new story
Skye and Stop’s Big Adventure.
April 8, 2004
At the hospital
I am in bed next to this sick looking guy, Tony. He is, of course, Italian, and he smells sort of like a mix between Windex and fresh leather. Whatever fresh leather is. He keeps turning and tossing and licking his sheets, which is weirding me out, big time. I am trying to stay still, writing in my journal and not disturbing him. Because he is gross. And hairy. He is here for salmonella poisoning. He ate cookie dough. Dumbass. But being in the next bed over from Mr. I-Can-See-Through-Your-Hospital-Gown is nothing compared to the shots I got today. EEK. I had to take so many pills and get so many shots. 3 Fibroscans, one Tempervin, Two Vacinsades, and six purple Emphytins. SIX. The Fibroscans were the size of a premature baby. And the Vacinsades tasted like mothballs, not that I know what they taste like. Mom won’t tell me why I am in this cold, badly lit room, suffering from lack of clean oxygen and suffocating because of Tony’s Windex/fresh leather perfume. Nurse alert! Candace, a.k.a. “Call me Candy” is here with my tray of food. Well, not quite food. It looks like meatballs. Without the pasta. I just asked her what it is, and she says it is meat meat. She has to be kidding. What in hell is meat meat? Double the meat? Maybe she has a stutter. I have to eat now. She’s looking at this notebook like I’m plotting to kill her. CANDACE KNIFE DIE. Haha she just looked at that and walked away really fast lets see if I get in trouble.
Still April 8, 2004
In Mr. Malcone’s room
Call me Candy got me in trouble. Not real trouble since this isn’t a mental hospital and I’m just being tested for Diabetes (mom finally cracked). I got sent to Mr. Malcone. I don’t even know who he is. No one will tell me anything here. But I am about to find out. His office looks like a poo. I’m not just being immature or anything but it really does look like a shit. A large and shiny shit. The walls are a rich fecal-matter brown. The sofa is made of some type of brown animal, possibly an endangered feces. Hahahaha I crack myself up. There are degrees (so stereotypical!) lining the walls, an oversized wood desk (diarrhea colored), and finally, an overwhelming stench of -you guessed it- ASS. Its just lovely sitting in here. I look and feel tired and shitty, therefore I camouflage well with the room. A lump of Skye. Mm mm good. Not to mention my brown hair.
April 9, 2004
Back at home
Weeeeeell, I am fine, healthy, normal, clean, well, strong, working, and okay. I have one more test to run but Mr. Malcone (who turned out just to be a doctor, not a disciplining psychologist who would analyze my death threats on annoying female nurses) says that I am most likely in good shape. Mom seemed very happy when he said this. I was just excited to be going home.
Later
Still at home
Maybe I should explain to you, oh plain black journal, why I was in the hospital. Mom says I should because when I look back at this I might get confused. Okay. Here it is. I am Skye Feane, I am fourteen, and I have a very boring life. I got pricked with a wire at school by Andrew Phillip Dartmouth (yes, THAT Dartmouth) and when the spot on my arm got infected, my mom took me to the doctor. My arm was fine, just a little puss-covered, healed in about a week, but then the doctor called and said I might have diabetes and needed to take some more tests. Hence the stuck-in-bed-next-to-Tony entry. But now, as you see, it was nothing. I don’t even know why I have a journal to chronicle this stupidity. Mom suggested it because she wants me to remember everything. “But Skye I never videotaped or took pictures or wrote about anything in my childhood and now I’ve forgotten! Just one journal, Skye, please?” She said that when I was five, and has continued to say it when any major (or minor) event nears. So here I am, on journal 46, (I’m not kidding) whining about all the previous journals. This is basically what I do in each journal. I’m glad mom doesn’t read them. Because she might get bored. They are all the same. This one is no different.
April 15, 2004
In the minivan
Mom got a call from Mr. Malcone. I have to do eight more tests. So far my count is up to 11, going in threes usually. Soon I’ll be up at thirty. I am so sick of them, and my arms have so many needle holes in them that I look like a heroin addict. I’m always tired and always irritable (like now!) and always…tired and irritable. I can’t think straight, thanks to the two Hansilins I took this morning. I’m in the car with mom, who is driving like a blind person. Blind people don’t drive. This is why I keep yelling out directions at my mom because she can’t do it on her own. Apparently I have a two percent chance of having Causarium Decidexossis, which is a newly discovered deadly bone eating disease. Oh fun. I’m not worried though, because 1) it has a stupid name, 2) I’m not afraid of death, 3) my life sort of sucks, 4) its TWO FUCKING PERCENT, and 5) I don’t think I have it because Mr. Malcone is a liar and I heard has told a lot of people they were sick just to make them feel better when they found out that they were okay and thank him for saving their lives and give him money. But Mom thinks I am going to die, so here I am, being rushed to Einstein Central Care Center (the whitest, cleanest hospital on earth) for no reason. Mom keeps mumbling about how much I mean to her and the fact that I might die and they haven’t found a medication for it and blah blah blah. I just turn up my headphones and listen to Ben Kweller the whole way there.
