Gabby shrugged. She hated herself for shrugging, but she didn’t know what else to do. It was one thing, sitting in a circle, but it was another getting up onstage and singing in front of people.
“You should,” said Sam. “It’ll be fun.”
“Yeah,” added Charlotte. “And you’re a natural. You’ll fit in perfectly.”
By the time Gabby caught up with Aria in the hall, she could feel herself beaming.
“Well?” asked Aria, bouncing on her toes, clearly pleased with herself.
“Much better than painting,” said Gabby.
Aria nodded. “And way less messy.”
Aria’s heart thudded happily. She’d done it. She’d found something for Gabby.
When Gabby had started singing in the circle, her smoke began to shift, to change. Aria had watched it ripple and — for a little while — thin. The smoke had come back, of course, by the time they reached the hospital. But it was a sign, a step — even a small one.
“What are you smiling about?” asked Gabby as they ambled down the sidewalk.
“Nothing,” said Aria. “Just thinking.”
They walked in an easy silence up the hospital steps. They’d fallen into a routine, heading there together each day after school. Later on, Aria would follow Gabby home — now that she’d been invited in, she could come and go — and make sure she was okay alone. Gabby’s mom came home most nights, but Gabby was usually asleep, and even when she wasn’t, Mrs. Torres’s being there didn’t make the house much warmer. Gabby and her mom just sat at the table, eating dinner while the TV rambled in the background.
At the hospital, Aria and Gabby found Marco flipping through channels on a TV mounted to his wall.
“Thank god you’re here,” he muttered when he saw them. “Mom’s at her worst. I sent her on some errand for an obscure caffeine-free healthy soda just to get a few moments of peace.”
Gabby frowned. “Why is she hovering? Did something happen?”
He shook his head and tossed the remote onto the bed. “I had one small coughing fit. It wasn’t even that bad, but I got dizzy and she freaked out.”
“Are you okay now?”
“Of course I’m okay.” He rubbed his eyes. “I was okay then, too. But I’m losing it, Gabs. They better clear me for surgery soon ’cause I can’t keep doing this. I can’t stay in here. I can’t …”
His breathing started to tighten, and Marco closed his eyes and rested his head on his knees. Gabby hurried forward and began rubbing circles on his back and whispering in Spanish. Aria hesitated by the door, watching Gabby’s smoke engulf them both. Aria didn’t know what to do. She wished that she could make Marco better, but her powers didn’t work that way.
Gabby picked up the remote. “Let’s find something good,” she said, flipping through channels. It didn’t seem to help. “Do you want me to go get Henry?” she finally asked.
Marco nodded silently.
“I’ll go find him,” offered Aria.
Gabby gave her a look that was equal parts surprise and relief. “You sure?”
Aria nodded. “He’s in 308,” said Gabby, adding a small, “Thank you.”
Aria wove through the halls to the other side of the floor, stopping outside room 308. When she peered in through the glass insert, she saw the boy sitting in bed, pale as the sheets, his purple-black smoke still hanging cloudlike around his shoulders. Why hadn’t anyone like Aria come to help him yet?
A book sat open in his lap, but he was staring past it into space. And then, as if he could sense Aria there, he turned his head and saw her. He gave a small wave.
Aria pushed open the door and stepped inside.
“Hi, Henry,” she said.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m Aria,” she said.
“You’re Gabby’s friend,” said Henry. Aria’s heart fluttered at the word. Friend. She liked the idea of being a friend almost as much as she liked being an Aria. “Marco told me about you,” he explained.
“What did he say?” asked Aria.
“That you were strange,” said Henry. A shadow of a smile touched his mouth. “And that you were cool.” He tried to hold on to the smile, but underneath it he looked so sad. Aria’s eyes kept going back to the dark smoke that hung around him like a fog.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Henry’s watery blue eyes took her in. “That’s a silly thing to ask someone in a hospital.”
Aria felt herself blush. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean big okay,” she said, spreading her arms. “I just meant little okay.” She brought her hands together, leaving only a few inches between them.
