SUMMER 2014

Jonas had done two things when he'd come home from the hospital for the first time after The Accident.

1. He'd taken a permanent marker and scribbled out the lower half of the left leg on his Bones of the Human Skeleton poster, which had hung on his closet door since fifth grade (when he'd decided he wanted to be a doctor).

2. He'd looked at the newly-altered poster and cried, for the first time after and the only time since.

He was looking at the same poster now.

"Jonas?"

His mom's tone was familiar. It was the same tone she'd been using with him for the last year. It was as if she was tiptoeing around him, walking carefully to avoid stepping on something sharp like glass shards or a Lego brick. His gaze fixated once more on the mass of permanent ink on the poster that obliterated the left tibia, fibula, patella, half the femur—irrevocable, unshakable. It won't go away! he'd screamed in his head, that first day, as he angrily smeared ink on the poster. This won't ever go away! And that was when he had cried.

"Are you there?"

Jonas sighed into his phone, the static breath rebounding in his own ear. "Yes, Mom. Here."

"Okay," she said. "Look, I know you haven't really driven since, well, you know." She paused before pressing onward, her tone diplomatic. "Your sister forgot the waiver for her summer camp, and you know they're leaving later this afternoon. I really wouldn't ask under any normal circumstances, but I have a big meeting at work today and I can't get away to bring it to her."

Jonas thought about his sister being unable to zip-line or white-water raft or any of the other things she had been going on and on about doing at summer camp since school had first let out back in May. He thought about his sister, so excited to go off and do something, the first thing their parents had had any extra money for, what with Jonas's stack of receipts for doctor's appointments, hospital stay, therapy, and prosthesis (which hadn't left his closet since the day he'd gotten it).

"I was just wondering if you could take it to her."

Easier said than done. Jonas frowned, massaging the place right above his nonexistent left knee, where the rest of his leg should have been.

"Jonas?"

He pictured himself saying no and then pulling the covers over his head to block out the outside. "Okay, Mom," he said instead. After all, he'd put her through enough, hadn't he? He could do one thing for her, right? And for Taylor, who had kind of been the forgotten one in all this mess.

"Okay? You'll do it?" Jonas could hear his mother's relief through the phone. He also didn't miss the hope in her voice. He wondered if she had expected more arguing. She'd been trying to get him to leave the house for something, anything, since the end of the school year (really, since Jonas's Great Tragedy). He could also hear the concern in her voice. He knew she'd be worried that she was asking too much. Jonas felt bad—the uncomfortable feeling of guilt squeezed at his insides. After all she'd done for him, she shouldn't have to worry about asking too much. She shouldn't have to worry that her son couldn't handle a little thing like a quick errand.

"Okay," he said again. Maybe she'd believe him a little more after he said it a second time. Maybe he'd believe it a little more too.

He could practically see the smile on her face. "Thank you, Bird!" she exclaimed. Jonas closed his eyes and tried not to cringe at the child- hood nickname (You're so skinny, like a bird! his mom used to say). He could picture her smiling an actual smile (not tired or forced) and he felt a little better about himself for once. His mom was continuing, her words humming in his ear. "Taylor said the form is either on the counter or on her desk in her room. If you could just take it—they're meeting in that parking lot behind the school, you know the one."

Jonas knew the one. He didn't think he'd forget it. He and his older brother, Rhys, leaving school. That same parking lot around four thirty, post Rhys's track practice. Crash. The sound of crunching metal echoed in his head.

"Yes." He forced the word out. "Got it." He swallowed and closed his eyes.

"If you could just take it there and give it to her . . ."

"Yeah, all right," he said. There. All right. Something other than okay.

"All right." A pause. "I love you, Jonas."

Jonas pictured his mom. In the year since his accident she'd seemed to shrink somehow. Her dark eyes didn't hold as much light and there was a little streak of gray in her dark hair, which she always tried to tuck behind her ear. Jonas thought that maybe the worst thing of all of this was what it had done to Elise Nguyen-Avery. He held his breath a moment before letting it out and replying. "Love you, too, Mom."