April 16th, 2004
In a hospital bed, room 402
It is very late. Or, very early. That always confuses me. Either way, it’s four in the morning. Early. I am trying to be veeeeery quiet, as there is a veeeeery attractive boy in the bed next to me. veeeeery attractive. He has faded bubblegum pink hair and bright blue eyes that match to make it so you see purple spots when you look away from him. He smells like talcum powder, apples, and soap. And he feels very warm. (I don’t know that.) Today was a very long day. Or more, yesterday. Eek. Mr. (really “Dr.” but that sounds too official and implies he worked hard for his position) Malcone says I most likely have the stupid disease. They rushed me in and did honestly NINETEEN tests and two medical procedures, all in the span of ten (painful) hours. Then they stuck me in a room with Tony (again), and I was about to complain, when they wheeled him right out and loaded, in his place, an angelic boy. I swear there is a halo on his little blonde head (he is blonde beneath the muted pink). I figure he is maybe 12, which makes me look sort of creepy. But he just looks so peaceful asleep, and I wish I could be that way, or at least my mom. There is something about him that makes me (oh gosh) crawl over to his bed, lay my head next to his face and listen to him breathe. I did this for about five minutes, then heard footsteps, and, heart racing, I scuttled back to my own cold bed. Then, out of curiosity, I look at his information, a white placard laying neatly on a plasticized bedside table. His name is Norman Andrews, he is seventeen, and he has the exact medical condition that I have. The only thing we have in common. How…normal of us. I decide to stop snooping and lay flat and quiet on my bed. Staring straight at a white stucco ceiling has its odd benefits. I see the vague and flustered shape of my grandmother Annabelle Feane, a women’s rights activist and granddaughter of a first lady. Which makes me great-great granddaughter. Frank Cene’s presidency lasted only eight hours, therefore earning it no place in the textbooks of America’s children, and, consequently, none in history. Grandmother Annabelle is making pancakes on the ceiling at her home in Louisiana. They are buttermilk banana pancakes with fresh strawberries on top, and I can smell them frying.
April 16th, 2004
Room 405
Now it is eight thirty. Norman Andrews and I got moved to intensive care unit, three rooms down. Dr. Gelman-Ross came in to tell us our test results. Behind him, my mom cried SO LOUDLY. I mean, I don’t care how bad the situation is, it’s still EXTREMELY embarrassing to hear your own, pathetic-looking mother screech her way down the hallway, soaking her damn Doncaster shirt and whining like the world is ending. Hand me the Ben and Jerry’s, its CRY time at Einstein Central Care Center. It’s not like dad left her, or I failed out of high school, or I’m pregnant. I’m just sick. GOD MOM, WILL YOU SHUT UP!?! Right before G-Ross (I call him that because he looks sort of like eminem, very skinny and white looking. And besides, everyone sounds more ridiculous with a rapper name) came in to tell us whatever it was he was going to tell us, mom SLAMMED herself into the door. I heard this big BANG noise and a bunch of commotion and a lot of female voices and one male voice. I looked over at Norman, who hadn’t said anything up to that point, and he started laughing really hard. Then he said “your mom or mine?” and I said, in shock “mine. At least I think so.” The door slammed open, and for a split second it was pure silence, no movement at all. Norman and I had goofy smiles plastered on our perspiring faces; Mom was half in and half out of the room, her flabby body rocketing towards us; G-Ross looked horrified, clutching his clipboard to his white lab coat; several frantic-looking nurses who had obviously been pulling on my mother to stop her from stopping them; and finally a very short blonde woman in a business suit, perfectly calm. I don’t know why it was silent and motionless, there was so much going on. But somehow it just was, and I could tell that Norman had seen it too.
April 16th, 2004
Room 405
So many entries today. That sounds stupid, considering my news. Dear fucking piece of shit diary, I have twelve weeks to live, approximately three months, and somewhere near eighty-four days. I prefer to think of it as close to 2,016 hours, or roughly 120,960 minutes. Maybe about 7,257,600 seconds! No, that scares me. Seconds scares me. I like hours, and I like weeks. All I have been doing is math, math math math in my little deteriorating head! Norman is painting, and it is bothering me because he keeps going SWISH SWISH with the brush. Mom is very sad. Poor mom. I know it hasn’t hit me yet, that I am going to die. Lovely.
April 17th, 2004
Room 405
Shit. I’m going to die.
April 18th, 2004
Room 405
Like, death. As in I WON’T BE ON EARTH ANYMORE, I WON’T THINK ANYTHING, I WON’T EXIST, SOMEONE WILL REPLACE ME, I WILL BE GONE.
April 19th, 2004
Room 405
Norman and I are getting along very well. We are both going to die very pesky deaths in three months. The doctors say we should continue to attend high school and try to live normal, lively lives. I think G-Ross is very nice. NOT. Why would I want to go back to school?
April 19th, 2004
Room 405
Norman and I talked for two hours and twenty one minutes. I know everything about him. No one calls him Norman, everyone calls him Stop. He won’t explain why. He likes history, and knows about Frank Cene, weirdly. He hates people named Clarissa because he dislikes double letters. As in gOOse, haRRied, and disaPPear. Stop loves making candles, painting, and screaming. Screaming especially. He tries to portray the way screaming feels in his paintings. He showed me some and they are awesome. Most of them are almost all white, with a tunnel of color in a corner, leading to an unknown, scream filled destination. One is chaos. It is utter pain and loudness and cars and disruption and spilled coffee and bad hairdos and the number eight. In the corner of this one is white, a white tunnel with yellow and pink and blue and green leading to a baby. The tunnel sucks you in like a vacuum. It’s amazing. Stop and I are very bored. We talk about what we want to do before we die.
SKYE
Die hair
Get tattoos all over arms
Vandalize something
Tell people how feel about them
Go to a random place
Have sex
Make out with a really hot guy
Go out with a celebrity
Have sex
STOP
Paint all over everything
Get a cat
Get another cat
Run around through the streets of LA naked
Have sex.
Eat forty oranges in a row
Tell the boy live next door to that his nakedness is always visible in windows
Tell mom that school is hard
Cry a lot
Hold someone for a very long time
Have sex.
To be continued