The road was a little bumpy over the bridge, but I’ve discovered I can surf the pain, feel it roll and crest and crash. If you think about something, anything, else, it’s not so bad.
The fact that I can think at all, when my leg has recently been—well, chopped off and glued back on is, I believe, the medical term—is kind of a miracle, and I’m grateful for the random thoughts that flood my brain.
Things I Think About, Exhibit A:
How I got a B+ on my oral report in bio, which sucks because it’s going to bring my grade down, and possibly my GPA, which means I won’t get into a decent college, which means I’ll never escape the clutches of my crazy-ass mother, and I know this really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, especially now, but that’s not the point, is it?
I’m pretty sure Ms. Montoya dropped my grade because of my intro: “Boys have nipples.” Perhaps this was news to her.
It was a risky ploy, sure, but when it’s second period and you’re the first speaker and the Red Bull has only ignited a handful of brain cells, you do what you have to do.
There were twenty kids in the room. When I moved to the front to tie my iPad to the projector, I’d say I had a total of eight eyeballs out of a possible forty watching me.
I delivered my opening line, and thirty-nine eyeballs were trained on me. Jennifer has one lazy eye, so I was never going to get all forty.
“Why?” I asked. I cued the first slide, which was of a boy’s chest. It was a fine chest, a very fine chest, and I knew it would hold the attention of the nine straight girls and one gay boy.
It was a cheap ploy, but sex sells. It always has, it always will, and in the context of a boring report day in my boring eleventh-grade biology class at boring Bay Area School of Arts and Sciences, a smooth, hard chest over rippled abs was just the ticket.
The way I had the presentation laid out, we’d see that slide two more times. We’d also see DNA molecules, a little video snippet of dinosaurs demonstrating the concept of survival of the fittest—because seriously, there’s no bad time to show bored kids some dinosaur-on-dinosaur violence—and the inevitable graphs, pie charts, and equations that would earn me a decent grade. And chest to keep my audience.
I thought I had the thing aced.
Wrong.
So, okay, I phoned it in a little. But still. A B+ after those abs?
Things I Think About, Exhibit B:
How I was supposed to bail out Aislin’s dirtbag boyfriend after school, which is why I was checking her latest frantic text when that out-of-place apple caught my eye, which is why I wasn’t looking where I was going, which is why I am now in an ambulance with an MD from Aveda and some guy with a perpetually smug look on his face.
Things I Think About, Exhibit C:
How I missed prom yet again. (I had a previous engagement, organizing my sock drawer while watching old Jon Stewarts on my laptop.) Aislin claims I didn’t miss anything: It was a total waste of a good buzz. Even with the purse searches and rent-a-cops, she managed to sneak in three separate flasks of lemon vodka.
I am a little worried about Aislin.
Things I Think About, Exhibit D:
How I can’t figure out the deal with this Solo guy. Is my mother using him as her stand-in? Is that his job?
Things I Think About, Exhibit E:
How Solo’s eyes have this distant, don’t mess with me edge to them. They’d be hard to sketch, but then, I can never get faces right.
Last week during Life Drawing, Ms. Franklin asked me if I’d ever considered majoring in art instead of biology.
I asked her for a new eraser.
Things I Think About, Exhibit F:
How Solo smells like the ocean when he leans close and smooths my hair.
Things I Think About, Exhibit G:
How Solo, once he’s done gently smoothing my hair, starts pounding out an incredibly inept drum solo on my oxygen tank.
Things I Think About, Exhibit H:
How I might never run again.
– 5 –
SOLO
We pull into Spiker Biopharm. It’s located on the back side of the Tiburon peninsula across the Golden Gate and down some windy roads. As you drive up it’s not mind-boggling or anything, because the road at that point is maybe two hundred feet up above the ocean, and the Spiker complex is more vertical than horizontal. It spreads down that steep slope from the road above to the water below. And it is big. From the water, it looks like the City of Oz had a giant baby with one of those big-city Apple stores.
The place is built around three massive spikes—as in Spiker, heh—with each of the spikes being an elevator array. Connecting them is a sort of ziggurat construction with terraces, open spaces, entire floors given over to gardens, sandy volleyball courts, a pool.
It is, without question, a great place to work. If you can get past some of the people.
And number one among the people you have to get past is the boss woman herself, Terra Spiker. Known throughout the campus as Terror Spiker.
That, to me, is a major clue someone should have gotten: If you’re going to name your daughter Terra, and if she’s going to grow up to be a psycho-bitch, people are going to start calling her “Terror.”
The way the complex is laid out, the floors are bigger below and smaller above. The bottom floor, Level One, is the largest space, the Orphan Disease Research Division. They focus on the many less-than-popular diseases that no one is ever going to get rich curing.
Whatever else you can say about Terra, she’s done some very major work down there on Level One. As in cures. As in people who were being eaten alive by some parasite or some germ are walking around alive today because of Level One. Because Terra Spiker said, “Screw profits, we’re throwing a billion dollars into beating this disease.”
The reason no one gets serious about investigating Spiker Biopharm? Because of what happens down there on Level One, that’s why. Because the psycho-bitch saves a bunch of lives.
On the other hand, the reason so many people think about investigating Spiker? Because of what happens on Levels Seven and Eight.
Me, I live on Level Four. My parents, Isabel and Jeffrey Plissken, were Terra’s business partners way back in the day, when all they had was a broken-down IBM, some petri dishes, and a dream.
I don’t remember them. It’s like that.
I could say Terra raised me, but that would be wrong. She’s no mother to me. She gives me a place to live, an education, a job at the lab.
She tolerates me.
She wouldn’t even do that if she knew.
– 6 –
A steel door opens and we enter an overlit garage. Two men and a woman, clad in black lab coats like Dr. Anderson’s, are waiting for me. I have an entourage.
“She’s stable,” Dr. Anderson remarks, “doing well,” and the other three lab coats seem surprised. They mutter medically in ways I can’t decipher.
I am whisked into a long white-tiled tunnel. Solo keeps pace beside me.
We arrive at a large glass elevator. Each member of the group stands before a wall-mounted lens.
“Optical scanner,” Solo explains as a green light clears him.
I’ve only been to my mother’s office a couple times. (She says mixing home and work is like mixing a single malt with Sprite.) The complex is visually stunning, or at least that’s what Architectural Digest said: “Frank Gehry on steroids.” When you look at satellite photos, you see more security than the Pentagon. Even the security gates have security gates.