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“Well, I know she is. She texted me. Told me to come. Go ask her.”

She took in my bedraggled state with pursed lips. Her continuing silence rattled me. What if something was really wrong?

“Look—I just walked five miles in the rain because I was worried about her, and I have to walk five miles back. Can you at least tell me if she’s all right?” My voice may, or may not, have broken a little.

Her eyes narrowed and she finished measuring me. “Stay right here,” she said, before standing and walking off.

I did as I was told, for once. The clock over her desk said it was ten PM.

When the nurse came back she had a warm blanket in her arms and said, “Follow me.”

She led me down the hall. The lights were dimmed here, to mimic the nighttime outside, and she tapped on one door.

“Come in,” I heard Lacey croak.

The nurse pressed the door open and handed the blanket to me. “For you.”

I nodded, pulling it up over my shoulders, and went in.

Lacey was there, huddled up on her side, facing the other wall. I sighed in relief at seeing her without all the tubes and wires and pins I’d imagined. I waited until I heard the nurse shut the door before sagging over the nearest chair. “Oh my God, Lacey—what the hell? Do you know how far I walked?”

I slung my feet over one arm and kicked my shoes off. My feet hurt so bad—my shift at work tomorrow was going to suck.

“Yeah,” she said, and nothing else.

I expected words to come pouring out of her like they always did. Lacey had something to say—frequently a hilarious something—about everything. Her silence bothered me more than seeing her with wires would.

I waited as long as I could before hitching the blanket up over my head and going, “Boooooooooooooo,” in a cheesy spooky voice. “Booooooooooooooo,” I went on, standing and lumbering over to the bed to sit down on it before flipping the blanket back. She was still turned away.

“Remember how we were ghosts for Halloween in 3rdgrade? Because our moms were cheap and lazy?” I bounced up and down on the bed a little, waiting for her to face me. “Are you germy? Is this going to be like the time I had mono and we weren’t allowed to share sodas for six months?”

She shook her head ‘no’ back and forth into the pillow.

“Come on, Lacey—what’s up? How was the party? Did you have a good time or what? Why are you here?”

She shook her head ‘no’ again.

I waited and waited and waited, and bounced the bed one more time. “Can you use your words? Because this silent treatment’s starting to freak me out.”

Lacey rolled over beside me to curl up the same way she had been, only facing me this time. Her eyes were red and swollen and ringed with black. “I don’t want to talk about it, all right? I just wanted you here.”

I opened my mouth, exhausted and exasperated, but I managed to close it again before words came out. I gave up and snuggled next to her, like we had when we were younger, watching marathons of Dora the Explorer on TV.Puede usted leer el mapa?

This was not like Lacey. I did not know what to do, while having that pressing feeling that something must be done. I reached for the flashlight, put it under my chin, and then turned it on and made goofy faces with it, until she watched me.

After a minute, she started to laugh—and then, as if that laugh were a pop top on a shaken can of soda, tears started to bubble out from everywhere. Her eyes, her nose, her mouth—all of her frothed as she started to wordlessly shake.

I pulled her to me, panicking—what did you do when someone cried like this? I hadn’t cried this hard since my dad’d left. Maybe not even then. I put the flashlight on her bedside table and the room went dim. It didn’t feel right to interrupt her. She sounded like the storm outside, and each time I thought it’d ebbed, something brought it back on again.

“Lacey, what is going on?” I asked, when I was worried she’d forgotten how to breathe. She took gasping inhales and wiped the back of one hand across her spitty mouth. “Are you rabid? Because I’ve readOld Yeller. I know what to do.”

She shook her head, lips quivering on the verge of another storm cloud. “Don’t joke. No jokes.”

“Tell me. Okay?”

She swallowed audibly, then nodded, and reached up to pull my head toward her lips so she wouldn’t have to talk very loud.

CHAPTER 6