A Lucky Two Dollar Bill / Broken

Broken

I envied Leslie. Her life seemed perfect.

She was the first of us to break her arm or anything bone-wise. It was a miracle it hadn’t happened before. We were wild and indestructible, daring each other to jump from ten feet up the oak tree and transverse the creek that sliced, like a deep scar, into the ground behind my backyard. We built ramps for our bikes out of boards with rusty nails and sailed no hands into the air without padding or helmets.

One morning, Leslie crept into our seventh-grade homeroom, cradling her arm like it was her baby. Us girls rushed to admire her cast, half hidden by the scarf her mother tied around her neck to swaddle it, perfectly matched her outfit, navy, and cream.

Leslie’s clothes fit perfectly. Her mom worked at a department store and got a discount. She never choose a random item from the clearance rack for her daughter that she had to share with her little sister. Leslie, the oldest with four brothers, had a bedroom with a pink canopy, not bunk beds. 

Leslie was named after her father. You could tell from how he looked at her that he liked her best.

“What happened?” we cooed. We were hungry for the gristly details. 

“I just fell,” she said, turning away. “I’m such a Klutz.” 

Leslie had never been a Klutz in her whole life. 

Her mother set Leslie’s blond hair in curls, a modern Shirley Temple. She didn’t get a crooked pixie cut when her mother woke up with a hangover and noticed she looked shaggy. Leslie’s skin was flawless, with a spray of freckles dancing across her nose. She never had pimples or needed braces.

The teacher danced around her to make Leslie comfortable. She was excused from gym class and perched sweatless on the bleachers while we grunted through the President’s Physical Fitness Challenge.  

Since I lived across the street, I was chosen to help carry her books home. 

“How did it happened?” I begged. 

“I fell,” she said. “Just drop it, okay?” She grabbed her books and ran inside.

We usually played outdoors. Once, we climbed onto the concession stand roof at the Little League field and took running leaps off while clutching the flag pole rope. No one broke any arms that day, but the cops showed up and took our names. 

We became friends in the third grade when my family moved across the street. Her dad hated kids in the house, but if it was raining and he wasn’t home, we’d play RISK in her basement until one of us conquered the world. 

“Does it hurt?” I asked her the next day when she sat at a lunch table.

“It feels weird, like I’d lost something. Don’t tell anyone, but I threw up when it happened. Gross.”

“Was it Kyle?” I asked. We were sure her little brother started a brush fire last fall in the woods behind the school when we wouldn’t let him hang out with us. 

Leslie stared at me like I was a stranger and looked away to study the smoke from the incinerator outside like it might reveal a fantastic secret. 

A few seconds later, she tightened her lips and shook her head. I think she said, “I wish,” but the cafeteria was noisy.

The spring Leslie broke her arm, we already started to drift apart. I was in the accelerated classes with the nerdy kids. Leslie started wearing makeup, smoked cigarettes in the Girl’s Room, and got Cs. She got quieter, not just around me, but all the time.

One time, her mom cut up apples for a snack for us. I noticed she couldn’t bend her arm in the usual way. When I asked Leslie about it, she said her mom broke it when she was little but couldn’t remember seeing her arm in a cast. Her mom never talked about it. 

It must have been a nasty break.