Turn 19 of 26

Watch Ruth go in for her permanent wiring and wait with the girls. Soon she’s done as you see everybody else go in and revive their permanent wiring. Soon all 30 of you have permanent wiring in your mouth. You guys all love this as you leave and head to class in room 201

You sit in the waiting room and watch it happen. Ruth goes in first after you, waving, and through the small window in the inner door you watch her recline in the same chair, open the same two-fingered gap, and come out an hour later with a fused lattice of wire where her braces were. The room applauds her too.

"Ith the betht day," she lisps through the fresh metal, rubbing her jaw, beaming.

Then Megan. Then Priya. Then Danielle, and the girl whose tag says TRUDY, and the girl with the low pigtails who always sits behind you. One at a time, all morning, while the rest of you giggle and snort and compare elastic colors in the waiting room and the fish tank bubbles. One at a time, until every single girl among you has been reclined, opened, wired, and told she did so good. Thirty mouths, thirty permanent lattices. Nobody anywhere in the room sees anything strange in it — and by the time the last girl comes out, neither do you. You all love this. You can feel that you all love this, the way you can feel the wire itself, and when the last assistant calls the office finished, thirty girls rise in unison and file out into the noon light, lisping happily at each other, all sounding exactly the same.

"Clath, girls," Ruth says beside you, and the tide of cardigans turns as one toward campus, toward the mathematics building, toward room 201.

Room 201 is new — a bigger room, up on the second floor, tiered seats — but your feet know the way and your body picks the same relative seat, third from the left, and Ruth folds in beside you. Your notebook is out and squared before the room fills. The afternoon light comes down over thirty wired mouths, and the small cold knocking thing under the warmth is still pounding — it has been pounding since the mirror, since the chart that always said Edith — but there is nothing in your mouth that can ever be taken off now, and the lesson is about to begin.