arms flapping about. We had to get on that bus but I didn't know how, and it was like my arms and legs were itching to grab Sunny and leap in.

“Come on,” said a voice from behind me.

I turned. It was Michael Capezzi!

He moved toward the back of the bus where the doors were opened to let people off and motioned for me and Sunny to follow. As the last person stepped off the bus, he climbed on. I grabbed Sunny's elbow and we followed.

He snaked around the pole and plopped into a seat. I pulled Sunny down into the two seats opposite him. My eyes darted around at the people sitting near us. Had any of them noticed? Would they say something? I was panting and sweating like I'd just run ten miles.

“So, you guys are breaking out of the hospital too, huh?” Michael didn't seem to be scared or nervous about sneaking onto the bus.

“
Technically
it's not breaking out because we weren't locked in,” Sunny said.

“Thanks for … helping us,” I said. “How did you know that we needed to get on the bus?”

“You looked like you needed to get on.” He laughed. “Nice heads, by the way,” he added, smiling.

I searched for something cool to say back but couldn't think of anything except, “Same to you.”

He smiled again. “You're funny.”

I liked his smile. His mouth was large and seemed to sit on his face in a wide, twitchy kind of way, like he was holding that smile back from breaking out all over his face. His eyes were a light brown with really black lashes. His stare made me feel a weird pressure in my chest, making it hard to take anything but tiny breaths that I knew wouldn't keep me alive for long. But even the thought of not breathing didn't stop me from being really happy that Michael had appeared out of nowhere and saved us.

“So where are you guys going?” he asked.

“We're going home,” Sunny said. I was glad she answered because I definitely couldn't breathe and talk at the same time. “What's wrong with your head?” she asked.

“Sunny,” I hissed.

“No, that's okay.” He shrugged. “I have a tumor. Oh wait,” he added, “
technically
I had a tumor. It's gone now.”

He and I laughed. Sunny didn't. She didn't get it. She just started in on tumors. She actually loved tumors. “Brain Tumor Week” on the Discovery Fit & Health channel was like Sunny's “Shark Week.” She'd sit in front of the television for hours while some guy with the most boring voice ever droned on and on in Latin or something.

Michael listened to Sunny blab about tumors, but he kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I sat with the rumble of the motor of the bus underneath me and snuck looks back at him. I couldn't tell if it was the heat of the motor or those eyes looking over at me, but little drops of sweat were trickling down the back of my hospital shirt. How could someone noticing you make you hot and itchy
and
happy? But it did.

“Why did you break out of the hospital?” I asked, without having made any plans at all on opening my
mouth. I had interrupted Sunny, but she didn't notice. She was too busy googling stuff about brain tumors on her phone.

He looked up and down at my bald head and hospital clothes and asked, “Why did you break out of the hospital?”

We both laughed, and he used the moment to move over to the seats in front of ours, which made the saliva in my mouth instantly dry up.

“I'm Michael,” he said, putting out his hand over the top of the seat back. His eyes were so close that I almost couldn't see them.

“I'm Masha,” I said, shaking his hand awkwardly. “And this is my little sister, Sunny.”

“Hi, Masha. Hi, Sunny.”

He got my name right. This was the second time today that someone got my name right.

Sunny looked up from her phone. “You know what Caroline Alvinia told me?”

Michael and I looked at each other and then back at Sunny, and shrugged.

“She said that every time a boy talks to your older sister, you are supposed to get down on the ground and bite his ankles.”

“Why?” he and I said together.

“I don't know, I'm just repeating what she told me,” said Sunny. “I thought maybe you guys would know.”

“Washington Street and Elm Avenue,” said the computer-generated woman's voice that called out all the stops.

“We gotta go,” I said, jumping up and starting for the door.

“Bye, Masha,” he said. “Hey—and Sunny, you can bite my ankles next time, okay?”

“Okay,” Sunny said.

Next time
. I don't know why it felt as if someone were tickling the inside of my chest with a feather when he said that, but it did.

“Bye,” I whispered, looking back at him but only seeing him as a blob in the seat because of the whole feather thing.

I couldn't get the goofy smile off my face for the
entire eight-block walk home. It was still there when I caught sight of my mother pulling into our driveway. I guess Mom had decided to come home early, even though I had told her not to.

Sunny and I crossed the street, stepping over the garbage by the curb. I spotted my cell phone lying in the gutter and picked it up. My mom climbed out of her car.

When her eyes caught sight of Sunny and me, her jaw dropped. That's a saying—your jaw dropping—but it's a saying because it really happens; your jaw really can drop.

Sunny ran to her and hugged her around her waist.

