percent. And then your head is nine percent. You’ve burned somewhere between a quarter and a third of the left side of your face.”
Mom:
Doc: “I’m just saying that if you break it down, the burn covers less than one percent of her body.”
Mom: “It was her face. It was Nicole.”
Doc: “It could have been much worse.”
Mom: “Her face. Can you get her back to-”
Doc cuts her off: “No. You can’t think that way. This is a life-altering event.”
Me: “The other one percent?”
Doc: “Excuse me?”
Me: “The rule of nines. If you add up all those numbers, the body parts, you get ninety-nine percent. What’s the other one percent?”
Doc: “That’s what we use to describe the males’ private parts.”
Me: “One percent, huh? I’m sure they’d be thrilled.”
Doc: “A sense of humor is important, Nicole. You’re doing great.”
Me: “The girls get nothing. The boys get the extra point. They’re complete at one hundred percent. That’s why women are stronger: We live with omission.”
Mom (sobbing): “Can’t you give her more morphine?”
Doc: “The left side of your face. I’m hopeful you’ll still be able to blink. If you can’t, we’ll give you drops to keep your eye lubricated. If you can’t cry, you’ll go blind.”
Me: “I’m sure I can cry, Doctor.” I’m crying all right. “I can’t see out of that eye anyway. I can’t see. I can’t
Mom: “Don’t touch it, Nicole. Oh my god. Oh my baby.”
Me: “What does it look like, Mom? How bad is it? Please. Tell me.”
The doctor rolls me onto my side. With two tugs on the strings he unties my hospital gown to expose my left leg, and then he draws lines into the back of my hip with something.
Me: “Is that your fingernail? What are you doing?”
Doc: “I’m surveying the donor site, Nicole.”
Me: “Please. No.”
Doc: “I know this is horrible for you. Don’t try to look, Nicole. If you have to, look at your mother. That’s right, close your eye and hold Mom’s hand. Hold it tight.”
Close your
“My other eye,” I say. “Is it-”
Mom cuts me off: “Hush now, sweetie. It’ll be all right.” Worst liar ever.
The surgeon’s hands are cold and way too soft on my hip. I feel tapping and tugging and a vague sense my skin is being stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity. A minute later they’re wheeling me down the hall for the surgery, the first of several, I’m told. The doors to the OR swing in. I see through a slit eyelid a nurse is checking the equipment. The scalpel flash reflects in the glass of one of the implement cabinets. Mom gasps. She nearly collapses as the OR doors swing shut on her.
Doc: “Do you like this music, Nicole?”
I didn’t notice any music was playing. It’s New Age, waves crashing, whale calls. “Got any Eminem?” I say.
Doc: “Atta girl.”
My attempt to make the doctor laugh surprises me as much as it does him. Where is this bravery coming from? I feel bolder now that Mom isn’t weeping over me. Or maybe I feel worse. The situation is absurd. Have I really burned my face?
Anesthesiologist: “We’re ready to go.”
Surgeon: “Beautiful.”
That word.
My first memories, going back to when I was four years old, maybe even three.
My identity.
Not the real me.
Sixth-grade yearbook: MOST BEAUTIFUL: NICOLE CASTRO.
The fake me.
Just? Nothing else?
A thing.
What will it be like, not being
The mask goes over my mouth. Dad, where are you? I’m afraid of the dark.
Anesthesiologist: “Count backward from one hundred, Nicole.”
“One hundred, ninety-nuh. .”
THREE
The police brought Dave Bendix in for questioning. His father was an engineer with claims to numerous patents, and he refused to let Dave be interviewed without lawyers present. They rolled up to the precinct in a chauffeured town car. The detectives didn’t have any evidence, or any that pointed to Dave.
They found the squirt bottle in the stairwell with traces of latex glove dust, no fingerprints. The bottle was new technology, coated on the inside with a flexible glass weave that was resistant to extreme heat, cold and in this case battery acid. This sports drink company that was trying to compete with Gatorade had developed the bottle. Volta-Shock was their name. They made a big deal about the bottle back in my freshman year, giving one to every athlete in school. The top athletes got hoodies too, Day-Glo orange with double helix lightning bolts on the sleeves. Dave was given one of those.
The vast majority of Hollows students respected Dave Bendix not just because he was a remarkable competitor but also because he had founded an anti-bullying support group. A few cynics said Dave was doing ZERO TOLERANCE FOR DOMINANCE to look great to the Harvard admissions officers, but he was a shoo-in anyway. His father and grandfather were Crimson, and even if they hadn’t gone there, Dave was top ten of our class academically. More than that, I had proof that he was sincere in his efforts to quash bullying.
I knew Dave from before I quit wrestling freshman year. I was definitely an outsider, not a geek but a loner by choice. When you’re a freshman, it doesn’t matter how you see yourself. The upperclassmen on the team are going to give you hell either way, especially when you beat one of them in a scrimmage the first day of practice. His name was Richard Kerns. He wore his hair in a Mohawk dyed bloodred. The way he was looking at me, licking his lips like I was puff pastry, I was pretty sure he was going to honor his word when he promised he was going to break both my arms. My fear must have provoked a serious self-defense adrenaline surge, because I ended up pinning him. Just headlocked him, flipped him pretty hard, knocked the wind out of him. After practice the guys stuffed up the sink and held my head under water, until Dave came in. He shoved everybody back, said anybody who touched me would have to deal with him.
Dave was All-State since freshman year, 195 lb. weight class, and he benched 385. Those same few who doubted his sincerity about his anti-bullying efforts said he was shooting anabolic steroids. Back two years ago, when I was still on the team, I was 152 lb. class and three inches taller than Dave. Figure if I was just over six one back then, that made Dave a five foot ten killing machine who was, if the rumors were true, willing to do anything to win, including possibly giving himself steroid-induced testicular cancer, while I was pretty much a tall skinny newbie who was only going all fours in the goofy suit because his old man forced him to do an after-school activity. Wrestling was what my dad had done, so you bet it was good enough for me too. Those mats stank of anger. A
