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added, “What it boils down to, Jo, is you have become allergic to the sun.”
    “Oh, no,” my mother said. Yes, of course she had insinuated herself into the room with me. “You mean like that poor little girl on 60 Minutes who can’t go out in the sun or she’ll die?”
    What? What kind of designer quack had my mother taken me to? Was he even a real doctor? Allergic to the sun , I mean, really! “I’ve gone out in the sun my entire life,” I said, “and have never had a problem before. ‘Allergic to the sun’ seems a little extreme. Are you sure it’s not a simple allergic reaction to my face lotion or some sort of side effect of my flu? The problem is coincident with my cold, and it’s not only my skin that has been affected. My vision has been a little blurry too.”
    “I’m sure,” he said. “In fact, it might be the other way around. The flu symptoms you had might have been your body’s way of responding to the allergy, and I’m not surprised your vision is a little blurry. After all, the cells covering your eyes would be sensitive to the sun’s rays as well.”
    At my mother’s gasp, the doctor paused and turned toward her, as if to offer support. My mother has that effect on men, but their instinctive efforts to prop her up are completely unnecessary. If anyone can take care of herself, it’s my mother.
    I must have made some sort of noise, for the doctor turned back to me and said, “I realize it sounds odd. Frankly I’m a little hesitant in calling it a sun allergy, because as you said, it’s rare, it’s unlikely, and to be frank, it’s rather unheard of for someone to develop it so late in life. But as Holmes said, ‘Once the other stuff has been ruled out, whatever’s left, however unlikely, is the answer.’”
    Evidently, the good doctor couldn’t make it as an English professor and had gone into medicine instead. As my mother and I sat silently contemplating my sunless future in respective states of horror and denial, he spelled out the rules, which boiled down to no exposure to the sun, not even through a window.
    “You’re kidding, right?” I burst out. “How am I supposed to get around? Wear a ski mask in the car? What about my job? There’s not a room in the school that doesn’t have some light coming in through the windows.”
    Dr. Nagata listened patiently to my whining, even venturing an opinion that yes, the ski mask wouldn’t be a bad idea so long as I wore a really good sunscreen under it, though he would supply me with something a little better. He went to a supply closet in the corner of the room and after a few minutes’ rummaging returned with a small, clear package containing something beige and squashy.
    My mother poked suspiciously at the lump of cloth. “What is that?” she asked, curling her lip in disdain.
    “It’s a top of the line face mask. Lightweight, stretchy, molds instantly to any face shape, and best of all, it’s rated SPF 75,” he said, beaming as if he’d pulled out the cure for cancer. “You’ll need to wear it any time you’re outdoors during daylight hours (though, of course, it would be best if you avoided daylight altogether), and any time you’re in a sunny room.”
    “So—all the time?” I said.
    My mother looked horrified. “Surely, she can get away with sunscreen when she’s inside.”
    “Well, now.” He spoke jovially, as if all we needed was little perspective. “I suppose it’s not really necessary once the sun goes down. And if you’re in a dark room during the day, a high SPF would probably be sufficient, but I think you’ll find the mask so comfortable, you’ll wear it all the time. I think it’s really rather sharp.”
    He took our silence for agreement, but my mother and I were just too appalled to contradict him. He wrote me a prescription for some seriously heavy-duty sunblock and another for something to soothe my skin. He also gave me a note for the headmaster explaining my new “disability”,