My arm, it turned out, was indeed broken. My mother drove me to the hospital on the mainland the next afternoon as the space shuttle Columbia climbed into the sky behind us on its maiden voyage, sounding out a rumble we could hear through the closed car windows and carving an arc of gray smoke into the sky over the island. She brought her hand to her mouth as the doctor showed her the faintest indication of a fracture in my humerus, so insignificant that he wouldn’t put a cast on it but would merely give me a sling to wear for a week—yet significant enough to make her suffer horrible guilt for not having believed me. Before Wes Markham had a chance to see me in my sling, he was suspended for selling a bag of crushed aspirin to a fellow student in his P.E. class. Karen, who turned out to be the one who had packed the suitcase that had sat by the door that night, would unpack it and pack it again several more times over the coming year, but would prove herself not in much of a hurry to go anywhere. Frankie would hold fast to his desire to be Luke Skywalker’s intergalactic true love, until Star Wars met New Wave and Skywalker eventually yielded to Simon Le Bon. And I wouldn’t hold fast to any of my desires, or to any truth about myself, for a long, long time.

But as for that night, as for that moment in my room, I felt temporarily less than miserable. I felt, even, okay. For Frankie, who could say anything regardless of the sense it made, who could speak his own invented language at will, said nothing at all. He bent over and, so gently that I almost didn’t feel it, kissed my upper arm the way our mother used to when we’d hurt ourselves. Then he lay down behind me, eased his body against mine, and rested his hand against the side of my neck, and for an eternity, for an hour, we drifted just like that—immobile and weightless.

The Last Time I Knew You

1984

Karen positioned herself in the neutral zone of asphalt between the bowling alley and the religious bookstore, and leaned against the driver’s door of the Datsun. She was watching the neon cartoon of the Shore Lanes Bowling sign, on which a man in profile bent down and sent a ball blinking toward a set of pins, exploding them outward and prompting S-H-O-R-E L-A-N-E-S to flash in bright pink sequential letters, over and over again.