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and advised me to use copious amounts of aloe, and then his nurse herded us out the door.
    I spent the rest of the day alternating between freaking out and total denial, before surrendering to the common denominator—self-pity. I hate to admit it, but as I discovered to my great shame that afternoon, I am weaker—and more concerned with my appearance—than I’d ever thought I would be. My mother had rubbed off on me.
    I was so upset I had to go out for emergency fries. I ordered a double bacon cheeseburger to go with them and ate every scrap. Then I went home and worked my way through about a pound of chocolate.
    About the time I reached for the mint chip ice cream, I began to feel claustrophobic, probably from being so fat in such a small apartment, and forced myself to go out for a walk. I didn’t care that it was after nine at night. In fact, I almost wished someone would put me out of my misery by sticking a knife in my back or shoving me under the wheels of a truck.
    Questions without answers shot though my mind again and again. How would I live? With these insane restrictions, I didn’t know if I could keep teaching. How had this happened? Why me? I hadn’t wanted to say anything to Dr. Nagata in front of my mother, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the emergency room doctors might have missed something. Maybe I had a rare disease they hadn’t tested for! Maybe Will had infected me with something. It was a little science fictiony urban myth, but maybe he hadn’t bitten me out of misplaced lust or lame Goth fantasies; maybe he had some disease that made him bite me and could explain my sun allergy…like some mutated form of rabies! I don’t think the emergency room had tested me for anything like that . Did I need to go back? Had I been unusually thirsty lately? I made a mental note to look up the symptoms of rabies and to do a full Internet search on obscure diseases. Will had an accent—he must have traveled around a bit. Maybe he’d picked up something in some dark corner of a forgotten forest in Eastern Europe. Been bitten by some insect or animal—wasn’t that kind of how AIDS had started?
    As my thoughts got weirder and more absurd, I walked faster and faster, fueled by anxiety and my umpteen-thousand calorie snack. I walked at warp speed for over an hour, not paying much attention where I went.
    Once or twice I thought I heard footsteps behind me but I didn’t see anyone when I turned to look. Frankly, I didn’t much care if someone accosted me. I almost relished the thought of taking out my stress on someone fool enough to tangle with a well-sugared woman on the edge.
    By the time I’d circled back and my apartment was nearly in sight, I was exhausted. I hadn’t fully recovered from the flu and this was far more exercise than I’d gotten in the last seven days combined, but my freakout was over. I had come to terms with Dr. Nagata’s diagnosis and no longer felt the need to research every disease in the world in an attempt to prove him wrong. All I wanted to do now was crawl into my bed and go to sleep.
    I was about to turn down my street when I noticed a small, dark car cross an intersection a couple blocks up. I couldn’t be sure of the car’s color, but I was pretty sure it had a bike rack on the roof.
    Gavin?
    The car had had its right turn signal on and would drive right past me, up on the next block. My fatigue was forgotten. I made an abrupt ninety-degree turn and ran up a side street for a closer look at the car, but I hadn’t gotten more than halfway when the car whizzed by, little closer than it had been the first time.
    “Damn!” I said when I could catch my breath.
    I turned and headed home. It only took a few steps before I was sure the car had a bike rack. By the end of the block I had convinced myself it was Gavin’s car.
    Was he stalking me?
    I had worried about Gavin after I’d learned he’d lied to me about being a taxi driver, but only a little. With all that had