Real estate prices have soared, but the Lightners The Northeast Portland house, wood-framed with a wide front porchĪnd fading cream-colored paint, is like thousands of others on Portland’s He walksĪlong the worn hallway and turns into his room, the one with the toy Hole in his throat-a tracheotomy funnels air directly into his lungs,īypassing the swollen tissue that blocks the usual airways. The boy passes out of the kitchen, stepping into the staircase His right cheek glows with theīlushing good health that the rest of his face has obscured. Neatly behind a delicate, well-formed ear. His healthy, close-cropped hair is a luxuriant brown, shapedĬarefully in a style any serious young man might wear. The third of Sam’s face surrounding his normal eye reinforces the You can see yourself in that eye, the child you once were. You find yourself instantly drawn into that eye, pulled past theĭeformity and into the world of a completely normal 14-year-old. It is clear, perfectly formed and a deep, penetrating brown. Sam Lightner at a meeting of his Boy Scout troop.īut Sam, the boy behind the mask, peers out from the right eye. Looks as though someone has slapped three pounds of wet clay onto hisįace, where it clings, burying the boy inside. The mass draws his leftĮye into a slit, warps his mouth into a small, inverted half moon. In a dome that runs from sideburn level to chin. The main body of tissue, laced with blue veins, swells His left ear, purple and misshapen, bulges from the side of his head. The boy slips behind his mother and steps into a pool of light.Ī huge mass of flesh balloons out from the left side of his face. She bends her head toward him, about to speak.
Watching him like this since he left the hospital a few months before. The way he wearily props himself against the door frame. The boy knows she’s studying him, running her eyes over his bony arms and Worry and turns, not bothering to turn off the water or to dry her hands. The boy clears his throat and says he’s not hungry. He watches his mother, humming as she runs water over lettuce. He stops in the door frame leading to the kitchen and melts into But this boy, a 5-foot, 83-pound waif, has learned Through a room, slapping door jambs and dodging around furniture like Over the sink, washing vegetables for supper. He threads his way toward the kitchen, where his mother bends Plaintive meow, and silently stands, tottering unsteadily as his thin Sister sit on the floor, chattering and playing cards. Stroking the family cat with his fragile hands. The boy sits on the living room sofa, lost in his thoughts and Next part > At a certain age, nothing is more important than fitting in
0 kommentar(er)