“Just tired,” he said, adding, “My parents were here. I’m always tired after they visit.” The second part he’d said so softly Aria had barely heard.
“Why’s that?” she asked.
Henry opened his mouth like he wanted to say something but thought better of it. “I don’t know,” he said, picking up his book and pretending to read. She could tell he was pretending because his eyes never moved from the middle of the page. When Aria didn’t leave, Henry looked up from his pretend-reading and said, “So what brings you to my rather gloomy quarters?”
Aria chewed her lip. “I came to see if you want to watch TV with Gabby and Marco.”
Henry started to shake his head. But Aria knew that Gabby’s brother needed him and she could tell that Henry needed to get out of this room, so she said, “Marco’s not doing great. I think he’d really like it if you came.”
At that, Henry’s face changed again. He didn’t ask what was wrong, only straightened and nodded.
“Well, then,” he said, mustering a smile. “I’ll be his knight in shining armor.” He pointed to the wheelchair. “Grab my steed.”
A nurse stopped them in the hall, and after a few minutes of bickering with Henry over his outing, insisted on accompanying them to Marco’s room. Henry sighed and let the nurse push him the rest of the way. Marco looked up when they came in, his eyes hanging on Henry’s for a moment.
Henry didn’t say “What’s wrong?” or “Where does it hurt?” or “Are you okay?” All he said was, “You good, Torres?”
Marco nodded. “Yeah.”
“Good,” said Henry. And that was that. And looking at them, at the defiance in Henry’s eyes when he asked the question and the set of Marco’s jaw when he answered, Aria understood why they didn’t ask each other silly questions. Everyone else treated them like patients. They treated each other like people. Like friends.
Friends listened when you needed to talk and they didn’t make you talk when you didn’t want to and they knew how to help you without making you feel like you needed help.
You’re Gabby’s friend, Henry had said.
Aria smiled. Gabby was sitting next to Marco’s bed, and Marco was already chatting with Henry and acting like himself again. Gabby met Aria’s eyes and mouthed thank you.
“Only thirty minutes,” insisted the nurse, still gripping Henry’s chair. He waved her tiredly away.
Then he wheeled himself over to Marco’s bed and kicked his legs up onto the sheets.
“No time to waste, Torres,” he said. “What are we watching?”
Marco made the soccer team this week, Gabby wrote in her journal on Sunday. No one’s surprised, she added. He’s always been the best.
She paused and reread the lines. Then she added a few about Henry.
In journal-world, Henry lived in the same building as Marco and Gabby, and that’s how they first met over the summer.
Henry never seems very happy, wrote Gabby, but he’s good at making other people happy, especially Marco.
And then, without thinking, Gabby wrote: I really hope he gets better.
Gabby froze. The line sat there in the middle of the page, a glaring piece of truth in a book filling up with lies, and suddenly Gabby felt horrible. Horrible for messing up the lie, and horrible for wanting to make the truth go away in the first place.
r /> Gabby began to scribble out the line, and pressed down so hard she tore the paper. She let out an exasperated noise.
“Whatcha doing?” asked Marco. He was sitting in a chair by the window, soaking up sunlight. Their mom had thrown a fit when he wanted to get out of bed, as if a few feet would mean the difference between sick and well, but Marco had won. He always won, when he wanted to.
“Journaling,” said Gabby. “For school.”
“Can I see?” asked Marco. Gabby shook her head. Marco sat forward. “Come on, Gabs.”
She clutched the journal to her chest. “No.”
She knew what she was doing was wrong — the lies had started small and taken on a life of their own — and if Marco saw what she’d written, the lies she’d told about him, he’d be angry. Or worse, he’d be hurt. She expected Marco to make a grab for the journal — there was a time he would have snatched it right out of her hands — but he simply shrugged and sank back into his chair.
“I have a journal,” he said quietly.
Gabby’s eyes widened. “Really?”
