Leaving Paradise (2 page)

two

Maggie

I think physical therapists like their job a little too much. I mean, why do they always look so happy and smiley as they make you sweat and wince from pain?

Sure enough, Robert, my physical therapist, is waiting for me with a big white-toothed smile in the lobby of the outpatient area of the hospital.

“Hi, Maggie. You ready to work that leg of yours?”

Not really
. “I guess so,” I say, looking down at the floor.

I know it’s Robert’s job to try and make me walk better. But there’s no use in helping me walk normal because my leg is all messed up inside. The last surgery I had to fix my tibial plateau fracture lasted over seven hours. My orthopedic surgeon jokes with me and calls it a bionic leg. All I know is that I have more nails and plastic inside me than the average tool box.

When I go to Spain next semester the screeners at the airport are going to have a field day with me. They’ll probably ask me to climb inside the x-ray machine to make sure I’m not concealing a weapon inside my knee.

Robert escorts me into the physical therapy room. I have to come here twice a week. Twice a week for almost a year and still people stare at me when I walk.

“Maggie, lie down and put your foot on my shoulder,” Robert instructs, getting down to business-as-usual.

Sighing, I lay down on the mat and put my foot on Robert’s shoulder. He holds my foot in place and leans forward. “Put pressure on it.”

After the accident, all I can do is a little baby push.

“Come on, Maggie. You can do better than that. I hardly feel it.”

I put my forearm over my eyes. “It’s never going to get better than this.”

“Sure it will. Look, you never believed you’d be able to walk again and here you are.”

I put more pressure on my foot.

“Thatta girl. Rate your pain level right now from one to ten, ten being excruciating.”

“Eight.”

“An eight?”

It might even be a nine.

“If you work hard now, the payoff will show later,” he says.

I don’t answer, but keep the increased pressure on my foot. He leans back and lowers my foot. Phew, that’s over.

“Great. Now keep your legs straight and alternate bending them one at a time.”

I start with my right leg. The accident didn’t mess it up too much and the scars have healed. For the most part.

But when I have to bend my left leg, it feels like a weight is attached to it. I bend it an inch at a time. Just lifting my leg makes me sweat like a long-distance runner. The word
pathetic
pretty much sums up my seventeen-year-old life.

“A little more,” Robert says just as I’m about to lower it. “What’s your pain level from one to ten?”

Before I can answer a nine, his cell phone rings. And rings. And rings. “Aren’t you going to answer it?” I ask.

“Not while I have a client. Keep bending those legs, Maggie.”

“Maybe it’s important,” I say with hope in my voice.

“If it is, they’ll leave a message. Dr. Gerrard tells me you’ll be leaving us in January,” he says as I alternate legs.

“Yep,” I say between clenched teeth. “I got a scholarship to go to Spain for a semester. I had to petition for an extension because of the infection.”

Robert whistles appreciatively. “Spain, huh? You’re a lucky lady.”

Lucky? I am
not
lucky. Lucky people don’t get hit by cars and have to go through painful physical therapy. Lucky people don’t have divorced parents and a dad they see once a year. Lucky people have friends. Now that I think about it, I’m probably the unluckiest person in the entire universe.

I endure leg torture for another twenty minutes. I’m so ready to leave, but I know it’s not over. The last thing Robert does in physical therapy is massage my leg muscles. I pull down my workout pants and sit on the metal table in my shorts.

“Is the redness fading?” Robert asks as he rubs medicated cream on my leg with gloved hands.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t like to look at it.” In fact, I’d look anywhere except my scarred left leg. It’s ugly, as if a two-year-old drew red lines with a crayon up and down my calf and thigh. But the marks aren’t from a crayon. They’re from my various surgeries after Caleb Becker hit me while driving drunk.

