Happy Birthday to Me Again (Birthday Trilogy, Book 2) (14 page)

“I’m so excited,
Cam,” Liesel said.

“I am, too.”

“Is everything
still OK? Remember, if you have any concerns, you know, about
anything
, you can talk to me. I’m always
here for you.”

“I know. I’m OK.
I’m fine.”

She didn’t
believe me. “Come on… what is it?”

“What?”

“I can sense
something in your voice. Something’s going on.
Spill
.”

“It’s nothing,
Leese. It’s just me being paranoid.”

“Tell me.”

I told her about
the mysterious disappearance of my facial hair last night, as well as the
incident today involving my subtle but noticeable shrinking.

“Are you sure
you didn’t do anything on Saturday? When you blew up at me in the restaurant?”

“No, Cam. I
swear
.”

“Cuz the last
time you lashed out at me, I started aging. Maybe you threw a shrinking curse
at me or something and just don’t know it?”

“Cam, I have
been so good with my powers lately. I have complete control over them. Don’t
worry.”

“Leese, it’s all
right if you did. Just don’t lie to me. Don’t think if you did something I’ll
leave you, or never talk to you again. You know I love you. I just need you to
make me better if you did anything—”

“Cam, I got angry
on Saturday. But I swear, I didn’t do anything.”

“The light bulb
burst
above us,” I said.

“What?”

“And the flame
on the candle… it re-ignited. When you stood up from the table.”

Again, silence
on the other end. I could tell Liesel wasn’t so longer one hundred percent sure
about her innocence.

“But it’s OK,” I
said. “If you did anything, you can correct it. That’s the worst case
scenario.”

“Cam, listen to
me.” Her voice sounded more concerned.

“What?”

“I want you to
sleep on this. One more night. If anything else unusual happens to you
tomorrow, I want to see you first thing. I’m working crazy hours tomorrow, but
I can get away on my lunch break. I thought the chest hair thing was weird, but
I didn’t think anything of it. The height thing… well… that concerns me a bit.
Did you test your height on another tape measurer?”

“Of course I
did. I went and bought another one and tested it myself. It says I’m five-ten.
I’m six-one, Leese. I have been for the last two years.”

“OK. Call me
tomorrow, all right? Let me know how you’re feeling. I don’t want to worry
about you all day.”

“I will. Let’s
hope it’s nothing.”

“It will be.”

I tossed the
phone on my nightstand and turned to my right side. I closed my eyes and tried
to relax.

This can’t be happening again… it can’t
be… not again…

I was becoming
sure each and every minute that something bad was happening to me again. But
another thought started to occur to me, one that was even worse.

If Liesel really did put a curse on me…
again… what’s to stop her from cursing me another five hundred times in the
course of our lives?

And, finally,
this one:
Will I ever be able to trust
her?

5.
Fifteen

The nightmare returned, the one with the
figure of death chasing after me, down one long hallway after another, with no end
in sight.

I would run and run and run, and then
wake up in spurts. But as soon as I fell asleep, the nightmare would return,
with me running more and more, faster and faster, until my legs finally caved
in and I fell to the hard cement ground with a loud, painful thud.

But this time, instead of the figure
caressing the bottom of my feet with his sharp-edged knife, he started scraping
the knife against the bottom of my
palms
.

I woke up in a mountain of sweat, not
knowing if I was safe, or even alive. I rubbed my palms against the bed for a
few seconds before sitting up. I managed to get a hold of my breathing, when I
swallowed and realized that a big glass of water would probably make me feel
better.

I stretched and got up to my feet, still
in a daze, feeling like I was half asleep. I moseyed into the hallway and up
the stairs to find the house quiet and empty. I couldn’t even hear the dog
walking around. It was a few minutes past 9 A.M., and the only sounds I could
hear was the wind from outside blowing against the front doors.

I grabbed a paper cup from the kitchen
island and poured myself some tap water. I downed all of it and then poured
myself some more. I took a step forward, enjoying the touch of the cold water
against my dry throat, and looked into the family room area, where the TV was
turned on, with the sound on mute. A blanket was resting on the couch, sprawled
over three of the cushions, as if somebody has been sleeping underneath it last
night.

Before I investigated the blanket drama
further, however, I noticed, for the first time, as I finally started snapping
out of my daze, the annoying manner in which my sweatpants were bunching up
against my feet. I leaned down to pull the bottom of my sweatpants up, when I
stopped myself.

Oh my God.

My sweatpants weren’t just falling down a
little bit more than usual. They were crashing against the hardwood floor as if
I had put on a pair this morning five sizes too big. I swallowed again, this
time not because my throat was still dry, but because I was terrified.

No. No, no, no.

I slowly brought my hand up my body,
caressing my awkward, bony legs, rubbing the tips of my fingers against my
small, flattened butt. Then I took both of my hands and placed them underneath
my t-shirt, where I felt my protruding ribcage, and my hardened, boyish
nipples.
  

I thought I was going to be sick. When I
turned my head to the left, it took my brain a few seconds to recognize I had
even moved. I was getting woozy by the second, and I wondered if I was going to
be able to make it downstairs to my bathroom to see for myself the awful,
honest truth.

“It’s happening
again,” I said out loud.

After pulling the bottom of my sweatpants
up to the tips of my knees, I roamed downstairs, into the hallway and toward my
bathroom.

It was finally starting to click.

She
called me a baby,
I
thought.
She called me a baby!

