This Will Only Hurt a Little(20)
My mom liked Ben all right. His parents were also Catholic, even though they went to a church where my mom “didn’t like the music.” But Ben certainly knew how to be polite around them, calling them Mr. and Mrs. Philipps and looking them right in the eyes.
“He seems like a very nice boy, Biz. I just do not understand those pants! But you know, your grandmother never understood the way my girlfriends and I liked wearing our glasses down on our noses in high school. We thought we looked so great!”
“Cool, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes.
As the month wore on, I was getting ready to leave again for the fancy performing arts camp in upstate New York. This time Emily wasn’t coming, but I’d gotten my friend Ami to go with me, since we both did theater. We were super excited, but the idea of leaving Ben for three weeks was really painful to me. I promised I would call him as much as I could and write him every single day, and he promised to do the same. He even gave me a letter to open on the plane.
The Saturday before I was leaving for camp, my favorite band of all time, the Stone Temple Pilots, were playing at Desert Sky Pavilion, and Kendra scored us third-row seats for my birthday. I was feeling super run-down, but I thought it was just summer school and the heat and staying up late every night on the phone with my new boyfriend. Kendra’s dad dropped us off and we made our way down to the front. I had scribbled a message on a shirt that I wanted to throw onstage. The hope being, obviously, that Scott Weiland would get the shirt, read the message on it and then what? Call me and Kendra maybe? I think we put our phone numbers on it. Anyway, I don’t remember much of the concert. I do remember passing out against a huge sweaty dude, really the first and only time I’ve ever passed out. He yelled at Kendra, “Get your drunk friend off of me!!!”
The thing is, we weren’t drunk.
“Kendra. I think I have to go. I feel really weird. . . .”
“No! You just need some water! It’s like a million degrees out! Plus, they haven’t played ‘Creep’ yet! We can’t leave before that!”
She had a point. We went and bought some water and I started to feel a little better. We heard them play “Creep” and hugged each other and cried and I lamely threw the T-shirt onto the stage and then watched as it just sat there sadly for the rest of the show.
When I got home I went into my mom’s room and started crying hysterically. This is actually a trait that I still have. If I have a fever, sometimes the only way I’ll know is because I’ll start hysterically crying out of nowhere.
“Oh, honey!” she said, putting a hand to my forehead. “You’re burning up!”
She took my temperature: 103. She gave me Tylenol and put me to bed, and then, since I was supposed to leave for camp in two days, she took me to the doctor the very next day.
“It looks like it could be strep or it could be mono or maybe just a viral infection,” he said. “We won’t know until the tests come back in a few days.”
“Well, Busy’s leaving for camp tomorrow,” my mom told him. “She’s going to camp. We already had to defer last year because of the knee incident!”
I slept the rest of the day, waking only to talk to Ben on the phone when he got home from his job at the grocery store where he worked. The next morning, bleary eyed and with my throat almost swollen shut, I said goodbye to my parents and boarded a flight to New Jersey. I found the camp bus easily when I got off the plane and made it there with no issue. I was excited to see Ami, but I felt terrible. It didn’t seem like I was getting better. In fact, I felt much, much worse.
I took a top bunk but had no energy to put away any of my things. I skipped the welcome bonfire and instead fell asleep immediately. When I woke up the next morning, the whole cabin was discussing my insane snoring. On the way to breakfast, I threw up twice. I tried my best to make it through the rest of the day, until finally my counselor found me and led me to the infirmary. My parents were called; options were discussed. My mom felt terrible. I spent exactly one week at French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, the whole time in the infirmary. I remember hearing a few years ago that Adam Levine attended French Woods, and since we’re the same age, I like to think he was there while I was, out living his best future-rock-star camp life, while I was asleep in the only building with air conditioning, trying not to die. And maybe, if I hadn’t been so run-down and so me, I would’ve been out there too. And maybe Adam Levine would’ve become my camp boyfriend and I would’ve forgotten all about Ben Miller and everything that was about to happen wouldn’t have happened. But I wouldn’t meet Adam until many, many years later, and, as it turns out, I’m not really his type.
My mono test came back positive, and since it was then clear that I wouldn’t be getting better anytime soon, it was decided I should leave camp. My dad used his miles to upgrade me to first class for my trip home, since my parents both felt so terrible about how sick I was. The drive to the airport was super weird—they had a groundskeeper take me in his van. He immediately asked if he could smoke on the drive, which I thought was strange, but since I had a hard time seeing a way to say no, I said of course it was totally cool! I wish I could smoke! I’m just too sick! Otherwise, PASS THOSE SMOKES! He smoked the whole way and talked nonstop. I was trying to keep my eyes open but I was just so sick.
Later, as I was waiting to board my flight, I saw a businessman chatting with the flight attendant. He had gray hair and an easy smile, and I remember feeling oddly comforted by his presence. Adding to my terrible case of mono was the fact that I was an incredibly nervous flyer. The summer between third and fourth grade, one of my best friends and her whole family were killed in a commercial plane crash. I remember I knew there was a crash from the news, and I knew that my friend and her parents and brother were coming back from visiting family in Detroit, because she and I were supposed to play My Little Ponies that week. But my parents didn’t know that they were on the flight until the newspaper printed the names of all those on board a few days later. My mom was trying to figure out how to tell me when I snuck into the kitchen and read the article myself, scanning until I found my friend’s name: Megan Briggs, 7. It was obviously devastating and almost impossible to understand as a child. But what I did understand was that plane crashes happen, and since they’re so random, they can happen anytime. For years, every time I would be on a plane taking off, I would think of Megan and her family. So needless to say, I always looked for things to comfort me on planes, and still do. A baby or a group of teenagers or a priest or someone really famous, and I would decide that my plane, this plane, couldn’t possibly go down. I know it doesn’t fully make sense but that’s how these things work. They don’t really make sense.