Chapter 22: The Show

The gallery on Main Street gave me its front room for one night.

I hung nine prints, each the size of a door.

The three from Mine hung in the middle.

Around them were six new ones I had made in the last two weeks.

In one I stood on the quad grass at noon in a green dress, facing the lens.

My prosthetic was on and both feet were planted.

In another I sat on Gideon's loft floor with the leg beside me and my hands in my lap.

The wall label under each said only my name.

Nell stood at the door in a blue dress with a clipboard.

She was checking people in, and nobody had asked her to.

She had refused to let anyone in without a wristband.

"I'm choosing the wrong people to be rude to," she said, when I asked. "That's the whole point of the clipboard."

By eight, the room was full.

The professors came, all six, and stood at the back and said nothing.

I let them look.

A student of about twenty came in alone and stopped in front of the print of me on the grass.

She had a carbon blade on her right leg.

She looked at my picture for a long time.

"Is it true?" she asked me, when I came over. "That it's a fellowship now? For people like us?"

"It's true," I said. "I'm on the committee. Apply the day it opens."

"Do you still get stared at?"

"Every day."

"What do you do?"

I thought about it.

"I stare back," I said, "and then I get on with my day."

She laughed, a short surprised laugh, and wrote the date on her hand.

At nine Nell tapped a spoon against her glass.

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