Gabby’s eyes went to the floor, guilt rippling through her. “I shouldn’t complain,” she said. “They aren’t real problems. Not compared to Marco’s.”
“I don’t think it’s a matter of real,” said Aria, swinging her legs back and forth. “I think Marco’s being sick, is a loud problem. So loud it makes every other problem seem quiet. And because they’re quiet, you think they’re less important. And maybe sometimes they are. But you have to ask yourself, if you didn’t have his problems to compare yours to, would they really seem so quiet? Because I have to tell you, the fact that I’m here means your problems aren’t quiet, or unimportant, or that they aren’t real. They’re very real. And the fact that I’m here means I can help.”
“How?” asked Gabby, shaking her head. It was such a big question inside a small word. “No offense, Aria, but making things bright colors isn’t going to help me.”
“I think colors are my voice,” said Aria. “Singing is yours.” She tapped a few piano keys. “I wish you could see what happens when you sing,” she said. “All that smoke, it gets thinner. Maybe that’s why my shadow brought us here. Because this place, and the way it makes you feel, is a good direction. A future. One that belongs to you.”
Gabby looked down at the floor. “But what about Marco?” she asked, that same old tightness working its way into her chest. “What about his future? Does he have one?”
Aria sighed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to your brother,” she said. “I wish I did, and I know it feels like everything depends on him. But that kind of thinking, it’s the reason you forgot how to be you. This is your chance,” she said, gesturing to the empty choir room. “And you’re going to have to take it, Gabby. No matter what happens to Marco.”
Gabby closed her eyes. She didn’t want to picture her life without Marco. Could she picture her life outside of him?
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes and looked around the room. She pictured choir in session, Charlotte and Sam cracking jokes, the way the music lifted her up, the way the singing made her feel like somebody.
But at the hospital, she still felt like a ghost.
“They feel like two separate worlds,” she blurted. “Here and the hospital.”
“That’s because they are,” said Aria. “You’ve found your voice here. But you still don’t have one there.”
“What good is a voice when no one will listen?” whispered Gabby.
“If your mom were ready to listen,” asked Aria, walking back toward her shadow, “would you be ready to talk?”
Gabby hesitated. She hadn’t thought about it that way. She nodded. “Yes.”
Aria smiled and held out her hand. “Then I’ll see what I can do.”
“Really?” asked Gabby, as she took Aria’s hand.
“Hey,” said Aria as the shadow beneath them turned on like a light, “I’m your guardian angel after all.”
“Miss Torres,” said Mr. Robert the next morning after class, “a word please.”
Gabby tensed. She was nearly to the door when he said it. She looked back and saw that he was holding her journal. “This is good work,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said, turning again toward the door where Aria was waiting.
“There’s only one problem,” he said. Gabby’s steps slowed and stopped. She felt dread wash over her. “My son goes to Grand Heights High,” continued Mr. Robert. “He’s one of the captains on the soccer team.” Her heart sank as she turned back toward the teacher. “I asked him if he knew your brother. You can imagine my surprise when I found out Marco wasn’t on the team. So I looked into it: he’s not even enrolled at the school.”
Gabby looked at the checkered linoleum floor.
“Why don’t you tell me the truth?” said Mr. Robert.
She dragged her gaze up. Something in her crumpled. She was so tired of lying.
“My brother would be in tenth grade at Grand Heights High,” she said. “And he would be the best player on the soccer team, but he’s in the hospital. He’s been sick for more than a year. We moved here so he could have surgery, but he got a cold and so it’s on hold and we’re all just stuck waiting and hoping he doesn’t get worse, and I spend every moment thinking about it so I really don’t want to talk about it, and I really don’t want to write about it.”
Gabby was breathless by the time she finished. She expected Mr. Robert to say he was sorry, to slip into that too-familiar mode of pity, of false kindness. But instead his brow crinkled.
“I’m going to make you a deal,” he said. “You can write about anything you want in here, but it has to be true.” He offered the journal back to her. “No more lies. Do you understand? Find a way to tell the truth.”
Gabby took the journal and nodded.
“And I know it’s none of my business,” he added, “but I hope your brother gets better soon. Grand Heights High could use a few more great players.”
Gabby almost smiled. “Please,” she said, “don’t tell anyone.”
Mr. Robert shook his head. “It’s not my story to tell,” he said. “It’s yours.”
Maybe it was Gabby’s story to tell, but she couldn’t find the words to tell it.
She sat in Marco’s hospital room that afternoon, staring at a blank page.
It wasn’t that Gabby didn’t know what to say. Dozens of thoughts spiraled through her mind, about Marco and Henry and Aria and school and the hospital. But she was afraid that if she started, she wouldn’t be able to stop, just like in the classroom when she’d spilled out her thoughts to the teacher.
Gabby wondered if the thoughts were filling her blue smoke, too. Aria said that’s what the smoke was made of, things you felt and didn’t say. But Aria was off wandering the hospital halls — she could never sit still — and Gabby couldn’t ask her, and it wouldn’t help her anyway because the page was still just as blank.
In a moment of frustration, Gabby lobbed her pen across the room.
