The one thing I will say for California is that everyone here is so good-looking. On the one side, it sucks because it will only make my scars stand out more when everyone around me looks so perfect all the time. On the other hand, though, I enjoy spending time with cute guys just as much as the next girl, and my entire new rehabilitation team is gorgeous. This is nice because it makes all the time I have to spend with each of them so much more pleasant.
My dietician and my nurse are both hot guys in their thirties. My dietician is also a part-time personal trainer. I’ve never been much of an exerciser, but the guy makes me want to join a gym. My physical therapist is only twenty-eight and is downright mouthwatering. He seriously looks like he belongs on TV and not in my living room, forcing me to exercise until I feel like crying. Physical therapy these past two weeks has been something I almost look forward to. Almost.
I gasped at an unexpected surge of pain and held my breath so that I wouldn’t cry out.
“Come on, Ella, just one more. I know you can do it. All the way to your shoes this time.”
I wanted to cry, but I did one more toe touch because Daniel smiled at me with so much confidence that I couldn’t let him down. And I swear he batted his eyelashes. I pushed my fingers toward the floor, stretching my new skin in some of the tightest places. I knew physical therapy was supposed to be hard—it takes the phrase “no pain, no gain” literally—but I just couldn’t make my fingers reach my shoes. My whole body was burning. Tears pricked my eyes and I stood back up. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I feel like my body is going to rip open any second.”
Daniel frowned—not in frustration or disappointment, but out of concern for me. The action was swoonworthy. “You reached your shoes once on Monday. Are you doing your exercises every day like we talked about?”
“Yes, but I think my skin hates the California air. It’s been irritating me all week.”
“Let me see,” Daniel demanded. I pulled up my shirt a little so he could inspect my back, and lifted my pant legs for him to get a good look behind my knees. “Why didn’t you say something sooner? I shouldn’t have been pushing you so hard. You’re not scratching, right?”
“I’m trying not to.”
“And sun exposure? No sunbathing on the back patio? No trips to the beach?”
“Yeah,” I scoffed. “Parading around in public in a swimsuit is on the top of my to-do list. I haven’t even left the house once since I got here. I’m practically a vampire now.”
Daniel stopped inspecting my skin and frowned again. This time I was in trouble. “First of all, the beach is amazing and you’d love it. Next summer when your skin is stronger, I’ll take you there myself.” Delicious Daniel, in nothing but a pair of swim shorts? That would almost be worth the stares. “And second, when is your nurse coming?”
“Not until Monday.”
“That’s not soon enough. You’re way too dry. Your skin’s still adjusting to the climate change. Cali’s a lot drier than the East Coast.”
“My hair would agree with you.”
Daniel laughed and began rummaging through his backpack, seemingly on a mission. “Aha! I do have some with me.” He pulled out a bottle of mineral oil and grinned. “Go change and I’ll give you a rub down. Your mom has a massage table, right? I thought she said that last time I was here.”
I didn’t realize I’d frozen until the playful smile on Daniel’s face fell.
“She’s not my mom,” I said, though that wasn’t what had my stomach suddenly tied in knots. “And yes, she has one, but you don’t have to do that. I’m sure I’ll be fine until Monday.”
He’d seen my scars already, but an arm or a leg here and there was different than witnessing the whole picture at once.
Daniel looked me straight in the eye, as if he knew exactly what my hesitation was. “Ella.” His voice was gentle but stern. “You’ll be cracked and bleeding by Monday. We can’t risk tearing your grafts. You don’t want another surgery, do you?”
“No.” My voice shook as I wrestled with my emotions.
“If you’re that uncomfortable with me, I can call Cody or you can have one of your parents do it, but it has to get done today.”
As if I’d have my dad or Jennifer do it.
I hated when my nurse had to see me just as much as I’d hate for Daniel to see, so there was no sense in asking him to call Cody. I took a deep breath and nodded. “Sorry. You’re right. It’s fine. I’ll go change.”
“Good girl.” Daniel smiled at me so sincerely full of pride that it tugged at my insides. “You’re one of my bravest patients, you know that?”
I managed to laugh. “I bet you say that to all your patients.”
Daniel grinned. “I do, but I really mean it with you.”
