Indigo

knew that wasn’t how it went, that I was just messing around. I insisted on playing it for her on my violin. The correct way.

“Corrine, don’t forget this, though,” she told me afterward, sticking her pencil into her messy silver curls. “Music isn’t static. Don’t ever apologize for making something beautiful. Don’t be scared of what you alone can add.”

I left Rennick’s drawing on my desk and knelt down, looked under my bed, and took out my violin. I tuned each string, turning the knobs at the scroll just enough. I applied the rosin to my bow, tightened it to exactly the right amount of tension. I brought the violin to my chin, rested it in the familiar little nook of my collarbone.

I played Canon in D. My fingers remembered the notes, and my soul remembered the music. I played for a long time. Sousa. Mozart. Piece after piece. Not for any reason other than I needed to play. I needed to remember what it was like to be my real self.

I was still playing when I heard my cell phone ring for the fifth time in a row. I gave up, put my violin down on the bed, and reached for the phone. Mrs. Rawlings’s phone number.

“Hello?”

“I’m at the hospital with Mia-Joy,” Sarah said calmly. “It is not an emergency, but please come. We will explain.”

She hung up. Obviously her phone call had been planned specifically so that I would not freak out, but what I was actually doing was freaking out. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I repeated, pacing around my bedroom before I could make a cohesive plan. And, of course, in the back of my head I had more guilt. Hadn’t Rennick predicted this? The rip in her aura? And hadn’t I just let it all go?

I didn’t have a car. Mom and Dad turned off their cells at church. Biking out to the hospital would take at least an hour.

Rennick.

I called his cell and he answered on the first ring. He was in my driveway within ten minutes, and I was in his car, trying to explain the situation.

He clenched his jaw. “We’ll get there in time,” he said, driving faster than I’d ever seen. I knew what he meant. No matter what was going on, I could fix her. I could heal Mia-Joy.

My stomach clenched. How was I supposed to use this thing when I didn’t have control, really?

I tried to remind myself of the mouse, of how sure I had seemed after that. It didn’t help.

As soon as we walked into Mia-Joy’s hospital room, I knew that this was a different kind of situation than I had expected. Tenuous in a different way. She sat in her hospital bed, and her face was pinched and angry, defiant. That famous Mia-Joy scowl. But if she looked scary, Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings looked downright terrifying.

“You want to tell your friend here? Or shall I?” Sarah barked at Mia-Joy.

Mia-Joy broke then. She looked out the window, and I saw the cover, the mask, dissolve for a second; I moved to go to her, but Mrs. Rawlings was already there, holding her in her arms. She pressed Mia-Joy to her ample bosom, rocked her back and forth. She whispered things to Mia-Joy, and I fought the tears back too. I had to look away because of what this did to me. It undid me. This show of kindness.

So powerful.

Mr. Rawlings got up and motioned for Rennick to leave with him. Rennick looked at me for the okay, and I nodded. Mrs. Rawlings finished comforting her daughter and turned toward me. “She wants to tell you about it herself.”

Was she pregnant? Oh Jesus. What could it be?

“Sit down, Corrine.”

“What is it, Mia-Joy?” I sat down in the chair across from the bed. She composed herself, applying some lip gloss and fixing her curls in her compact mirror before she began, all the while my heart thudding in my eardrums.

“I knew something was up,” I told her. “I knew I should’ve—”

“Shut up, Corrine,” she said. “This isn’t about you. And you don’t know anything. You’re not the only one who can have a crisis in this world.”

I sat back, wounded. But I deserved that, didn’t I?

“Oh, stop it,” Mia-Joy teased. “Just let me get it out, okay? It’s embarrassing. It’s … shitty, ya know?” She bit her lip for a second. “I work at it—seeming like I got my shit together. For you. For the kids at school. For everybody. But mostly for my own sorry self.”

I waited.

“I like seeming like I’m in control, working it, ya know?”

“You do have it all together, Mia-Joy,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay. Summer of seventh grade. It started then.”

I made a face at her. “Seventh grade?”

“Yep. Puberty.”

What did she mean? The year she got boobs? The year she became beautiful? “You handled that like nobody’s business, Mia-Joy. Ugly duckling to a swan. Although I don’t know if I’d go so far as ugly duck—”

“I spent half the year throwing up every meal I ate.”

“You did?” I was flabbergasted. Mia-Joy? Bulimic?

“You didn’t know about that, Corrine?”

“No. Jesus.” I was speechless. Dumbfounded. “So since then … now?”

Mia-Joy blanched. “On and off.” She was embarrassed, wouldn’t meet my eyes. She knotted and unknotted a stray string from a curl of a blanket in her lap. She looked so small there, sitting in her mint-green hospital gown. It hurt her to tell me this, to show me this weakness. “With my diabetes, it makes things worse. Messes with my pump, the insulin, if I’m screwing up like that. Mom caught me. That’s why I’m here. Last time, she told me she’d give me one more chance.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Mia-Joy, you’re too smart to—”

“Spare me the speech, Corrine, okay? I get it. I know. I know it doesn’t make sense. I know that. But I know I need help. People aren’t perfect.”

“But you have to know how beautiful you are. Guys are like drooling—”

“I think …” Mia-Joy licked her lips and closed her eyes. This was hard for her to talk about. “I think I’ve learned that it’s how I keep control. I feel things getting crazy and I—”

“But you’re the one who always handles things so—”

“No. You can’t put me up on that pedestal, Corrine. Not me.” Then she eyed me, looked a little bit more like herself. “You can’t put anybody on that pedestal, yourself included.”

I nodded and stopped myself, realizing I was only going to sermonize. “So you’re staying here?”

“For a while. Then outpatient therapy.”

“You don’t think I could help with the touch or anything?” I was surprised when the offer came tumbling out of my mouth.

But Mia-Joy just gave me a look. “Girl.”

“I just thought maybe I could get you back to normal, back—”

“There is no normal!” she snapped.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Corrine, if I’ve learned one thing about trying to be perfect, it’s that it’s not attainable. Nobody’s normal. Nobody’s perfect. Not you, not me. And none of us has it all worked out. We don’t get to perfect and then that’s it, ya know? It’s about waking up each day and trying. Making better decisions.”

I sat in silence with her then, trying to digest this. How did I never know this about Mia-Joy? How had I been so oblivious? She had needed me, and I had never even known.

“Mia-Joy, you’re beautiful. Everyone thinks so. You can’t seriously think you are too—”

“Sometimes … sometimes …” I saw the mask lift from her face again. I got up, sat on the edge of her bed. I hugged her. “Sometimes I know,” she said quietly.

“Can I help?” I said. “Let me help somehow.”