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Losing baby teeth. Not exactly something to crow about. A natural milestone, sure—but nature doesn't keep the same clock for everyone. Huey, as always, was the exception. He'd outgrown his peers in every way: mentally, of course, but physically too. Half a head taller than the other kids his age, his adult teeth already settled in. That composed, almost too-adult composure of his had a way of getting under people's skin.
Jazmine, though, was on the later side. She didn't lose her first tooth until she was ten—and then it all happened fast. Within days, her mouth was full of that dull, tender ache. She was overjoyed that the Tooth Fairy would come, and she kept every tooth she shed like a relic. To her, it was all new and strange. The smallest things could set her heart stirring.
Her tooth was loose now, wobbling in its socket. It swayed, it shifted—its restless root still anchored in the gum, causing trouble at every turn. She kept her mouth half open, careful to keep her tongue from brushing against any of those aching, growing teeth—though the effort left her grumbling in discomfort.
Jazmine guarded that loose tooth with painstaking care, even as she couldn't quite suppress the urge to show it off. Like a puppy, both proud and sweet—wanting it both ways: tail wagging, mouth wide open, proof to anyone who looked that she was on her way to growing up.
But it came with its own little troubles. When her parents would lean in, all concern, and ask which tooth it was, she would frown in concentration and run her tongue over the loose tooth several times—still unable to say for sure. She tried holding up a mirror to look inside her mouth, but she could never see it clearly. Too many blind spots. Her mouth, after all, was only so big.
At times like this, she should have asked someone for help. That was the sensible thing, and she could have gone to her parents. But Tom and Sarah each had their hands full—one with a prosecutor's caseload, the other with the duties of a homemaker. Besides, Jazmine didn't want to send them into a panic over something as small as a loose tooth. They would probably press a hand to her forehead and launch into it all in one breath: Baby, why didn't you tell us sooner? This tooth is about to come out. Should we take you to the dentist tomorrow to have it pulled? Does it hurt? Does it ache? You can't eat anything cold for a while, alright? Just imagining it gave Jazmine a headache. That long rush of words, that single breath, that whole tangle of concern crashing straight into her skull—it was hard not to get a headache.
So Jazmine went to Huey for help. She had fallen into the habit of leaning on him almost without realizing it—Huey was reliable, and he was clever. She approached him with her request, blinking up at him with that pleading, slightly pitiful expression she did so well. Huey, predictably, had little patience for anything as babyish as losing teeth. He didn't even subscribe to the Tooth Fairy myth. He was a materialist, and he walked his own solitary road.
But Huey—please, Huey. Jazmine spoke the words as she leaned in closer, and in doing so she revealed, without knowing it, one of her natural advantages: she had a way of making people's resolve go soft. Was this a skill all ten-year-old girls possessed? Not necessarily. But Jazmine had it, for better or worse. It was why, back at the movie theater, Robert had turned back halfway, his conscience suddenly stirring, and shouldered the responsibility with something like shame.
Under the weight of this appeal, Huey at last relented. He nodded. He sighed. The response was pure Huey.
He watched her open her mouth—she really did try to open it as wide as she could—and then, with some difficulty, directed his gaze inside. Her mouth was so very small—normal, really, for a ten-year-old—but it forced him to lean in close. Both hands assumed the same posture: four fingers against her cheeks, thumbs venturing inward. He touched the surface of each tooth with the caution of someone reading her reactions as he went.
The tooth was hard, smooth. Healthy. She clearly brushed every night. Jazmine made a muffled sound of protest. Her fear of pain made her want to close her mouth, but Huey's fingers kept it propped half open. Her voice came out aggrieved, as though he were the one putting her through this. Don't touch it, she said. It hurts.
This hadn't been his idea, he reminded himself. She had no right to complain. With a note of exasperation, he said: Jazmine, I have to feel around to know which tooth it is.
Jazmine hesitated, then, haggling, added: Just—be careful, okay? Huey nodded and his thumb continued its slow exploration. When it brushed past the back teeth, Jazmine drew in a sharp breath and let out a pained little whimper—a sound soft and muffled, and yet so direct in its expression of pain.
Huey paused, then went on, touching the loose molar with great slowness. He could feel it now: the tooth was dangling, barely attached, wobbling dramatically. It was, without question, on the very edge of coming out. Jazmine cried out—Ow ow ow. Huey repeated himself, more firmly this time: Jazmine, the second-to-last tooth on the right side is coming loose. Then, as if laying the groundwork for what he was about to do, he added: I need to get it out now. Otherwise it'll keep hurting, and you won't even be able to eat.
Jazmine wondered why the tooth had to come out at all. She understood the logic—better a short pain than a long one. But this short pain was proving to be far too painful, too sharp, too direct. Maybe Huey had some kind of severe obsessive-compulsive streak. Or maybe he really was afraid she wouldn't be able to eat. The pain seemed to have muddled her head; without quite meaning to, she found herself making excuses for what he was doing.
Her mouth had been open so long that saliva was pooling beyond her control. Her jaw, held so still for so long, had begun to ache and prickle and go numb all at once. The sounds she was making had grown indistinct—no longer words, just raw, saturated feeling.
