The Art of Getting Stared At by Laura Langston

If they agree, then I’ll take it to administration. You’d still have to sign papers releasing the hospital from any responsibility for the final product but it certainly would be a simpler solution.”
    Simple is good. “I’ll talk to Jade and her parents and get back to you later this week.” I stand. “I assume Jade’s in the same room?”
    â€œYes. 307.”
    In the hall, I weave around the lunch cart and wave to Leslie at the nurses’ station but I don’t stop. I’m too busy thinking about what I’ll say to Jade and her parents.
    As I near her room, I hear Jade’s familiar voice. Smiling, I stop in the doorway. Jade rests in a nest of pillows. Her eyes and lips are downcast. My smile dissolves. She’s picking absently at the white hospital blanket. She looks pale and lost and defeated. Her parents, Denver and Latanna, sit on either side of her bed.
    I’m about to say hi when Jade looks over. I give her a tiny wave and force myself to smile again but she doesn’t smile back. She stares right through me like I’m not there. That’s when I realize: she knows me in my wig and costume as Miss Cookie, not in my jeans and green hat as Sloane.
    Feeling foolish, sad, and uncertain, I drop my hand and walk quickly to the elevator. It’s not the right time. I’m scheduled to read to the kids next Monday. I’ll ask her then. But as I get on the elevator and the door closes behind me, I can’t help wondering if the time will ever be right? If Jade’s laughing days are over?

    â€œI have to see your mom before she leaves,” Lexi says a few hours later when we get off the cable car at the turnaround and head for Market Street. We weave around a group of Spanish-speaking tourists, and then pass a flower stand overflowing with buckets of colourful autumn blooms. “I need her to look at my thumb.”
    A woman carrying a Neiman Marcus bag cuts between us. The downtown streets are crowded with shoppers and it’s another minute before I can answer. “Good luck. She’s working in emerg for the next couple of days. And she’s leaving early Saturday morning.”
    â€œThen I’m coming over tomorrow. Look at this.” She sticks her thumb under my nose.
    â€œYeah, so?” I sidestep a busker blocking part of the sidewalk with his open guitar case.
    â€œSeriously. Look.” She thrusts her hand under my nose again. “The cut won’t heal. And isn’t that a red streak? Heading up my wrist?”
    The cut on Lexi’s thumb looks like a perfectly normal, three-day-old cut on its way to healing, but worrying about someone else’s problem, even an imaginary one, is a welcome distraction from thinking about Jade or my hair. “Yeah. You probably shouldn’t wait. You should go to the clinic right away and get it checked.”
    I’ve been checking out my own treatment options lately too, reading up on cortisone, PUVA treatments, drugs with names I can’t pronounce. I want to be informed when I see the specialist.
    â€œIt’s that bad?” Lexi jerks to a stop and stares at her thumb. “Really?”
    â€œIt could be staph.” I keep walking. “You could lose your thumb. Your whole hand even.”
    â€œI knew it!” She moans. “Oh my God !”
    I start to laugh.
    She runs to catch up. “You’re jerking me around.”
    â€œOnly a little.”
    â€œI don’t know why people won’t take me seriously.”
    â€œMaybe because you’re a hypochondriac?” I’m still laughing. Lexi is so fun to tease. “Isn’t Miles always saying so?”
    She sniffs. “Don’t bring up his name. We broke up an hour ago.”
    And an hour from now, they’ll be back together.
    â€œMy health isn’t funny,” she adds. “You shouldn’t be laughing.”
    â€œThink of it as research,” I say as we