“You were here then?”
“Just wheeled in.”
I take a really good look at him. He’s got a cherubic face, all round cheeks and pug nose. Big, dark, almost-girl-pretty eyes guarded by eyebrows knit together in an expression of annoyance and suspicion. It’s all topped off by a huge mushroom cloud of kinky hair. Calhoun High. Fourth-floor bathroom.
“You’re the gamer,” I say.
“Four-time Captain Carnage champ. It’s Gonzo, if you don’t remember. Well, my full name is Paul Ignacio Gonzales, but everybody calls me Gonzo.”
“Cameron. Smith.”
“Yeah, I know.” Gonzo scrambles up onto his bed, which is like watching somebody’s kid brother try to do it. “So. You’re the guy with mad cow disease. Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow.”
“Wow, wow, wow.” Pause. “That is some crazy shit, dude. How’d you get that?”
“Nobody really knows,” I say.
“Hey, no offense, but isn’t that fatal?”
Nobody’s come out and said it so directly. Gonzo’s just gone up a notch in my book. “Yeah. Supposed to be. They’ve got me on some experimental stuff.”
“Man. That sucks.” Gonzo adjusts his bed. The back rises up with a mechanical groan till he’s at a ninety-degree angle.
“So … what are you in here for?” I ask.
“Me? I’m in here a few times a year.”
“Oh,” I say, not sure if it has something to do with his Little Person status.
Gonzo pours his can of Rad XL soda into a plastic cup and swigs it, following up with an impressive belch. “My mom’s always convinced that there’s something terrible wrong with me and that I’m going to die. If I get a rash, she thinks it’s beri-beri. If I lose a little weight, she thinks I’ve got colon cancer or a tapeworm. If I get a cold she thinks it’s pneumonia. I think I hold the record for most chest X-rays ever performed on a single human being under the age of twenty.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Me too.” I take another sip of my water. “What are you here for this time?”
“I took this growth hormone?” he says, like he’s not sure whether he took it or not. “It was supposed to help me get taller. Didn’t work. You probably figured that out already. Anyway, the stuff was made from cows—there was this whole class-action lawsuit—so when my mom read about you in the paper, she kinda freaked, wanted them to, you know, test my blood and stuff, make sure I wasn’t gonna … you know, go bovine.” His smile pushes his cheeks up like Venetian blinds, till his eyes have nowhere to go but into a squint.
“So,” I say. “What’s the word? Is your brain sponging out even as we speak?”
“No, dude. I’m good. But I’ve had this bad cough, too, so you know, gotta do the old chest X-ray and rule out pneumonia. Or TB. Or lung cancer.”
The phone beside Gonzo’s bed rings. He lets it ring twice, like he doesn’t want to pick it up, but the third ring he cuts short.
“Hi, Mom. Nah, I’m okay. Lunch? Some kind of gross, pureed chicken thing with mashed potatoes and carrots, a little pudding. Mom, how could the chicken be poisoned—it’s in a hospital? I’m not being mean. ¡No soy malo! Okay. Okay, okay, siento. Yes, they took me for the spinal. No. No meningitis, so I’m cool. Mom, I don’t have a brain tumor. I don’t! What do you mean? What article? Well that doesn’t mean … but not every dwarf gets it!”
Gonzo shifts down low in the bed. “When are you coming by? Can you bring me some books? My Big Philly Cheese Steaks CDs? Oh, and my Star Fighter DVD.”
Of course he’s a Star Fighter guy.
“All right. You too. Mom. I can’t. I can’t.” He sighs, then lowers his voice. “Love you, too.”
The minute Gonzo hangs up, he grabs an asthma inhaler from his bedside table, puts it in his mouth, and takes two huge puffs, finally letting everything out in a big exhale and a few dry hacks.
“You okay?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah, dude. My mom was just freaking me out a little, that’s all. I’m her only kid. She raised me totally on her own and shit. My dad wasn’t up for kids, especially not a dwarf kid.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Hey, you like the Copenhagen Interpretation?” Gonzo asks. “Got the remix of ‘Words for Snow.’ Did you see the commercial they cut to that song for Rad XL: ‘For when you’re too much for any other soda!’? Dude, it is severe! Hey, do you like Star Fighter?”