“Goodnight, Jamison.”
“Goodnight, Nathan.”
As the sun rose over the hillside, Nathan opened his eyes, yawned, and decided that today was the day he would finally be reunited with Penny and Mary.
“Come on,” he said, brushing the leaves off of Jamison. “It’s too beautiful of a day to waste by sleeping all…”
Jamison was not asleep.
“No,” Nathan whispered. “It can’t be.”
He gently shook his friend. Jamison’s face had taken on a greenish tint, and he looked exactly the way Nathan might expect somebody to look if they’d eaten bad cheese.
“Please, no.”
Nathan’s entire body shook as he wept. He sobbed so violently that his last two teeth fell out. He didn’t pick these up. Let them decay on the ground! Nobody would ever want them!
In fact, he tore off his necklace, snapping the string. He took the individual teeth and flung them away, one by one, throwing them as far as he possibly could. Why keep mementos of his existence? He brought nothing but misery to those who were kind to him.
He threw away the last tooth and wept some more.
He should have eaten that cheese himself!
“Oh, Jamison, I’m so, so very sorry. I wish you’d stayed behind and married Beverly. Then you wouldn’t be dead. I’m so sorry.”
Nathan knew what he had to do. He searched for a few minutes for one of the teeth he’d thrown away, and then scraped it across the ground. He would bury Jamison in a grave that he dug with his own accursed tooth. That was the only way to show his best friend the proper respect.
Digging a grave with a tooth, however sharp, is a very time consuming process, but Nathan didn’t care. If it took him the rest of his life, he would dig this grave!
When the vultures arrived, he decided to cheat a bit.
“I’ll miss you, dear friend,” he said, as he set the last stone upon the grave. A marker read Jamison. A friend to all, but especially to me.
And then he resumed his journey, alone.
His gums were particularly sore one day and even bleeding a bit, and he realized that his new teeth were finally coming in. In fact, as he poked at the spot with his tongue, one of them had started to emerge.
He hurried to a pond and gazed closely at his reflection.
Normal!
His new tooth had a flat top!
It was a normal tooth!
If all of his new teeth followed this pattern, soon he’d look like everybody else!
He clapped his hands together with delight, and then he frowned.
He’d no longer be special!
He’d be just like everybody else!
He flicked himself on the side of the head to clear out that train of thought. The normal teeth were good.
He invented three new dances, right there on the spot, and then continued on his way.
Each day it seemed a new tooth emerged from his gums, and they were all normal. His mouth was so sore that even drinking through a straw caused pain, but it didn’t take away from his happiness.
In every town, village, and city, he asked if anybody knew where Penny and Mary might live. He was sorrowful each time they said “No, sorry, I’m afraid we can’t help you, best of luck in your search” but nobody screamed when they saw him. Nobody recoiled. Nobody even gasped.
Soon all of his teeth had grown in completely. He smiled all the time, even when he wasn’t particularly happy.
And one day, he passed by a small brown house with a white picket fence that felt somehow right to him. Familiar. Like he’d been there before even though he’d never seen it.
Home.
He ran his hand through his hair, tried to wipe most of the dirt off his face, and then walked up onto the porch and rang the doorbell.
Penny did not answer.
Nor did Mary.
“May I help you?” asked the woman. “I won’t be buying any newspapers or raffle tickets, if that’s why you’re here.”
“No, it’s nothing like that. Do you by any chance know a pair of sisters named Penny and Mary?”
“Nuns?”
“No, sisters as in blood relatives.”
“I’ve never heard of them.” The woman narrowed her eyes. “You look oddly familiar, even though I don’t remember you from anywhere. Are you famous?”
“I was frozen for a while. It might have been on the news.”
“That can’t be it. I don’t follow news of science. What’s your name?”
“Nathan Pepper.”
The woman put her hand to her mouth in shock. “Nathan Pepper?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Smile for me. As wide as you can.”
Nathan gave her his widest smile.
“It’s a miracle! They’ve been fixed!” She threw her arms around him and gave him a tight hug. “Nathan, I’m your grandmother!”
“My grandmother?”
Helena hugged him again, then took Nathan by the hand and led him into her living room. A man sat on the couch, reading a newspaper. “Martin! This is Nathan! And he’s no longer a physical deviant!”
“Isn’t he a bit young?”
“I was frozen,” Nathan explained.
“It’s a miracle!” Martin set his newspaper aside, got up off the couch, and gave Nathan a hug. “We could never have anticipated that you’d grow up to be such a fine young man!”
“It’s hard to imagine that we told your mother and father to suffocate you,” said Helena.
“You told them to…suffocate me?”
“Well, that or some other humane means of extermination. But you were a monster back then.”
“I think I’m going to leave now,” said Nathan.
TWENTY-FIVE
Would he ever find them?
Nathan started to think that he should stop trying. Was he wasting his life with this fruitless search? What if they weren’t even happy to see him? What if they said “You’re the obnoxious biting boy who sent us to the Poor House!” and formed a mob to chase after him with pitchforks and torches?
It was a risk he’d have to take. He couldn’t stop searching. If nothing else, he had to tell them he was sorry for all of the misery he’d brought them.
He walked and walked.
Literally thousands of people would later report having spoken to a sad little boy, but none of them knew how to find the women he was searching for. Some were kind and offered to drive him around, or gave him food, and some even let him sleep in their backyards for the night, and he thanked them, yet he started to wonder if perhaps Penny and Mary were trying not to be found.
Nobody knows for sure how long Nathan traveled, or how many steps he took, but it was a very long time, and a great many steps. Sometimes he felt as if he were almost there, and other times he felt as if he were wandering in circles and wouldn’t reach his destination until he was a powdery skeleton.
And then, one day, as he wandered into the town called Final Pass, things felt right.
He remained cautiously optimistic, because of course this feeling hadn’t worked out for him the last time, but his heart raced and his pace quickened and he knew—he knew—that this was where the sisters lived.
A man dressed in rags stood on a street corner. Nathan hurried over to him. “Sir! Do you know if two ladies, one named Penny and one named Mary, live in this town?”
The man furrowed his brow and rubbed his chin. “They do, in fact. In a humble but well kept house at the far end of town, with a lovely garden from which I steal radishes.”