unison. I spin to see the cause. Grandma Dalia is grasping for the oxygen mask, trying to sit up. They hold her down, but she struggles, fighting with strength I didn’t know she had yet is still nothing compared with a team of thirtysomethings. She succeeds in getting the mask off, but only for a moment. She gasps for air, inhaling flecks of snow and ice. Her lips move; she’s speaking; she’s trying to reach out to Kai as he runs to her side. His hands and knees are scraped; he must have fallen on the way—
“Don’t go,” she whispers. I hear her only because the wind has changed direction, blowing against her, carrying her voice to me. She sounds like a ghost, as if she isn’t really here. I slide up beside Kai just as she speaks again; her eyes find me and narrow accusingly. She points at me. “Don’t go with the girl.”
“Ginny and I aren’t going anywhere, Grandma, not right now,” Kai says immediately. He allows the waiting paramedic to replace the mask; Grandma Dalia inhales fully, her chest arching up against the blankets. “We’ll meet you there, at the hospital.”
He steps back as the ambulance doors slam shut. I grab his hand. I have to do something. I have to figure out a solution—Kai can’t, not right now.
“Let’s go—”
“The car,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s stuck in the snow. I’m going to call a cab. I’ll tell them to hurry.” Kai’s face falls—cabs are epically slow, especially on this side of town. I can’t help but feel I’ve utterly failed him.
“You sure you’re okay?” the girl in the Lexus calls again. She’s parked directly behind us and is standing outside the car now, tall and bright in a sea of whiteness. Kai stares at her, confused.
“Wait—can you give us a ride?” I shout to her. “To the hospital? His grandmother—”
“Sure,” she says, nodding. “Come on, get in.”
I know I should feel surprised that she said yes—she’s a total stranger—but my mind is too preoccupied with worry. I lead Kai across the snow to the Lexus and sit down in the back seat with him. The girl is barely running the heat; the leather seats feel like ice under my legs. Her eyes flicker to mine in the rearview mirror, two bright blue stars.
“Thank you,” I say as we pull forward. “I tried our car, but—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says smoothly. Kai leans against me, keeping his head down—I worry, for a moment, that he might throw up in a car we can’t afford to have cleaned.
“Don’t be scared. She’s tough,” I remind Kai as I look out the window, watching the world growing ever whiter. People are sledding on trash-can lids and flattened boxes, since no one in the South actually owns a sled. They’re laughing and playing, while Kai holds back tears.
“She looked awful,” Kai says, exhaling. “What if she doesn’t make it?”
I want to tell him that she will, but I’m not so sure. I open my mouth to speak, but the girl driving us breaks in.
“Then you’ll still be here,” she says. Kai lifts his head; she speaks again. “You can’t let yourself die when someone else does. When my sister died, I thought my life was over. But it was just beginning.”
“But,” I say, squeezing Kai’s hand, “that’s something we can think about at the hospital.”
“Your sister died?” Kai asks. The ambulance skids through an intersection; the girl expertly navigates the gearshift, jetting through the red light to keep up.
“Ages ago,” the girl says. “My whole world changed.”
“I’m sorry,” Kai says. “What’s your name?”
“Mora,” she answers.
“I’m Kai,” he says. “And this is Ginny.”
“Thank you for driving us,” I add. “It’s a nightmare, driving in the snow.”
“Not a problem,” she says, smiling at me in the rearview mirror. Her teeth are as perfect as her skin, and I hate that I can see my reflection next to hers. I turn back to Kai, who is staring at the back of Mora’s head.
“Your grandmother plans everything, right?” I say.
“Yeah,” Kai says, sniffling. I can’t tell if it’s the cold or the emotion making his nose red and eyes watery.
“She planned your clothes every day until last year. She planned each and every trip to the grocery store. She even planned arguments she suspected she’d get into. You think she’d really plan for her last words to be about
Kai almost laughs, but not quite. He shakes his head and looks away from Mora’s head and at me.
“Then those aren’t her last words,” I say, a promise I’m afraid will become a lie. “She isn’t done yet.” Kai lifts my hand and kisses it, then rests his head against the back of the seat, eyes closed.
It was a lie after all. Grandma Dalia died before she even got to the hospital.
CHAPTER THREE
I saw Kai playing in the courtyard the day we moved in. It was December, a few weeks before Christmas. My dad and his brothers handled the furniture, while my mom lugged box after box of lamps and books and silverware up the stairs. I was too small to really help, and eventually my mom got so irritated with me weaving around under her legs that she told me to go play with “that little boy in the courtyard, the one with the ball.”
It wasn’t a ball—it was a Frisbee, and neither of us actually knew how to throw it. Kai and I pretended it was a weapon, something we flung at our enemies to knock them off their horses. They didn’t stand a chance against us, and we’d slain dozens before we got around to sharing our names.
“Kai,” he said.
“I’ve never heard that name before.”
“That’s because you’ve never met me before.”
He had a point.
Becoming fast friends when you’re that small is easy, because the only requirement is that the other person likes to play games. We eventually made our way up to his apartment and were drinking juice boxes when Grandma Dalia found us. She was already old, even then, but she stood a little straighter, and her hawk eyes were a little brighter. She looked at Kai warmly for a split second, but then her eyes moved to me. Everything changed; she darkened and beckoned Kai to come to her. Seeing I wasn’t following him, he turned around, blissfully unaware of the look she was giving me.
“I’m Ginny,” I said, trying to look polite despite the fact that my hands were grubby and the cowlick on the back of my head was sticking up. I desperately wanted Grandma Dalia to like me—I didn’t have grandparents, and my parents were already starting to drift away from me. Even at that age, I knew what I wanted: to have a home. To be loved. To be cared for. To have someone look at me the way Grandma Dalia looked at Kai—
“Ginny,” Grandma Dalia said coolly, like she didn’t believe me, and I deflated. “Kai has to practice his violin now, and you have to go home. Besides,” she said, “he doesn’t play with girls.”
“I did today, Grandma!” Kai said, proud. “We played all afternoon, and it was great.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” Grandma Dalia said, looking down at him. She wrapped a clawlike hand around his shoulder protectively. “But little boys and little girls don’t play together.”
“Why not?” Kai asked, disappointed.
She looked back up at me and narrowed her eyes. “Because, sweetheart. It isn’t safe.”
After a morning of debate, we decide that Grandma Dalia will be buried in a fuchsia suit, one that has a matching hat and looks like something I’d expect to see on the queen of England. Kai and I sit on the couch, ignoring the television in front of us, the suit laid across the dining room table. The TV is the one modern thing in the room—when Grandma Dalia realized she could watch soap operas and the Home Shopping Network in HD, she bought it and had it same-day delivered. The rest of the place is a strange combination of old lady and… something else.
There are knitted holders on the tissue boxes and bits of John the Conqueror root on the bookshelves. Statues of kittens sit beside house-blessing incense, black hen feathers hang by the windows—thousands of little things that would supposedly keep her, Kai, and the apartment safe. There’s an ashtray of dimes at the door; she
