Never a Hero

us, probably trying to decide how seriously to take her. “Really? Like, the same shark?”
    She snorted in disgust. “Of course not. Have you ever seen a shark that could eat two arms at once?” She shook her head at Nick. “Can you believe this guy?”
    The kid turned scarlet and fled. I wondered if my cheeks were as red as his.
    “Knock it off,” Nick said to June.
    “He started it.”
    We managed to order without incident. It wasn’t until our salads came that June leaned forward on the table to look at me. Her actions and her gaze were so much like Nick’s, it unnerved me. “You know what keeps me up at night?”
    I looked at Nick for help. He was giving me a look that said, “You’re on your own.” I turned back to June. “I have no idea,” I confessed.
    “Wondering if I’m actually right-handed.”
    I looked down at her amputated right arm, which held her weight on the table. In her left hand, she held her fork over her salad bowl. “Are you serious?”
    “Think about it. Hand dominance isn’t learned. It’s genetic, and only about ten percent of people are left-handed. And this.” She pointed with her fork toward her shortened arm. “Depending on which source you’re looking at, the statistics for ABS are anywhere from one in twelve hundred to one in fifteen hundred. That means the chances that I’m actually left-handed are roughly one in thirteen thousand.”
    “That’s not how probability works,” Nick said.
    She ignored him completely and pointed to my right hand. “You have way better odds than me.”
    I looked down at my right hand, suddenly appreciating it more than I had before. “I guess that never occurred to me.”
    “She used that little ploy to talk our parents into the best prosthetic money could buy, back in junior high,” Nick said to me. “Then she quit wearing it three months later.”
    “Not completely.”
    “Close enough.”
    “It was heavy!”
    “Yes, I know. You whined about it every five minutes.”
    It was strange to me, the way they could bicker, and yet it was obvious they loved each other. I didn’t think Nick was actually as annoyed at her as he pretended to be, and she didn’t seem to take anything he said to heart anyway.
    “What do you miss most?” she asked me over our entrees. “I mean, of the things you can’t do, which one really drives you crazy?”
    “I wish I could hammer a nail. All of my walls are blank because I can’t put in nails to hold up pictures.” She nodded in understanding, and I found myself laughing. It was a ridiculous conversation, but I asked anyway, “What do you miss?”
    “I want to be able to hold my morning coffee the way they always do in commercials, you know? With both hands wrapped around it so the cup can make your fingers warm and you don’t have to use the handle.”
    Such a simple thing, to hold a coffee cup. For the first time, I saw a hint of anger in Nick’s eyes, not directed at his sister, but at the unfairness of life.
    “I’ve never thought about that,” I admitted.
    “You’ll never be able to drink coffee and not think about it, now.”
    As we were leaving the restaurant, she bumped my amputated arm playfully with hers. “You doing anything for Halloween?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Want to come to a party with me? We can tape our stumps together and tell everyone we’re conjoined twins, attached at the forearm.”
    “No, thanks.”
    “It’ll be fun,” she said. “I’ll talk you into it later. And I’ll find us a piano teacher, too.”
    Was she serious? She skipped ahead of us, and I slowed down to fall into step with Nick. He put his arm around my shoulders. Such a simple, friendly gesture, but it made my heart race. He leaned close, as if he were about to share a secret with me. “She’s a force to be reckoned with.”
    “I’m starting to figure that out.”
    “Welcome to my life.”
    “Does she ever not get her way?”
    “Not often enough, Owen. Not often enough.”

    “Was she always like that?” I asked Nick, after June had gone. We were back in the comfort of my own apartment, and although I’d liked Nick’s sister, I was glad she’d left.
    “Always. My mom says she came out of the womb determined to make the world pay her back for her missing hand.” He laughed, thinking about it. “When she was three or four, she’d imitate Captain Hook. She’d say, ‘I’ll fight you with one arm behind my back!’ But then she’d put her good arm behind