Katerina

 Katerina

  "... and on that note, I would like to introduce our first speaker tonight, our principal, Dr. Martin." The sound of thunderous applause reverbed around the room.

    Katerina yawned and glimpsed at the time. It was only an hour into the banquet and she was already bored. She looked around and suddenly caught a bright glint of light reflecting off one of the other cheerleader's legs. That reminded her of the television show she saw the other night.

    It was about a girl who had lost her right leg in a terrible car accident and how she eventually learned to use an artificial leg and walk again. The show caught her attention because the girl on TV, like her, was a cheerleader. She wondered how difficult it would be to do routines with one leg. Those stunts were hard enough to do with two legs!

    "Our second speaker tonight, who we all know as the..."

    She had dozed off right through her high school principal's speech! Oh well, knowing him she didn't miss much. She decided to shift her position and stretch a bit. She felt a little soreness in her upper right thigh. That must be because of all the walking she did today. She wondered how long she had worn her leg today.

    Strange. That thought made absolutely no sense. Wearing her leg? Its not as if she needed to wear an artificial leg-

    She looked down and saw the extremely shiny plastic prosthetic leg project out from under the right side of her short cheerleading skirt. The thigh segment was slightly skinnier than her already slender left thigh. A hinged knee joint connected the thigh and calf together. She sat there horrified not knowing what to do.

    Then it all came back to her, as if someone was helping her put everything together so it would all make sense. The girl she saw on TV was her. This was only one of the many prosthetic legs she had. She remembered the camera crews filming her. It was all making sense now. Perhaps she was trying to block the memory of the accident out of her mind. She had read that some people block out the memory of events that happened years before only to finally remember them decades later.

    She remembered the awful accident a little over a year ago. She was driving home from cheerleading practice when for some reason, she decided to take a route she normally didn't take. The drunk driver slammed head on into her Toyota. The air bags deployed saving her life but the entire front end of the car almost collapsed into the passenger compartment. When the paramedics came, they had to use the jaws of life to cut her out of the wreckage.

    She arrived at the emergency room with her right leg missing at the knee. It had been cut off to free her from the wreckage. After some additional surgery, she was fitted with a temporary prosthesis and was put on a rigorous therapy program. After a few weeks, it became clear that the muscles in her right thigh were atrophying and would never heal.

    She woke up from the second operation to find most of her right thigh missing. She remembered learning how to walk for the third time with an above-the-knee prosthesis.

    "Having a flashback?" asked Erin, who was sitting next to her. Katerina looked up at her slightly startled. "I can tell," Erin explained. "You always look at your leg that way."

    "I'm sorry," said Katerina. "I guess I'm just tired." As she was turning her gaze back to the front of the room, she noticed something. Erin wore an artificial leg as well!

    "Erin!" she gasped. "Your leg!" She pointed to the prosthesis sticking out the right side of Erin's skirt, not unlike her own.

    "You must be really out of it." replied Erin. "Don't you remember the bus accident? We were going to that cheerleading competition when that drunk truckdriver hit us. We all lost our right legs! Remember?"

    She was right! Katerina looked around the room. Every girl was wearing an artificial leg! Even Frances, the sophomore who made the varsity squad as a freshman, stood by the refreshments table on an energy storing foot! Slowly, she remembered being cut out of the bus wreck and placed on a stretcher with her right leg missing at the knee...


    Thousands of miles away, Jim Davies finished touching up another photo. A friend had given him the yearbook photo of a high school cheerleading squad. Jim scanned it and used a paint program to digitally "amputate" all of their right legs. Satisfied with his work, he saved the image, turned off his computer and went to bed.