He gestured to the blue-and-white-striped book Gabby had given him the day before school started. “I started writing in it right after you gave it to me.”
“What do you write about?” asked Gabby.
Marco shrugged. “All kinds of things. I write about life before getting sick. Mostly I write about being stuck in the hospital and the strange and random things I notice here. And of course I write about Henry and Mom and you.”
“You write about me?”
“Sure. You want to see?”
Gabby found herself nodding. Marco’s mouth twitched up tiredly. “A page for a page,” he said.
Gabby’s heart sank as she shook her head. “I can’t.”
Marco shrugged. “Fine,” he said, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. Stretched out in the puddle of sun, he looked so … normal. Sometimes normal felt so far away, but looking at him now, she wanted to believe it could happen.
Gabby got to her feet.
“If you ever change your mind,” he added as she reached the door. “Let me know.”
“Sure,” said Gabby softly as she slipped into the hall and went in search of Aria.
Gabby could hear her friend’s laughter — it carried, even when she wasn’t loud — from halfway down the hall. She was in Henry’s room. Gabby heard Henry make a small, laughlike noise, too.
Gabby stopped and peered through the glass and saw Aria sitting there, cross-legged in Henry’s wheelchair. She was about to open the door, when she heard Henry ask, “What are your parents like?”
And Aria simply said, “I don’t have any.”
Gabby’s stomach twisted. She’d assumed … well, she didn’t know what she’d assumed. Aria had said it was complicated, and Gabby had let it go. Maybe she’d known, deep down, been able to sense that hole, and stepped around it. But now that she knew, she could feel the pity rising in her chest. The same pity she couldn’t stand from other people.
If Henry felt sorry for Aria, it never showed in his voice. “We’re all missing pieces,” he said. And then his voice lowered, and he added, “Can I tell you something?”
Gabby hesitated. She knew she shouldn’t keep eavesdropping, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave, or to interrupt him, not once Aria said, “Of course.”
Gabby chewed her lip, and pressed her ear against the door.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I feel like I spend all day bracing myself for when my parents come.”
“You don’t want them to?” asked Aria.
“I love them,” said Henry. “I really, really love them. But I sometimes think that if they didn’t come, if I didn’t have to see the pain and the hope in their eyes every single day then I could just …” He sighed.
“Just what?” asked Aria.
“I’ve been sick since I was eleven,” he said. “And at first, they thought I could get better, it looked like I might, but eventually … it was just a matter of time. The gift of time, that’s what they call it, when you’re not going to get better. They give you a prediction — maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months, maybe even a year — and they call it a gift. I was fourteen when the doctors gave me their prediction.
“Eight months,” he said, clearly worn out from talking but determined to keep going. “That’s what they said. And I held on, every day, every week, every month, for my parents. And when those eight months were up, I just … kept holding on. For them. Still not getting better. Still not getting worse. And every day my family would come and I’d still be here and it would be this miracle. And for a while, it was worth it, for the hope it brought them. But …”
Henry’s voice tightened and he trailed off. Gabby and Aria both waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. Gabby’s heart ached. She hadn’t known how long Henry had been sick, or that he would never get better. Did Marco know?
“Hey, what’s your favorite color?” asked Aria, breaking the silence.
Henry seemed relieved to change the subject. “It used to be yellow,” he said, “before they moved me to this hall.” Gabby looked around and saw the walls were indeed a faded lemon color. “But now I can’t get away from yellow. So it’s red.”
Aria smiled. “Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Trust me.”
What was Aria up to? wondered Gabby. She peered in through the glass as Henry closed his eyes, and Aria tilted her head, as if thinking, and a moment later, something happened: the blanket on Henry’s bed changed color. Gabby gaped. That wasn’t possible. Aria hadn’t moved, hadn’t done anything, but instead of a dull cream fabric, the blanket was now a vibrant crimson red. Gabby hadn’t blinked, hadn’t looked away for a second, so how had Aria done it?
