Lulu

A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity

Chapter 5 - B.arf M.e O.ut!

by Lulu Martine

 
Alice told me later that there had been a real parade of doctors through my room while I was asleep. Two or three came in at once and looked at my chart and one of them examined me, right there in the bed while I was unconscious.

Then they all left, looking worried but they wouldn’t tell her what they what was going on.

I didn’t know anything about it.

Instead I dreamed of going home, looking like the bride of Frankenstein, all covered in bandages. My brothers made comments about my tits and my little sister was afraid of me. Mom wanted to take me shopping and Dad wanted to lock me in my room.

“Y?” I asked him.

“B-coz u cant trust boyz,” he said. We all talked in text in the dream.

They gave me a new bike, a girl’s bike. It had a basket with pink flowers on it on the front.

The basket was full of Ken dolls dressed in Barbie’s clothes and they all talked like Valley Girls. “4 sure,” and “o rly!” and “bmo 4 reals!” They disappeared from the dream pretty quickly, if I’d had to put up with much of that, I think I would have woken up.

But I peddled my bike to school and no one recognized me. Scott Winters walked past me giving me a look but I wasn’t sure what for. I didn’t think he liked me but he didn’t seem to know me. And the look was strange.

Mr. Daysmith, the drama teacher, motioned to me and then whispered something I couldn’t understand. I’d always thought he was gay, did he like me better this way?

Some of the girls grabbed me then. April Locke, Taylor Grimes and Heather Something. “Girlfriend,” one of them said, “You’re scary!”

“Barf me out!” another said and they all laughed.

“Fokker seagulls,” said the other.

I went with them because I felt like I needed to. We went into the bathroom, the girl’s bathroom. They primped their hair and did makeup, like in the movies. I didn’t know how to do that stuff so I just went into a stall. Maybe they could show me later.

I felt a little sick, anyway. I took out my cellphone to call my folks so maybe I could go home early.

I thought the girls were being friendly but they locked me in. I dropped my cellphone in the toilet. I had to use my bandages as toilet paper. My foot came unraveled.

I wanted to cry and I kept telling myself it would be okay to cry if I were a girl now. But instead, I woke up and Alice was looking at my ankle, prying up at the bandages there. She stared up at me. I blinked.

She came up beside the head of the bed. “Sit up,” she said. I did. She sounded spooked instead of friendly.

She pulled the stupid hospital gown away from my shoulder. “Your tattoos are gone,” she said. “You had a tattoo of two butterflies right here – and a flower on your ankle. And since when do you have freckles?”

I shook my head. I remembered I couldn’t speak but maybe she had forgotten.

She sat down on the big padded chair and stared at me. I motioned for the keyboard and she handed it to me. “Who are you?” she said.

“I’m marty lewis,” I typed.

“You’re not Lulu?”

I shook my head again.

“Oh,” she said. “This is so fucked up.” She stood and paced around the room, chewing on her lip, using her hand to push it back into her mouth when it escaped. “What the fuck is Prince going to say?” she asked.

I didn’t have any idea since I didn’t know who Prince was. “Who?” I typed.

She stared at me then suddenly turned and headed out of the room.

I tried to make enough noise to get her to stop but I couldn’t speak and I had nothing to bang on. It wasn’t until then that I remembered I hadn’t asked her for a cellphone.

But now that Alice knew I wasn’t this Lulu person, she would tell the doctors and someone would call my folks and I could go home. Couldn’t I?

I remembered the basket of Ken dolls from the dream. Ken dolls don’t have anything between their legs. Would that be what I would be like now? Crying seemed like a good idea again.

I’d forgotten about the pain. Sitting up suddenly and leaning forward so Alice could see my back had not been a good plan. Something blunt and hard and about two feet wide pushed upward into my middle. It felt like a chestburster but lower down.

I thought if I even opened my mouth I would puke and that seemed like a very bad idea.

I reached for the button to call the nurse with tears running down my face.