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I didn’t answer.
But I did know.
Having
that second hand.
Having
that straight spine.
Looking
like everyone else.
Being
like everyone else—some days
it all seemed like it should be so
simple.
“I’m going to put it on my Christmas list.”
Funny. A hand on a Christmas list.
We were almost thirteen, and
no longer believed in Santa.
But I didn’t laugh.
I didn’t do anything, and all the things
I wasn’t doing, wasn’t saying
added up, and she
scooched closer,
our noses inches apart.
“They won’t get me one.
They said some online
rubber hand is silly, and
I don’t need it.”
They were her parents.
Her eyes asked,
What do you think?
I think…
Lidia’s parents were being just like
Lidia:
practical.
Although with this hand thing,
Lidia wasn’t being very
practical.
“Eve?”
“Sorry,” I said, closing my eyes,
so I couldn’t see
hers,
accusing me of being
just
like
them.
Parents.
Doctors.
PTs.
Everyone with hands.
Everyone who wasn’t her.
And through the quiet,
I felt it.
She was thinking
about my spine.
My eyes flew open.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Something,” I said.
She tossed her body to face away
from me and pulled
the covers up over her shoulders.
After she made sure she couldn’t
see my face, she spit out that something.
“You could be straight
if you wanted.”
I knew it.
I knew it was this.
What I didn’t know was
why it hurt so badly, those words.
Why they made me hotter than hot. So that my crooked bones
felt like they were searing through my skin,
burning the whole of me to white ash.
She fell asleep,
while I was on fire,
leaving me to cool in the dark.
You could be straight
if you wanted.
Sawed open.
Rearranged.
Stapled shut.

Pain
IT’S DARK.
I’m tangled. I need my meds. Fucking Nancy and her fucking PT.
I can’t turn. I’m pinned to the bed. Godfuckingdamnit, I need my medicine.
Mom, I mouth without sound, like a goldfish… then I remember her speech, the door closing.
I throw my body to the side and the pain shoves its fist down my throat, choking me.
I want OUT. Out of this bed. Out of this brace. Out of this body.
Desperate, I tear at the sheet and roll for the Roxy. The pain attacks again, sinking its metal teeth into my stomach.
The feeling suffocates me and I fall back, trying to catch my breath.
Because there is only one way out of this, I roll with everything I have toward the orange bottle.
Managing to make it to my side, my body shaking and wet, my nose smashed up against my pillow and my own hot breath slamming my face over and over again, I reach out and grab for the bottle, knocking it to the floor.
Help. Help me. Someone help me.
She’s got to be home.
The bell.
Clutching it, I jerk it about. Its only sound is a dull clang. I switch it to my left hand, but my fingers are too sweaty and shaky to hold it by the knob at the top—and the pain is coming again, it’s coming again. Hugging my plastic-covered body, I close my eyes and groan in fear as the attack approaches.
Lunging, it tears into me, ripping me apart until pain zings out of my eyes like lasers. I gasp, holding back the sobs.
Working the bell’s knob into my fist, I slam it against the bed and am rewarded with a clear ring. I slam it again. And again. And again. Ringing the bell over and over and over until it slips away and flies out of my hand, hitting the floor with one last clang.
She isn’t coming.
No one is coming.
I clutch at my blankets, shoving my face into their hotness. It hurts too much, nothing should hurt this much.
The force of the vomit rolls me to the side of the bed. It pours from me in gusts. Onto my bed. Onto my floor. Onto the bottle of Roxy.
Hanging from the bed, I snatch up the wet bottle and roll back, clutching it against my heart while the pain eats me alive.
Cracking it open with one hand, I pinch out a pill.
I’m not supposed to chew it, but I don’t give a shit right now.
I stick my thumb into the bottle to keep my precious Roxy from spilling out over my sweat-soaked sheets while I swallow lumps of chalky medicine mixed with the sour taste of vomit.
My body rasps out a gag. And another.
Shit!
Opening my eyes as wide as possible, I try to unglue myself from my body, like I can somehow project my brain onto the ceiling of my room until my stomach has ingested this pill.
“Eve,” he calls.
I groan to shut him up—it hurts to hear.
Seconds seem like minutes. Minutes. Years.
Why isn’t it working?
Crying is like blood in the water to the pain, but I can’t hold it back anymore. I’m breaking down.
“Six more minutes,” he soothes, “and you’ll feel better.”
“I’m dying,” I shout into my pillow, my mouth full of spit and tears and chunks of Roxy.
“It’s working,” he says in his thick, calming voice.
“No,” I gasp, “no, no, no.” But the pulsing pain and I are slowly separating.
He is right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
“Better?”
His voice is soft in my ears, making me sink deeper into my bed.
“Will I ever be?” I ask, panting and wet with sweat and not looking or caring for an answer.
“Telescopes see the past, Eve,” he says. “Not the future.”
The past?
I hear the echoing crowds of the mall. Giant green-leaved plants. The smell of popcorn. And the pain. Not the brutal, searing kind of being sliced through with a sharp blade, but the extraordinarily aching kind where every atom of you attempts to split. The kind you can’t chew your way out of. Or can you?
And so I chew.
Again. Shivering. Cold.
“What about Minnesota?”
He answers
with a tinge of pink
behind my eyelids,
a warm spot in the center of my chest
that grows… and grows
until my hands are warm.
My feet are warm.
I am warm.
Because it is summer,
of course.


The Burger Hut
We were fourteen
that July,
and therefore eligible
for our first jobs.
The Burger Hut needed
two people willing
to dress as a
hamburger and french fry.
She was totally willing.
Because it meant money
for the hand.
I was totally willing.
Because it meant dressing up
as food.
Lidia studied the Burger