game over Thanksgiving, either, because my grandmother did not allow racing all over the house at Front Street. So maybe I'll have to wait until Christmas, I thought.
'Maybe your friend would like to kiss Hester,' Simon said.
'/ decide who kisses me,' Hester said.
'Whoa!' Noah said.
'I think Owen will be a little timid around all of you,' I ventured.
'You're saying he wouldn't like to kiss me?' Hester asked.
'I'm just saying he might be a little shy-around all of you,' I said.
'You like kissing me,' Hester said.
'I don't,' I lied.
'You do,' she said.
'Whoa!' said Noah.
'There's no stopping Hester the Molester!' Simon said.
'Shut up!' Hester said. And so the stage was set for Owen Meany. That day after Thanksgiving, my cousins and I were making so much noise up in the attic that we didn't hear Owen Meany creep up the attic stairs and open the trapdoor. I can imagine what Owen was thinking; he was probably waiting to be noticed so that he wouldn't have to announce himself-so that the very first thing my cousins would know about him wouldn't be that voice. On the other hand, the sight of how small and peculiar he was might have been an equal shock to my cousins. Owen must have been weighing these two ways of introducing himself: whether to speak up, which was always startling, or whether to wait until one of them saw him, which might be more than startling. Owen told me later that he just stood by the trapdoor-which he had closed loudly, on purpose, hoping that the door would get our attention. But we didn't notice the trapdoor. Simon had been pumping the foot pedals of the sewing machine so vigorously that the needle and bobbin were a blur
of activity, and Noah had managed to shove Hester's arm too close to the plunging needle and thread, so that the sleeve of Hester's blouse had been stitched to the piece of sample cloth she'd been sewing, and it was necessary for her to take her blouse off-in order to free herself from the machine, which Simon, insanely, refused to stop pedaling. While Owen was watching us, Noah was whacking Simon about his ears, to make him stop with the foot pedals, and Hester was standing in her T-shirt, tensed and flushed, wailing about her only white blouse, from which she was trying to extract a very random pattern of purple thread. And I was saying that if we didn't stop making such a racket, we could expect a ferocious lecture from Grandmother-regarding the resale value of her antique sewing machine. All this time, Owen Meany was standing by the trapdoor, observing us-alternately getting up the nerve to introduce himself, and deciding to bolt for home before any of us noticed that he was there. At that moment, my cousins must have seemed even worse than his worst dreams about them. It was shocking how Simon loved to be beaten; I never saw a boy whose best defense against the beating routinely administered by an older brother was to adore being beaten. Just as much as he loved to roll down mountains and to be flung off sawdust piles and to ski so wildly that he struck glancing blows to trees, Simon thrived under a hail of Noah's punches. It was almost always necessary for Noah to draw blood before Simon would beg for mercy-and if blood was drawn, somehow Simon had won; the shame was Noah's then. Now Simon appeared committed to pedaling the sewing machine into destruction-both hands gripping the taWetop, his eyes squinted shut against Noah's pounding fists, his knees pumping as furiously as if he were pedaling a bicycle in too-low a gear down a steep hill. The savagery with which Noah hit his brother could easily have misled any visitor regarding Noah's truly relaxed disposition and steadily noble character; Noah had learned that striking his brother was a workout requiring patience, deliberation, and strategy-it was no good giving Simon a bloody nose in a hurry; better to hit him where it hurt, but where he didn't bleed easily; better to wear him down. But I suspect that Hester must have impressed Owen Meany most of all. In her T-shirt, there was little doubt that she would one day have an impressive bosom; its early blossoming was as apparent as her manly biceps. And the way she tore the thread out of her damaged blouse with her teeth-snarling and cursing in the process, as if she were eating her blouse-must have demonstrated to Owen the full potential of Hester's dangerous mouth; at that moment, her basic rapaciousness was quite generously displayed. Naturally, my pleas regarding the inevitable, grandmotherly reprimand were not only unheeded; they went as unnoticed as Owen Meany, who stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the sun from the attic skylight shining through his protrusive ears, which were a glowing pink-the sunlight so bright that the tiny veins and blood vessels in his ears appeared to be illuminated from within. The powerful morning sun struck Owen's head from above, and from a little behind him, so that the light itself seemed to be presenting him. In exasperation with my unresponsive cousins, I looked up from the sewing machine and saw Owen standing there. With his hands clasped behind his back, he looked as armless as Watahantowet, and in that blaze of sunlight he looked like a gnome plucked fresh from a fire, with his ears still aflame. I drew in my breath, and Hester-with her raging mouth full of purple thread-looked up at that instant and saw Owen, too. She screamed.
'I didn't think he was human,' she told me later. And from that moment of his introduction to my cousins, I would frequently consider the issue of exactly how human Owen Meany was; there is no doubt that, in the