Jonas hung up and dropped his phone on the bed next to him.

He stared at the ceiling's bumpy plaster for a few moments, as if gathering his strength. Then he sighed and flung the blankets back, sat up, and swung his right leg over the side of the bed, ignoring what remained of the left. Pretend it's not there. Don't look. (When it had first happened, there had been moments when he almost forgot. He wished he still had more of those moments—the forgetting. Of feeling nothing for a while.) Standing and using the edge of his bed for balance, he tripped over to his closet, where he hesitated, staring at the poster's ink-mangled leg once more before pulling out the prosthesis from the dark corner he had shoved it into.

He sat back down on the edge of the bed and examined the prosthetic leg. A part of Jonas hated the thing. It was a poor substitute for what he was missing. He frowned, then situated it against the stump. No, that didn't feel right. Wasn't there supposed to be a sock or something that went on before the prosthesis? A stump liner? Jonas shuddered a little; for some reason, he'd always hated that word. Stump. Stump, stump, stump. He had tried to get used to it, lying in the hospital bed in the pediatric unit (there were clouds and stars and stuff on the ceiling tiles; he wasn't old enough for the adult unit yet) and thinking it over and over in his head, but it didn't work—didn't sound right. Trees had stumps. Legs weren't meant to have stumps.

After a bit more digging, he managed to find the practice liner they'd given him when he'd first gotten the prosthesis. (Wear it a little every day—get used to it. He hadn't.) He put it on and refitted the prosthesis. It felt loose, and he was a little worried that the suction between the liner and the prosthesis wouldn't hold. Somewhere there was a new liner, one fitted to his leg a few months post-accident, after his leg had atrophied a bit. Shrunk. The thing—stump, leg—had actually shrunk.

Jonas's gaze moved to the floor, unable to look at the leg for very long. "It will be fine," he muttered into his empty room (empty house, really). "It's only for a little while, after all."

Jonas stood, wobbling for a moment, keeping all his weight on his good leg. After The Accident (Jonas's Great Tragedy was always referred to as The Accident), he'd gone through the motions: minor inpatient therapy, practice wearing the liner, trying on a prosthesis. He'd gone through the motions because after he did, he felt less guilty when he looked at his mom. The motions had stopped when his mom had sug- gested getting the permanent prosthesis. Something about the word permanent had made everything sink in. So he'd given up on replacing his missing leg with metal and plastic. His mom hadn't; she'd had him fitted and worked with a prosthetist to order it, hoping that once he had the leg, he might show a little more interest. He'd taken it almost as a challenge. Think again. It had spent most of its time in the corner of his closet, gathering dust. Jonas preferred the crutches. He'd gone to therapy long enough to learn how to use them properly. Why pretend everything was normal when it clearly wasn't?

He tried putting some weight on the leg, drawing in a sharp breath at the pain that shot up his left thigh (like his lower leg was still there and was currently being stabbed). Jonas stumbled slightly, then clenched his leg with his hand and straightened it.

You can do this, Jonas, he told himself, breathing a little heavily from the pain. Was he going to hyperventilate? Stop it, he ordered his uncooperative body. Had it been this painful before? He couldn't remember. His rumpled reflection in the mirror on the back of his closet door revealed a boy who was a shadow of who he'd been before The Accident—pale and a whole lot thinner. He's back to eating like a bird! He'd heard his mother express her frustration with him to his father in hissed whispers coming from their bedroom down the hall. He tried to smooth back his feathery dark hair (his mom's hair), which was stubbornly sticking up on one side, where it had had face time with his pillow last night. Then he tried on a smile that, when combined with the dark circles under his eyes, made his reflection look only slightly unhinged.

He left on his plaid pajama pants and threw on an old Washington U (St. Louis, Missouri: est. 1853) sweatshirt his dad had given him when Jonas had been accepted there (his mom and dad had met there—family tradition?). His dad was more muscular (filled out, as his mom would say), and his old sweatshirt made Jonas look a little like he was going for a swim in it.