Gabby remembered that when Marco was eight or nine, he announced he was going to be a magician. He wasn’t very good, but Gabby was very gullible, falling for every one of his tricks. But she was older now, and she knew there was no such thing as magic. Coins were hidden up sleeves and in pockets, and fast fingers could make things disappear. But Aria didn’t have long sleeves on, and even if she did, she couldn’t hide a blanket in them!
Gabby started to think she’d imagined the new color, but when Henry opened his eyes and looked down, he let out a small, delighted sound. He obviously saw it, too.
“How on earth did you do that?” he asked, running his hand over the fabric as if the color might rub off. It wasn’t like a magic trick, thought Gabby. It was —
“Magic,” said Aria.
“No such thing,” said Henry, still touching the blanket in disbelief.
Aria shrugged her shoulders playfully. “Hey,” she said. “Why don’t you come hang out with us? Me and Gabby and Marco? It’ll make you feel better.”
At that, the tiredness slid back into Henry’s face. “You go on,” he said. “I’ll try to swing by later.”
Gabby came to her senses and backed away from the door just in time to avoid colliding with Aria as she came out.
“Oh, hey,” said Aria brightly.
Gabby’s mind was still spinning as she said, “Oh, hi! You want to um … go … get some food … or … something … ?” Gabby wanted to bang her head against a wall. She sounded like an idiot. This was Aria. Aria was strange and apparently capable of ridiculously believable magic tricks, but she was still Aria.
“Sure,” said Aria.
It was only after they’d raided the third vending machine — Aria was fascinated by the way they worked — that Gabby remembered the part of the conversation about Aria’s parents. Is that why she liked to come over to Gabby’s place all the time? Aria was so cheerful, so loud, that Gabby hadn’t thought about the fact she might be hiding from something, too.
“I know this is random, and we have school tomorrow,” Gabby said, “but do you want to spend the night?”
Aria’s eyes lit up. “I’d love that.”
They loaded their vending machine bounty into Aria’
s backpack, and set out.
“Hey,” said Aria when they were halfway to Gabby’s apartment. “Do you believe in magic?”
Gabby’s heart raced. Had Aria seen her spying? Or was she simply asking one of her strange questions?
“I don’t know,” said Gabby after a long pause. “I’d have to see it to believe it.”
But even then, she wondered, would she?
One moment Aria was lying in a nest of blankets on Gabby’s floor (thinking about how nice it was to be visible and comfy instead of invisible and afraid of being heard) and the next she was being trampled by a very flustered Gabby as she leaped out of bed with a panicked cry and nearly landed on top of her.
“What’s wrong?” asked Aria as Gabby mumbled a quick apology and kept going, gathering up clothes before dashing out into the hall.
“The permission slip,” called Gabby, turning on the shower in the bathroom. “I forgot to get it signed!” The door slammed and almost immediately reopened. “How fast can you get ready?” she called.
“Two minutes,” said Aria, even though she really needed only two seconds, but that would have been hard to explain.
“Great,” said Gabby. The door shut. And then reopened. “You can borrow some of my clothes!” It shut again and stayed closed.
Aria got to her feet and went to peruse Gabby’s closet, thinking about how easy it would be if they just used her shadow to get to the hospital. It would just take a moment, and the truth was, Aria was getting tired of hiding her secret from Gabby. There was nothing stopping Aria from telling her, no force like the one that had kept her out of the apartment. It was just the fear that sharing her secret would make things worse when they were finally starting to get better.
“Are you almost ready?” called Gabby.
“Yeah, coming,” said Aria, tugging a blue shirt off its hanger.
They half walked, half jogged to the hospital, Gabby slowing only when she finally reached the lobby.
“See?” said Aria, breathless. “Plenty of time to spare.”
“Wait here,” said Gabby. “I’ll be right back.”
Aria nodded and perched on the edge of a chair while Gabby disappeared down the hall. Aria pulled her own permission slip from her bag, and stared at the blank space where a parent was supposed to sign. She wondered absently what it would be like, to have a family, to have a name to fill in the box.