Bad Taste in Boys (7 page)

“If you’re coming to school,” Jonah said, “you better get up.”

“What happened?” I croaked.

I wrestled the cap off my meds with one hand and shielded my eyes ineffectually with the other. Sharp spears of light pierced my eyeballs.

“Sorry, Kate.” He hung his head. “I thought you were one of my friends.”

“Huh?”

“I thought you were Drew. I knew he was going to try to take me down soon. I hit you when you came downstairs, and you had a seizure. Dad was really upset.”

Ahh. Jonah had been playing Assassins again. It was his favorite game ever; the point was to “kill” the other players with pretend weapons and fake poison made out of green food coloring. The last one standing won the game.

This explained the bonk, the lightning, and the look of abject shame on his face.

“What did you hit me with?”

“My sword.” He pulled out a long piece of plastic pipe wrapped in powder-blue foam and secured with what looked like a roll and a half of duct tape. I’d never seen anything more ridiculous. He got that pompous, know-it-all tone he always used when talking about anything gaming related. “I’m learning swordplay, okay?”

“Jonah, that’s nothing like a real sword. The weight is all wrong.”

“You’re an expert, huh?”

“It’s just common sense, dork.” I rubbed my head irritably.

“Well, it was enough to take you down.”

I couldn’t come up with a good response, so I didn’t bother saying anything. I struggled to get up and padded over to my dresser. It only took me a minute to pop my migraine med, prepare a syringe, and inject the seizure drug. Had I missed my injection yesterday? I didn’t think a bonk on the head would be enough to cause a seizure on its own.

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself until I remembered what happened to Mike. Things could be a lot worse.

“How do you feel?” I demanded. “You okay?”

“Uh … Kate? Shouldn’t I be asking you that, since you’re the one who had a seizure? Dad had to carry you upstairs. He took away your car keys and your license, so don’t even bother looking.”

I shrugged. “I don’t want to drive right now anyway. My car smells like puke.”

“I’m just saying he’ll want to have the seizure safety talk.”

Jonah knew how much I’d wanted my license, but they won’t let epileptics on the road until you can prove you’re not going to lose consciousness on a regular basis. So I hadn’t gotten my license until well after my seventeenth birthday, and now it looked like I was going to lose it after only two months.

Epilepsy sucks.

“Thanks for the warning,” I said. “Seriously, what about you? Any vomiting? Stomach cramps? Dizziness?”

“Are you mental?”

“Let me check you out. Or I’m telling Dad you whacked me over the head with a pseudosword. I bet you edited that part out, didn’t you?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

He submitted to a rapid-fire physical, although he made it clear how unhappy he was about it, whining and moaning like a
little girl the entire time. I ran through every exam I could think of, but I didn’t find a thing wrong with him.

After Jonah went to shower, I checked myself over. Pulse, blood pressure, respiration, temperature: a full and accurate list. Everything was fine, except for my headache.

I needed to see if Mike’s symptoms were progressing. I needed to be at school in case he tried to bite somebody else. And I’d promised Kiki I’d help her out later at the pancake supper she’d helped organize for homecoming. I couldn’t stay home. So I dragged myself out of bed and went downstairs. Dad was sitting in the breakfast nook digging into a bowl of high-fiber cereal. He put down his magazine and waved me over.

“Hey,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare. What happened?”

I decided not to tell him I might be infected with a latent virus of unknown origins and effects. “I ran all over the place, and I think it was too much for my system to handle.”

Dad stirred a huge spoonful of sugar into his cereal. “And what about the medical emergency Jonah was telling me about? Something about a guy getting sick at a party?”

I shrugged. “Someone collapsed at this party at Kiki’s house. I took care of him until the EMTs came.”

“Is he okay?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Mike was probably infected with the mystery disease, which was bad. And diseased or not, he
was
the king of the Neanderthals.

“He’s as good as can be expected,” I finally said.

“Good.” My dad smiled at me. “He’s lucky you were there.” Then he picked up his magazine again. “I took your car keys, by the way. And your license.”

“I figured.” I couldn’t keep the sigh out of my voice.

“I’m sorry, Kate, but it’s for your own safety. You’ve got an appointment with Dr. Kallas next week. We may need to adjust the meds again. And if you want the surgery … it’s your choice.”

There was a surgery that almost guaranteed to get rid of seizures like mine, but they had to open up your head and torch some neurons. Being seizure-free would have almost been worth having some surgeon grope my cerebrum. The operative word being
almost.

“Yeah, I know.” I rested my head in my hands and tried ineffectively not to look glum.

We sat for a few minutes in silence. I debated getting a slice of raisin bread, but it looked like it was all gone except for the heel. Things just weren’t going my way. So I moped until Dad spoke up from behind
Physics Quarterly
. “Kate, I’m really proud of you. That guy could have died.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I stood up, kissed his forehead, and poured myself a cup of coffee. I didn’t bother to tell him that I thought the guy actually had.

“I can’t do this, Kate,” Kiki said later that morning in bio.

I was still dragging despite three cups of coffee, but Kiki looked even worse. Her face was a nasty shade of green that clashed with
her sweater. That worried me; I hoped she didn’t have the mystery disease. I twisted in my seat to look at Mike for comparative purposes. He hadn’t stopped kicking the back of my desk since he’d sat down behind me, but I’d successfully ignored him so far.

