Girl in the Arena Read Online Free PDF

about the silliness of hamming it up around other people that has a particular draw for Thad.
    My brother sees a lot of specialists and physical therapists. He was put on meds when he was four. I call them  elevator  drugs. Without them he seems to flatten out in a way that worries Allison. I know that side effects are part of life, but Thad’s biochemistry mixed with the drugs, produce, well, he fires off this steady stream of predictions now like a crawl at the bottom of a screen. You don’t want to pay attention to all of it but you do. Beautiful and crazy oracles ride up from the basement of his brain and spill out of his mouth in frequent spurts. He feels compelled to share this stuff with me, as if I’m the local translator or the seer’s assistant, and I do my best to take it all in.
    Thad looks into the video screen, presses the green button, and the monitor starts to count down from three, signaling that he should get ready for his ten-second personal recording. When it hits zero, he looks into the tiny eye of the camera embedded at the top of the screen and says, in this way that some people would mistake for deadpan, —I’m the most famous person you’ll ever meet.
    Then he stares, waiting for the tape to stop.
    He presses the replay button and there’s Thad, his large head and the precise teeth marks in his chapped lower lip.
    — I’m the most famous person you’ll ever meet.
    Then: the stare.
    We both laugh. I tell him how professional he looks.
    He says, —I love that.
    I count twenty-five additional replays until I say, —I think the show on electricity is about to start. Let’s go see the Tesla coil.
    When that doesn’t work, I recommend the Nancy Drew computer game with the eerie androids, the  Lord of the Rings  exhibit, the new butterfly room.
    —If we’re really still, the butterflies might come and land on us, I say. —I know you’d love that.
    But we are in the ritual and we will be here until he finally looks at me and says, —Can we see Mom now?
    This means he’s tired and ready to go home. As I take his hand and we walk back toward the escalator, I tell him people will come by and press the replay button and they will see the most famous person they’ll ever meet, if they’re lucky enough to meet him someday.
    Thad likes hearing this and asks me to repeat it a couple of times, which is more like fifteen or sixteen.
    Later, when I’m helping him with his seat belt out in the parking garage, I say, —We had fun tonight, didn’t we?
    And he says, —We had fun tonight.
    Thad is not by nature someone who smiles a lot, but I can tell when he’s content. We take Memorial Drive back, less lights—or a different kind of light in any case—less neon.
    —We’re going to go to the stadium tomorrow, I say, looking at Thad in the rearview as we pass MIT. Because suddenly I realize someone better explain things to him.
    He says, —Tommy’s fighting.
    It’s not like him to remember this kind of thing, even if he’s told it many times over, so I know he has to be worried. I’ve noticed Tommy has been spending more time with him lately.
    —Tommy’s going to lose this, he says.
    He points with his right hand but I’m trying to keep my eyes on the road, so I don’t get what he’s talking about at first.
    —What’s Tommy going to lose?
    —This.
    When I tell him I still don’t get it, he becomes agitated and then he waves his hand back and forth.
    So I wave back at him in the rearview, thinking that’s what he wants.
    —His hand, he says.
    —Tommy’s going to lose his hand? I say, and stop waving.
    —Tommy’s going to lose his hand, he says, letting out a deep breath.
    I know the horrible things that happen in the arena, but there’s something about this information coming from Thad. Allison shouldn’t take him to competitions. We’ve had endless fights about that. But she says that’s what she has to do—it’s in the GSA Bylaws—and when she starts talking