The Broken Arm

Maren didn't mean to fall out of the tree. Nobody ever means to fall out of a tree. But there she was on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, climbing the old oak in Grandma's backyard — the one with the perfect branches that looked like a staircase going up, up, up — when her sneaker slipped on a mossy part, and the world went sideways.

She grabbed for a branch. Missed.

She grabbed for another branch. Missed that one too.

And then — thump — she landed on the ground with her left arm bent under her in a way that arms are absolutely, positively not supposed to bend.

"OWWWWW!" Maren yelled, and it was the loudest yell she had ever yelled in all her six-and-three-quarters years of life.

Grandma came running out the back door so fast her slippers flew off. Dad came running from the garage. Even Biscuit the dog came running, though Biscuit mostly just licked Maren's face, which was not helpful at all.

The drive to the hospital was long and bumpy, and every bump made Maren's arm feel like it was full of bees — angry, buzzing, stinging bees. Dad held her good hand the whole way while Grandma drove and said, "Almost there, sweet pea," about forty-seven times.

At the hospital, a doctor named Dr. Ramirez looked at the X-ray and pointed to a little white line on the bone.

"See that?" she said. "That's the break. It's small, but it's there."

Maren stared at the X-ray. She had never seen the inside of her own arm before. It looked spooky and cool at the same time.

"The good news," Dr. Ramirez said, "is that kids' bones heal fast. The other good news is that you get to pick the color of your cast."

Maren thought about this. Pink? No. Purple? Maybe. Green like a lizard?

"Orange," she said. "Bright orange."

And bright orange is exactly what she got.

The cast went from just below her elbow all the way down past her wrist to the middle of her hand. It was heavy and warm and it smelled like a mix of wet plaster and the inside of a Band-Aid. Maren held it up and looked at it from every angle.

"It looks like my arm ate a traffic cone," she said.

Dad laughed so hard he snorted.

The next morning at school, Maren walked through the doors and everything changed. Suddenly she was the most interesting person in the entire first grade — maybe even the entire school.

"WHOA!" said her friend Jude, sliding across the hallway floor. "What happened? Did you fight a bear?"

"I fell out of a tree," Maren said.

"Did you cry?" asked Priya.

"A little," Maren admitted. Then she thought about it. "Okay, a lot."

"Can I sign it?" asked Theo, who was already pulling a marker out of his pocket like he'd been waiting his whole life for this moment.

"Yes!" said Maren.

And that was how it started.

Theo wrote his name in big blue letters. Then Priya drew a tiny sun with a smiley face. Then Jude wrote "JUDE WAS HERE" in wobbly green letters that took up way too much space, and Maren had to tell him, "Leave room for other people!"

By lunchtime, her cast was covered in names and drawings. Her teacher, Ms. Feldman, wrote "Heal fast, superstar!" in her beautiful cursive. The lunch lady, Mrs. Okafor, drew a little cupcake. Even the principal, Mr. Brennan, signed it, and he drew a stick figure falling out of a tree, which Maren thought was very funny and also very accurate.

After school, Grandma added a heart with polka dots. Dad wrote, "To the bravest kid I know — Love, Dad." And Maren's little brother, Cass, who was only three, scribbled a big purple blob that he said was a dinosaur but looked more like a potato.

Maren loved every single mark on that cast. She would lie in bed at night and turn her arm slowly, reading each name, looking at each drawing, remembering who had put it there. Her arm might have been broken, but her cast was becoming the most beautiful thing she had ever owned.

Then came the itch.

It started on Day Four. A tiny tickle, deep under the cast, right in the middle of her forearm where no finger could reach. Maren wiggled her arm. She shook it. She tapped on the outside of the cast.

The itch laughed at her. Not really. But it felt like it did.

"Dad," Maren said at dinner. "My arm itches."

"I know, honey. Don't stick anything down there."

"But what if I just used a pencil—"

"Nope."

"A chopstick?"

"Nope."

"What about a very thin piece of spaghetti?"

"Definitely nope."

Maren groaned and laid her head on the table. The itch was still there. It was always there. It was there when she woke up. It was there during math. It was there during her favorite show. It was a tiny, invisible monster living inside her cast, and it would not leave her alone.

She tried blowing air into the cast. She tried running cold water along the edge. She tried thinking very hard about something else — puppies, pizza, the ocean — but the itch didn't care about puppies or pizza or the ocean.

"This is the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone in the history of the world," Maren announced on Day Six.

"Worse than the broken arm?" Dad asked.

Maren paused. "...Yes."

But then something happened. On Day Seven, Maren was sitting on the playground bench — she couldn't do the monkey bars or the climbing wall with her cast, so she just sat and watched — when a kindergartner she didn't know walked up to her.

"Excuse me," the little girl said. She had a missing front tooth and a very serious expression. "Can I sign your cast?"

"Sure," said Maren.

The girl carefully wrote "NOLA" in tiny pink letters on the one bare spot near Maren's thumb. Then she looked up at Maren and said, "I broke my leg last summer. The itching is really bad, huh?"

Maren's eyes went wide. "THE WORST."

"I know," said Nola. "But it goes away. And when they take the cast off, your arm looks all funny and pale, like a baby alien arm."

Maren giggled. "A baby alien arm?"

"Yeah. It's gross and awesome."

Nola smiled her gap-toothed smile and ran off to the swings, and Maren sat there, looking down at all the names and hearts and wobbly letters and potato dinosaurs covering her bright orange cast. She tapped at the outside — just a little tap-tap-tap — and the itch was still there, of course. It was always there.

But somehow, right then, it didn't bother her quite as much.

Five weeks later, Dr. Ramirez cut the cast off with a tiny buzzing saw that tickled but didn't hurt. The cast cracked open like an egg, and Maren's arm slid out — pale and skinny and a little sweaty and, yes, exactly like a baby alien arm.

"GROSS!" said Maren, delighted.

She wiggled her fingers. She bent her wrist. She scratched — oh, she scratched — up and down her arm with her fingernails, and it was the most magnificent scratch in the history of all scratches.

"Can I keep the cast?" she asked.

Dr. Ramirez smiled. "Of course."

That night, Maren set the two halves of her bright orange cast on the shelf in her bedroom, right between her favorite books and her rock collection. She ran her fingers over the names — Theo, Priya, Jude, Ms. Feldman, Mrs. Okafor, Dad, Grandma, Cass's potato dinosaur, and down at the bottom, in tiny pink letters: NOLA.

Her arm was healed. The itch was gone. But she kept that cast for a long, long time.