The Bloody Souvenir Read Free Page B

to the neighborhood, “Hey, everyone, come see our new yard gnome. Its name is Purple Pus Boy!”
    I lowered my head and marched toward the front door. “Thanks for all your kindness,” I hissed as I passed her. I went into my room and closed the bedroom door. I took off my shoe and then peeled off my sock, which was already soaking through with blood, and wrapped bandages around it again. The clean wrapping felt better but not by much. Then I got up and walked over to the windowsill, where my journal was drying out. I reached forward and touched the pebbly surface of the wart. It was great, and I smiled just a little.
    That night my mother brought me my dinner on a tray. “I thought you’d rather avoid the family spotlight,” she said, and reached out to hug me but then remembered that I was repulsive and pulled away with a look of fear and loathing.
    The next morning I woke up and when I put my foot down on the floor, I knew there was a problem. It felt like that little volcanic wart had erupted and now I was standing on red-hot molten lava. And then there was the streak. Even though I was purple, I could still see it. I almost wanted to cry because now it was running up the inside of my leg, over my hip, and aiming for my heart. “This can’t be good,” I said slowly, and instantly I knew the terrible, hard thing that I was going to have to do. I put on a pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt, and pulled a baseball cap down low over my forehead, and slipped my hands into a pair of work gloves, and painfully limped down the hall.
    â€œHey, Mom,” I said as casually as I knew how. “I forgot to tell the doctor one little bitsy thing that I think would be really helpful for my future health.”
    She gave me a withering look that would scare a bear. “Back in the car,” she commanded with one stiff finger pointing toward the front door.
    I got into the car as if I were taking a ride to where I would meet a firing squad. The whole way there she drove with one hand on the wheel and the other balled up into a red fist and aimed at me. She knew I had done something colossally stupid. But I still wouldn’t tell her what. And why should I? She’d never understand. It was a boy thing.
    She pulled into the parking lot. “Out!” was all she said.
    I scurried from the car and hobbled up the stairs and into the emergency room. Very sick people pulled back from me. The ones who were too sick to move just closed their eyes.
    The nurse receptionist escorted us to the same little room with the curtain. My mom and I sat on the same bench. She held the same fist up in the air, but she looked at me in a new way, a way that confirmed all her fears. “You are one of them,” she said, passing a final judgment on me. “You’ve become a Pagoda. Admit it!”
    Before I could put together some flimsy lie, the doctor pulled aside the curtain and stepped toward me. “What did you forget to tell me?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” my mother echoed, “what did you forget to tell us?”
    There was no other way to say it except to blurt it out. “It slipped my mind the other day,” I said breathlessly, and I pointed toward my foot. “I had this big volcanic wart on the bottom of my foot, and I took this rusty pair of needle-nose pliers, and…and…and ripped it out!”
    â€œRipped it out?” my mother shrieked. “Are you kidding me! Ripped it out with a pair of pliers! Oh save me, doctor,” she said mournfully, “my son is an idiot.”
    The doctor patted her on the knee to calm her down as he looked up at me. “You know what you did, don’t you?”
    â€œNo,” I replied, “I’m too stupid to know what I did. What’d I do?”
    â€œYou gave yourself blood poisoning with the rusty pair of pliers,” he explained.
    â€œOh,” I said quietly as my pride shriveled up like