“What did the pen ever do to you?” asked Marco. He was sitting in bed, head bent over his own journal. His face was flushed, and his temperature was up. Stress, a nurse had said, from losing Henry, but Mom was in a panic. She was meeting with the doctors right now.
“I don’t know what to write,” said Gabby.
“You’ve filled half the book,” said Marco.
With lies, thought Gabby. “That was different,” she said. “What are you writing about?”
Marco looked down at his page. “I’m not ready to write about now,” he said. Gabby knew what he meant. He wasn’t ready to write about Henry. “So I’m writing about when we were kids. Going to the beach. Growing up in that big house with the woods behind. It’s easier….” he said. “Maybe you should try that.”
Gabby looked down at her blank page. She didn’t want to write about now, either, but maybe she could write about before, too.
When we were younger, she started, my brother and I used to race up the hill behind our house….
The line spilled out across the page, and Gabby let out a small sigh of relief (Mr. Robert was right, starting was the hardest part). Slowly, haltingly, she went on to describe the house and the yard and the woods. The way she and Marco raced, and the way Marco always won.
But when she got to the day he finally lost, the day they knew something was really wrong, Gabby stopped.
She didn’t want to talk about that, but it felt good to write, so she jumped down a line, and started another story. This one was about a camping trip they’d gone on last year, where her mom had gotten into a war with a squirrel. And when Gabby got to the point where Marco’s sickness crept back into the story (they had to cut the trip short so he could go in for more treatment), she switched again. She did this, bouncing from story to story, cutting out the bits she didn’t want to write (without filling in lies), making a patchwork of memories.
And with each story, she got a little closer to talking about now. It hovered at the edges. She even managed to write a littl
e about how she was feeling, even if she wasn’t ready to talk about why.
“Hey, Marco,” she said when she’d filled five pages, “look how many —” But Marco had fallen asleep, the pen still in his hand, the journal open in his lap. Gabby slid silently to her feet and crossed to him.
Everything in her wanted to read the words on his page. But she didn’t.
She reached out and closed his journal, careful not to wake him.
Aria had examined the contents of every vending machine in the hospital and was on her way back to Marco’s room with a selection of snacks when she rounded the corner and nearly ran into Mrs. Torres.
Gabby’s mom didn’t even seem to notice her.
“No sé, no sé,” she was saying into her phone. I don’t know, I don’t know. Aria marveled at the fact she understood the words. She put that solidly in the pro column of being an angel. The voice on the other line must have asked about Gabby because Mrs. Torres added, “Gabby’s fine. She’s always fine. She can take of herself.”
Aria wanted to shake Mrs. Torres and tell her Gabby shouldn’t have to take care of herself. But that wasn’t the way to get rid of Gabby’s smoke. Aria had to be clever.
If your mom were ready to listen, would you be ready to talk?
Yes, Gabby had said.
Aria just had to get Mrs. Torres to listen.
When Aria got to Marco’s room, she peered in through the glass. He was asleep in his bed and Gabby was folded up in a chair, scribbling away in her journal.
That was it! Aria realized, pressing her face to the glass. She smiled. She had an idea.
That night, Aria lay awake on Gabby’s floor, waiting for Mrs. Torres to come home.
Soon enough Aria heard the sound of the door open and then close. She heard the soft thuds of shoes being taken off and set by the door, then the scrape of a chair being slid across the floor, a body sinking into it.
Aria got to her feet and made sure she was invisible before wandering out into the apartment.
Mrs. Torres was sitting at the kitchen table.
She stared at the dark beyond the open window, her brown eyes so similar to Gabby’s.
The simple fact was that even though Gabby was finding her voice, her mom still wasn’t listening.
Aria couldn’t make her listen. But maybe she could make her read.
Gabby’s journal sat on the table a few inches from her mother’s hand. Aria had made sure it was there before they went to bed.
Now she reached out an invisible hand, and flipped the journal open. Mrs. Torres looked down at the book and then to the open window, clearly wondering if there was a draft. Aria turned through a few more pages until she came across Gabby’s newest entry. Aria had convinced Gabby to write it earlier that night. She told her she had to be honest, had to trust Aria, and Gabby had done both. Now Gabby’s mom looked down at the page, at first absently, and then intently as she read the line at the top.
Some days I feel invisible.
Gabby’s mom reached out and pulled the journal toward her.
I don’t want to be the center of attention, continued the entry. I just want to be seen.
Aria held her breath. And then Mrs. Torres turned back to the first page of the notebook, and started from the beginning.
The next morning, Gabby talked to a student in each of her classes. Once to ask for a pen, once to hand back a pen someone had dropped, and once just because she thought of something funny. It was getting easier, the talking.
Sam and Charlotte were waiting for her at lunch, and Gabby realized how happy she was to see them. She pictured the smoke Aria had talked about, imagined it thinning, and she could almost feel it, like a weight lifting.
Like a slice of blue sky through clouds.
But the best part of the day came in choir.
“Gather round,” said Ms. Riley brightly. She held a crisp piece of paper, as if it were a prize. And then Gabby realized that it was. It was the choir concert roster.
“With the songs and the solos,” whispered Sam beside her.