“I bet you say that to all of them, too.” With a roll of my eyes, I headed for my bedroom to put on a dreaded bikini.
When I finally built up the courage to walk out of my bedroom, Daniel had already set up the massage table in the living room. I held my breath, but when he looked up, he smiled as if nothing were different. There wasn’t a second’s hesitation. Not even a flinch. He simply patted the table.
That’s why I loved doctors. The staff in the burn center in Boston was all exactly the same as Daniel. To them, I was just another person. During my stay there, I’d even fooled myself into thinking life wouldn’t be so bad.
On my trip from Boston to LA, I’d had on shoes, pants, and a long-sleeve shirt. The only scars that had been visible were on my right hand, and of course I walked with a limp. People stared as if I were an alien with three heads. They whispered and pointed and flinched. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to leave the house in a tank top and shorts.
Building up a little courage, I headed toward him, but when I came into the room Jennifer saw me. She’d been carrying a couple of glasses full of lemonade and when she caught sight of me with all my scars exposed, she gasped and her eyes glossed over with tears. She had to set the glasses down and sit. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Rich said it was bad, but I had no idea…I’m so sorry, Ella.” She looked up at me and flinched again. “Excuse me,” she said, and then all but ran upstairs to her room.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Daniel gave me a minute to compose myself and then gently took my hand. “Do you need help up?”
Normally I would have tried to do it myself, but this time I let him lift me onto the table. I lay down on my stomach first because I wasn’t ready to look at him. I couldn’t after I’d just made my stepmother run from the room.
“I don’t know why my dad paid for in-home care,” I grumbled as Daniel began to soak my sensitive skin in mineral oil. “The burn center’s not that far away. I would have much rather gone there to do all this stuff.”
Daniel was quiet for a moment and then he said, “I wish I could tell you that it’s going to get better. It’s never going to be easy, Ella. People are always going to react—some worse than others.”
“At least the stepwitches aren’t home. Jennifer may be tactless, but at least she tries to be nice. Witch One and Witch Two make the devil sound tame.”
Daniel sighed. “Look at the bright side. You’ll always be able to tell who your real friends are. Someday when you decide to settle down and get married, you’re only going to get the absolute best cream of the crop for a husband.”
I snorted. As if there were any chance that someone would date me now, much less choose to be stuck with me for the rest of his life.
“Don’t you dare laugh at the idea that someone would love you, Ella. Flip,” he demanded. When I rolled onto my back, he tried to make a mad face at me. He wasn’t very good at it. “You are smart, witty, and strong. And you’re beautiful.”
“Again, you’re my doctor. You have to say that.”
Daniel didn’t laugh. He looked straight down at me, as serious as I’d ever seen him. “Breathtakingly beautiful,” he insisted. “You have eyes that could haunt a man’s dreams.”
I wanted to make a joke, but something in Daniel’s face made it impossible, so I just whispered “Thanks” as my face turned bright red.
“There are people out there that will be able to see past your scars to the girl inside,” Daniel said, “but you’re not going to find them if you hide away in this house all day. Don’t think I forgot about that, missy. I’m warning you now that I am totally going to rat you out to Dr. Parish.”
I groaned. My sessions with my psychiatrist were almost more painful than my physical therapy.
“Don’t give me that face. It’s for your own good. Sitting around this house all day is not what you should be doing, and you know it. You can digress, Ella. You don’t want all your past months of hard work to go to waste.”
“But I’m doing my exercises every day. I promise I am.”
“It’s not the same. You need to be active. You need the variety in your movements. You need to be doing all those things that you used to do without ever thinking about it. Besides, you’ll get depressed, and then you’ll stop working so hard. Then I’ll look bad and your dad will fire me. You might want to get rid of me, but I promise you any replacement he finds will torture you just as much—only they won’t be as cool as me.”
The man had a point. If only everyone were half as cool as Daniel.
My father came into the room then and silently examined my skin as Daniel finished moisturizing it. His brows fell low over his eyes and he pointed at my skin. “Why is she like this?” He’d been there to witness many a rub downs when I was in the hospital in Boston, so he could see the difference.
My father was looking at Daniel, so I let Daniel answer the question. “She’s used to the humidity in Boston. You might want to have her nurse check on her more frequently until her body has time to adjust to the California weather.”