I stepped into
the bathroom, slapping myself in the face a few times just to confirm that I
wasn’t having another nightmare. I most definitely wasn’t.

I turned on the
light and immediately threw off my t-shirt, not to impress any teenage girls
across the way, but to see the damage that had been done. I needed to see the
striking differences.

I kept my eyes
closed for a moment. I didn’t want to open them. But I finally did.

My six-pack from
the last two days was gone. And the subtle build-up of fat from the days prior
to those was gone, too. There wasn’t an inch of fat on me. My stomach was as
thin as an iron board, not in a way that suggested I had been starving myself
in the last twenty-four hours, but in a way that suggested I had been sent back
in time a decade, when I was able to consume anything my heart desired and
still maintain a svelte figure.

Last year when my stomach ballooned into
the size of a basketball, I asked Dad to give me liposuction. Now I’d be
prepared to ask him for fat injections!

The lack of hair
wasn’t the issue, anymore; the issue was the lack of growth, the lack of
substance in my body.

I grabbed my
measuring tape from the drawer furthest to the left. I had measured myself
again last night. I had still been five-ten.

Here goes nothing.

I measured
myself again, my whole body tensing. I hadn’t puked since Mrs. Gordon licked my
nipples last May, but I thought I might finally upchuck again if my worst fears
came true.

I backed away
from the wall and looked at the top of the measuring tape.

Five-seven.

“You’ve gotta be
kidding me.”

Did you really think it wasn’t going to
happen again, Cameron? Did you? How naïve are you?

I stepped toward
the middle of the bathroom. I wasn’t sure whether to vomit or just start
bawling my eyes out. I figured I’d do whatever came first.

I leaned myself
forward against the sink and tossed aside all my cosmetics to allow my arms to
rest on the counter. I closed my eyes again, but I didn’t know why. There was
no hiding from the truth now. There was no denying that Liesel had gone against
her so-called magic sabbatical and cast a spell on me Saturday night.

At least she’s not repeating herself
, I thought.
At least she keeps things original.

I didn’t laugh.
Instead, I opened my eyes, revealing a face I hadn’t seen in years. It was the
face of someone I had tried to forget.

My face sported
nearly a dozen pimples, ranging in size from a grain of salt toward the bottom
of my chin to the size of a blueberry on the edge of my right cheek. My jaw
dropped, and I started to breathe erratically, as if I were suffering a panic
attack.

I’d had an acne
problem for six months during my freshman year of high school, until my dad
fixed me right up with a set of acne-fighting herbal cleansers.

The revolting
pimples had been a daily problem. But just for a short while.

Back when I was a freshman, in high
school.

When I was fifteen years old.

“I’m fifteen
again,” I said out loud. “I’m fif—”

I collapsed to
the floor and threw up in the toilet.

Then I called
Liesel.

---

It took ten
minutes to find a shirt and pair of shorts that would actually fit my new,
tinier, slender body, and then I had to spend another full minute in the car moving
the driver’s seat as far up as it would go. A lot of changes were taking place,
and I knew the only happy truth to get me through the day was that Liesel would
fix me and my newfound problem by the end of her extended lunch break.

I wonder what she’ll do to fix me this
time…

I already called
Liesel once from the bathroom. She said it was near impossible to get away from
her shift until noon, but I begged her, telling her something catastrophic was
again happening to my body, and she told me she’d figure out a way to meet me.
Idlewild Park, near the hospital, and just five blocks from Uncle Tony’s,
seemed the ideal place. She said to meet at the swings. Again.

The swings…

I pulled off
California Avenue and started speeding through a school zone. Taking a short
cut to the park, I realized I was passing my sister’s middle school. There were
no kids outside, and I was confused why the 15 M.P.H. sign was blinking. I made
it to the end of the street, and then took two more rights, until I could see
the park up ahead.

I picked up my
phone and tried Liesel again, just to make sure she was already there or, at
least, on her way.

She picked up
after the first ring. “Cam?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“OK, I’m walking
to the swings,” she said. “My boss doesn’t know I’m here. I could get in real
trouble for this—”

“Forget about
your
job
, Leese!” I shouted, frantic,
terrified. “I’m having a major problem here!”

“I’ll fix it,
Cam. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it. Relax. I’m here now.”

“Thank God for
that. OK. I’m a minute away. I’ll meet you at the swings.”

“OK.”

I tossed the
phone on the passenger seat and entered one of the many entrances to the park.
I passed a large, public swimming pool, which looked closed due to the chilly weather.
I passed two tennis courts, and an abandoned mini amusement park that was only
operational in the summer. I sped up a little as I started driving alongside
the Truckee River, which was roaring with violent life like I’d never seen it
before. I could see the baseball stadium up ahead. The jungle gym, slide, and
swings, were just past it.

Almost there, Leese. Oh God, please fix
me. Please fix me.

I sped past the
stadium and then made a left turn into a large parking lot, which only housed
two cars at the moment. The blue car on the left was Liesel’s.

I pulled up next
to her car, turned off the ignition, and looked through the windshield.

There she was,
not swinging happily on any one of the four swings, but standing next to them,
her arms crossed, wearing her dorky green restaurant garb, tapping her feet
against the dirt like she was getting impatient.

I looked down,
grabbed my phone, and took a deep breath.
Let’s
do this.

I opened the
door and stepped out onto the gravel pavement, taken by surprise by not only
the fierce winds but the cold temperatures, particularly freezing for mid
April.