Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

“That sounds kind of fun-”

“You can’t come, Amelia. It’s for people like me .”

I knew you didn’t mean to sound like such a snot, but it still hurt to be cut out. I mean, who else was left to ignore me? First Mom, then Emma, now even my little disabled sister was dissing me. “Well, I wasn’t inviting myself,” I said, stung. “I have somewhere to go anyway.” But I watched you wheel yourself into the pack as one of the nurses called the first group of kids to head toward the pool. You were giggling, whispering with a girl who had a bumper sticker on the back of her chair: HOGWARTS DROPOUT.

I wandered out of the kiddie zone and into the main hallway of conference rooms. I had no idea what presentation my mother was planning to attend, but before I could even think about that, one of the signs outside the doors caught my attention: TEENS ONLY. I poked my head inside and saw a collection of kids my age with OI-some in wheelchairs, some just standing-batting around balloons.

Except they weren’t balloons. They were condoms.

“We’re going to get started,” the woman in the front of the room said. “Hon, can you close the door?”

She was, I realized, talking to me. I didn’t belong here-there were special programs for siblings like me who didn’t have OI. But then again, looking around the room, I could see there were plenty of kids who weren’t as bad off as you were-maybe no one would know my bones were perfectly fine.

Then I noticed the boy from yesterday-the one who’d come over to get that little girl Niamh when we were still registering. He looked like the kind of guy who would play the guitar and make up songs about the girl he loved. I’d always thought it would be amazing to have a guy sing to me; although what on earth could he find interesting enough about me to write a song about? Amelia, Amelia…take off your shirt and let me feel ya?

I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me. The boy grinned, and I lost all sensation in my legs.

I sat down on a stool beside him and pretended I was far too cool to notice the fact that he was close enough for me to feel his body heat. “Welcome,” the woman at the front of the room said. “I’m Sarah, and if you’re not here for Birds and Bees and Breaks, you’re in the wrong place. Ladies and gentlemen, today we’re going to talk about sex, sex, and nothing but sex.”

There was some edgy laughter; the tips of my ears started to burn.

“Nothing like beating around the bush,” the boy beside me said, and then he smiled. “Oops. Bad metaphor.”

I looked around, but he was very clearly speaking to me. “ Very bad,” I whispered.

“I’m Adam,” he said, and I froze. “You’ve got a name, don’t you?”

Well, yeah, but if I told it to him, he might know I wasn’t supposed to be here. “Willow.”

God, that smile again. “That’s a really pretty name,” he said. “It suits you.”

I stared down at the table and blushed furiously. This was a talk about sex, not a lab where we got to do it. And yet, no one had ever said anything to me even remotely resembling a come-on, unless Hey, dork, do you have an extra pencil? counted. Was I subliminally irresistible to Adam because my bones were strong?

“Who can guess what your number one risk is if you have OI and you have sex?” Sarah asked.

A girl’s hand inched up. “Breaking your pelvis?”

The boys behind me snickered. “Actually,” Sarah said, “I have talked to hundreds of people with OI who are sexually active. And the only person I’ve ever known to break a bone during sex did it by falling off the bed.”

This time, everyone laughed out loud.

“If you have OI, the biggest risk in sexual activity is acquiring a sexually transmitted disease, which means”-she looked around the room-“you’re no different from someone without OI who has sex.”

Adam pushed a piece of paper across the table to me. I unfolded it: R U Type I?

I knew enough about your illness to understand why he’d think that. There were people who had Type I OI who went through their whole lives not even knowing it-just breaking a few more bones than ordinary folks. Then again, there were other Type I’s who broke as many bones as you did. Often, Type I’s were taller, and they didn’t always have those heart-shaped faces that you saw on Type IIIs, like you. I was normal height; I wasn’t in a wheelchair, I didn’t have any scoliosis-and I was in a session for kids with OI. Of course he thought I had Type I.

I scribbled on the other side of the paper and passed it back: Actually, I’m a Gemini .

He had really nice teeth. Yours were kind of messed up-that hap pened a lot with OI kids, along with hearing loss-but his looked all Hollywood white and perfectly even, like he could have starred in a Disney Channel movie.

“What about getting pregnant?” a girl asked.

“Anyone with OI-any type-can get pregnant,” Sarah explained. “Your risks would vary, though, depending on your individual situation.”

“Would the baby have OI, too?”

“Not necessarily.”

I thought of that picture I’d seen in the magazine, of the lady with Type III who’d had a baby in her arms nearly the same size as she was. The problem wasn’t with the plumbing, though. It was with the partner. Every day wasn’t an OI convention; each of these kids was probably the only one with OI in his or her school. I tried to fast-forward you to my age. If I couldn’t even get a guy to notice my existence, how would you -tiny, freakishly smart, in your wheelchair or walker? I felt my hand rising, as if a balloon were attached to the wrist. “There’s just one problem with that,” I said. “What if nobody ever wants to have sex with you?”

Instead of the laughter I expected, there was dead silence. I looked around, stunned. Was I not the only person my age absolutely positively sure I was going to die a virgin?

“That,” Sarah said, “is a really good question. How many of you had a boyfriend or girlfriend when you were in fifth or sixth grade?” A smattering of hands rose. “How many of you have had a boyfriend or girlfriend after that?”

Two hands, out of twenty.

“A lot of kids who don’t have OI will be put off by a wheelchair, or by the fact that you don’t look the same way they do. And it’s totally clichéd, but believe me, those are the kids you don’t want to be with anyway. You want someone who cares about who you are, not what you are. And even if you have to wait for that, it’s going to be worth it. All you have to do is look around you at this convention to see that people with OI fall in love, get married, have sex, get pregnant-not necessarily in that order.” As the room broke up laughing again, she began to walk among us, handing out condoms and bananas.

Maybe this was a lab after all.

I had seen couples here who clearly both had OI; I’d seen couples where one partner did and one didn’t. If someone able-bodied fell in love with you, maybe it would take some of the stress off Mom, eventually. Would you come back to a convention like this and flirt with a kid like Adam? Or one of the wild boys who rode his wheelchair up and down the escalator? I couldn’t imagine that was easy on any account-not practically, on a daily basis, and not emotionally, either. Having another person with OI in your life meant you had to worry about yourself and about someone else.

Then again, maybe that had nothing to do with OI, and everything to do with love.

“I think we’re supposed to be partners,” Adam said, and just like that, I couldn’t breathe. Then I realized he was talking about the stupid banana and condom. “You want to go first?”