Brett McCarthy by Maria Padian

Author:Maria Padian
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780375849404
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2008-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

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Growth is a defining fact of a junior high kid’s life. The defining fact.

Early growers are Royalty. Kings and Queens of the school dances. Lords and Ladies of the sports teams. Once-skinny boys who could barely heft a basketball from the free-throw line morph into broad-shouldered starters for the A team. Shy girls who only just gave up playing with dolls sprout bodacious breasts requiring hot outfits from the teen department.

Conversely, slow growers are Peasants. In a world where everyone wants to seem as high school as possible, flat-chested shortness is a curse. Lucky slow growers find a safe haven in Geek World, too busy practicing their musical instruments or attending math meets to worry about the boy-girl or sports scenes. The unlucky…those who are short, untalented, and only mildly intelligent…they kind of get lost in junior high.

It was ironic that just when everything in and around me concerned growth, my grandmother embarked on a journey of antigrowth, a.k.a. chemotherapy.

Ironic: given to irony; expressing something other than and especially the opposite of.

The doctors wanted to shrink the tumors they’d found on Nonna’s pancreas. So they prescribed chemotherapy. Chemo, as Mom called it. This involved Nonna going to the hospital once a week, where they fed antigrowth chemicals into her veins. The chemicals stopped the cancer cells from growing—as well as all the other cells in her body. Her fingernails. Her hair. Bam! No more growth. And the thing about hair is that when it stops growing, it loses its hold in your skin. And it drops off. Not all at once, but slowly. First a few extra hairs in the brush or on the shower floor. Then handfuls. And before you even realized what had happened, your silver-haired Nonna was bald.

Unfortunately, chemo also causes nausea. Which causes vomiting. Which causes weight loss. So another irony of that winter was that while I spent most of my waking hours feeding my machine with healthy foods (not Pop-Tarts), and waking up every morning a bit bigger, Nonna shrank. Pounds fell off her, she slept a lot, and because she didn’t feel well, she didn’t speak as much. Even her personality seemed smaller.

She had cut a deal with my parents: She’d do chemo for six weeks and see how it went. She wouldn’t skip her treatments and she’d follow all the doctors’ orders. In exchange, they’d leave her alone about participating in the lighthouse project.

My first day in Fifth Period coincided with Nonna’s first chemo treatment, so she didn’t come to school. Mrs. Augmentino said I could “intro” the project for everyone. She asked me to bring pictures of the island and come prepared to speak.

Nonna was really happy that I’d been invited to join the lighthouse project, and not just because it gave me something to talk about besides missing soccer. The night before my presentation we pulled together about a dozen of our favorite Spruce Island photos and glued them to poster board. I practiced what I’d say about each, and in what order.

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