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"I feel sorry for you, Alice. I really do."

"Oh yeah? Tell me, Charlene, if I do go back to school, will you be my best friend?"

"What?"

"Just what I said, will you?"

"I thought you said you're not coming back." I smiled at her.

"I'm not," I said. "Now you can be the center of attention and tell them you saw me and heard everything firsthand. Make up whatever you want. Tell them I had candles burning in the room and I was chanting in a foreign language."

"I won't do that."

"Whatever. I'm tired. Thanks for stopping by."

She stared at me a moment and nodded. "I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry."

I grunted, and she turned to go. I did feel bad. Why take it out on her, the one girl who had cared enough to visit me?

"Charlene."

She turned back.

"I'm the one who's sorry. I didn't mean to sound so bitter. Thanks for coming to see me."

She smiled.

"One thing," I added. "Tell Bobby good luck on his college career and baseball career. If Craig were here, he would say that."

She widened her smile.

She really was beautiful. I wished that somehow things had been different and I could have been her best friend. We would have had a great senior year together. Maybe she and I would have become like my aunt and my mother had been.

"Good luck, Alice," she said and left.

The walls seemed to close in around me and shut out all noise, every peep, except the far-off sound of someone sobbing.

It took me a while to realize that the sobbing was my own.

10 A Fresh Start

. The operation on my hip was not a total success. Even after I got over the pain, I was unable to walk without a pronounced limp. It made me feel as if I was walking on a tipped surface all the time. After nearly five weeks of care, surgery, postoperative care and therapy, I returned to the Doral House. My grandfather suggested I move to a downstairs bedroom tor a while to avoid having to go up and down stairs, but the doctor had specifically said I should not avoid stairways.

"There's no reason why you can't climb a stairway. If you think of yourself as physically disabled, you'll be physically disabled," he told me with a smile.

I was easily able to rationalize and tell my grandparents that he was right. I could pretend my body wasn't that much different from the way it had been before the accident. I wasn't all that restricted in doing the things that were important to me. After all, I wasn't going to be a ballerina, was I? And I wasn't much of an athlete before the accident. However, pretending I wasn't any more disabled than I had been before the accident was just fooling myself, I decided. Neverthel

ess, I did reject Grandpa's suggestion to avoid the stairs. I remained in my own room.

During my recuperation period, I had done whatever schoolwork I had been given and was granted the right to finish with home study. My grandfather arranged for me to take my final exams after school when everyone else was gone. I didn't know exactly what he had told the administration and my teachers, but whatever he had said worked. He was good at convincing juries, so I had no reason to be surprised at his success in persuading the school authorities to treat me differently. I suspected he relied a great deal on my psychological trauma, which wasn't altogether a false argument.

I still had great difficulty recalling the exact details of the car accident. I had absolutely no memory of what had occured immediately afterward. For a while I even had trouble recalling specifically how the accident evolved. The hospital assigned a therapist to speak with me, and together, she and I worked out the details until I felt it all come rushing back. She was surprised when I suggested Craig was reckless and practically suicidal because of his anger at his parents. However, after I detailed some of what he had said and what had led up to it all, she nodded at me with a look of appreciation.

"You're a pretty bright young lady," she said. "Don't sell your future short."

What future? I wanted to ask. Except for my art, I had never been ambitious about anything, and now it seemed to be impossible to envision myself passionate about any sort of career. As for my art, a very strange new fear came over me during my period of recuperation. For the first few weeks after my return from the hospital, I did not attempt to go up to the attic. My grandmother was not unhappy about it. She had looked for every opportunity to get me out of the attic as it was.

"I know what the doctor told you, but you don't have to go and climb another set of stairs every day," she said. "Your grandfather could bring all your art materials downstairs and set up a studio for you in the guest's bedroom. Why look for trouble? All you need, Alice, is to injure yourself before you're fully recuperated from the injuries you had."