I expected one of his usual pervy comments, but he just stared until I turned away. On the good side, I was pretty sure Kiki didn’t have whatever he had. His skin wasn’t green; it was gray. On the bad side, I expected him to start gnawing on my braid any second now. He had that freaky intense stare thing going again. And if he didn’t stop kicking my chair, I wasn’t responsible for what happened.

“It’s just a pig, Kiki.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. It did nothing to alleviate the throbbing of my temples, but it was a nice thought anyway. “I’ll do the actual cutting. Just hand me the instruments.”

“You don’t understand. I just can’t cut up a pig!”

“Look. I’m not asking you to cut him up. I’m asking you to hand me the instruments while I cut him up. Our grades depend on this.”

“The
smell
—” she started to wail, but Mrs. Mihalovic clapped for attention and cut her off.

“Okay, class. We’ll be starting on the head today. Can anyone describe to me the structures you’ll encounter as you penetrate the skullcap? Anyone?” She looked around, but no one was desperate enough for brownie points to volunteer. “Mr. Luzier?”

Mike stared at her vacantly. I wondered if he had bitten anyone
else yet. No one in class was sporting an attractive bite mark, so I assumed not.

“Any day now, Mr. Luzier,” Mrs. Mihalovic said.

“Braaaaains,” Mike said. The word came out long and exaggerated, and some people laughed. Not me, of course.

She pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Very funny, Mr. Luzier. Miss Carlyle? Would you please improve upon Mr. Luzier’s answer?”

Kiki made a sound like “Urk!” and ran from the lab with both hands clasped over her mouth. Mrs. Mihalovic and I exchanged long-suffering looks; I shrugged helplessly.

“I give up,” she grumbled. “Just get started.”

I thought about checking on Kiki, but I had no desire to hold her hair while she puked. So I went to my lab bench, strapped on my protective gear, and got to work. The whole dissection process was fascinating, and I was so into it that Kiki surprised me when she sat back down.

She leaned in confidentially. Her breath smelled like mint. “So, about last night? Thanks again for helping with … you know. Things could have gotten really bad if you hadn’t been there.”

I looked across the lab at Aaron and Mike’s table. Aaron hunched over their pig while Mike stared at Mindi Skibinski’s butt like he wanted to take a big bite out of it. I’d have been freaked out except it was what he usually did during lab.

“No problem.” I figured it was safe to continue dissecting; Kiki wasn’t really paying attention anyway. I opened the tissue
surrounding the cranium with a swift stroke of my scalpel. “Pins, please.”

She handed them over, taking great pains not to look. “So you remember those EMTs from the party? One of them asked me out.”

“Wow. And your parents are okay with you going out with an older guy?”

“Oh, he’s not my type. He’s
ancient
.” She grinned. “But it was still pretty flattering.” Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “He told me something interesting, though.”

“What? And can you pass me the bone saw, please?”

“He said their Breathalyzer was broken. It’s a good thing too, because otherwise Mike would have been in big trouble. He got cited for underage drinking once before.”

“Broken?” I asked. “That’s lucky.”

“I know; isn’t it? They said it was like he wasn’t breathing at all. They tried to retest him, but he refused. Smart guy.”

I removed the top of the skull, but all I could think about was Breathalyzers. They operate on airflow. Maybe Mike could hold his breath for a ridiculous amount of time, or maybe the Breathalyzer really was broken. Or maybe he hadn’t been breathing. I knew that wasn’t possible, but after everything I’d seen, I could almost believe it.

I didn’t like this one bit. My list of possible symptoms now included black vomit, rigor mortis, semicannibalistic tendencies, and severely depressed respiration. I couldn’t think of a single
freaking disease that had this kind of presentation. I would have been panicking, but the military hadn’t issued a health alert. Yet.

Mrs. Mihalovic walked past, shaking a finger in our direction. “Less talking, ladies. More work.”

Kiki looked at me. “Strange, huh?”

“Yeah.” I located the corpus callosum and sliced decisively through it. “Very.”

he lunch line inched along at a funereal pace. I didn’t really have the patience to deal with it, but I needed caffeine and sugar if I was going to remain conscious. When I got to the front, the lunch lady glared at me. She took poor nutrition as a personal affront, and my tray contained a cookie and three cans of soda.

She frowned and pointed at the Coke. “That stuff will rot your liver.”

On any other day, I would have corrected her, but today I was in a hurry. I paid for the cookie and a cup of ice since the cans were still warm from their hibernation at the bottom of my locker. I’d been lobbying for pop machines in the cafeteria but hadn’t won yet.

I took my change and made my way toward our usual table by the windows, but Rocky intercepted me before I sat down.

“Kate! I didn’t expect to see you at lunch today. Don’t you have Quiz Bowl?”

“Oh, no!” I smacked my forehead. “You’re right.”

My stomach sank. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten; I’d been on the team for three years. I was the president, for god’s sake. I dashed for the basement, because that was how our school rolled: the perennially losing football team got an athletic wing, and the state-champion Quiz Bowl team got a four-square-foot closet in freaking Siberia.

Swannie, our faculty advisor, looked up when I hurried through the door. Her name was Ms. Swan, but she wouldn’t answer to it. I thought she looked like the love child of a mad scientist and a leprechaun, with her short stature and crazy red Afro. But she was the most brilliant scientist I’d ever met, and she let me help in her lab after school sometimes. She had some big government research grants, which was unheard of for a high school chemistry teacher and pretty much elevated her to sainthood in my eyes.