Placebo 1 by Lacey Mitchell

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The two friends carried their burger combos outside to eat on the patio in the early summer sun, only one more week of junior high before real summer began. One week, one Friday and the rest of Thursday afternoon, to be accurate.

Carmody, the bigger boy opened his bag and took out a double-double bacon burger and a large bag of fries. "You're what? Five-foot-nine and you weigh like 100 pounds?" Carmody asked his friend.

"It's 108. So?" Nelson didn't like people asking about his weight. He pushed a lock of pale blond hair out of his face and glared at his dark-haired friend.

"You're just too skinny, man." Carmody shook his head. "Don't you eat at all?" He took a slurp of his large caramel shake through the extra wide straw.

"I eat," Nelson protested. "I just don't eat as much as you do." His bag contained only a regular hamburger and a small bag of fries and he'd got only a cup of water to drink.

"Well, I'm telling you," Carmody said. "You're never going to make the football team this fall if you don't put on some weight."

"Why would I want to be on the football team?"

"Dude! The football players get all the girls!" Carmody looked astonished that Nelson did not know this. "Skinny guy like you, turn sideways, they won't even see you."

Nelson looked at his friend who certainly would not disappear if he turned sideways. "They want fat guys on the football team?"

"Not fat guys, big guys," said Carmody. "You need some muscle, too, but you ain't gonna muscle up eating like a girl." He pointed at Nelson's meager lunch.

Nelson frowned. He and Carmody had known each other since they started kindergarten and in three months they would be going to high school together. As friends, they stuck together, had adventures, watched each others' back, provided alibis when needed and got along better than brothers would have. "Maybe I'll go out for track," Nelson suggested.

"They don't have track in the fall, it's cross-country and you hate to run, why would you go out for something that involves running?"

"You have to run in football," said Nelson.

"Not all the time! You do other things, like catch the ball, kick the ball, tackle guys."

"Get tackled. Get knocked down. Break arms and legs and necks."

"Wuss," said Carmody.

"Ape," said Nelson.

"Look," said Carmody. He opened his mouth and showed Nelson a half-chewed mass of burger meat, cheese, bread, condiments and fried potatoes.

Nelson turned away. Carmody had used this trick to win arguments since he discovered Nelson's weak stomach back when they drank milk that had sat on the window sill too long in Mrs. Winterfree's kindergarten class.

"You going to eat those fries?" Carmody asked.

"Not now," said Nelson, pushing the rest of his lunch over to his friend. "I'm just not hungry."

Carmody laughed. "You're just too skinny," he said.

"And who's fault is that?"

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"Well," his mother asked him that night, "do you think you're too skinny?"

"I don't know," Nelson said. "I asked you."

His mother thought about it. "I suppose we could ask the doctor. You've got a checkup coming tomorrow morning so you can go to camp next month."

"Oh yeah," said Nelson. "So no school tomorrow?"

"You can go to your afternoon classes."

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"I just don't get hungry," Nelson explained to Doctor Weiss.

"He doesn't eat much," agreed Nelson's mother.

The doctor nodded. "Why don't you wait for Nelson in the outer room, Mrs. Frederick?" he suggested.

"So you can ask him things he might get embarrassed about in front of his mom?" Mrs. Frederick grinned. "Okay." She got up and left.

"So," said the doctor. "You're healthy, no blood chemistry problems, no evidence that you're doing anything stupid like throwing up to avoid gaining weight."

"Huh?" said Nelson. "No, I told you. I just don't get hungry."

"Anything bothering you? Trouble at home? Trouble at school? Girl trouble? Boy trouble?"

"Huh?" said Nelson again. "I don't think so. Things are fine, it's just, I get teased about being too skinny."

The doctor looked at some papers in a folder then consulted a chart he pulled up on the little computer on his desk. "You're about average height for your age," he said. "But you're in the lowest 5% for weight."

"Is that bad?" asked Nelson.

"Well, no, not necessarily. You don't have any health problems I can find that might explain it and you don't seem to have any problems it might be causing–other than this teasing. At school?"

"Uh, I'm out of school next week–for the summer."

"So, your friends?"

Nelson nodded.

"Your voice hasn't changed yet," the doctor commented. "Have you started noticing girls?"

Nelson blushed. On his fair skin, it looked like the result of a sudden high fever. The doctor put two fingers to his mustache to hide a smile.

Nelson shook his head. "Everybody seems to think I ought to but I just don't see it. Why make things complicated?"

"Complicated," the doctor repeated. "Well, that's one way to put it." He did smile this time. "Do you like girls?"

"I guess so," said Nelson. "I mean, I used to have some girl friends but they all moved away. I hang out with Carmody Michaels, he's my best friend and I guess he talks about girls just about all the time, enough for both of us." He rolled his eyes. "More than enough."

"Is he the one that teases you about being skinny?"

