NO NO NO NO NO.

*   *   *

“I’ll be back for y’all in a minute.” Sue is taking Dolly and the eyebrow tapper away, leaving me with a ten-ounce bottle of Coke and yet another girl in a wheelchair.

“I’m Sara.” She acts like I should have heard of her already. “I see you’ve met Dolly.” She rolls her eyes. Her head, which looks fairly normal, barely reaches the tabletop; it seems shoulders and arms sprout right from her seat. “This is my eighth year here. How about you?”

“My first time.” I speak carefully, separating each syllable. If I take my time and people pay attention, I’m not that hard to understand.

I hear a boy’s voice behind me. “Hey, Sara, I just found out you’re here.”

Her sharp eyes crinkle with delight. “Willie. You’re a sight for sore eyes. Or perhaps—more accurately—I should say an eyesore.”

“You’re just as sweet as you’ve always been.”

He steps in front of me, and the sight of him hits like an explosion of ugliness. He’s skin and bones; a shocking lack of flesh in general, but with big knots of flesh on random places. Misshapen shinbones bowing over high-top sneakers. Khaki shorts flopping above giant knobby knees. A camp T-shirt, hanging loose at the waist and chest, stretched tight over a hunchback. Skin and bones. How does he move?

But it’s the face— I can’t look at it, but yet I see lips stretched like putty over twisted teeth, fish eyes, too far apart on his head, one sticking out, one almost buried by a bulging lump of something, flesh or bone, I don’t know—

The face is just too much.

My panicking eyes jump back to Sara, Sara who now represents a place of safety. But she has no thought of me. Her eyes are locked on his, glowing gladness. “Meet Jean. It’s her first year. Jean, Willie’s been at camp about as long as I have. He’s just finished his first year of college.”

His voice speaks polite words of welcome, and I wonder what I ought to say. He must be so brave, to go to college, to face everyone looking like that. People say I have courage and determination, but he—

Does he want to hear that? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, I guess. I can’t talk with all these shock waves still rumbling through my body.

“She’s been getting an earful from Dolly,” Sara says.

I manage to shrug. Maybe I can pull myself together.

“It’s okay to ignore Dolly,” he says. “If you don’t, she’ll drive you nuts.”

Sara pitches her head back and tells the rafters, “I’m writing a novella!” It’s exactly like Dolly, I mean, like Dolly if Dolly were coherent. “An incredibly steamy sexy lurid pornographic novella for adult readers only! Based on my own experiences very very very very late at night, after lights out, with Johnny Carson!” I try not to, but I choke. The thought of Dolly and Johnny—