Dad nodded. “I’ll call Cody today. Is she okay to leave the house like this? I need to take her to register for school.”
Ugh. Physical therapy, horrifying my stepmother to tears, dry skin, extra visits from my nurse, and still, my day just miraculously got a lot worse. Amazing.
Daniel—who was self-aware enough to realize that talking about people as if they weren’t in the room when they were actually standing right there was beyond rude—spoke to me when he answered my father. He winked and said, “The fresh air will be good for you.”
. . . . .
My father enrolled me in the same fancy private school the twins went to. The closest I’d ever been to private school was watching teen dramas on TV. The school claimed a 98% success rate for their college placement program. My high school in Boston sported metal detectors and boasted a 63% graduation rate.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the school required uniforms. They went with the traditional white polo shirts, or turtlenecks in the winter, and navy blue pleated skirts. I’d spent the summer locked up in the house, and the few occasions my dad and Jennifer had forced me out in public I’d covered myself head to toe. Now they expected me to go to school wearing short sleeves and a knee-length skirt? Didn’t they understand how mean teenagers were?
My father was all smiles as we got back in the car after our meeting with the principal. “So?” he asked. “What do you think? Are you excited? It’s nice, isn’t it?”
It was too nice. The school was caged in behind enormous iron gates and a guard shack, and was perched on a giant sprawling lawn. It was made up of a number of smaller buildings that were connected by covered archways, reminding me of an old mission. I could hardly believe the place was a high school.
As Dad navigated us out of the parking lot, my heart started fluttering in that familiar way I’ve come to recognize as a panic attack. I turned fully sideways in my seat and grasped his arm. “Dad, please don’t make me go there.”
He was startled by my sudden intensity. “Why, what’s wrong?”
“School is going to be hard enough as it is. Please, please, please don’t make it worse for me. That place is crazy. At least in public school I’ll know what I’m getting into—same crap, different school. The doctors said I needed ‘familiar.’ That”—I waved my hand toward the school behind us—“is not familiar. I can’t do it. Don’t make me go there.”
My panic was one hundred percent sincere, but my dad had the nerve to laugh at me. He brushed my anxiety off as if it were nothing. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be fine there, you’ll see.”
“Why can’t I do online school? I could probably make up the time I missed and get my diploma in a few weeks instead of repeating my whole senior year.”
“You know why you can’t do online school. Your doctors have all told you the importance of getting you back into a normal routine as soon as possible. The longer you stay a shut-in, the harder it will be for you to ever live a normal life.”
I scoffed at that. “You think I’ll ever live a normal life again?”
“What do you want me to do, Ella? I’m just trying to follow the doctors’ orders. I’m trying to do what’s best for you.”
I wanted to scream. He didn’t have any idea what was best for me. “Fine. Can I at least go to a public school, then?”
My dad looked appalled by the suggestion. “Why on Earth would you want to do that?”
“Uh, no uniforms, for starters, and because kids are allowed to express themselves there and be individuals. There will be a lot more freaks. I’d have a much better chance at blending in.”
“You’re not a freak.”
I shot my dad a disbelieving look, daring him to say that again. He didn’t.
“Even if I weren’t crippled and scarred, I wouldn’t want to go to that school. I’m not like Jennifer’s daughters. I don’t belong at some snooty, over-privileged, fancy rich-kid school.”
“You’re being very judgmental, Ella. At least give it a chance before you decide you hate it.”
“But—”
“Besides, no daughter of mine is going to go to public school when I can provide her with a better education.”
I found that completely offensive, considering my entire education thus far had been from public school. “It didn’t seem to bother you last year,” I snapped. “But then, I guess I wasn’t really your daughter last year, was I? Or all the years I attended public school before that.”
My dad froze, his expression sliding into a serious poker face. I could only take that to mean I’d really pissed him off or hurt his feelings. Probably both, but it didn’t matter at that point. I was too angry, too scared, and I missed my mom too much to care what the man who’d left us thought.
“You’re already enrolled. I’m not sending you to public school. End of discussion.”
I shut my mouth and flopped back in my seat, opting to stay silent and glare out the window the rest of the way home. End of discussion? Fine. I didn’t care if that was the last discussion we ever had.