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We could all see what those bites were doing to her.
She was swelling up.
“God,” said someone, “she’s having a fit.”
Chong knew the word for it. Chong always knows the word. “Anaphylaxis.”
An allergic reaction.
Most kids aren’t allergic to fire-ant bites. It’s the same with bee stings and tarantula bites. But you never know until you get bitten.
Mr. West-Mensch came pushing through the crowd and told us all to get back. He picked Jazz up and ran with her—actually ran—across the school yard and inside the school. A bunch of kids followed. Her friends, mostly. And some of the kinds of kids who need to see stuff like this.
We didn’t. Chong, Benny, and I stood there. Morgie came up holding the grapes in a pouch he’d made by pulling out the bottom of his T-shirt. He stared at Mr. West-Mensch as he took Jazz away. Morgie’s mouth hung open.
“Jazz—?” he asked.
We told him what happened.
Morgie looked sick. “She looked really bad.”
We didn’t say anything because it seemed mean somehow to say it. But we thought it. Jazz looked really, really bad. Like she could hardly breathe.
“My cousin DeeDee used to be allergic to peanuts,” he said. Again, none of us said anything. We all remembered DeeDee. She’d been a house painter and sometimes did face painting at the fair.
That was then.
DeeDee ate something that she didn’t know had peanuts in it. Only a little bit, too, from what everyone said. She ate it and she had anaphylaxis too.
That was a bad night. I didn’t see it. Neither did Benny or Chong, but we all knew that Morgie had.
Sometimes Morgie goes and puts flowers on her grave. He was close with DeeDee. He loved her. And for a long time he hated his dad because of what had to be done.
The dead don’t stay dead. We all know that. Everyone knows that.
Ever since First Night, anyone who dies, no matter how they die, comes back.
We make jokes about it. We call it “zomming out.” They’re bad jokes, but sometimes that’s the only thing you have to keep from screaming.
Morgie’s dad had to use a sliver on DeeDee.
A sliver.
It sounds like something nice. A sliver of cheese. A sliver of turkey on Thanksgiving. A sliver of chocolate when you get an A on a test.
Not the same thing.
Slivers are little pieces of metal. Flat on one end for pushing. Sharp on the other end. You have to stick them in the back of the neck, right where the spine enters the skull. We all learn about it in school. We all have to practice with slivers on cantaloupes and on dummy zoms made from straw.
Everyone in town—all the adults, anyway—carries at least one sliver.
Morgie’s dad had to use his. Morgie understood. I mean, he’s a little slow sometimes, but he’s not stupid. He understood. But just because you understand something doesn’t mean you can deal with it.
For a long time Morgie couldn’t deal. He treated his dad like he’d done something bad to DeeDee. Like he’d hurt her.
It was a while before they could even talk about it.
