The First Time (8 page)

“Why don’t we read a few lines from the text,” Mr. Loewi suggested. “Page thirty-four. Romeo declaring his love for Juliet. Kim,” he said to Kim’s breasts, “why don’t you be Juliet.”

Teddy was waiting for her after class, slouching beside her locker when she went to retrieve her lunch. “I thought we could eat outside,” he suggested, unfolding his lanky frame and stretching to his full height, an
inch or two above six feet. He took Kim’s hand, leading her down the locker-lined hallway, pretending to ignore the looks and whispers of the other kids. He was used to the attention. It came with being athletic, rich, and “so gorgeous you could die,” according to the caption under his picture in the latest school yearbook. “It’s really nice out,” he was saying.

“Then leave it out,” Caroline Smith volunteered from somewhere beside them. Annie Turofsky and Jodi Bates laughed uproariously by Caroline’s side.

The Three Muskatits, Kim sneered. They dressed identically, in tight jeans and tighter scoop-necked sweaters, wore their long brown hair straight and parted to one side, and their noses had all been bobbed by the same plastic surgeon, although Caroline insisted her nose job was because of a deviated septum.

“You girls are a class act,” Teddy said.

“Try us—” Annie Turofsky began.

“You’ll like us,” Jodi finished.

“Not likely,” Teddy said under his breath, picking up the pace, ushering Kim toward the side door.

“Party on Saturday night,” Caroline called after them. “Sabrina Hollander’s house. Her parents are away for the weekend. Bring your own whatever.”

“A party full of stoned fifteen-year-old girls,” Teddy said, his voice dripping sarcasm, as he pushed open the heavy door to the outside world. “Can’t wait.”

“I’m a fifteen-year-old girl,” Kim reminded him, as a cold gust of wind slapped her in the face.

“You’re not like the others,” Teddy said.

“I’m not?”

“You’re more mature.”

A C cup, Kim thought, but didn’t say. She didn’t want to scare Teddy away by being too clever, too knowing, too
mature
.

“How about over there?” Teddy pointed toward the students’ parking lot.

“What’s over there?” Kim asked.

“My car.”

“Oh.” She dropped her lunchbag to the ground, listened as the can of Coke she’d packed that morning began to fizz, and wondered if it was about to explode. “I thought you wanted to eat outside.”

“It’s colder than I realized.” He scooped up her lunchbag from the pavement without any obvious concern and took hold of her elbow, leading her toward the dark green, late-model Chevrolet at the farthest corner of the lot.

Had he parked it there deliberately? Kim wondered, feeling her heartbeat quicken and her breathing become short, almost painful.

Teddy pointed a remote control unit toward the car, and it squealed like a frightened pig, signaling that the doors were now open. “Let’s get in the back,” he said casually. “There’s more room there.”

Kim crawled into the backseat of the car and immediately tore into her lunch bag for her sandwich. “Tuna,” she said awkwardly, holding it out for his inspection. “I made it myself.” She started unwrapping it, stopped when she felt his breath against her cheek. She turned toward him, their noses colliding gently. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were so close—” she began, but his lips stopped her. She heard a low moan, pulled back sharply when she realized it came from her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, facing directly ahead, as if she were at a drive-in movie, talking a mile a minute, the way she always did when she was nervous, when she wanted to regain control. It wasn’t that she didn’t
want
to kiss him. It was that she wanted to kiss him so badly, she could barely see straight. “I just think maybe we should eat. I’m in classes all afternoon, and then I promised my grandmother, my mother’s mother, Grandma Viv,” she explained, knowing that Teddy, whose hand was massaging the back of her neck, couldn’t have cared less about her Grandma Viv, “I told her that I’d come by after school. She had to have one of her dogs put to sleep yesterday. It was really sick and everything, and she said it was looking at her with those eyes, you know, those eyes that said it was time, but still, she’s really upset about it, so I said I’d drop by She’ll be okay in a few days, once one of her other dogs has its litter. Then she’ll have something to take her mind off Duke. That was the dog’s name. It was part collie, part cocker spaniel. Really smart. My grandmother says that mutts are much smarter than purebreds. Do you have a dog?”

“A yellow Lab,” Teddy said, a sly smile spreading from his lips to his eyes as he lifted the tunafish sandwich from Kim’s hand and returned it to its bag. “Purebred.”

Kim rolled her eyes, then closed them. “I’m sure it’s a really smart dog.”

