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stay away from him.”
    “Why does he hate me?” I blurted. “I mean, Before. Dad said he hated me Before.”
    She gaped at me like I was an uglier freak than usual. Doorbells. Sahara. Don’t curse. Don’t say something stupid out loud, like doorbells.
    “Doorbells,” I muttered. “Pretty doorbells. Football rugs.”
    Leza gave me a longer, stranger look. “You don’t remember? Elana Arroyo and all that?
    I shook my head.
    She studied me for a few seconds. “Well, that was you and him. I wasn’t there. I just heard about it.”
    “What? Heard doorbells? I mean, heard what? Why? Why did we fight?”
    More studying me. She bit at one of her nails. “That was a long time ago. And like I said, it was him over that girl. That’s all I really know. Now—well, I think he can’t stand what you did. Kind of like my parents.”
    I looked at the ground. It was easier than looking at Leza. “Doorbells.”
    “You can’t help that, can you? Saying stuff.”
    “No. Well, a little, but not all the time.”
    “And you can’t help turning your head funny, to the side so you can see better.” She picked at her palm like she might have a callus. “I read about that in a pamphlet Mama Rush brought home from one of your hospitals. It’s because your brain is broken, right?”
    “I’m a five-year-old genius,” I offered.
    “Okay, yeah.” Leza actually smiled. “I’ve got to get to the track, and you need to go home before Todd comes back outside. Mom and Dad are down in the basement getting ready to go to Lake Raven, so—”
    “I’m gone. Thanks for helping me.”
    “Welcome.” Leza turned and jogged toward her house.
    I wondered if I had snot on my face.

chapter 4
    My father overreacted when I got home from my Saturday morning in Todd’s front yard, all because my book was torn up, and my bag had grass on it, and I told him I fell. He dragged Mom out of bed and hauled us to the emergency room to have my bad hip checked out, and my ribs and arm and leg and whatever else he could think of asking them to examine. Fell. I just fell. Fell down.
    Mom didn’t say much, ate a pack of peanuts for breakfast, and somewhere between the fourth X-ray and the orthopedic consultation, she left for the bank “to catch up on some work while nobody could interrupt.” I fell down. I just fell down. But Dad had to have X-rays, and Mom left.
    After Dad and I got home with a prescription for really strong aspirin, something for my stomach so I could take the aspirin, and a diagnosis of “multiple bruises,” Dad told me I had to stay home for the next week. I fell down! Just a fall. A little fall. X-rays. I tried to argue, but it did no good. I was there, trapped in the house with Dad, J.B. the homicidalghost, the football rug, and sometimes, late at night or early in the morning, Mom.
    “Use the time,” I told myself Wednesday afternoon, repeating something the hand-Nazi from Carter had told me over and over again. “No such thing as downtime if you use it to get stronger. Time.”
    So, I avoided looking at the devastation of Mama Rush’s presents by studying the driver’s manual, doing hand exercises with a tennis ball, and repairing my memory book as best I could. Time. Time and more time. After a while, I sat down on my bed, looked up the number in my memory book, called Carter, and asked for Alicia. She was in occupational therapy and couldn’t come to the phone. Time. Hank was seeing the shrink, and Joey had been discharged. No forwarding number. His parents wanted him to “go back to his real life.” Probably didn’t want him talking to the kid who shot himself. Me. If I shot myself. Whatever. Time. When I got to talk to Hank, I’d ask him about Joey’s number.
    I had to dig out a school directory to look up numbers from people I knew Before. People other than Todd, anyway. Guys from football. Guys from the golf team. The first one I tried was Kerry Brandt. Time. I used to know him from golf. I used to like