Kate Day - In the Quick

Usually when I showed up Theresa was alone, and she would check my work while I sat in James’s chair. She took her time, and afterward she would ask me questions in an exacting way. About why I chose the method I did and the different ways I could have gone about solving the problem. Sometimes I would talk to her about Materials lab and the improvements Carla and Lion and Nico and I were making with the hand. But if our conversation strayed beyond the topic of school—if I tried to ask her about the fuel cell or about Inquiry and Endurance —she’d gather up my work, hand it back, and tell me she had other things to do.

Sometimes when I arrived I heard two voices behind the door when I knocked. On those days Theresa opened the door by just a crack—through it I could see James leaning over his desk on his elbows, a mess of papers in front of him—and she would ask me to come back another time. One evening I showed up after Materials lab and heard them arguing. Theresa’s voice was more insistent than James’s, but her words were muddled by what sounded like tears. I was surprised and stepped back from the door. Then I heard my uncle’s name, Peter.

We’re never going to figure it out without Peter, Theresa said, and her voice cracked.

We’ll just keep working, James said. Okay?

At lunch I stayed quiet. I watched Lion and Carla, how they talked to each other and to the other kids at the table. What they laughed at. They laughed at Nico, mostly, who was always doing something weird to his food or making faces or arguing with other kids. But he didn’t seem to mind them laughing; he liked it. I tried laughing too, but it felt strange.

In Materials I did what Carla asked me to do. A long line always formed to use the 3D printers, and sometimes we had to wait until the very end of lab to get on a machine. Teams with four or five members would send someone to hold a place in line, and that became my job. I spent so much time in line I got to know the printers, and when they broke down I figured out how to fix them. Eventually, even when I wasn’t waiting for a printer, I got called over when one broke down. At first this annoyed Carla, but then Lion figured out we could broker this for more time on the printers for our team, or for spare parts, and then she was pleased.

When I wasn’t in line I stood with Carla and Lion and Nico at the table and listened. I was allowed to do small tasks, like searching through the hardware bin for tiny screws and washers or cutting down pieces of metal mesh.

Lion and Nico decided changing the thumb on number five would improve its grip after all, and eventually they convinced Carla to let them try it. They left me at the table while they went to go trade with another team for the materials they needed, and I picked up the hand. The metal was warm from Carla and Lion and Nico moving its digits and rotating its thumb. I wrapped its fingers and thumb around my own wrist, squeezed, and felt the give of my skin against the hard metal.

What does a hand do? I thought.

I repeated the actions. Open, shut. Unsqueeze, squeeze. Hands are soft, I thought. They change shape based on what we want to do, from one moment to the next. But that kind of softness can’t survive in space—

How do you make a metal hand soft?

Melt it. In my mind I softened an imaginary titanium hand. But it was too soft. The hand in my mind turned to liquid, became a puddle.

Cut it so thin it gives to pressure. No, too hard. My imagined hand bent and cracked down the middle.

What then? I said this out loud, and the group at the table next to mine stared.

I squeezed the fingers of the hand around my wrist again, tighter this time. Tight enough that it hurt. Again I saw the hand in my mind blown up large, like a balloon, and then shrunk down small, like a piece of desiccated fruit. Its shriveled fingers made a fist.

What if—

Everyone came back to the table, talking loudly, and Carla asked me to find the hardware they needed to redo the thumb. Go look in the bin, would you?

I still had number five wrapped around my wrist, and the desiccated fist hung in my mind.

Carla’s face was impatient.

Lion put his hand on my shoulder. His fingers were warm and firm. June? Did you hear?

Right, I said, and I went to the hardware bin and began digging through it. I didn’t know the answer to my question—how do you make a metal hand soft? But I knew there was one. And I knew changing the thumb on number five wasn’t it.

I found two of the six washers we needed. Then I went to the supply closet and got a latex glove.

Back at the table Carla and Nico were arguing again.

We’re going about it all wrong, I said, and I held up the rubber glove.

Carla raised her eyebrows. Lion cocked his head to one side.

This is the answer. I took the glove and blew air into it and tied it at the wrist. I held it out to Carla, as if to shake hands with her.

It looked silly. I knew that. But I was trying to show them about the blown-up and shrunk-down hand—

Nico started to laugh. And then Carla laughed, and Lion too.

Their laughter wasn’t mean.

Lion shook hands with the glove. Nico actually had tears in his eyes. You are a weird one, you know that? he said. But you’re all right June. He wiped his eyes.

Carla shook hands with the glove too. When she did that it felt good, like I was wrapped up in something warm. So good I pushed the imaginary hand from my mind.

Now we’ve had our fun, Carla said, where are my washers?

The season slowly changed. Our classrooms were slightly warmer now, and some days the sun shifted between the clouds outside the windows. The snow started to melt and turn to slush, and when Lion and I met during free period to run, it soaked our sneakers. I was able to jog around the track five times without getting winded now.

But I still wasn’t very fast, and my stride was still awkward compared to Lion’s. One day I said I wanted to watch him and I leaned against a wall. Rockets flared through the sky overhead as I waited for him to come back around the track. When he did there was a rhythm in his stride. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. The rhythm seemed to match him—the length of his legs and arms, the bob of his head. I started running again and in my mind I tried to find a beat that matched my legs and arms. Lion’s beat was steady like a clock. 1, 2, 3, 4. Mine was quicker, a scurrying backbeat. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. I moved my arms and legs to the numbers, and two of my strides fit inside Lion’s one.

Lion turned his head and smiled. You don’t look like a chicken anymore, he called.

That night in my dormitory bed, with the sounds of other girls’ sighs and sniffles and snores surrounding me, I thought about the hand and my uncle’s question, What does it do? I thought about how different things moved different ways and had certain natural rhythms to them. Lion did when he ran. I did too. The hand had a natural way of moving—or it ought to. The group was trying to make the hand move like our hands do, I thought. But it needs to move how it wants to move.

Carla turned over on her side in the bed next to me. Her breathing was soft and slow.

How can a chunk of metal want ? I asked myself. I recalled my first night at Peter Reed. How Carla reached across our two beds and squeezed my hand. I remembered how I felt the small bones underneath the pads of her fingers, and I thought, It can.

The next morning I went to Theresa’s office to talk to her about my idea for the hand. I knocked; the door was ajar and it swung open. James was asleep at his paper-strewn desk, his head in the crook of his arm.