The pain leaked from the corners of her mouth despite her efforts, or perhaps the sounds were a wish, a plea, for the tooth to come out faster. These shapeless sounds were unsteady, trembling—like a puppy having its cheeks squeezed, its protests too weak to be anything but piteous.
Huey, however, paid no attention to her discomfort. Unmoved, unreadable, he maintained his air of detached persistence, using the soft pad of his right thumb to work the tooth loose, his left thumb holding steady, keeping her mouth propped open whether she liked it or not. Each push was a little firmer than the last. The tooth wobbled more violently with every pass. This wasn't cruelty on his part—if he kept the pressure too soft, that tooth would never come out—not until she was dead. He had resolved, with something like determination, to remove this irresolute tooth. Or perhaps it was not determination. Perhaps something else had moved him—some urgency he could not have put a name to.
Her mouth was wet—almost sticky. Huey had read somewhere that keeping the mouth open for an extended period would produce certain moderate changes. The scene before him matched the description in the book, and yet it disturbed his thoughts in a subtle way. He studied the dangling tooth the same way he would have studied a healthy one, except for this: the heat of her mouth, the softness of its inner walls, the white enamel, the tongue that kept darting away from the pain.
For the first time, it struck him that having a mouth opened this wide, this openly, might be a little too direct. The strangeness of it was difficult to articulate. First of all, it was a perfectly normal phenomenon—but whatever this thought or desire was, it was entirely out of place for a ten-year-old. Words too naked couldn't convey something so murky.
Though Huey was precocious, for a ten-year-old to have set foot so soon into adolescence was, all the same, a little unforgiving. Restless and unsettled, reserved yet wild—outwardly impassive, inwardly stirring: the classic signatures of puberty. It was true that Huey knew things he shouldn't, and for that, Granddad bore the lion's share of the blame. The old man kept the adult channels running without a shred of discretion, romantic nights included, which had given Huey an early education in certain matters—though he himself had never felt the least bit moved by any of it.
But now, Huey felt only a strange, misplaced confusion. His heartbeat had fallen into rhythm with Jazmine's breathing, and his mind had gone blank—a blank that felt almost imposed on him, as though demanded by something outside his control. At the start, he had simply wanted to help her pull out this loose, wobbling tooth. Huey was not the type to let his thoughts wander. So he pressed harder with his right thumb, and the tooth gave a larger wobble, and Jazmine's pleading whimpers grew sharper in reply. He felt, against all expectation, a faint stir of unease.
Without quite meaning to—yet not entirely innocent of intent—Huey privately felt that this childish mouth was like a man-devouring beast, swallowing whole the clear purpose he had brought to the task. The weak root of Jazmine's tooth finally gave way. A startling streak of red came surging forth. Huey doubled the pressure he had been using, rocking the uneven, bumpy surface of the tooth. Jazmine's cries of pain no longer mattered. This limited mouth strained itself wide, calling to mind an underground cave—both possessed of sufficient moisture, almost sticky to the point of softness, except that the former was soft and warm, the latter cold and hard. Her mouth was feverish now, scalding with pain, as though contagious. The heat climbed into his fingertips, and his thoughts stumbled as if he had caught a fever himself—as if everything around him were swimming in a blur.
Her words grew muddled, her voice rising. The sounds, shaped and reshaped by the wet cavern of her mouth, began to shed their syllables until only the reverberation of pain remained. He hadn't used much force, hadn't thought through how much force to use. Light or heavy, it made no difference—she just kept blinking back tears, crying out. And Huey, in truth, had no sense of the right pressure either. All he knew was that this stubborn baby tooth was getting on his nerves, and he just kept throwing force at the messy, nameless fire it had lit in him. She, in the meantime, seemed to be pulled clean out of her own body by the pain, held apart from herself until the thread of it was finally severed.
Huey let out a long breath. The calm settled back over him. He told Jazmine to open her eyes, and she did, and there in his palm was the tiny tooth, its root streaked with blood—gruesome and pitiful all at once. Her voice came out briny with tears. As though a great weight had been lifted, she gazed through the blur at that small tooth and couldn't help but laugh. She took it from him the way you take something worth keeping, and said, Huey, the Tooth Fairy is coming tonight.
Huey was perfectly normal that evening. Only, he was quieter at dinner, and he didn't fight Riley for the remote afterward. He seemed distracted the whole evening. When Granddad asked what was wrong, Huey jolted, as if suddenly coming to himself, and buried his face in his book. Nothing, he said, his voice flat.
He just felt, for the first time, that his head wouldn't quite straighten out. He kept circling back to that mouth, that tooth, that sound. It was all perfectly ordinary—and yet merely the memory of it made his palms sweat. Maybe Huey really was entering adolescence, though he would never admit it. After all, it was no different from losing baby teeth. Nothing about it to brag about.
Maybe Jazmine was the only one who would show it off—the way she showed off every tooth she lost. A late bloomer, innocent and unaware, waiting for those same changes to find her too. Even if it hurt, she would take it. By then, she probably wouldn't need to lose any more teeth. The thought lifted something in him. Huey finally felt a little relieved.