Night World 1 (2 page)

“P
oppy!” Poppy could hear her mother's voice, but she couldn't see anything. The kitchen floor was obscured by dancing black dots.

“Poppy, are you all right?” Now Poppy felt her mother's hands grasping her upper arms, holding her anxiously. The pain was easing and her vision was coming back.

As she straightened up, she saw James in front of her. His face was almost expressionless, but Poppy knew him well enough to recognize the worry in his eyes. He was holding the milk carton, she realized. He must have caught it on the fly as she dropped it—amazing reflexes, Poppy thought vaguely. Really amazing.

Phillip was on his feet. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I—don't know.” Poppy looked around, then shrugged, embarrassed. Now that she felt better she wished they weren't all staring at her so hard. The way to deal with the pain was to ignore it, to not think about it.

“It's just this stupid pain—I think it's gastrowhatchmacallit. You know, something I ate.”

Poppy's mother gave her daughter the barest fraction of a shake. “Poppy, this is not gastroenteritis. You were having some pain before—nearly a month ago, wasn't it? Is this the same kind of pain?”

Poppy squirmed uncomfortably. As a matter of fact, the pain had never really gone away. Somehow, in the excitement of end-of-the-year activities, she'd managed to disregard it, and by now she was used to working around it.

“Sort of,” she temporized. “But—”

That was enough for Poppy's mother. She gave Poppy a little squeeze and headed for the kitchen telephone. “I know you don't like doctors, but I'm calling Dr. Franklin. I want him to take a look at you. This isn't something we can ignore.”

“Oh, Mom, it's
vacation.
…”

Her mother covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Poppy, this is nonnegotiable. Go get dressed.”

Poppy groaned, but she could see it was no use. She beckoned to James, who was looking thoughtfully into a middle distance.

“Let's at least listen to the CD before I have to go.”

He glanced at the CD as if he'd forgotten it, and put down the milk carton. Phillip followed them into the hallway.

“Hey, buddy, you wait out here while she gets dressed.”

James barely turned. “Get a life, Phil,” he said almost absently.

“Just keep your hands off my sister, you deve.”

Poppy just shook her head as she went into her room. As if James cared about seeing her undressed.
If only,
she thought grimly, pulling a pair of shorts out of a drawer. She stepped into them, still shaking her head. James was her best friend, her very best friend, and she was his. But he'd never shown even the slightest desire to get his hands on her. Sometimes she wondered if he realized she was a girl.

Someday I'm going to
make
him see, she thought, and shouted out the door for him.

James came in and smiled at her. It was a smile other people rarely saw, not a taunting or ironic grin, but a nice little smile, slightly crooked.

“Sorry about the doctor thing,” Poppy said.

“No. You should go.” James gave her a keen glance. “Your mom's right, you know. This has been going on way too long. You've lost weight; it's keeping you up at night—”

Poppy looked at him, startled. She hadn't told anybody about how the pain was worse at night, not even James. But—sometimes James just knew things. As if he could read her mind.

“I just know
you,
that's all,” he said, and then gave her a mischievous sideways glance as she stared at him. He unwrapped the CD.

Poppy shrugged and flopped on her bed, staring at the ceiling. “Anyway, I wish Mom would let me have
one
day of vacation,” she said. She craned her neck to look at James speculatively. “I wish I had a mom like yours. Mine's always worrying and trying to
fix
me.”

“And mine doesn't really care if I come or go. So which is worse?” James said wryly.

“Your parents let you have your own
apartment.
”

“In a building they own. Because it's cheaper than hiring a manager.” James shook his head, his eyes on the CD he was putting in the player. “Don't knock your parents, kid. You're luckier than you know.”

Poppy thought about that as the CD started. She and James both liked trance—the underground electronic sound that had come from Europe. James liked the techno beat. Poppy loved it because it was
real
music, raw and unpasteurized, made by people who believed in it. People who had the passion, not people who had the money.

Besides, world music made her feel a part of other places. She loved the differentness of it, the alienness.

Come to think of it, maybe that was what she liked about James, too. His differentness. She tilted her head to look at him as the strange rhythms of Burundi drumming filled the air.

She knew James better than anyone, but there was always something,
something
about him that was closed off to her. Something about him that nobody could reach.

Other people took it for arrogance, or coldness, or aloofness, but it wasn't really any of those things. It was just—
differentness.
He was more different than any of the exchange students at school. Time after time, Poppy felt she had almost put her finger on the difference, but it always slipped away. And more than once, especially late at night when they were listening to music or watching the ocean, she'd felt he was about to tell her.

And she'd always felt that if he
did
tell her, it would be something important, something as shocking and lovely as having a stray cat speak to her.

Just now she looked at James, at his clean, carven profile and at the brown waves of hair on his forehead, and thought, He looks sad.

“Jamie, nothing's
wrong,
is it? I mean, at home, or anything?” She was the only person on the planet allowed to call him Jamie. Not even Jacklyn or Michaela had ever tried that.

“What could be wrong at home?” he said, with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. Then he shook his head dismissively. “Don't worry about it, Poppy. It's nothing important—just a relative threatening to visit. An unwanted relative.” Then the smile
did
reach his eyes, glinting there. “Or maybe I'm just worried about you,” he said.

Poppy started to say, “Oh,
as if,
” but instead she found herself saying, oddly, “Are you really?”