“He’s as dumb as dirt.” Teddy ran his fingers across the top of Kim’s lips. “Your grandmother was right.”

“I don’t have a dog,” Kim said, eyes opening as the tips of Teddy’s fingers disappeared inside her mouth,
making speaking all but impossible. “My mother hates dogs,” she persisted stubbornly, talking around them. “She says she’s allergic, but I don’t think she is. I just don’t think she likes them.”

“What about you?” Teddy was asking, his voice husky, as he leaned forward to kiss the side of Kim’s mouth. “What do you like?”

“What do I like?”

“Do you like this?” He began kissing the side of her neck.

Oh yes, Kim answered silently, holding her breath, aware of the growing tingle beneath her flesh.

“What about this?” His lips moved toward her eyes, brushing against the lashes of her closed lids. “Or this?” He covered her mouth with his own. She felt his tongue gently prying her lips apart, as one hand caressed the nape of her neck and the other hand began its slow slide across the front of her sweater. Could anything feel more delicious? she wondered, her entire body vibrating. Except that the vibrations weren’t internal; they were coming from somewhere outside her body.

“Oh, my God,” she said, her hand slapping the pocket of her jeans. “It’s my beeper.”

“Ignore it,” Teddy said, trying to coax her back into his arms.

“I can’t. I’m one of those compulsive personalities. I have to know who it is.” Kim extricated her beeper, pressed the button to see who was paging her, and watched the unfamiliar number flash across its face, followed by the numbers 911, indicating an emergency. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I have to get to a phone.”

O
h, my God, get me out of here. Get me out of here.”

“Try to stay calm, Mattie. It’s important for you to keep very still.”

“Get me out of here. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”

“You’re breathing fine, Mattie. Just stay calm. I’m taking you out now.”

Mattie felt the narrow table on which she was lying start to move, propelling her, feet first, out of the monstrous MRI machine. She tried to suck in the surrounding air, but it was as if someone were standing on her chest in stiletto heels. The heels dug into her thin blue hospital gown, piercing her flesh, puncturing her lungs, making even shallow breathing painful, almost impossible.

“You can open your eyes now, Mattie.”

Mattie opened her eyes, felt them instantly fill with tears. “I’m sorry,” she told the female medical technician, who was small, dark, and alarmingly young. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“It’s pretty scary,” the technician agreed, gently patting Mattie’s bruised forearm. “But the doctor was pretty anxious for the results.”

“Has someone called my husband?”

“I believe he’s been notified, yes.”

“What about Lisa Katzman?” Mattie propped herself up on her elbows, inadvertently dislodging the pillows that had been placed on either side of her head. Pain, like thousands of tiny daggers, shot through her joints. There wasn’t a part of her that didn’t ache. Damn airbag almost killed me, Mattie thought, manipulating her sore jaw.

“Dr. Katzman will be waiting for you when we’re finished in here.” The technician, whose name tag identified her as Noreen Aliwallia, managed a small smile as she repositioned the pillows.

“How long will that be?”

“About forty-five minutes.”

“Forty-five minutes?!”

“I know it sounds like a long time—”

“It
is
a long time. You know what it feels like inside that thing? It feels like being buried alive.” Why am I giving her a hard time? Mattie wondered, longing for the sound of her friend Lisa’s reassuring voice, the voice of calm and reason that had soothed her since childhood.

“You were in a car accident,” Noreen Aliwallia reminded Mattie patiently. “You lost consciousness.
You suffered a serious concussion. The MRI is to make sure there aren’t any hidden hematomas.”

Mattie nodded, trying to recall exactly what the initials MRI stood for. Something about magnetic imaging, whatever that meant. A fancy name for X rays. The neurologist had already explained it to her when she’d regained consciousness in the emergency room, but she was only barely paying attention, her mind trying to come to grips with exactly what had happened. Her head was pounding, her mouth tasted of dried blood, and she was having difficulty remembering the precise order of things. Everything hurt, although they told her that, miraculously, no bones were broken. Then suddenly she was being wheeled into the basement of whatever hospital she was in—they’d told her which one it was, but she couldn’t remember—and this young woman, this x-ray technician with the mellifluous name, Noreen Aliwallia, who looked like she was fresh out of high school, asked her to lie down on this really narrow table and put her head inside a coffinlike box.