"Yeah, but it's just teasing. It's not mean or anything."

"I'm going to ask you something else," said Dr. Weiss. "Don't get upset, it's just a question."

"Huh?" said Nelson.

"Do you like boys? Do you feel attracted to boys?"

Nelson blinked, blushing again. "I don't think so," he said after a moment. "That would be even more complicated, wouldn't it?"

"Probably," agreed the doctor. "You're only fourteen, maybe you're not ready for complications yet."

"I don't have any body or face hair, my voice hasn't changed," Nelson said. "I guess I'm just a really tall little kid, still."

"Those things happen on their own schedule," said the doctor. "You're not unusually late developing but if it doesn't happen by the time you're sixteen, we can do some tests."

"Can you do some tests, now, find out why I'm so skinny?"

The doctor nodded. "Sure. But they cost money and I'd have a hard time justifying it when you don't have any other health problems."

"Oh," said Nelson.

"If I had a pill I could give you that would help you gain weight, would you want to take it?" asked the doctor.

"Well, yeah?" said Nelson. "I know I'm too skinny."

"Hmm, hmm," said the doctor. He pulled his prescription pad over and scribbled on it. "I'll give you something that might work. You'll have to take it twice a day. But you'll have to eat, too."

Nelson nodded.

"I'm serious. Put cheese on your burgers, gravy on your potatoes, sugar in your tea. And eat three meals a day." He tore the sheet off the pad, "The nurse at the front desk can fill this for you, we have samples."

He'd written "Dextronilactivon," in his trademarked doctor's scrawl – dextrose (sugar) that does nothing – a placebo. The sugar pills themselves were about 2 dietetic calories apiece; he could be honest when he said they might help Nelson to gain weight. They'd be more likely to if the boy swallowed fifty at a time, though.

Nelson took the script and smiled.

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Later in the car, on the way back to school, Nelson asked, "Did you get my pills?"

"What pills?" asked his mother.

"Oh, I forgot to give you the prescription the doctor wrote. They're supposed to help me gain weight." He pulled the paper out of his pocket and handed it to his mother.

"Nelson!" she said. "Well, we can stop at the pharmacy."

"Dr. Weiss said they had samples."

Mrs. Frederick didn't want to admit that she had forgotten to pick up the pills, too, since the doctor had called her aside and told her that they were actually harmless sugar pills. "I'm sure they have them at the pharmacy and our co-pay is only $5.00. Cheaper than turning around and having to pay for parking again."

After letting Nelson out at the gates of the school for his afternoon classes, Mrs. Frederick dropped the prescription off at the busy drugstore nearest her house, telling the pharmacist's clerk that her husband would pick up pills on his way home.

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"Dexo-what?" asked the pharmacist. "Never heard of it. I'm going to have to call the doctor on this one."

But the doctor had gone home on a Friday afternoon, so the druggist left a message. The pharmacist's clerk pored over a big book of medicinal compounds. "Maybe it's this one?" he suggested, showing the page to his boss.

"Dexandrolactisone?" The druggist read with interest and then researched the chemical on the internet. "It's an artificial hormone, used to start puberty in girls who are late developing. Hmm. The dosage is not quite right, 250 mg twice a day for three months, it's usually only taken once a day for a month to start."

The clerk checked. "This is for a child, Nelson Frederick, age 14. Nelson? What kind of name is that for a girl?"

"They're giving girls all kinds of names these days. I suppose they call her Nellie," said the pharmacist. "Well, set the pills aside but we won't fill the prescription until we get a call back from the doctor."

"Yes, sir," said the clerk. But then he and the druggist both went home at five-thirty, replaced by the night crew.

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Mrs. Maggie Frederick called her husband, Horace, and told him about the placebo the doctor had prescribed. They both had a small laugh but felt that the otherwise useless therapy might actually help if Nelson believed it would. Horace promised to pick up the pills on his way home.

Mr. Frederick had to work late, then got caught in the traffic for the first game of the crosstown classic. He didn't get to the pharmacy until after six. The clerk told him it would be only a few more minutes and soon returned with a rather large container labelled with Nelson's name and address.

Mr. Frederick took the bottle of capsules while the clerk rang it up. "Sixty dollars? I thought our co-pay was only five?"

The pharmacist's clerk explained. "For drugs on the insurance formulary, it's ten, or just five for generics. For things not on the formulary, it's twenty. And that's per month, this is a three month supply."

"Oh," said Nelson's father. He worked for a big national firm with a bureaucratic mindset and could actually believe that sugar pills were not considered an approved drug by insurance companies. "That'll teach us to take the samples when the doctor offers them, huh?"

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Mrs. Frederick clucked her disapproval at the unexpected expense but agreed that she was at fault. "But," she added, "I'm serving lasagna tonight. Your favorite."

"Give Nelson his pill before dinner," suggested Horace. "Maybe he'll have seconds."