"Things I've Lost" by Rachel Kincaid

CONTENTS THE INTERIM HOUR FIRELIGHT TWINE
THINGS I'VE LOST COSMIC PROFILES AUTHORS

The first time it happened I was eight years old. My best friend Katherine lived next door and we were running away together, us and her invisible friend Billy. We were wrapping up sandwiches that her mother made for us into a blanket, we were looking for sticks to build a tent. And then we took a break because her mom brought out some lemonade and while we were spilling half of it all over ourselves Katherine's older brother, Leo, told us that Billy wasn't real, that Katherine had made him up so that she had someone to blame when she wet the bed. Her mother came running as Katherine dropped her lemonade into the grass and began to wail, and no one noticed when my thumbnail flaked off onto their lawn.

I told my parents about it then, because I didn't know any better. I told them my nail was gone, and showed them the naked fleshy stub of my finger; they chalked it up to the perils of childhood, put a Big Bird bandaid on it, and that was all. Later there was some wonder as to why it never grew back, but these things happen sometimes. I was able to garner some attention with it in grade school, although once David Pritchett figured out how to roll his eyes back into his head no one cared as much. And it wasn't til I was twelve that it happened for the second time, so begrudgingly I conceded my place.

The day we came back to school after Thanksgiving Kevin Muldeen raised his hand for current events and told us about a supermarket in Alabama that wanted some publicity on Thanksgiving day. They hired a helicopter to fly over the building and it was supposed to toss turkeys out along the way so they could fly over everyone, like white doves on the news except they didn't, they fell like bricks and shattered the windshields of the cars in the parking lot and lay like bowling balls of flesh and feathers on the pavement because I guess no one had realized that turkeys don't fly. And everyone was laughing picturing a hailstorm of turkeys in Alabama and I felt a slight tingling in my right foot. During recess I took off my sock and sneaker and found two of my toes rolling around in there like gumballs in a machine. That summer I bought a pair of sandals with a thick band that covered the empty space. You'd be surprised how few people noticed. I told them it was a boat propellor.

Luckily the things I lost over the next seven years were minor. I have a four-inch bald spot on the top of my head, three teeth missing, and half of my left earlobe gone. I comb over the first, have bought replacements for the second, and make up stories about the third. It's the summer before my sophomore year in college and I have spent all my time there so far in fear of losing something I can't make up for; a breast, an arm, my eyes, my lips. I have tried Ayurveda and holistic massage and copious amounts of scented oils. I tried incense and chanting, I tried praying. I don't know if it worked or not. I stopped all of it after coming home. But this afternoon while running to the store for milk and butter and cigarettes I heard the fourteen-year-old boy with Down syndrome behind me telling the checkout girl about how Santa Claus comes every winter, he comes down the chimney and he leaves cookies for him and carrots for the reindeer, and when I heard her giggle I felt something in my mouth just let go. And waited til I was in my car again to open my lips and let my tongue flop like a fish into my hand.

So I am writing this out in the hours before my parents come home and I am trying to figure out what I will say. I mean what I will tell them. Whether I should even be here when they come back. And I cannot stop thinking about that boy. I want to find him and ask do you think Santa could bring me a new tongue, three teeth, two toes, my earlobe and a thumbnail? Because I think he would tell me that he could.

This has not been published per se, but has been posted on www.deviantart.com under the name escapemonkey.

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