He stopped looking at himself in the mirror when he couldn't bear it anymore. It was odd, seeing himself with two legs again. It made his chest ache a little.

He picked up the crutches again and headed to the kitchen. He tried to think of things in steps.

1. Get up. (Complete.)

2. Get dressed. (Complete.)

3. Get down the hallway.

He was thankful that he was on the ground floor, at least, and didn't have to navigate the stairs with crutches. After The Accident, Rhys had been forced to give up his bedroom downstairs and take Jonas's old upstairs bedroom (the odd space over the garage where the air conditioner didn't quite get in the summer and the heat didn't quite get in the winter). Rhys hadn't complained, and Jonas knew it was because he still felt guilty for being the one driving, and for not being injured in the same permanent capacity that Jonas was. Jonas let him feel guilty. Sometimes he felt bad about it, but most times he thought it was a poor substitute for what he himself had lost. It was complicated. He didn't exactly blame Rhys, but he didn't exactly not blame him either. Jonas had tried to explain this aloud to the counselor his parents had had him go to after it had first happened (until he'd refused to go and his mom, after a lot of tears, had given in) but had failed. After that, he hadn't tried to explain anything to the counselor.

There was the permission slip, on the counter.

1. Pick it up.

2. Make it down the step into the garage.

The paper crumpled when he tried to hold it and the crutch at the same time. He slowly navigated the step down into the cool darkness of the garage. The keys for the Bus were on the wall next to the door, just like always—just like they'd been when Jonas still drove, where he would pick them up almost every day. The Bus was an old Honda Odyssey with sliding doors that didn't work and a hole rusted through the door to the trunk. The air conditioner was also on the fritz, on top of the vehicle's other charms—but it was loyal, and it continued to start and run without fail. There was almost something comforting about it.

Jonas opened the driver's-side door carefully. You can do this, he told himself again, before opening the garage door and putting the key into the ignition, bringing the engine to life (all six minivan cylin- ders firing). He proceeded to give himself a pep talk that would have rivaled a football coach's rallying cry minutes before the homecoming game (well, at least what he thought that would sound like; he wouldn't know).

Jonas tried not to picture how many days had started with him grabbing the Bus's keys off the same old hook, shouting good-bye to his mom, and driving off to school or to soccer practice because he was sixteen and newly driver's licensed and he could. He tried not to think about how now he couldn't—about all the times he'd tried since he'd recovered from The Accident (when everyone was gone and he was safely alone), only to end up in a cold sweat, unable to leave the drive- way. He could have kept trying—could have worked up to it, as the counselor had said—but he just didn't see the point anymore. And you're afraid, his irritating inner voice shot back.

After The Accident, there were a lot of things Jonas found himself unable (or unwilling) to do. It was too easy to be reminded of what he was before he was reduced to being a teenager with only one and a half legs. After The Accident, the way he saw the world had been skewed. To him, people were always either a) trying too hard to pretend he was normal or b) going out of their way to try to help him. Help carrying his backpack after school, help opening the door to whatever store he happened to be going into. One well-meaning friend had even offered to take his arm and help him walk, much to Jonas's embarrassment.

He was tired of people looking at him like he was less him than he had been before the semi hit the passenger side of his brother's car. He already felt like he was somehow less than he had been before—he didn't need other people reinforcing that.

So he withdrew from everyone. Jonas with two legs had never been incredibly social, but he'd had friends, at least. He had since distanced himself from them. It was too easy for them to make comments like, "Can't believe Coach is making us run laps today," or even the com- pletely innocuous, "Break a leg," before a presentation at school. Jonas would give anything to run laps aimlessly around the soccer field, or for his leg to ache with something other than phantom limb pain. He was tired of being reminded. He was tired of his friends realizing he was there and then turning to him and apologizing awkwardly. Really, he could handle the comments. What he couldn't handle were the pitying looks that came afterward, or the way their words trailed off when they caught his eye, because that was what reminded him that he was different now.

