I sat down. When the meaning sank in, my skin got cold.

“Dad’s going to miss my colonial breakfast!” I said. Which wasn’t what I meant at all.

“Bea,” Mom said, “does that seem very important right now? The breakfast?”

I walked to the bathroom and threw up.

“Bea!” Mom came in and felt my forehead. “Are you sick? Why didn’t you say something?”

I sat on the bathroom floor. She held a washcloth under cold water, squeezed it out, and pressed it against my cheeks. Then I let her walk me to bed.

“Honey, you should have told me you weren’t feeling well. And I really am sorry about the breakfast. I wish I could cancel my trip. Do you want me to see if Melissa can go with you?”

Mom couldn’t come to the colonial breakfast, either. She had a teachers’ conference in Philadelphia and would be gone from early in the morning until after dinner.

“Can you talk if your face is half paralyzed?” I whispered.

“I think so,” Mom said. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Could it be from a fall?” I asked.

“What?”

“Angelica fell off the loft last summer. At the cabin.”

“She did?”

I nodded. “Uncle Frank says her head missed the woodstove by four inches.”

“That wouldn’t cause this,” Mom said. “I don’t think so.”

So it was possible.

“I don’t need anything from Dad’s.”

“What, honey?” She was rubbing my back.

“I don’t need anything. Dad should go straight to the airport.”

“Okay.” She put the washcloth on my forehead. “You want to call him before he goes?”

I said no.

Chicken

The worst thing about getting a bat shot was all the time I spent thinking about it before I actually got it.

Mom held my hand and I stared at the wall while Dr. Thomas gave me the shot. She always had a Band-Aid ready to go, so that by the time I looked, it was already on my arm. And the shot was really no big deal, which is what I always remembered, right after.

“Do you think one side of my face looks droopy?” I asked Dr. Thomas. Mom had left the room to “do the paperwork.”

“No,” Dr. Thomas said, tapping on her computer, which she wheeled around with her on a rolling cart. “Why do you ask?”

“Because my cousin Angelica has a droopy half of her face now. My dad says it’s this side.” I slapped the left side of my face very gently. “I thought maybe it was something she caught, and maybe I caught it, too.”

“I’m guessing your cousin has Bell’s palsy,” Dr. Thomas said. “But it’s not something you can catch. And it’s temporary, almost always.”

I nodded. “I know.”