by Allison Palmer
I remember you from time to time, when I sharpen a pencil and press its new tip to the pad of my thumb to test the sharpness. Ideally, fine enough to leave a mark on the skin for a few moments, but dull enough not to break it.
In second grade, I sat at my quarter-sized desk and rubbed the pin prick on my forearm where your graphite No. 2 had done its intended damage. It stung, and I leaned even further away from you in my seat, letting out an audible sigh. You, the red-headed boy to my left, the current bane
of my existence. You laughed smugly under your breath and turned back to your times tables. We were on 7s.
I think of you, sometimes, when I look at my knees. In the shower, or in the summer months or at doctor’s appointments. The scar is shaped like a T so distinctly that my Uncle Tim likes to add the I and the M with a pen, if he feels like being funny. It’s the only real scar I have. I got it chasing you down the basketball court that no one used for basketball, kicking up loose debris in my pursuit.
You’d called me shrimp for the third time that week. As furious as I could be given my size, I took off after you, unsure of what I’d actually do if I caught up. A bump in the pavement or a stray shoelace, however, sent me flying headlong to the ground, where a chunk of asphalt lodged itself deep in my kneecap. I refused to cry as I was carted inside to the nurse, my leg a sticky canvas of dirt and blood.
I see flashes of you in October too, when the doorbell rings by the minute and sets of fat, eager hands belonging to Spiderman, a tiger and Little Red Riding Hood plunge into our plastic candy bowl. The seasonal sugar cookies from the box remind me too, the ones with pumpkins in the middle that don’t really look like pumpkins when they’re disfigured from the oven.
I stood next to a plate of them at the annual party, held at a barn that year, letting the green crystal sprinkles melt and turn my tongue unnatural colors. I scratched discreetly at my polyester witch costume. I retreated back to my parents when a group of boys dressed as hockey players came crashing through. A streak of red hair under a helmet and a raucous laugh and then you were gone. You didn’t spare me a second glance. That was the last time I saw you.
Occasionally you’ll snap into my mind when I watch my Mom talk on the phone in the kitchen. I was fishing for the remaining few Cheerios in my bowl, sitting cross legged in front of the TV when one of the neighborhood harpies called to tell her the news. I ignored the broken pieces of her conversation that interrupted my morning routine.
She didn’t say anything while we walked down the short drive to wait for the bus. Curiously, I studied her face disappearing in the distance, old enough to acknowledge the extra weight in her hug but too young to name it.
I know now what she had heard. That you’d taken an ATV into the woods with your best friend but your feather-light freckled frame and his were not enough to keep it steady as it flew over a loose root or rock. The machine had pinned you underneath and broken your best friend’s leg. I imagine the thud knocking you loose from the world. I see your soul sailing right up to heaven, gone, by the time the adults finally arrived.
I’m still uneasy in the back-row pews of churches and in long lines. I sat huddled in between my parents the day of your funeral, sinking further into either one of their sides as people filled the church. I watched adult after adult stagger to the podium, try to speak and fail. I watched your Dad fall to his knees in a state of grief so deep three grown men could not keep him standing.
After the service, I waited to pass by your open casket brimming with stuffed animals and trophies and jerseys. A slideshow played on the wall above wreaths of rigid-looking flowers. A recent photo of you, grinning with both arms slung around your older brothers, faded to black. This next one, a picture of your whole family gathered around your hospital bed, wearing stiff, scary smiles. A ventilator must have clicked. A nurse must have shaken her head slowly.
Very rarely, I find you in silence, in moments of hesitation. I wonder what you’d be doing, when I don’t know what to do myself, when my life is changing. I paused. It was our turn to look, to pray. I avoided your face and gazed down at the floor instead. The carpet was dark green. My left shoelace had come undone. A tiny ant crawled around a crumb.
My knee itched. The scar had almost finished healing and I could see the pink edges of new skin starting to poke out under the scab. Don’t pick it please, my Mom kept saying. I wondered when it would fall off. I wondered what happened to cuts and scabs when you were dead. Now, on the outside, I was only 99% alive. I wondered if it had to be me or you. There was a tug on my hand, and I let myself be led out of the church, abandoning my thoughts there, swirling in the eternal air like dust.
Allison Palmer is a Florida-based writer and editor. She has been a Best of the Net nominee and finalist for the Barry Lopez Prize in Creative Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Pithead Chapel and The Manifest-Station.
January House Literary Journal 
Leave a comment