The True Meaning of Smekday (Smek 1)

“Whoa!” I shouted after her. “Wait a minute!” I ran into the kitchen, and Mom turned to meet me.

“It’s okay, baby,” she said. “I’m not really mad, I just—”

“Shut up!” I said. “I have to tell you—”

“Don’t you tell me to shut up. YOU shut up.”

“Mom—”

“I don’t like this behavior. You’re acting very weird…ly. Weirdly. Is it weird or weirdly?”

“Mom, you have got to get that mole removed,” I said.

“What? Why?” she said, looking confused. “What?”

“It’s bigger than before, and it’s changed color,” I said. “Moles that change size and color, that’s like, a sure sign of cancer.”

Mom began vigorously shaking her head. “I’m not going to let some quack hack me to pieces,” she said.

“But a second ago I saw it glow!”

There was a heavy silence in the kitchen. Mom looked at me like I had feet growing out of my head.

“Glowing moles are definitely cancerous,” I added. I was pretty sure this was a lie, but I hate losing arguments.

Mom hesitated. Then she reached up to her spine and touched the mole gingerly. She didn’t like what she found, I guess, because her hand snapped back and she began to shake her head again, violently, like she had swimmer’s ear. Like she was trying to shake a thought right out of her.

“I’m the grown-up, and you’re the baby,” she said finally, and left the kitchen. It was how a lot of our fights ended. Not this time.

“We can’t just ignore this,” I said slowly, sweetly. “We have to be brave and go to the doctor. Do you remember Dr. Phillips? You thought he was going to be scary, but everything turned out all—”

“Jesus, Gratuity, stop talking to me like that,” said Mom, shooing me away. “This’ll work itself out.”

I huffed. “Oh, yeah. What, like everything else does around here? Yeah, everything else works out, and you never have to worry or think about it or do a thing. But you know why this is different? Because I can’t fix it this time!”

“Oh, Gra—Turtlebear, don’t—”

“I need you to cooperate because I’m not a doctor yet, and I can’t take your mole to have it looked at without you attached to it, so I need you to just do as I say!”

Mom just stood there in a door frame for a really long time looking angry, then something like sad, then angry again.

“We’ll talk in the morning!” she said, and slammed the door. Only, our doors were cheap and lightweight and about as good to slam as a Wiffle ball is to hit.

“Mom…” I sighed. “Mom, you’re—”

The door opened again, and she brushed past me to the other end of the hall.

“I knew it was your room,” she mumbled.

The Shirtless Man Movie had clearly been ruined, so we both went to bed early. But I awoke three hours later on account of the twelve glasses of water I’d had before bed. After a few minutes I was seated at the computer.

I turned it on. I forgot that ours was one of those computers that makes a sound like a choir saying “Ahh” when you turn it on.

“Shh,” I hissed, pressing my hands over the speakers. “Stupid computer.”

I peeked out into the hall. Lights off, no sounds. I settled back into my chair and started the web browser, and went to Doc.Com, one of those medical websites. It loaded a cover story about whooping cough, and a banner ad that suggested I ask my doctor if Chubusil was right for me, and then finally the part where I could enter Mom’s symptoms. I typed:

mole changes size color

After a moment, I added:

glows

and hit RETURN.

The search turned up something like 140 articles, with names like “Do I Have Cancer?” and “Oh, No! Cancer?” and “Okay, So It’s Cancer, Now What?”

Excited, I clicked on the best match and began to read. Maybe moles do glow, I thought. But the first item didn’t mention it. Neither did the second. I read five articles before realizing my search had only turned up results for the words mole, changes, size, and color, except for one that mentioned getting a “healthy glow” in an essay about tanning salons. No mention of glowing moles.

You know that part in the story where the character thinks, I bet I didn’t really see a ghost after all. I bet it was just a sheet. Wearing chains. Floating through our pantry. Shrieking. I bet it was just my imagination. You know how you always kind of hate characters who think that? You hate them, and you know you’d never be so stupid not to know a ghost when you saw one, especially when the title of your story is The Shrieking Specter, for God’s sake, pardon my language.

This is that part of the story.

You see, the problem is, you don’t know you’re in a story. You think you’re just some kid. And you don’t want to believe in the mole, or the ghost, or whatever it is when it’s your turn.

I decided then and there that the mole had not glowed. It was a trick of the light, or a hallucination, or smoke and mirrors, or any one of those things people say that are supposed to explain what happened but don’t. Anyway, I stopped believing the mole glowed. I had to.

It didn’t matter, because I still believed the thing had changed size and color, and that was scary enough. I shut down the computer and crept back down the hall. Pig followed, purring and making little figure eights around my legs. She probably thought she was getting an early breakfast, and when I didn’t acknowledge her she meowed.

For a moment I thought I’d been caught when I heard Mom’s voice from her bedroom. I froze in place, and her voice went on, one word, pause, one word, pause, like she was calling a bingo game. I couldn’t help but be curious, so I padded slowly to her bedroom door. It was ajar, and I put an ear to the crack.

“Tractor,” said Mom.

Tractor? I looked in.

“Gorilla,” she continued, then, “Arancia…Domino…Emendare…Vision…Apparently…Mouse…”

She was lying on her back, talking in her sleep. In English and Italian. And dreaming about the weirdest roll call ever.

I listened a while longer, expecting her to stop, or to say something sensible. I don’t know much Italian, but I knew enough to realize the Italian-to-English dictionary wasn’t going to make any sense out of what I was hearing.

“Lasagna,” said Mom.