The Moth Girl by Heather Kamins

Author:Heather Kamins [Kamins, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2022-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

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MY PARENTS TUCKED me in on the living room couch for the rest of the day so I could watch TV, and they brought me food and drinks and my Walkman and anything else I asked for. By the time they transferred me back up to my bed to go to sleep that night, I was already feeling more solid on the ground, and by the following morning, I was able to walk on my own. Since I was due back at school the next day, I went to the basement to practice using the tether so I’d be prepared.

I stood five or six feet away from one of the basement’s metal support posts and threw the heavy end toward it. The carabiner clanged loudly on the post the first few times I threw it, and I heard heavy footsteps overhead and then my father’s voice shouting as he came down the stairs. “Honey? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m just practicing with the tether.”

He reached the foot of the staircase and looked around to make sure I was really all right. “Oh, good. You want any help?”

“No, thanks.” When he didn’t move, I added, “Don’t watch me!”

“Okay, okay. Call if you need me.”

I waited until I heard the door shut at the top of the stairs before going back to practicing. I tried to remember how it had felt when I threw it correctly in the doctor’s office. Maybe I was holding it too close to the end. I slid my hand up the cool rubber tubing, about a foot beyond the three magnetic dots, and, instead of throwing the clip directly at the post, swung the tether toward it from the side. It wrapped and clicked. With the end of the tubing attached successfully to the post, I gave the line a tug to see how strong it actually was. Pretty strong: I had to walk over and pull the clip and the magnets apart from each other by hand.

I kept practicing while my mind drifted back to the day before yesterday at the mall. I got mad all over again, thinking about being left behind, and I threw the tether clip so hard that it smacked against the post with an earsplitting crack. The footsteps overhead started up again, and when the door to the basement opened, I preemptively shouted, “I’m fine!”

There was still a small part of me that wanted to tell Smilla what was going on with my floating, with the tether, all of it. But I knew her reaction would only upset me more. She’d tell me she was glad I was okay, like everything was fine now, like I didn’t still have a disease with no known cause or cure, and no idea what the future held. She’d tell me to just keep going, to keep pushing, to try and beat the odds.

I threw the tether enough times to feel confident that it would hold me and reasonably confident that I could throw it correctly.

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