“Okay,” Harper said, searching my face. “So is that The Boy?”
“You mean Griffin? Yeah.”
Harper shielded her eyes from the sun. “Well, Norah, looks to me like you’re in a crush triangle. Although in my opinion she likes him more than he likes her.”
“Where’d you get that from?”
“She’s acting all animated. And squealy. But he’s basically just standing there.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I protested. “He’s holding a heavy instrument; he’s not going to jump around!”
“Maybe. Although he could put it down, you know.” She stuffed the granola bar wrapper into her pants pocket. “So what’s going on between the two of you, anyway?”
I could see it was a test: Would I shut down again, or would I tell her? But I couldn’t think of a reason to avoid the topic of Griffin anymore. And besides, wasn’t this what normal friends did in the normal world—talk about crushes?
So I told her everything: about the griffins and the norahs, about the Kraken logo and the hug. She listened without interrupting.
Then she said: “Does he know you’re a seventh grader?”
I shook my head.
“And does he know you’ve been sick?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Are you going to tell him?”
“Are you nuts? Why would I?”
“Why? So he can see the real you.”
“I am the real me. And I’m not lying to him, Harper.”
“Um.”
“What does ‘um’ mean?”
“It means I think you sort of are, actually.”
“How can you say that? Just because I’m not going, Oh hello, Griffin, I think you’re nice, what did you write for the third math problem, and by the way, last year I had leukemia—”
“Well, but it happened to you, Norah. It’s important. Why not tell him?”
“Because then he’ll feel sorry for me! And we’ll have to keep talking about it all the time!”
Harper groaned. “Norah, no one is better than you at not talking. You’re like the World Not-Talking Champion. So if you don’t want to keep discussing it, just tell him that! But not even mentioning it is crazy. And also kind of unfair. To you and to him.”
Fortunately, that was when Dad’s car pulled up. Harper and I got in.
“So sorry, girls,” Dad said. “My editor called just as I was running out the door—”
“Not a problem, Mr. Levy,” Harper said. “Norah and I love having extra time for girl talk.”
The way she said it: “girl talk.”
CYCLOPS
That evening, I Skyped with Mom (“Norah, you look tired. Are you sure you have enough energy for Afterschool?”), texted Ayesha (I got a 9/10 on my first two homeworks!), then spent a long time researching kraken. The thing about mythical creatures: No one knows exactly what they looked like, so there are always different versions. In this one article I read, the kraken was described as a giant octopus with spikes on its suckers. Which to me sounded extremely rock band–ish, so I decided to draw it that way.
Around nine thirty, Dad came into my bedroom. “Norah, can we chat a sec? About tomorrow.”
“Sure,” I said, closing my sketchbook and my laptop.
He sat on my bed. “So this is good news, actually. My editor wants me to cover a player on the triple-A farm team for the Yankees. They’re out in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which means I’ll need to spend tomorrow on the road.”
My mind raced. “So that means you can’t pick me up after school? How will I get home?”
“I thought maybe you could take the school bus home, just for tomorrow. But could we keep that between us?”
“You mean not tell Mom?”
He winced a little. “Well, yeah. Because it does violate the No-Bus rule.”
A secret from Mom put me on Dad’s team, which I didn’t appreciate. On the other hand, the No-Bus rule was ridiculous. I mean, I was exposed to school germs all day; what could a few extra germs on the school bus do to me? And it was so great how Dad could take a travel assignment again.
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.”
He smiled. “Terrific. Nicole will stay with you overnight, but she won’t get here until dinnertime. Think you can hang out, do homework, fix yourself a snack, until she shows up?”
“Dad, I’m in seventh grade. I’m not a baby!”
“I know.” But you had leukemia, Norah. So that resets the clock. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. And I’m glad you’re back to normal. With your job, I mean.”
He kissed my cheek. “Me too, sweetheart. Me too.”
* * *
Sometimes, when I was in the hospital overnight, I had a sort of nightmare. I say “sort of” because I was awake for it, or at least a version of awake. It usually happened the times I woke up in a dark bed area (we didn’t have private rooms) and suddenly I had no idea where I was. Like it felt I wasn’t in an actual place, at an actual address on a map; I could have been anywhere, or nowhere. And this was terrifying.
Once I told Ayesha about this not-anywhere feeling. She said she’d had something like it too, when she was a patient. And the way she dealt with it was by telling herself, over and over, that she was somewhere else. It didn’t matter where, exactly—just anywhere besides a hospital.
So I tried that too. The next time I woke up in the hospital with that creepy floating-in-space, where-am-I sort of feeling, I played a version of the Room game. I pretended to be a camera in my very own bedroom, noticing every little detail, from left to right. And I can’t say it tricked me into believing I wasn’t in the hospital, in a sick person’s bed, with a hospital bracelet around my wrist—but it did make me feel a little better. And I even dozed off for a bit, eventually.
But that night, after Dad told me about his business trip, I got zero sleep. I tried the Bedroom game, but it didn’t work—probably because it was only in the hospital that you felt like you were Nowhere, and needed to convince yourself that you were Somewhere Else. Here in my cozy room
