AUGUST 13, 2009

Early the next morning, Mom bursts into my room wearing her gray scrubs. She hates scrubs and says that the hospitals where she consults might be able to force her to wear them, but they can’t force her to wear ones that are pink or have bunny prints. In a lot of ways, Mom is kind of badass.

Without a word, she puts her palm on my forehead. Instead of cool and nice, though, it now feels damp and gooshy, like it could melt right into my skin if she kept it there long enough. “You feel warm.” Then she does her ultra-annoying thing of telling me how I feel. “You’re not any better. I’m staying home.”

“No. I’m fine, Mom.” I make my voice hit the right tone: sick enough not to go to band camp but not sick enough for Dr. Queng. “Really. You go on. You’ve got patients waiting for you.” Luckily, at that exact moment one of the many alarms Mom has set on her phone goes off.

“Shit, I’m going to be late! Call me if you start to feel worse.” She rushes out, stops, tells me, “Just call me anyway, OK?”

I promise I will, and then—score!—I have the house and the laptop all to myself. I can think about my dad with no fear that someone will burst through the door without even knocking, demanding to know what I am doing and when I am going to unload the dishwasher.

From under the bed, I pull out the scrapbook Mom made for me of every photo she could collect of my father. She called it the Book of Palms. The name is supposed to be a joke because he has his hand up, shielding some famous person’s face in most of the photos. I think there might be a Book of Palms in the Bible. I never asked. Mom likes to pretend that I’ve lost interest in my father. That it upset me to hear about him. Actually, I stopped mentioning him when I saw how much it upset her. By that time, though, she wasn’t my only source of information. For the past few years, I’ve been Googling my father’s Next name constantly.

I open the laptop and check my Google alerts to see if there is anything new. There isn’t. There hasn’t been anything on the Internet about my father for months.

“My father.” I don’t even know what punctuation mark to put after those two words. Lots of exclamation points!!! One lonely question mark? I need a cartoon balloon with every symbol available in it. Something that stands for stunned/terrified/pissed off/excited/depressed/happy/mad.

I go to Facebook and stare at his friend request until it starts pulsing and glowing like it is radioactive. I close the laptop, get back in bed, and pull the covers up so that just the soft cotton is touching my chin.

The Gap Year
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