The MRI machine resembled a large steel tunnel. It took up most of the small, windowless room, whose dingy white walls were void of adornment. At the entrance to the tunnel was a rectangular box with a circular hole. Mattie had been given a set of ear plugs—“It gets a little noisy in there,” she was told—and pillows were placed on both sides of her head to keep it still. A buzzer was placed in her hand, to use if she felt she was about to sneeze or cough or do anything that might disturb the operation of the machine. If she moved at any time during the procedure, Noreen
explained, the X ray would be ruined, and they’d have to start over from the beginning. Close your eyes, Noreen had advised. Think pleasant thoughts.

The panic started almost as soon as Mattie’s head was fitted inside the box, and the top of the box was extended past her face to her chest, so that even with her eyes closed, it felt as if she were lying in her grave, as if she were suffocating. Then the table on which she was lying began its slow slide into the long narrow tunnel, and she felt like one of those Russian dolls, a doll within a doll within a doll, and she knew she had to get out of this damn machine that was worse than the accident, worse than the air bag, worse than anything she’d experienced in her entire life. She had to get out or she would die, and so she started screaming for the technician to help her, forgetting about the buzzer, forgetting about everything but her panic, until Noreen told her she could open her eyes, and she started to cry, because she hurt all over, and she was acting like a baby, and she’d never felt so alone in her entire life.

And now Noreen Aliwallia was asking her to push all that fear and loneliness aside and do it again, and Mattie was thinking, no, she’d rather risk internal bleeding in her brain and whatever else might be lurking there than go through that again. She’d always harbored a secret fear of suffocating, of being buried alive. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it.

“You’ll bring me out if I start to panic?” she heard herself ask. What was the matter with her? Was she crazy?

“Just press the buzzer. I’ll bring you right out.” Noreen’s surprisingly strong arms lowered Mattie’s
shoulders back to the table. “Just try to relax. You might even fall asleep.”

Oh God, oh God, oh God, Mattie thought, eyes tightly closed, left hand gripping the buzzer against the pounding of her heart, as once again her head was placed inside the box, the top of which slid down over her face to her chest, plunging her into total darkness and abject despair. I can’t breathe, Mattie thought. I’m suffocating.

“So, how long have you known Dr. Katzman?” Noreen asked, obviously straining to distract Mattie.

“Since forever,” Mattie replied through tightly clenched teeth, picturing Dr. Lisa Katzman as a freckle-faced child. “She’s been my best friend since we were three years old.”

“That’s amazing,” Noreen said, her words trailing off as she abandoned Mattie’s side. “I’m going to start the machine now, Mattie. How are you doing?”

Not great, Mattie thought, as the table beneath her began to move, carrying her into the body of the machine. Stay calm. Stay calm. It’ll all be over soon. Forty-five minutes. That’s not so long. It’s very long. It’s almost an hour, for God’s sake. I can’t do this. I have to get out. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating.

“The first series of X rays are going to start now,” Noreen said. “It’s going to sound a bit like horses’ hooves, and it’ll last about five minutes.”

“And then what?” Keep breathing, Mattie told herself. Stay calm. Think pleasant thoughts.

“And then there’ll be a break of a few minutes, and then some more X rays. Five in all. Are you ready?”

No, I’m not ready, Mattie screamed silently over the sound of horses approaching from the distance. This is
interesting, Mattie found herself thinking, her panic temporarily diverted by the loud clip-clop, clip-clop, as behind tightly closed eyes, a team of black-and-white stallions raced toward her. Black and white, she mused. Things are rarely black or white, only varying shades of gray. Where had she heard that?

The accident, she thought, suddenly back in her car, watching helplessly as it swerved into oncoming traffic. Black and white colliding. Varying shades of gray. What had she been thinking?

“You okay, Mattie?”

Mattie grunted, trying to pretend the top of the box wasn’t inches from her nose. I have lots of space, she told herself. I’m lying on an empty, white, sandy beach in the Bahamas, and my eyes are closed, and the ocean is lapping at my toes. And a hundred horses are galloping toward me, she thought, about to bury me alive beneath the sand, as the noise of the second set of X rays began. Stay calm. Stay calm. The buzzer is in your hand. You can press it at any time. Think positive thoughts. Think calm. You’re on a beach in the Bahamas. No, it’s not working. You’re not on a beach in the Bahamas. You’re on a table in a hospital in the middle of Chicago. They’re taking pictures of the inside of your head. What will they say when they discover it’s empty?