What We Saw at Night - By Jacquelyn Mitchard Page 0,4
the world would inspire even you to do something that idiotic?” Rob snapped. “That was screwed up, even for you.”
“What do you mean, even for me? Somebody who’s not a wuss?”
Rob rolled his eyes. “My point is: you don’t even know what you’re doing. People work out for years before they try anything like that.”
“I’ve been practicing it for months!” Juliet’s hair had come loose from its braid and cascaded around her shoulders. Her face blooming in the cold, she looked like a movie star, the only imperfection a little shadow of a cleft in her chin.
When she got mad, her eyes changed color, like somebody had retouched them with gold flecks. Juliet had no scars. Most people with XP who don’t find out until they are two or three years old have a lot of dark freckles: scary dark scars from sunburn. Rob had some on his back and neck. They found out he had it when he was one, and they were pushing him in his stroller at Disney World. Some lady looked at him. His mom thought she was going to say how cute he was, but instead she screamed, “What did you do to your baby?” Rob’s neck and back had morphed into an angry field of huge, dripping blisters.
I didn’t have any scars, either. But they found out I had it before I was born. Ironically, my dad is a genetics researcher. He had a cousin with XP, the fatal allergy to sunlight. (Clinically, Xeroderma Pigmentosum.) So they tested the unborn baby for it. And they found out—yay!—she didn’t have it. Then she was born. Surprise! I did have it. Tests aren’t always right.
Then Dad took off.
Lots of dads do. I hadn’t seen him since I was four. He existed for me as some very nice handwriting in a few letters and a bunch of fat guilt checks that allowed us to own our house and have some nice things. Mom adopted Angela instead of latching on to some guy, which I completely admired her for, because most XP kids are only children.
What makes XP even stranger is that there are seven kinds of variations involving eight genes. Some kinds only affect your eyes and skin. But others involve cell changes from exposure to sunlight, too. Juliet and I have Type A, and Rob has Type C, but none of us have the kind that makes a child start out smart and beautiful but lose more and more every year … reading and drawing and words and steps just disappearing, like water into dry earth. If you can be grateful for something that’s impossible to be grateful for, I was grateful for this small blessing. And for my mom, especially. I couldn’t even imagine trying to raise a kid who was not only doomed to a life without sunshine, but also to lose her mind.
Juliet continued to pirouette before us.
“You’ve been practicing this alone? What if you hit the ground?” Rob demanded.
“What if I did?” Juliet said. “I’d die. Gideon would find me the next morning. Somebody’s going to find me dead sooner or later anyhow.”
As the douchebag Henry LeBecque pointed out, one of the truly extra-terrific things about XP is that you’re forced to live like a vampire, except you’re not immortal. Most people with XP die before they’re forty, although in every other way, you’re totally normal. Juliet lived like she was dying. Some XP people do. Others just hide in the dark and wait.
Nobody said a word.
Juliet finally glared at both of us and growled, “I’m getting my sweater.” In a flash, she hurtled back up the rickety fire escape to the pizza parlor roof and came stomping back down, clearly outraged at Rob—and me, too, although I hadn’t done anything. “Go on and leave. I’ll walk home. I’m taking it you’re not interested.”
Her home was a long, lonely uphill hike from Gitchee.
“Interested in what?” I asked, glaring at Rob, too. “We’re not leaving you.”
“She can do what she wants,” Rob said in a toneless voice. He was shaking out the keys to his Jeep, mumbling about going home early. It wasn’t even three. We hardly ever went home before five. Then he relented. “Get in the car, Juliet.”
Her eyes sparkled in the darkness. “Don’t you even want to try it? Don’t you want to learn? I have two DVDs and some books. It’s the most incredible feeling. Like flying. Like an orgasm while you’re flying.”