When I was little, a kid pointed at me on the playground and shouted, “Her arms fell off!” then ran away screaming in terror to his mom, who had to cuddle him on her lap and rub his head for like ten minutes to get him to calm down. I think, up until then, I hadn’t thought about the idea that my arms must have actually fallen off at some point in my life. I had never really thought about not having arms at all.

My missing arms weren’t an issue for me or my parents. I never once heard either of them say, “Oh, no, Aven can’t possibly do that because that’s only for armed people,” or “Poor Aven is so helpless without arms,” or “Maybe Aven can do that one day, you know, if she ever grows some arms.” They always said things like, “You’ll have to do this differently from other people, but you can manage,” and “I know this is challenging. Keep trying,” and “You’re capable of anything, Aven.”

I had never realized just how different I was until the day that horrible kid shouted about my arms having fallen off. For the first time I found myself aware of my total armlessness, and I guess I felt like I was sort of naked all of a sudden. So I, too, ran to my mom, and she scooped me up and carried me away from the park, allowing my tears and snot to soak her shirt.

As she drove us home that day, I sat whimpering in my car seat and asked her what had happened to my arms and why they’d fallen off. She told me they hadn’t fallen off; I was just born like that. I asked her how I could get some new ones. She said I couldn’t. I wailed in despair, and she told me to stop crying because having arms was totally overrated. I didn’t know what overrated meant at the time because, like I said, I was really little and so was my brain. I kind of figured it out over the next few days, though, because my parents were constantly saying things like, “Coloring this picture with my hands is okay, but if only I could color it with my feet like Aven. Now that would be fantastic,” and “Eating spaghetti with my arms is just so boring. I wish I could eat it with my feet,” and “The only person I know who can pick their nose with their toes is Aven. She sure is a special little girl.” Dad even went so far as to ask Mom if there were any arm-removal services in the area.

Growing up, I could do most everything everyone else with arms could do: eating cereal, brushing my teeth and hair, getting dressed, and yes, even wiping my own bottom. I know you’re instantly wondering how I do it, and maybe I’ll tell you later . . . maybe. Until then, you’ll just have to live in suspense.

Sure, these things take longer for me. Sometimes they take a lot longer. Sometimes I have to use a special tool like a hook or a strap or something like that. And every now and then I want to scream in frustration and kick a pillow until the stuffing comes out because it’s taken me twenty minutes to get my pants buttoned. But I can button my pants.

I think I can do all these things because my parents have always encouraged me to figure things out on my own—well, more like made me figure things out on my own. I suppose if they had always done everything for me, I would be helpless without them. But they didn’t, and I’m not. And now that I’m thirteen years old, I don’t need much help with anything. True story.

When I started kindergarten, the kids were a little weirded out by my lack of armage. I got asked just about every day what had happened to my arms, as well as a billion other silly questions—like how do I make farting noises with my armpits when I don’t have arms or hands . . . or pits. And how do I play dress-up—which I tried showing them and ended up with a poofy pink tutu thing stuck around my head for about five minutes before the teacher finally noticed and helped me pull it down to my waist.

I got so tired of telling them the same boring story about being born without arms that I started making stuff up. It was stinking hilarious. I knew from the first moment I told a girl my arms had burned off in a fire, I had found a great hobby: making up stories. I loved the way her eyes grew wide with shock and the way her voice went all high-pitched with excitement as she asked me a bunch more questions about my charred arms.

Her: “What kind of fire accident?”

Me: “A wild forest fire burning out of control!”

Her: “Where?”

Me: “In the mountains of Tanzania.” (I honestly didn’t know where Tanzania was or if it had any mountains. I think I had heard the name in an episode of Scooby-Doo or something.)

Her: “How old were you?”

Me: “Just a helpless baby. My mom barely rescued me in time. She pulled me from my burning crib and raced out of our flaming village, leaving a trail of fire all the way down the mountain as my arms burned to a crisp! They looked like two pieces of bacon by the time we got to the village hospital!”

Another kid standing nearby: “Cooked or uncooked?”

So I kind of traumatized her and had to have a meeting with my parents and the teacher later about my story. My parents squinted their eyes and pursed their lips and nodded their heads as the teacher told them, “Um, Aven told another child that her arms burned off in a wildfire in the mountains of Tanzania.” She peered at them over her glasses, frowning. “She also mentioned something about bacon.”

I had never seen such serious looks on my parents’ faces before, like they were concentrating so hard on being serious, their heads might explode if they blinked. They said seriously they would talk to me about it and shook the teacher’s hand seriously and gave me serious looks as we walked seriously out of school. But I could tell they weren’t mad because all the way home one of them would softly snort and then the other would giggle and then the other would shake from laughing but trying not to laugh out loud and on and on like that all the way home.

They later told me just to be truthful so I didn’t upset any other kids. And I did for a long time. But then one day in fifth grade, we had a new kid come to our school. (I had gone to the same school since kindergarten, so all my friends knew I was just born with no arms.) When I sat down at lunch with this kid, he said, “Whoa! What happened to your arms?”

All my friends were looking at me, and what can I say? It exploded out of me like an overfilled water balloon. I told him this crazy story about how I had rescued a puppy that had been tied to the train tracks just in time before a train nearly ran over it—just in time for the puppy . . . but not for my poor, flattened arms.

You should have seen the look on this kid’s face—priceless. My best friend, Emily, burst out laughing and my friend Kayla spit chocolate milk across the table. The new kid realized it was a joke and started laughing, too.

Pretty soon everyone was constantly asking me, “Hey, Aven! Where’d your arms go?” And I would have a new story to tell. Over time my stories got more and more ridiculous: alligator wrestling in the Everglades in Florida, freak roller coaster accidents, skydiving trips gone wrong. I made my stories as ridiculous as possible so people would always know I was joking.

I grew up with those kids. I never felt out of place or anything like that. My armlessness wasn’t strange or weird to them because, like I said, I had always gone to the same school.

I never imagined my parents would make me leave. I never thought they would make me move all the way to Arizona and go to a new school right after starting eighth grade.

Then again, I never imagined I would save the Old West, perform for an audience in the desert, and solve a mystery. You’d be surprised at all I’m capable of, though. Even without arms.