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THE HEALER
There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand.made ofice. Everyone else's hands were normal. The girls first met in elementary school and were friends for about three weeks. Their parents were delighted; the mothers in particular spent hours on the phone describing over and over the shock of delivery day. I remember one afternoon, on the playground, the fire girl grabbed hold of the ice girl's hand and-Poof-jus t like that, each equalized the other. Their hands dissolved into regular flesh-exit mutant, enter normal. The fire girl panicked and let go, finding that her fire reblazed right away, while the ice spun back fast around the other girl's fingers like a cold glass turban. They grasped hands again; again, it worked. Delighted by the neat new trick, I think they even charged money to perform it for a while and made a pretty. penny.
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THE HEALER
ring, and vanished forever. After six months or so he mailed
After a while, the ice girl said she \vas tired of the trick and gave it up and they stopped being friends. I'd never seen them
together since but now they were both sixteen and in the same science class. I was there too; I was a senior then. The fire girl sat in_ the back row. Sparks dripped from her fingertips like sweat and fizzed on the linoleum. She looked both friendly and lonely.. After school, she was most popular with the cigarette kids who found her to be the coolest of lighters. The ice girl sat in the front row and wore a ponytail. She kept her ice hand in her pocket but you knew it was there because it leaked. I remember when the two met, at the start of the school year, face-to-face for the first time in years, the
his mother a postcard with a fish on it that said: In the Big City. Giving Speeches AU Over. Love, J. She Xeroxed the postcani and gave every citiZen a copy. I stuck it on the wall by my bed. I made up his speeches, regularly, on my way to school; they always involved me. Today w focus em lisa, J.'s voice woUld sail out, lisa with the two flesh hands. This is generallY where I'd stop- I Wasn't sure what to add. During science class that fall, the fire ,girl burnt things with her fingers. She entered the room with a pile of dry leaves in her book bag and by the time the bell rang, there was ash aU over her desk. She seemed to need to do this. It prevented
some potential friendships, however, because most people
'Were too
what to say. For Christmas that year I bought her a log. Here,
fire girl held out her fire hand, I guess to try the trick again, but the ice gid shook her head. I'm not a shaker, she said. Those were her exact words. I could tell the fire girl felt bad. I gave her a sympathetic look but she missed it. After school let out, she passed along the brick wall, lighting cigarette after cigarette, tiny red circles in a line. She didn't keep the smokers company; just did her duty and then walked home, alone.
I said, I got this for you to burn up. She started to cry. I said:
Do you hate it? but she said No. She said it was a wonderful gift and from then on she remembered my name.- . I didn't buy anything for ihe ice girt What do you get an . ice girl anyway? She spent most of her non-school time at the hospital, helping sick people. She was a great soother, they said. Her water had healing powers. Wh,at happened was the fire girl met Roy. And that's when everything changed.
Our town was ringed by a circle of hills and because of this no one really came in and no one ever left. Only one boy made it out. He'd been very gifted at public speech and one afternoon he climbed over Old Midge, the shortest of the 122
I found them first, and it was accidental, and I told no one, so it wasn't my fault. Roy was a boy who had no parents and lived alone. He was very rately at school and he was a cutter. He cut things into his skin with a razor blade. I saw once; 123
THE HEALER
mountain walks after school, and usually I'd see them pressed into the shade, but I never again allowed myself to stop and watch. I didn't want to invade their privacy but it was more than that; something about watching them reminded me of slide and pull in, as fast as that. I just took in what I could as I passed by. It always smelled a bit like barbecue, where they were. This made me hungry, which made me