Moonface Read Online Free

him that nothing had changed, that, in fact, the elastic in my socks had made deep pits into my fat skin, he said two words: “Come home.”
    I heard the concern in his voice, but I didn’t want to go.
    I had recently gotten the attention of a particular boy in my philosophy class who was, for the most part, oblivious to my existence. There were other boys who were looking at me, too, I think. Also, I had done my first beer bong and keg stand, without spitting beer out of my mouth like an amateur. More recently, I had obtained a decent, authentic-looking West Virginia driver’s license from two guys in the next dorm over who had bought a gold-colored blanket for a picture background and invested in a laminating machine. With a good ID I could get into any Baltimore bar I pleased within the five-mile radius of our sheltered campus, where the doormen—who were mostly seniors at my school—would take one look at the ID and then at my boyish hip bones and my fresh face and let me in anyway.
    I didn’t want to leave because it felt like my life was just beginning—a life in which I didn’t worry what would happen if I stayed up late or if I stood outside without a coat. To relinquish such a status so early in the game, even for just one weekend, would offset any hopes I had for status or consistency, for making a name for myself in the partying world on campus.
    I got a ride home that weekend, not the least bit concerned about the state of my health. I knew my father could make the swelling in my ankles go away, just as he had so easily done with my other ailments in the past. As soon as I left campus, I was hurrying to get back.
    â€œMy anak ,” my mother said, pulling my head down to her chest as I walked into the house, not yelling now, but clinging to me and not letting go. My father pulled my feet up on the couch, looked at my ankles, and shook his head.
    I began missing classes shortly after then, sometimes weeks at a time, as my father dragged me from one hospital to another, to doctors with blood pressure machines and needles and tongue depressors who told me to wait in the other room as they talked to my folks in private. I sat outside reading magazines, and when they came out and asked me if I had questions for them, I said, “Yeah—when am I going back to school?”
    On car rides home, my parents yelled at me for not paying attention to the doctors, and told me to stop complaining about my puffy face and what the medications were doing to me. At the hospital, the doctors pulled my father aside in the hallway and said, “I think she’s more concerned about the aesthetics of this disease than what’s happening to her.” I overheard that and thought it might be true.
    I went back to school for a time, and then a result from my blood test required me to come home again. My dad drove down to Baltimore by himself this time, and picked me up and took me back to Pittsburgh. I stood in the parking lot waiting for him while girls walked by and said, “Going out tonight?”
    I said, sadly, “No, going home,” without an explanation.
    This went on for weeks, all a blur for me, as I scrambled to get my missed assignments when I got back to the dorm, and as Marsha recounted the weekends for me, telling me who had hooked up with whom, and who had beat up whom, and I was so jealous of her and her big ballooning tits bouncing as she talked with her big Italian gestures.
    Then, just when I got home for winter break, when I thought I’d finally have time to relax after trying to play catch-up all semester, a doctor with a thick German accent and a white lab coat brought us into his office. His eyes were warm and understanding across the table, and he spoke slowly. “You have Glomerulonephritis , which is a kidney disease. Your kidneys are failing, and now we’re going to have to treat them. It may work with medication or may not. I don’t