I couldn't hold back, so I ran over too, hugging her right over the top of Sunny. My mom smelled like clean
carpets mixed with a hint of dry-erase marker. It smelled so good. “We're fine, Mom. We really are.”

I stood back from her, and Sunny joined me, holding on to my hand. I looked right into my mother's eyes and smiled. “We're fine.”

“Okay, Masha,” she said. “Okay.” And her tone made me feel like she totally believed me and that everything was okay.

My cell phone rang.

My mom jumped and then looked down at me in surprise. My phone was ringing and it obviously wasn't Sunny calling.

“Oh,” I said. “Guess what happened today?”

My mother stared at me.

“I made a friend,” I said. “Her name is Alice.”

“Let me walk you into school,” my mom said.

“No, Mom, please. I can do it,” I repeated for the tenth time. This was going to be hard enough without my mother watching.

“Okay.” She sighed.

My mom felt so guilty over my head being shaved that she agreed to let me keep the cast. I had explained that it would be easier for me to go back to school bald if I could do it with my orange cast on. She even called the hospital, getting me completely off the hook. And then she called school and told them
that I'd had a little “bike accident.” All this had made me pretty happy as I got into bed last night, but it wasn't helping me this morning. The three of us sat in the parking lot watching streams of buses and cars and people and kids all heading toward the school … all heading toward
my bald head
. I knew I couldn't hide forever, but I also couldn't bring myself to give up trying just yet.

We waited until almost everyone was in the building, and then Sunny and I finally got out of the car. I gave my mom a big smile to assure her I was okay. Her face glowed with worry through the windshield.

“You know that they don't have to shave your head to test you for a concussion,” Sunny said.

“Yes, Sunny, I know. You already said that three times at breakfast. Mom just told the school that because it was easier than explaining your flowers.”

“But what about
my
bald head?”

“That's why she also told them that you wanted to be just like your big sister and get a test on your head too, remember?”

“But that makes it sound like I think that you need
to have your head shaved for a test that you
don't
need your head shaved for,” she whined.

“What?” I asked.

Sunny went on about cat or dog scans or something, but I had stopped listening. My feet slowed with each step, scraping lightly against the sidewalk, until they finally stopped altogether.

Sunny stopped too. “
Zhu ni hao yun
,” she said. “It means ‘good luck' in Chinese.”

“I know what it means,” I snapped. But I didn't.

“Hey, Masha,” she said, tugging at my arm. “I think it's cool that you're learning Mandarin Chinese. Listen, maybe I should learn Cantonese. Cantonese is the language spoken in southern China and Hong Kong. That way, when we go to China one day, you can speak Mandarin and I can speak Cantonese, and we'll be able to talk to everyone!”

I wanted to be mad at her. But when I looked down at her little bald head, I just couldn't. “There are more than 1.3 billion people living in China,” I said, quoting from page three of my
Longman Active Study English-Chinese Dictionary
. “That's a whole lot of talking!”

Sunny giggled. I took her hand, and together we started toward the front doors of school. There were more than 1.3 billion things I'd rather be doing right now other than walking into my school bald, but as far as I could see, there wasn't one single way out of it.

The warm, stuffy air inside the building hit me in the face. I said a quick good-bye to my little sister and then, with a hurricane swirling in my stomach, I tiptoed through the deserted hallways until I reached my homeroom.

The door was open. I hovered across the hall, clutching my absentee note from my mother. A huge urge to run swept over
me, and my legs wobbled with the effort not to do it. I reminded myself how soon I'd be with Alice, telling her all about this horrible moment. And then, with nothing left to stop me, I sucked in my breath as hard as I could and walked through the door.

I can't remember who saw me first. I just remember the moment when they
all
saw me. There was silence. And then there were wide-open eyes. And then gasps. And finally, after about five
very long seconds
, there came a burst of laughter. Mostly everything was a blur, although not the sight of Alex and Nicole looking at each other and laughing. That was pretty clear. My homeroom teacher, Mr. Valentino, put a fast end to it.

“That's it, everyone. Settle down.”

He stopped writing his notes on the whiteboard and hurried over to me. “How're you doing? I heard about your accident.” I handed him my note. He took it, along with my good arm, and helped me toward my seat, even though I really didn't need any help. All heads swerved to watch us make our way across the silent classroom.

“As you can see, Masha had a little accident,” he announced, his voice echoing across the quiet room. Then he turned directly to me. “We're all so thankful you're okay.” He pulled out my chair, and I sat down. Then he made his way back to the front of the classroom, but no one's eyes followed him. They all stayed on me.