“True Mortons, anyway,” Grandmother added, as if she’d heard mythoughts. Her words had fingernails. I felt her needles when I breathed. “There’s no need to talk about it until you feel ready. For now, all that matters is getting better.”
“Thank you,” I said.
All I wanted was to sleep, to shut out thesnick-snick, the painful light crowding the room. But something worse waited outside—the missing piece of me. If I closed my eyes, it might come in.
“Did I succeed?” I asked.
Elizabeth stared at the red yarn in her hands, wearing an alligator smile.
“Beyond expectations,” she said.
The next timeI woke up Grandmother was gone, replaced by a small girl.
The girl stood at the end of my bed, leaning on a frame with two wheels. Her legs looked too thin to support her weight. In every way, not a Morton.
“Are you lost?” I asked.
“I’m learning walking,” she said, breathing hard. “Re-learning. I’ve got rods and pins in me.”
“That sounds painful,” I said, wondering why this child was in my room.
“It hurts less than yesterday. I’m Bellamy. What happened to you?”
“Car wreck,” I said.
“Cancer,” she said. “Did your hair burn up?”
I lifted an arm—my ribs crackling with pain—and gently touched my head. My hair was cropped close, a few bare patches ridged with staples.
“Maybe I went through a windshield.”
Bellamy was aghast. “Weren’t you wearing a seat belt?”
“I don’t remember. Probably because I had a seizure later.”
“Your nose is funny too.”
“Broken,” I said, aware of the obstruction at the bottom of my visual field.
“Did you know that octopuses don’t have bones?”
I considered this. “Except their beaks.”
“That’s chitin,” she whispered, as if the word had dangerous properties.
“Sounds like you know a lot about them.”
“I love octopuses. No matter what happens, they’ll never break a bone—and they can squish through tiny holes.”
“If the beak fits,” I said.
“The eyeball has to fit too,” she said. “Octopuses can’t squish those.”
“Isn’t itoctopi?”
Bellamy shook her head vigorously. “Octopiis Latin, and octopuses are Greek.Pusmeans foot.”
“Like Oedipus,” I said.
