NATHAN ONCE MORE 8D

Nathan likes it when he gets blisters.

His new shoes for school pinched and he had one on the side of his big toe on his right foot. His mother put a band aid on it, and a few days later the pus had drained and it was a loose flap of dry skin clinging to the side of his toe like a leathery, deflated balloon.

He was sitting on his bed, reading a book on geography. He paused in the middle of a section on rivers in Africa and wrestled his right foot onto his lap and removed the sock. Then he leaned over and took the sock off his left foot too, so he wouldn’t be uneven.

His mother had safety-pinned the ends of his pillow cases closed because he was afraid the pillow would fall out while he was asleep. He removed one of the rusty pins and took it to his foot.

Even though the skin flap from the blister was still a part of him, he couldn’t feel the pin pass through it. He could see the red-brown of it, though, beneath his semitransparent and yellowing dead skin, and he wiggled it within the once-blister. He could see the pin moving beneath his skin, but he couldn’t feel it.

He left the safety pin in his blister and undid another one from his pillow case. He stuck it in his other big toe, and immediately felt a sharp pain. He pulled it out and a tiny drop of blood followed.

He removed the pin from his right foot too and put his socks back on. He’d have to go wash his foot soon, in case of infections. He wondered what would happen if he stuck a pin to his blister before his mother put a band aid on it.

The monkey bars at school always gave him blisters on his palms. He’d have to experiment soon before he developed calluses.

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