Her seriousness seemed to strike some chord. His smile disappeared, and Poppy found that they were simply looking at each other, without any insulating humor between them. Just gazing into each other's eyes. James looked uncertain, almost vulnerable.

“Poppy—”

Poppy swallowed. “Yes?”

He opened his mouth—and then he got up abruptly and went to adjust her 170-watt Tall-boy speakers. When he turned back, his gray eyes were dark and fathomless.

“Sure, if you were really sick, I'd be worried,” he said lightly. “That's what friends are for, right?”

Poppy deflated. “Right,” she said wistfully, and then gave him a determined smile.

“But you're not sick,” he said. “It's just something you need to get taken care of. The doctor'll probably give you some antibiotics or something—with a big needle,” he added wickedly.

“Oh, shut up,” Poppy said. He knew she was terrified of injections. Just the thought of a needle entering her skin…

“Here comes your mom,” James said, glancing at the door, which was ajar. Poppy didn't see how he could hear anybody coming—the music was loud and the hallway was carpeted. But an instant later her mother pushed the door open.

“All right, sweetheart,” she said briskly. “Dr. Franklin says come right in. I'm sorry, James, but I'm going to have to take Poppy away.”

“That's okay. I can come back this afternoon.”

Poppy knew when she was defeated. She allowed her mother to tow her to the garage, ignoring James's miming of someone receiving a large injection.

An hour later she was lying on Dr. Franklin's examining table, eyes politely averted as his gentle fingers probed her abdomen. Dr. Franklin was tall, lean, and graying, with the air of a country doctor. Somebody you could trust absolutely.

“The pain is here?” he said.

“Yeah—but it sort of goes into my back. Or maybe I just pulled a muscle back there or something….”

The gentle, probing fingers moved, then stopped. Dr. Franklin's face changed. And somehow, in that moment, Poppy knew it wasn't a pulled muscle. It wasn't an upset stomach; it wasn't anything simple; and things were about to change forever.

All Dr. Franklin said was, “You know, I'd like to arrange for a test on this.”

His voice was dry and thoughtful, but panic curled through Poppy anyway. She couldn't explain what was happening inside her—some sort of dreadful premonition, like a black pit opening in the ground in front of her.

“Why?” her mother was asking the doctor.

“Well.” Dr. Franklin smiled and pushed his glasses up. He tapped two fingers on the examining table. “Just as part of a process of elimination, really. Poppy says she's been having pain in the upper abdomen, pain that radiates to her back, pain that's worse at night. She's lost her appetite recently, and she's lost weight. And her gallbladder is palpable—that means I can feel that it's enlarged. Now, those are symptoms of a lot of things, and a sonogram will help rule out some of them.”

Poppy calmed down. She couldn't remember what a gallbladder did but she was pretty sure she didn't need it. Anything involving an organ with such a silly name couldn't be serious. Dr. Franklin was going on, talking about the pancreas and pancreatitis and palpable livers, and Poppy's mother was nodding as if she understood. Poppy didn't understand, but the panic was gone. It was as if a cover had been whisked neatly over the black pit, leaving no sign that it had ever been there.

“You can get the sonogram done at Children's Hospital across the street,” Dr. Franklin was saying. “Come back here after it's finished.”

Poppy's mother was nodding, calm, serious, and efficient. Like Phil. Or Cliff. Okay, we'll get this taken care of.

Poppy felt just slightly important. Nobody she knew had been to a hospital for tests.

Her mother ruffled her hair as they walked out of Dr. Franklin's office. “Well, Poppet. What have you done to yourself now?”

Poppy smiled impishly. She was fully recovered from her earlier worry. “Maybe I'll have to have an operation and I'll have an interesting scar,” she said, to amuse her mother.

“Let's hope not,” her mother said, unamused.

The Suzanne G. Monteforte Children's Hospital was a handsome gray building with sinuous curves and giant picture windows. Poppy looked thoughtfully into the gift shop as they passed. It was clearly a
kid's
gift shop, full of rainbow Slinkys and stuffed animals that a visiting adult could buy as a last-minute present.

A girl came out of the shop. She was a little older than Poppy, maybe seventeen or eighteen. She was pretty, with an expertly made-up face—and a cute bandanna which didn't quite conceal the fact that she had no hair. She looked happy, round-cheeked, with earrings dangling jauntily beneath the bandanna—but Poppy felt a stab of sympathy.

Sympathy…and fear. That girl was
really
sick. Which was what hospitals were for, of course—for really sick people. Suddenly Poppy wanted to get her own tests over with and get out of here.

The sonogram wasn't painful, but it was vaguely disturbing. A technician smeared some kind of jelly over Poppy's middle, then ran a cold scanner over it, shooting sound waves into her, taking pictures of her insides. Poppy found her mind returning to the pretty girl with no hair.

To distract herself, she thought about James. And for some reason what came to mind was the first time she'd seen James, the day he came to kindergarten. He'd been a pale, slight boy with big gray eyes and something subtly
weird
about him that made the bigger boys start picking on him immediately. On the playground they ganged up on him like hounds around a fox—until Poppy saw what was happening.

Even at five she'd had a great right hook. She'd burst into the group, slapping faces and kicking shins until the big boys went running. Then she'd turned to James.

“Wanna be friends?”

After a brief hesitation he'd nodded shyly. There had been something oddly sweet in his smile.

But Poppy had soon found that her new friend was strange in small ways. When the class lizard died, he'd picked up the corpse without revulsion and asked Poppy if she wanted to hold it. The teacher had been horrified.