unsteady groping came upon the bedroom knob. He swayed. I held my breath; Knox inhaled softly. The whole house seemed to tilt.
21.
NEWS OF MY FINGERS spread fast. Ted pulled me aside in the hallway before third period, pushing back the sleeve of my black duster—despite its fetor never for a moment dreaming that I’d stripped it from a corpse—to gape at the contraption Knox had fitted to my right hand. Ted was just the first of several teachers and even a handful of curious students. The strange thing was that none of them asked how it had happened, as if they suspected and feared that something they had done, or hadn’t done, had led to this sorry fate.
Fuzzy memories existed of a promise I had made Ted, but all vows were void when I wiggled at him my three abridged fingers—the exact three fingers needed to play the trumpet. The last tangible connection to life with my mother had been cleanly and literally severed, and Ted was just some garbage that had gotten sliced away with it.
“You can’t play anymore, can you?” He looked comically doomed.
“No,” I said.
He gasped and I swear I saw tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “The trumpet’s for pussies.”
Every treasure in Lionel’s legendary stash—that was what I would’ve given to have a picture of Ted’s reaction. Or Laverne’s reaction when I told her to eat shit, preferably her principal’s. Or Heidi Goehring’s reaction when I told her to cram her condolences as far up her ass as they would go. It was somewhere between sickening and amusing, how three small nuggets of sanded wood were all it took to turn me into a celebrity.
I pretended not to see Celeste in the lunchtime blitz, but her bright nails lanced my shirt and reeled me into a side hallway. The walls and floor and ceiling popped with the prim backpedaling of her heels; the students rushing past us sounded like the Big Chief River. For a few moments I avoided her expectant eyes, just as I had avoided her for weeks, banking down random corridors or even fleeing the school when her approach made a confrontation inevitable. Now I forced myself to meet her gaze. If my new fingers proved anything it was that I was made of sturdier stuff.
“Poor baby, is it true?” she whispered.
When I didn’t respond, she carefully cradled my elbow and crept her fingers down my arm until her warm hands encircled my wrist. Slowly she turned over my hand and lifted the gloved apparatus to the level of her breast. Her circulating thumbs kneaded the prostheses. Body conquered mind; my breath caught in my throat; it should have been the sexiest moment of my life. But the deadness of wood and leather prevented me from feeling her touch.
“Look at you,” she said. “Just look at you.”
My head dipped back. What was this feeling? Was it ecstasy? If so, wasn’t that what I had always wanted from her? Couldn’t this be an alternate, less deadly escape route from Mere Reality? Above me, a spectacle of marvelous fluorescents and breathtaking water spots.
“I’m worried about you, Joey.”
“I know.”
“Maybe you should get a physical therapist.”
“Definitely.”
“This thing on your hand doesn’t look all that sanitary.”
“You’re right.”
“Have you thought about seeing a counselor?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Teen suicide is an epidemic.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“You wouldn’t ever do something like that, would you?” I felt myself shaking my head—Anything you say, anything at all.
“Good. Because I’m still counting on you, you know.”
My hard parts softened; my soft parts hardened. My eyes eased open and my head rocked back into place. Funny—the movement of her fingers now recalled the death spasms of a rat I’d once crushed in a grave. I smelled something burning and it wasn’t cafeteria food. It was lies, both hers and mine. It was a bad smell and I wanted rid of it.
“The Spring Fling,” she continued. “It’s on Friday. Poor baby. Probably the last thing on your mind. But you said you’d make some calls? See who you could get to come down? You can still do that, can’t you? Poor little thing.”
She was beautiful on the outside, yes, but I had learned that true beauty had nothing to do with outsides. I gave her a once-over and wondered, How are her innards?
It was funny. I began to laugh.
The coaxing pressures against my hand ceased. Her fingers drew back like cobras. I didn’t care. My laughter bounced off the surrounding brick surfaces until it was swallowed by