You dress differently when you’ve only got one working hand.
Pulling on your own jeans? Hard. Zipping and buttoning them? Really hard. Tying your shoelaces? Really freaking hard.
For the first couple days after I came home from the hospital, I wore sweatpants and old pullover sweaters. I barely left my bedroom anyway, so it didn’t matter if I dressed like a total slob. On the second day Jezz and Patrick came over. The both stared at my big bandaged lump of a left hand while trying to look like they were staring at anything else, and then we all sat around and watched videos on YouTube. Not music videos. Just stupid comedy stuff. People doing voice-overs for their fat pets.
Finally, after we’ve been sitting there for almost two hours, Jezz turns so he’s sort of halfway facing me, and says, “Your mom says you don’t remember what happened. How”—he nods toward my hand—“how you got that.”
I shrug.
I can’t explain. Not yet. Not even to myself. The memory is like an open wound in my head. I don’t want to look at it too closely. I don’t even want to think about it. I just want to leave it alone, let it start healing, and maybe when I’m halfway back to normal, I’ll feel ready to touch it again. Maybe.
“Everybody is saying that there was somebody in the woods,” Jezz goes on. “Like, some psycho kidnapper. And you went out and found Frankie, and whoever was holding her tried to stop you, and that’s how your hand got burned. Or something.”
I nod slowly.
“So,” says Jezz. “Was that it?”
He’s looking straight at me now. His eyes are worried. Patrick is watching me, too.
And then, because it seems like the right thing to do, I lie.
“I don’t remember much,” I start. Both Jezz and Patrick keep staring at me, frozen, hanging on every word. “And I don’t think there was a kidnapper. I just think it was some kind of accident, and Frankie was trapped, and I had to reach into a fire to get her out. To get both of us out. That’s all I remember.”
They watch me solemnly.
“That makes sense,” says Patrick at last. “Maybe it was a car accident or something.”
“Oh,” says Jezz. “Yeah. Maybe the car caught fire, and you had to reach in to open the door and get Frankie out.”
They nod at each other.
Of course, that doesn’t really make sense. No one’s found a burned car. Frankie didn’t have any fire injuries. But it makes a lot more sense than what actually did happen. And right now, Jezz and Patrick are being kinder and more careful with me than they’ve ever been before. They’d agree with any stupid thing I said, I’m sure.
So I smile and say, “Hey. Let’s watch that Swedish cooking clip again.”
They smile back. And we do.
On the third day, in the middle of the afternoon, Mom taps on my bedroom door. She’s been working only half time this week, even though the bills for my hospital stay and the coming physical therapy are going to be huge, which means money is going to be even tighter. I’m trying not to add that guilt to the pile of bad things in my head.
“Come in,” I say from the bed, where I’m lying with Goblin on my stomach.
The door swings open. Frankie Lynde steps inside.
She’s always slipped in through the window before. Seeing her just walk through the door, like any normal human being, makes her seem more real than she’s ever been.
I sit up so fast that Goblin shoots to the floor.
Mrrk, he says, giving me an insulted look before ducking under the bed.
Frankie takes a little step closer. She’s wearing dark jeans and a sweater that makes me want to rub my face on it. I’m wearing drawstring pants and an ancient hoodie with Camp Longfellow printed on it. But right now, I barely care. I’m not pretending to be the rock star anymore.
Mom pulls the door shut from the outside.
“Hey,” says Frankie.
“Hey,” I whisper back. “You all right?”
“Yeah. I’m all right. And you’re”—she nods at my hand—“sort of all right?”
“Yeah. Mostly.”
We look at each other for a second.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. “Or do you not want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Frankie gives me the tiniest smile. “I don’t know, either. For me, it’s mostly a big blank spot.” Her face is a little thinner than I remember it. Her cheeks are hollow. It makes her eyes seem even larger. “I hate it. That I can’t remember. It makes it so much worse.” She hugs herself with both arms. “There are a zillion stories flying around, of course.”
“About you?”
“About both of us. People think it’s all connected. That there’s some crazy kidnapper in the woods who trapped me in a burning building or something. But whoever it was . . . they didn’t hurt me.” She glances at my bandaged hand again. “Are you going to be okay?”
I shrug with one shoulder. “They’re not sure. There’s a lot of nerve damage. They say time and therapy might help, but I might never regain full use of it.”
Frankie looks into my eyes. “And you’re okay with that?”
Nobody has asked me this.
Everybody assumes that of course I’m not okay with it. That I’m the guitar prodigy whose rocket ship to fame has just come crashing back to earth, and it’s so tragic and unfair. But it isn’t; not really. Because this was my choice. And all the parts of me that aren’t my hands want to remember what it was like just to be myself. Maybe, eventually, weeks or months or years from now, I’ll start learning to play backward, with my right hand forming chords. Maybe I’ll try writing songs again. Now it will be just me, not something occupying me, attacking me. I wonder what my own songs will sound like.
I take a breath. “Yeah. I’m okay with that.” I readjust the bandaged hand on top of the blankets. It itches. “Guitar took over everything in my life. But it’s not everything. You know? That’s not all I am.”
Frankie’s smile widens slightly, her mouth going from one perfect shape to another. “Yeah,” she says. “It isn’t.”
“So,” I say, after a beat, “what do you think happened?”
Frankie takes a minute to answer. “I think . . . there was something strange going on out there. Something big. I’m not sure if it was just one person, or—or what, but I think it caused a bunch of crazy things lately. And I think . . .” She pauses again. “I think it’s over now. I think everything feels different. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” My voice is a whisper again. I look down at the carpet between us. “Hey, Frankie? I’m really sorry. Really sorry.”
She doesn’t answer. I can’t bring myself to look her in the face.
“How I talked to you that night . . .” I force myself to go on. “I’m not even sure what I was trying to do. But it wasn’t right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Frankie glides closer. She sits down on the bed beside me.
One thing I told her during that stupid fight was true. She doesn’t really know me. And now I realize that I never really knew her, either. I just liked the idea of her. Gorgeous, cool, confident. Loved by everybody. But I don’t know if this is the truth of her. I don’t know what’s inside.
I could change that. I could try, anyway.
It takes all the courage I’ve got, but I reach out and wrap both arms around her, the normal one and the big, clumsy, mangled one.
For a second she holds still, and I swear my heart is going to stop. But then she presses her face into the nook between my shoulder and the hollow of my neck.
She smells so good, it makes me dizzy.
“So, do you finally believe I don’t like you just because of the music?” she asks. Her breath brushes my neck.
I don’t answer. But I hold her tighter.
We stay there, holding on, for a long time.