I try to forget about Caleb, but I can’t. He’s embedded into my brain like cancer. My nightmares of the accident have stopped, though, thank God. Those lasted for over six months. I hate Caleb. I hate what he did to me and I’m glad he’s far away. I try not to think about where he’s gone. If I think about it too hard, I’ll probably feel guilty. So I don’t think about it and trudge through my life ignoring the parts that’ll pull me under so far I won’t be able to get up.

As Robert studiously massages my leg muscles, I wince.

“It shouldn’t hurt when I do this,” he says.

“It doesn’t.” It’s just . . . I don’t like people touching my scars. I can’t even stomach touching them.

Robert examines my leg. “The deep redness will fade eventually. Give it a few more months.”

Robert finally announces he’s finished. As I put my workout pants back on, he writes something down in my file. His pen moves faster than I can talk.

“What are you writing?” I ask warily.

“Just evaluating your progress. I’m requesting Dr. Gerrard come visit during your therapy next week.”

Don’t panic, Maggie
, I tell myself. “Why?”

“I’d like to switch up your program.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

Robert pats me on the back. “Don’t worry, Maggie. We just need to come up with a physical therapy plan you can do in Spain without me.”

Physical therapy in Spain? Not exactly what I imagined myself doing while overseas. I don’t tell this to Robert. Instead, I give him a weak smile.

After my appointment, I head to Auntie Mae’s Diner where my mom works. I know it’s not glamorous, but she had to get a job when my dad left two years ago. Her boss, Mr. Reynolds, is pretty nice and gave her time off a lot when I was in the hospital. We’re not rich, but we have a roof over our heads and Auntie Mae’s Diner food in our stomachs.

I sit down at a table and my mom goes in the kitchen to get dinner for me. I’m about to read a book when I look up and see Danielle, Brianne, and my cousin Sabrina enter the restaurant. God, they look so . . . perfect.

I used to be friends with Danielle and Brianne. Leah Becker and I used to hang out with them all the time. The four of us were on the high school tennis team and inseparable since our first tennis lesson at the Paradise Community Center when we were nine years old. Sabrina was the outsider, the non-athlete. I remember Mom making me ask Sabrina to tag along with my friends when we went out.

The accident turned Paradise upside down. When Caleb hit me, he not only destroyed my leg, he also destroyed my friendship with his twin sister, Leah, and Mom’s friendship with Mrs. Becker. There’s an invisible fence now between our house and the Beckers’ house where there once was an open-door policy.

At first I didn’t have time to miss Leah; in the hospital my phone rang constantly. My mom kept busy answering calls and urging me to cut my conversations short so I could concentrate on healing. But as the months passed, the calls dwindled, then finally stopped altogether. Everyone else got on with their life while I recovered at home.

Sabrina used to come over and give me updates on school gossip. Now my cousin is close friends with Brianne and Danielle, which is totally strange because before the accident they didn’t give her the time of day.

I’ve never asked Sabrina about Leah . . . and Sabrina never offers any information. Leah’s brother went to jail because of me. I was sure she hated me because of it. We’d literally gone from best friends to strangers overnight.

Every time I think of going back to school on Monday, my stomach starts to do flips. I’ve been home-schooled by public tutors assigned by the school district almost my entire junior year because of the infection in my leg after my first surgery. Now I’m a senior. I don’t know which will be worse; getting out of the house or going to school and facing all the kids there. What if I run into Leah? What should I say?

My cousin and old friends are standing at the hostess stand, waiting to be seated. Okay, so it’s times like these I wish Mom didn’t work as a waitress. Knowing she wears a pink polyester uniform with buttons that read
ASK ME ABOUT MY DOUBLE DECKERS
doesn’t usually bother me. But that, on top of having her serve my former friends, makes me want to hide under the table.

Mom walks out from the back kitchen with my dinner. I watch in agony as she spots Danielle, Brianne, and Sabrina. Her eyes light up. “Hi, girls!” She waves at me to get my attention. “Look Maggie, it’s your friends and cousin!”

