Turn 18 of 26

Sit in the chair and let them wire your braces permanently. You know that everyone else including Ruth has to have their done today as well, you got lucky by going first.

You sit in the chair. It reclines you with a hydraulic sigh, and Dr. Sandoval — a soft-eyed woman with her own taped glasses — leans in and says, "Open wide, Edith," and your jaw drops open before the sentence is finished. That's how it is now: your body obeys the name before your mind can object to it.

The procedure takes an hour. There's clicking, and tension, and the cold taste of metal, and at one point a wire is threaded through every bracket and twisted, and Dr. Sandoval says, "Hold still, sweetie, almost done," and you hold perfectly still, because of course you do. Your hands lie folded on the bib. Your eyes water and no one minds. Through the small window in the inner door you can see the waiting room beyond: twenty-eight girls waiting their turn, all of them getting the same thing done today, and you got lucky, going first. The thought arrives warm and certain, a fact about luck, and it sits in you without asking whose luck it actually is.

"There," Dr. Sandoval says at last, sitting back.

"Permanently wired. You won't need adjustments anymore — those teeth aren't going anywhere." She holds a little mirror to your mouth.

You look. The braces are one continuous lattice now, wire fused to every bracket, wrapping your teeth in bright metal, and when you try to move your jaw to test it, it barely opens — two fingers' width, no more. You will eat small bites for the rest of your life. You will speak with this lisp for the rest of your life. The mirror lowers, and Dr. Sandoval checks a chart and says, warmly, "Edith Kessler. All done," and writes something, and the chart, you catch in a glance, has always said Edith, every page of it, in neat old-fashioned handwriting.

"You did tho good," Ruth says when you come out, and the waiting room applauds — twenty-eight pairs of soft hands clapping, snorting giggles everywhere — and you grin back at them, metal to metal, jaw barely able to close around the smile. The knocking thing under all the warmth is pounding now, and there is nothing left in your mouth that can ever be taken off.