Fun
by Anne-E. Wood
Macalester College
Winning story in the 1999 ACM Nick
Adams Short Story Contest
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All the other kids were playing Sardines. There had been Spin the
Bottle, then Truth or Dare, and now, Sardines. Outdoors, no boundaries,
no base. Frances could hear their outside voices. Her entire sixth grade
class was hiding in trees, in the toolshed, or in the jungle gym of the
swing-set. The shouts and laughter echoed all over her cousin, Andy's backyard.
He was the birthday boy. Twelve years old. This was his Star Wars birthday.
The house was Star Wars decorated. There was an R2-D2 birthday cake with
blue icing and a raspberry chocolate center. There was crepe paper and
Whipper Snappers and aluminum helium balloons. There was confetti and plastic
kazoos.
Frances had just turned twelve too, but she didn't have a party. She'd
only been invited to this one because Andy was her cousin. She didn't know
most of the other kids. The ones that she did know didn't like her because
she was too quiet and too smart in school. Besides, she always wore a puke-orange
cardigan that she buttoned up to the neck, even though it was summer. She
also had a prosthetic right leg that covered the space from knee to foot.
The plastic squeaked when she walked, so the children teased her behind
her back. The preferred nickname was "Plastic Girl." At the end of year
ceremony, Craig Doolin handed out twenty Xeroxed copies of a cartoon he
had sketched entitled "The Adventures of Plastic Girl" which showed a stick
figured Frances, her right leg enormous and bulging, trying and failing
at various athletic feats like mountain climbing and bungee jumping.
When she had first arrived at Andy's, the others said they'd let her play
if she could run. "You have to be able to run fast, otherwise it's boring.
Sorry."
She held her head up and kept the tears in the back of her her eyes
throat. Not crying was the goal, it had been the goal since the first grade.
And now, even at age twelve, even after being in the same class with the
same kids year after year, school still wasn't about learning fractions
or finding verbs. It was about getting through the day without bursting
into tears. So at their words, she managed a crooked smile and headed for
the garage where she could be alone.
What made everything worse was that something was broken on
the leg -- a loose piece of metal, a screw on the hinges that needed to
be fastened. The plastic made noises every time her foot hit the ground.
Like a jar full of pennies was strapped to her calf. The noise had been
going on for a week now but she didn't want to tell anyone because she
hated talking about the leg, even to her parents. Sometimes she would pretend
she was normal. She would close her eyes and imagine that at any moment
she could hop on a bike or scratch her shin until it bled, or jump down
half a flight of stairs, just like Andy could. Other times she imagined
that her whole body was a plastic leg. In her mind, she wouldn't have a
brain or face or guts or anything. Her whole self would just be one big,
phony leg. Like her leg was all she was.
The night before, Frances had prayed for rain so all the party games
would be indoors, so there would be no running around. But the August sun
beat down on everything as though it knew she'd be lonely at Andy's party,
in the corner of his dark garage, while the others searched for Sardines.
She sat on the floor, surrounded by junked-out yard equipment, stacks
of two-by-fours, car parts, old bikes, the smell of oil and gasoline and
paint thinner. She felt the dust collect in her eyes, she could taste it
in the air. She played with Piewacket, Andy's cat, who had just given birth
to six kittens. Andy wouldn't shut up about them. That's all he'd talk
about everyday, how cute they were, he bragged about them with pride, like
he was the man responsible. In the meantime, Pie was starving because Andy
never fed her, she was all bones under that fur. It was a miracle she was
even still alive.
The kittens were just opening their eyes and learning how to walk.
One of them was smaller than the rest and barely had any fur; it was the
size of her index finger and it kept squirming like a mouse. She held it
in her palm and cried quietly, her hot tears falling on the little animal.
She thought about taking revenge -- she could steal the kitten, no problem.
It wouldn't be that hard. She could just slip it in the pocket of her cardigan
and hold it there until her mother came to pick her up. Then she could
take care of it in her room at home, and she wouldn't tell anyone. No one
would know. They would all just think the kitten was dead, its mother could
have gnawed its neck off, it could have crawled into an old shoe and suffocated.
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