Facelift

It was raining and Gearbox—Rachel Mae Welding

—and I were hanging out in her room. We were curled up with our piles of comics and paperback books. Between us was a bag of Oreos and a jar of super-crunchy—the no-name house brand peanut butter—with two spoons, our usual rainy day brain food. Gearbox slid the jar over to me. “Sue Ellen...” She caught herself, looked up from her reading and made an apologetic sound.

“You know I hate that name,” I said, “...Rachel Mae.” I punched her. I fully expected her to punch me back.

She did.

“Sorry,” she said.

Last year—we were in the fourth grade then—Gearbox and I came across a trunk of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom books in my attic. On the covers, warriors and monsters flexed unlikely if not anatomically impossible muscles. There was always a pretty girl in trouble. Our parents had been something they called “the counterculture” together; we figured this meant they read paperback books a lot. Gearbox tried to convince her folks that their last name, and by virtue of childbirth hers, was Barsoomian. Did I ever tell you about that? The Weldings claimed Armenian ancestry somewhere in their family tree hence, according to Gearbox, the -ian ending to Barsoom made it a shoo-in. Barsoom is what Tars Tarkas, a four-armed green giant, called his home world.

“Barsoom is so cool,” she had declared. “I gotta get the name. My secret name...” I pointed out that if everyone called her Gearbox Barsoomian it wouldn't be much of a secret.

Gearbox did a real head job on her folks who exhibited mixed feelings about their daughter becoming a Martian. But whatever their feelings on the matter, Gearbox's parents would have to go through endless legal rigmarole to have their name changed from Welding to Barsoomian. Gearbox however used her nickname all the time. “Gearbox Welding,” said her dad, “...that sounds like a sign you'd see down by the highway.”

Gearbox had these “episodes.” That is what her parents called them. For her—as she told me once, I had asked—“I just fall down. I don’t remember a thing. For me time stands still; I’m just ‘away.’ Most of the time.”

“Most of the time. What happens the other times?”

“Oh, I go places. Oops...” She went all glassy-eyed and I knew I was going to lose her.

Rachel Mae Welding, known as Gearbox, looked up. A large viridian personage sporting bundles of tentacles from its shoulders—taller than an NBA center except green with golden pustules that caught the light and made it seem to shimmer—was reaching down to assist a red slug-like creature the size of a Humvee through a smoldering hole in her bedroom floor. “Lord Zorgon! Merlitz!”

“That’s us,” said Lord Zorgon.

Gearbox ran over to the hole. Its edges were shiny with cooling slag from the polyester in the carpet. She’d hear plenty from Mom about this. “Wow! I didn’t know you were real.”

“What is this real? We have feelings, too. That we may have not been seen in these parts recently is no indicator for reality.”

“Uh, sorry.”

“No offence taken. And you are...?”

“Gearbox Welding.”

“Sounds like a sign you'd see down by the highway. Level with us, kid, what’s your real name?”

Gearbox wiped her nose on a sleeve. “Rachel Mae Welding. I got named after an aunt.”