Read Phantom Limbs for Free Online

lolled against the window, her eyes still closed.
    “Are you drunk?”
    She lifted a shoulder.
    I gaped at her. “And you
drove
here?”
    “God, would you relax? I didn’t drive
you
, did I?”
    “So? You could’ve hurt someone!”
    I’d seen her drink a beer on countless occasions, but usually just one. I hadn’t considered that maybe it was just the only one I
saw.
    “Where are we going?” I asked.
    “I don’t know. Just drive.”
    I eased out the clutch as I backed up. I didn’t have a lot of experience driving a stick shift, but Dara had given me a few lessons after I’d gotten my permit. One night last summer, she drove us to the Ascension Cemetery and Mausoleum — thankfully, not the cemetery where Mason was buried. “Cemeteries are perfect for learning to drive,” she had explained. “No one’ll ride your ass for going slow, and you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone — everyone’s already dead.” I struggled with that damn clutch for what seemed like hours, jerking us backward and forward and killing the engine more times than I could count as we both alternated between hollering and laughing hysterically. I wish all of my memories of Dara were as good as that one.
    I drove down the street and came to a complete stop at Willow, looking both ways before proceeding. Dara mumbled, “You drive like an old lady.”
    “Why’d you leave practice this morning?”
    “Oh God. I was freaking out.”
    “Why?”
    “I think Abby asked me on a date.”
    “What?” I tried to keep my eyes on the road. “Why do you think it was a date?”
    “Well, duh! Because it’s Abby.” She put her bare feet up on the dashboard. “She asked me to go to a movie, and we’re not even that good of friends. And sometimes she . . .
looks
at me in the locker room. And she always wants to help me with my goggles. And my cap, at meets — she’s always the one to put it on for me.”
    “But that’s how she is.” Abby was sort of the mom of the team. I’d always figured she was just being nice to Dara, not that she actually liked her. Liking Dara could be a tall order.
    “Also, she touched my left arm.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “She touched your stump?”
    “Not on the stump, but here,” she said, touching her upper arm. “But nobody’s ever touched that arm except you. And the doctors.”
    “What about your dad?”
    “Please. He doesn’t touch me,
period
.”
    I hated that man. Russian-speaking, mustached, and barrel-chested, he seemed to go through life managing to avoid eye contact almost completely. I mean, I felt sorry for him, losing his wife and all. But, Jesus, Dara lost her
mother
. Man up! He was all Dara had. Except for me, I guessed, but I was hardly a fit parental substitute. Half of the time I couldn’t even figure out how to be her friend.
    “Well,” I said, remembering to clutch as I braked for a red light, “maybe she’s just hoping. Or maybe she just wants to be better friends.” I was being circumspect. Of course what I really wanted to know was could Dara be interested in Abby? But I couldn’t ask her outright. At best she’d ignore me, and at worst I’d be holding an ice pack to my nuts all night. “Anyway, you’re graduating in a week,” I pointed out. “Who cares anymore?”
    “I don’t want everyone remembering me that way when I’m gone! ‘Dara the dyke’— I can hear it now.”
    “It would take the focus off your stump!”
    She took a foot off the dashboard and kicked me hard in the arm. “You’re a real asshole, Mueller, you know that?”
    “Jeez,” I said, rubbing my arm. “Sorry. I just know you hate being defined by your — by being an amputee.”
    I wanted to glance at her to see if I was in for another physical assault, but I had to concentrate; the light was about to turn green, and we were on a slight incline. But she laid her hand on my arm where she’d kicked me and said, “You’re not an asshole. You just know me so well. Sometimes I