As you can see, I clearly knew my stuff. But when it was nearly my turn, just as Stephen Scarpinio washolding up a papier-maché model of a lemur, I knew that I was going to be sick. I went up to Mrs. Cuthbert,and told her if I stayed to do this assignment, no one was going to be happy.
“Anna,” she said, “if you tell yourself you feel fine, you will.”
So when Stephen finished, I got up. I took a deep breath. “Kangaroos,” I said, “are marsupials that live onlyin Australia.”
Then I projectile5 vomited6 over four kids who had the bad luck to be sitting in the front row.
For the whole rest of the year, I was called KangaRalph. Every now and then some kid would go on a planeon vacation, and I’d go to my cubby to find a barf bag pinned to the front of my fleece pullover, a makeshiftmarsupial pouch. I was the school’s greatest embarrassment7 until Darren Hong went to capture the flag ingym and accidentally pulled down Oriana Bertheim’s skirt.
I’m telling you this to explain my general aversion to public speaking.
But now, on the witness stand, there’s even more to be worried about. It’s not that I’m nervous, like Campbellthinks. I am not afraid of clamming8 up, either. I’m afraid of saying too much.
I look out at the courtroom and see my mother, sitting at her lawyer table, and at my father, who smiles at mejust the tiniest bit. And suddenly I can’t believe I ever thought I might be able to go through with this. I get tothe edge of my seat, ready to apologize for wasting everyone’s time and bolt—only to realize that Campbelllooks positively9 awful. He’s sweating, and his pupils are so big they look like quarters set deep in his face.
“Anna,” Campbell asks, “do you want a glass of water?”
I look at him and think, Do you?
What I want is to go home. I want to run away to a place where no one knows my name and pretend to be amillionaire’s adopted daughter, the heir to a toothpaste manufacturing kingdom, a Japanese pop star.
Campbell turns to the judge. “May I confer for a moment with my client?”
“Be my guest,” Judge DeSalvo says.
So Campbell walks up to the witness stand and leans so close that only I can hear him. “When I was a kid Ihad a friend named Joseph Balz,” he whispers. “Imagine if Dr. Neaux had married him.”
He backs away while I am still smiling, and thinking that maybe, just maybe, I can last for another two orthree minutes up here.
Campbell’s dog is going crazy—he’s the one who needs water or something, from the looks of it. And I’mnot the only one to notice. “Mr. Alexander,” Judge DeSalvo says, “please control your animal.”
“No, Judge.”
“Excuse me?!”
Campbell goes tomato red. “I was speaking to the dog, Your Honor, like you asked.” Then he turns to me.
“Anna, why did you want to file this petition?”
A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when youpop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest10 instead. “Sheasked,” I say, the first two words that will become an avalanche11.
“Who asked what?”
“My mom,” I say, staring at Campbell’s shoes. “For a kidney.” I look down at my skirt, pick at a thread. Justmaybe I will unravel12 the whole thing.
About two months ago, Kate was diagnosed with kidney failure. She got tired easily, and lost weight, andretained water, and threw up a lot. The blame was pinned to a bunch of different things: geneticabnormalities, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor—growth hormone13 shots Kate had oncetaken to boost marrow14 production, stress from other treatments. She was put on dialysis to get rid of thetoxins zipping around her bloodstream. And then, the dialysis stopped working.
One night, my mother came into our room when Kate and I were just hanging out. She had my father withher, which meant we were in for a more heavy discussion than who-left-the-sink-running-by-accident. “I’vebeen doing some reading on the internet,” my mother said. “Transplants of typical organs aren’t nearly asdifficult to recover from as bone marrow transplants.”
Kate looked at me and popped in a new CD. We both knew where this was headed. “You can’t exactly pickup15 a kidney at Kmart.”
“I know. It turns out that you only need to match a couple of HLA proteins to be a kidney donor16—not all six.
I called Dr. Chance to ask if I might be a match for you, and he said in normal cases, I probably would.”
Kate hears the right word. “Normal cases?”
“Which you’re not. Dr. Chance thinks you’d reject an organ from the general donor pool, just because yourbody has already been through so much.” My mother looked down at the carpet. “He won’t recommend theprocedure unless the kidney comes from Anna.”
My father shook his head. “That’s invasive surgery,” he said quietly. “For both of them.”
I started thinking about this. Would I have to be in the hospital? Would it hurt? Could people live with justone kidney?
What if I wound up with kidney failure when I was, like, seventy? Where would I get my spare?
Before I could ask any of this, Kate spoke17. “I’m not doing it again, all right? I’m sick of it. The hospitals andthe chemo and the radiation and the whole freaking thing. Just leave me alone, will you?”
My mother’s face went white. “Fine, Kate. Go ahead and commit suicide!”
She put her headphones on again, turned the music up so loud that I could hear it. “It’s not suicide,” she said,“if you’re already dying.”
“Did you ever tell anyone that you didn’t want to be a donor?” Campbell asks me, as his dog starts doinghelicopters in the front of the courtroom.
“Mr. Alexander,” Judge DeSalvo says, “I’m going to call a bailiff to remove your…pet.”
It’s true, the dog is totally out of control. He’s barking and leaping up with his front paws on Campbell andrunning in those tight circles. Campbell ignores both Judges. “Anna, did you decide to file this lawsuit18 all byyourself?”
I know why he’s asking; he wants everyone to know I’m capable of making choices that are hard. And I evenhave my lie, quivering like the snake it is, caught between my teeth. But what I mean to say isn’t quite whatslips out. “I was kind of convinced by someone.”
This is, of course, news to my parents, whose eyes hammer onto me. It’s news to Julia, who actually makes asmall sound. And it’s news to Campbell, who runs a hand down his face in defeat. This is exactly why it’sbetter to stay silent; there is less of a chance of screwing up your life and everyone else’s.
“Anna,” Campbell says, “who convinced you?”
I am small in this seat, in this state, on this lonely planet. I fold my hands together, holding between them theonly emotion I’ve managed to keep from slipping away: regret. “Kate.”
The entire courtroom goes silent. Before I can say anything else, the lightning bolt I have been expectingstrikes. I cringe, but it turns out that the crash I’ve heard isn’t the earth opening up to swallow me whole. It isCampbell, who’s fallen to the floor, while his dog stands nearby with a very human look on his face that saysI told you so.
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收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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2
pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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3
plumbing
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| n.水管装置；水暖工的工作；管道工程v.用铅锤测量（plumb的现在分词）；探究 | |
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sibling
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| n.同胞手足(指兄、弟、姐或妹) | |
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5
projectile
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| n.投射物，发射体；adj.向前开进的；推进的；抛掷的 | |
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6
vomited
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7
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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clamming
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| v.（在沙滩上）挖蛤( clam的现在分词 ) | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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10
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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11
avalanche
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| n.雪崩，大量涌来 | |
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12
unravel
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| v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开 | |
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13
hormone
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| n.荷尔蒙，激素，内分泌 | |
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14
marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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15
pickup
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| n.拾起，获得 | |
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16
donor
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| n.捐献者；赠送人；(组织、器官等的)供体 | |
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17
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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18
lawsuit
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| n.诉讼，控诉 | |
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