Against Medical Advice Read Free Page B

the urge to twist my head is gone. For now, anyway.
    A day or two later, I’m in the kitchen and I’m about to eat breakfast with my sister, Jessie. Jessie is only eight months older than I am. My parents adopted her when my mom thought she couldn’t have children of her own. Then Mom got pregnant with me
that same week.
Jessie may be only a little older than I am, but she’s years ahead of me in just about every other way.
    This morning I’m thinking about armies of bugs and germs. So there I am at breakfast, getting extremely disgusted by the idea that they could get inside my body somehow.
    Then I see a big hairy horsefly buzzing overhead.
    “Get it away from me!” I yell to anyone who can help. “Get it away, get it away!”
    “Do you know what flies do every time they land?” Jessie says to me.
    “What?”
    “Throw up or go to the bathroom.”
    I’m so disgusted by this thought that as the fly lands near my plate, I start gagging.
    My mother sees me and tries to swat the fly with a dishcloth, but she misses. The idea of its insect guts being smeared on the countertop makes me almost throw up again, and I beg her not to kill the fly.
    “Please, Mommy,
don’t!
” I screech.
    Still, I’m very hungry. Last night the spaghetti Mom served made me think of a bunch of long, skinny white worms, and I went to bed without eating supper.
    Jessie lifts a forkful of pancakes dripping with maple syrup, and I get past my bug thoughts long enough to do the same.
    Enjoying her meal, she turns to me to see if I like it as much as she does. So there’s absolutely no reason why, without any warning, I spit my mouthful of pancakes right in her face.
    Jessie is so shocked that she just sits there, covered with food. Then she starts screaming.
    “Don’t do that again,” my mother scolds loudly. “Tell your sister you’re sorry.”
    I should feel bad, but instead I’m mostly fascinated with the impact of my spitting.
    “Sorry, Jessie.” Then I repeat, “Sorry, Jessie.”
    For some reason the word
sorry
stays in my mind. I want to say
sorry
again.
    “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, Jessie. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
    Repeating the same word over and over makes everyone even more angry at me.
    After a while Jessie calms down and we continue to eat, but the urge strikes again, and I can’t help spitting another mouthful of pancakes at her.
    This time her earsplitting scream brings my father running — and when he leans in to scold me, I spit right in his face, too. He’s so surprised, he doesn’t know what to do, except wipe his face with a towel.
    “You’ll have to leave the kitchen,” my mother says, more serious than I’ve ever heard her. Actually, she looks more worried than angry. She doesn’t understand why I’m doing this spitting thing any more than I do.
    Instead of listening to her, I reach for more food to do it again. She takes the plate away just in time.
    “Sorry, Dad. Sorry. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Jessie. Sorry.”
    “That’s the worst thing you can do to people,” my father tells me, still dabbing wet spots on his cheeks. “The
worst
, Cory.”
    “Sorry, Dad. Sorry,” I say, making a silly face.
    I jump off my chair and take off to the family room, hooting as I run. I can’t understand what’s happening or what I’m doing. I love my family and would never spit at them.
    This isn’t me.
    So who is it?

Chapter 7
    AFTER I’VE SPENT a few more days on Ritalin, the totally new things I feel compelled to do keep shocking all of us.
    And they change from day to day.
    My parents tell Dr. Laufton they want me to stop taking the drug, but she says we have to give it a chance to work and allow my body time to adjust to it. I think that if the doctor had to live in my body
for even a few minutes,
she’d never give out that advice again.
    Later that week at dinner, my father is at my side, showing me how to use my knife and fork.
    “You feeling better today?” he asks.
    Right away I answer, “You feeling