Free Child of My Right Hand by Eric Goodman Page A

winter, when he started styling, he’d gobbed on the mega-hold. His spikes were so stiff kids’ palms bounced off. One freezing-cold day he was fiddling with his hair, and a big clump snapped off! Now, running his hands through his hair and watching them as if they belonged to someone else, his dad’s ham hands, he remembered being two years old, the year they lived in France, or maybe he only remembered France from the picture on Mom’s desk. Little Simon with blond curls, a big smile bright as day. He was so cute, I was so cute, what happened?
    Lizzie pounded the bathroom door.
    â€œUpstairs, you brat.”
    â€œGoddamn you, Simon. It’s not your bathroom.”
    â€œEat me, Dizzy!”
    She kicked the door. “Asshole! I hate you!”
    Her footsteps slashed away, and he looked again in the mirror for little Simon. The upstairs shower snorted; water gurgled upwards through the pipes. How she’d loved to spin, Dizzy Lizzie. In California—he could see it when he closed his eyes—they’d hold hands and spin until she fell down, laughing. Now she acted as if she were more mature than he was, but no way, of course, she wasn’t.
    Simon opened his eyes and returned to his terribly important hair.
    ***
    He walked down the hall after fourth bell, headed for the auditeria. Bad news and more bad news. Failing pre-calc, which he learned yesterday, and now, failing French. Just wait till Dad found out. You’re grounded for the rest of your life. Dad’s big ha-ha from middle school. Why did he ever think that was funny?
    Simon approached the end of the corridor. Asshole Corner. His palms bled. His heart beat like it did last spring after they made him run the mile, and he nearly passed out. He turned the corner and there they were, three round faces, moon boys with bowl hair and piggy eyes, Big, Bigger, and Little Asshole, and he didn’t know where to run or hide.
    â€œHey, faggot. Faggot, yeah, you.”
    Simon flattened himself against the wall to let them pass. What a joke, he was too big to flatten against anything smaller than a Winnebago.
    â€œFaggot, you’re dead!”
    But they swept past without hurting him.
    In the lunchroom, Simon looked for Rich. Not finding him, he heaped his tray and sat at Rachel’s table. BHA number three: Something green with every meal. With his heart still roaring, Fag-got, fag-got, fag-got! Simon started on his salad. His left leg twitched as it did when his mind was elsewhere: up-down, up-down, up-down.
    Rachel gazed at him through sweet doe eyes. “You’re shaking the table.”
    â€œMy leg,” he said. “Always does.”
    â€œNot always.” He sometimes thought she liked him in a boy-girl way. “Would you try? You’re annoying people.”
    He ordered his leg to stop. But like everything, his leg was out of control, and Simon felt a gooey wave of despair crash over him. He punched his left leg above the knee, punched and punched until it stopped.
    â€œYou’re such a nut.”
    He didn’t feel like such a nut. “Those guys were calling me names again.”
    â€œWhat guys?”
    â€œAssholes all look the same.”
    Rachel sipped her Arizona iced tea. “You’ve really got to do something.” She tucked fly-aways behind her ears, then whispered, “Rich isn’t coming back.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHis dad doesn’t want him, so he has to live with his mom up in Earlham.”
    Oh God. “Where’s Earlham?”
    â€œLike two hours north.” Rachel touched his arm. “I’m sorry.”
    Simon demolished his first slice of pizza, then started on the second. Under the table, his leg twitched as if it were running away.
    ***
    Jack spoke to his first student group Sunday night: the hall council in Sturtevant, one of the university’s two remaining women’s dorms. They met in the ground floor common room where the