Brianne and the others give my mom fake smiles. Mom is oblivious.

I give a little half wave and look down at a tiny chip in the corner of the table, hoping my mom will get the hint.

“Why don’t you sit with Maggie? She’s all alone,” I hear Mom say.

Why doesn’t she just tell them I’m a loser now, too? Maybe I should get a big “L” for “loser” button and pin it to the front of my shirt.

The girls, including my cousin, just look at each other and shrug. “Sure.”

Why pretend to be friends and be all fakey? It’s not worth it.

“Hi,” I say when Mom leads them to my table and places my favorite dinner in front of me: a French dip, split pea soup, and a side of fries with gravy.

“Mrs. Armstrong, what’s your double deckers?” Brianne asks.

The rest of the girls snicker while I sink deeper into my chair.

Mom doesn’t flinch and goes right into her spiel. “We have a new selection of double decker sandwiches with turkey and bacon layered with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and our special sauce. We also have new roast beef and cheese double deckers. They all come with two layers of bread in between.”

Danielle looks like she’s going to be sick. “My arteries are clogging up just hearing about all that cholesterol.”

“Forget the cholesterol,” Sabrina says. “Two layers of bread? Carb city.”

Since when did my cousin become concerned about carbs? I look down at my plate. Carbs and more carbs, cholesterol and more cholesterol.

“I’ll have a Diet Coke and a side salad, Mrs. Armstrong,” Brianne says.

“Me, too,” Sabrina says.

“And me,” Danielle chimes in.

“We have thousand island, blue cheese, ranch, low-fat Italian . . .”

“Thousand island for me,” Sabrina says. “On the side.”

Danielle furrows her waxed brows, thinking it over. “I guess I’ll take the low-fat Italian. On the side.”

Brianne cocks her head to the side and says, “No dressing.”

No dressing? What happened to pigging out on chips and pizza? I’ve only been away a year and I’m totally lost.

Mom leaves to enter the orders, and I’m left with my salad-eating cousin, ex-friends . . . and my French dip, pea soup, fries and gravy. I was seriously hungry before, but now I can’t eat.

Brianne fumbles through her purse and pulls out a small mirror.

“Give me that when you’re done,” Sabrina says. When my cousin has the mirror, she attempts to check out the back of her head. Which she really can’t do with one mirror, but I’m not going to break that news to her.

“What are you doing, Sabrina?” Danielle asks.

“I think I need to get my hair cut before tomorrow.”

Danielle laughs. “Girls, stop freaking out. It’s a party, not a presidential ball.”

“What party?” I ask, then want to die for asking. Obviously I wasn’t invited. I don’t want to go, anyway. But now it
looks
like I want to go.

The girls eye each other. They don’t want to tell me about the party. Ugh, why did I even ask?

“A back-to-school party,” Danielle finally says. “At Brian Newcomb’s house.”

Wouldn’t you know, Mom comes with their Diet Cokes and an extra large piece of pie for me at that exact same moment. “Oh, a party! When? Maggie would LOVE to go to a party, wouldn’t you honey?”

Instead of answering, I bite off a huge chunk of the French dip. It saves me from having to answer, but now I feel like I’m going to gag on the gargantuan piece of beef in my mouth.

Brianne looks like she’s gonna puke just watching me.

“Uh, you can come if you
want
, Maggie,” my cousin says.

It was definitely a pity invite, anyone but a waitress at Auntie Mae’s Diner would realize that. I’m not going to the party. I just don’t know how I’m going to break it to Mom and let my ex-friends off the hook at the same time.

I take my time chewing.

Before the accident I was a sophomore on the varsity tennis team. But now as a senior I wouldn’t even make the freshman squad. Not that I would want to, because then I’d have to wear those short tennis skirts. I’m never wearing a tennis skirt again because I’m never showing anyone my ugly leg scars. Besides, you can’t play tennis when you can’t even walk straight.