“I hope you get a solo,” added Charlotte.
Gabby told herself she wouldn’t, told herself it didn’t matter, but then Ms. Riley read her name — her name! — and she felt herself breaking into a grin.
Excitement flooded through her, followed quickly by terror. The thought of singing in front of people made her queasy. She started to tell Ms. Riley to pick someone else, when Charlotte stopped her with a smile.
“You’ll be great!” she said.
“Better than great,” said Sam.
And then Aria wrapped her arms around her shoulders and squeezed. “You can do this,” she said.
And for the first time, despite her fears, Gabby tried to believe her.
Afterward, Charlotte insisted they all go out for ice cream to celebrate.
“I don’t know if I can,” said Gabby automatically. She needed to be at the hospital with Marco … didn’t she?
“Why not?” asked Charlotte.
“We won’t be long,” offered Sam.
“Just one scoop,” added Charlotte. “You deserve it.”
“You do,” chimed in Aria. It was weird, but Gabby couldn’t shake the feeling Aria had gotten quieter lately.
Gabby smiled sheepishly, then nodded. “Okay, but just one.”
One scoop turned into two, which turned into three and a stomachache, but it was worth it, and as they sat on the benches outside the ice-cream shop, Gabby’s mouth hurt from grinning. Sam and Charlotte were so easy to be around, so comfortable with each other.
“We’ve been next-door neighbors since we were really little,” said Charlotte. “Would you believe there was a time when Sam was taller than me?”
Gabby laughed. “No way.”
“I don’t appreciate your skepticism,” said Sam.
“Aw, it’s okay, Sammie,” said Charlotte. “Maybe you’ll be tall again one day. Or at least average height.”
The girls giggled. Sam scowled.
“How about you two?” asked Charlotte. “How do you and Aria know each other?”
Aria started to answer. “We met at the hos —”
“Apartment building,” cut in Gabby, shooting Aria a look. “We moved in around the same time.”
Aria’s brow scrunched up, but she didn’t contradict her. Gabby knew Aria didn’t want her keeping secrets, and Gabby herself didn’t want to keep them. It was just that she didn’t want to talk about the hospital, not when things were going so well.
“That’s awesome,” said Charlotte. “To have a friend right there. Like a housewarming present.”
Aria smiled. “Like fate,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Gabby, as she pulled the phone out of her pocket to check the time. Her stomach lurched when she saw the number of missed calls. She must have accidentally turned off the sound or something.
“Oh no,” she said aloud, frantically accessing the three voice mails.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.
“Gabby?” Aria said softly.
Gabby pushed up from the bench as the voice mails played. They were all from her mom, and they were a blur of Marco took a turn and tests came back and there’s a problem and come to the hospital as soon as you can and where are you and where are you and where are you.
Gabby tried to force air into her lungs, tried to breathe in that special calming way, but she didn’t feel calm, only sick and dizzy as she grabbed Aria’s arm and pulled her up from the bench with a rushed, “We have to get to the hospital now.”
“Wait, hospital?” asked Sam.
“Gabby, what’s going on?” asked Charlotte.
“I’m sorry,” Gabby mumbled, “I have to go. We have to go. I’m sorry.”
She pulled Aria around the corner and took her by the shoulders and said, “Please, Aria. Take me there.” And Aria didn’t waste time asking questions. She stepped out of her shadow and she and Gabby
hurried down into the light.
It was the bad.
Gabby’s mom clutched Marco’s hand as the doctor explained. Marco’s fever had gotten worse, and by that morning he had a bad cough, too, so to be safe they’d run a panel and done some X-rays to make sure it wasn’t pneumonia. It wasn’t. It was the bad. There was a long word for what it had done — metastasized — which basically meant that the bad had snuck up into Marco’s chest.
Gabby closed her eyes and pictured little pieces of it like crumbs, breaking off from Marco’s leg and his hip and traveling through his blood to his lungs. She felt Aria’s hand on her shoulder, even though the girl wasn’t there. Or she was, she’d explained before she vanished, but Gabby wouldn’t be able to see her.
“The good news,” said the doctor, “is that we caught it very, very early. Your odds are still good. I can’t lie and tell you they’re as good as they were, but they’re good. We’ll operate as soon as possible and —”
“But you said it wasn’t safe,” cut in Gabby’s mom. “You said we shouldn’t operate while Marco was still sick. You said there was a higher risk of infection.”
“There is,” said the doctor, “but I’m afraid it’s no longer safe to not operate. Every day we lose takes odds out of our favor.”
“What now?” asked Marco, sitting forward. Gabby looked at him, the stubborn set of his jaw. She knew how much he wanted to get better, but she also knew how scared he was of the procedure. Before, there had been a chance he could lose his leg. Now, he could lose his life. And that was before the operation was even over.
“It’s an extensive operation,” said the doctor, “even more so now than before. We’ll go in and excavate the affected bones in the left leg, as planned. At the same time, we’ll need to go in through the chest and clear away the metastasized tumors. Even if everything goes well” — at the use of the word if, Gabby found Marco’s eyes. He found hers. They held on to each other that way — “it’s going to be a harder recovery.”
Gabby’s mom started to cry.