Jonas always thought he would be fine if people would only act like they had before, but a small part of him, that annoying inside voice, wondered if he would really be okay if people acted like nothing had changed. What's the point of pretending nothing has changed when everything has? But he couldn't stop trying to pretend, at least in front of anyone outside of his family.

So he didn't go places with friends anymore. He didn't go hang out at the mall or go to the movies. He didn't watch their soccer games. He didn't drive.

He just existed, as if suspended in the moment in which he had regained consciousness only to realize he was short an appendage.

He slowly backed the Bus out of the garage and then down the driveway. He shifted the vehicle into drive and headed down his street. This wasn't so bad, right? Not so bad (he felt very much like a fif- teen-year-old again, learning to drive his parents' minivan. He still remembered his dad: Easy on the brakes, Jonas. Then Elliot Avery would grin, even though his nervous energy was dissipating into his hands, adjusting his seat belt. You'll give me whiplash!).

Jonas had never been sad about the leg. The one time he'd cried was more out of anger than anything. He always wondered if it was just that the shock had been so terrible that it had yet to wear off, even almost a year later. It just . . . was. This was his situation now, and he didn't feel like being sad would help anything. Besides, Rhys had cried enough for the both of them. Jonas had never known his older brother could cry that much—could cry at all, in fact. (Rhys had gone to visit the counselor—Dr. Andy—after Jonas had stopped seeing her. Supposedly it had helped. At least Rhys didn't cry anymore.)

His mother still cried sometimes. Especially after an unsuccessful day of trying to get Jonas to show some interest in something other than watching the Star Wars movies over and over again (and wishing that there was some way he could get his hands on a robotic leg of a quality à la the hand that Luke Skywalker got after having his own chopped off by a lightsaber) or playing video games on the PlayStation his parents had gotten him after The Accident, mindlessly defeating enemies until his head emptied of all the worries about what his first year of college would bring. I don't understand! I just want to help him and I don't know how! he'd heard his mom cry to his father one night when he'd snuck down the hall for a drink, a phantom on crutches in the darkness. (He'd gone back to his room without the drink, and with guilt squeezing his insides again.)

He pulled the Bus to a jerky stop at the stoplight. This was it. The last thing between him and the main road.

The light turned green and he shakily accelerated, turning rather ungracefully but managing to stay in his lane, which was a plus. Jonas mentally added another point to his first-time-driving-again score.

After several turns, he was about ready to convince himself that this really was okay after all. His muscle memory was starting to kick in, and his braking and acceleration weren't so shaky and halting. (Plus, his hands weren't as sweaty.)

In hindsight, maybe he'd spoken—or thought—too soon.

At that moment, a semitruck passed in the left lane. Jonas held his breath. His vision wobbled a bit, sparking in and out of static, like a radio with a bad signal. He imagined that the truck was coming into his lane and ended up swerving dizzily, only to find that the truck was firmly where it belonged, and it was just the spinning of his head that was warping things. It was flashes—a semitruck; the shocked face of a man named Paul Whitford; Rhys crying and saying Jonas's name over and over again, like the more times he said it, the more likely he'd be to get a response.

Was he dying? Or just having a panic attack? The horizon line was wonky, and Jonas desperately pleaded with himself not to pass out. He was so busy holding his breath and vise gripping the steering wheel as he watched the truck, trying not to give in to a flashback to the moment when everything had gone black, that he didn't notice the red light in front of him.

When Jonas did notice the light, he panicked. Everything went from slow motion to 2x speed—he went for the brake with his right foot, which seemed abnormally sluggish for the speed at which everything was happening, while his left foot, the one belonging to the unwieldy prosthetic leg, somehow got stuck under the pedal. Shouldn't have done this. Shouldn't have done this, was all he could think, over and over as he slammed down the brake, pressing it as far as it would go with his shoelace caught around it and his prosthetic foot jammed up under it. His thoughts switched from Shouldn't have done this to I'm going to die now; this is it to What if I lose my other leg? No-legs Jonas?

The van came to a stop, but not before bumping into the car in front of him, jolting it slightly.

And everything stopped but the ringing in his ears. Shouldn't have done this.