To my surprise, I felt Todd wrap his hand around my left fist. “Gentle. You’re going to need that hand.”

I looked at him with some irritation. He was jittering his leg up and down, and it was distracting. “What?”

“Forgive yourself, forgive the hand.”

“All right, Todd.” Sometimes I thought Todd wasn’t completely right in the head. No one normal would work for the witch anyway. I turned my attention back to Lisa and winced to see Uncle inserting needles all along her legs and spine. I didn’t have a view of Lisa’s face from where I was but her body was rigid. Then I smelled the sweet smoke as Uncle and Dennis started to light the mugwort. If any of it fell onto Lisa’s skin, it would burn her and be almost impossible to remove because of the density of the needles. After allowing the mugwort to burn for some time, Uncle and Dennis blew out the fire. They removed the needles and Lisa was allowed to get dressed again.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” said Uncle Henry to Lisa.

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I want to go now.”

“She’s going to have to come back,” Uncle Henry said. “I’ll make the appointments with your pa.”

—

The next week, I thought up an exercise program for Lisa. I would start by getting her to stand for a few minutes to strengthen her legs, and before we knew it, she would be back to her old self again. At the beginning, she had only lost control over her legs for short, discrete periods, but now it seemed they were just weakening in general. The school nurse checked her again but didn’t find anything unusual. Lisa needed the cane most of the time these days, but still Pa asked me not to accompany her to her second session with Uncle Henry on Saturday. He’d heard I’d been difficult the first time.

When Lisa returned from the session, the skin on her face lay pale and worn, like the surface of an empty plastic bag. She looked thin and hunched over. The weather was finally warm—spring had arrived—and she was wearing a long skirt.

“Let me see.” I flipped her skirt up over her bare legs.

Lisa leapt back in her chair. “Don’t touch me!”

I held up my hands. I’d never seen Lisa react like this. “I only want to make sure they didn’t scar you.”

“They didn’t,” she said bitterly.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Get away from me.”

Lisa was just upset after her session. I would have been too. I wished we didn’t have to do this now but the weekends were the only time we had together. I placed an aluminum walker that I’d borrowed from Godmother Yuan in front of Lisa’s chair. Godmother still had it from when she needed one after her fall last year.

“Are you sure about this?” Pa looked worried.

“It’s good for kids to exercise, right?”

He didn’t seem convinced but he didn’t say anything else.

I placed Lisa’s small hands on the bars of the walker. We hauled her upright so that she was standing. I timed it with a stopwatch in my left hand.

Almost immediately, Pa said to Lisa, “Are you tired? Do you want to sit?”

Lisa looked straight ahead, swaying slightly on her skinny legs.

I pressed my lips into a thin line. “Pa!”

He ignored me, only focusing on Lisa. “I think she wants to sit.”

“She’ll be all right a little longer,” I said.

Lisa said, “Just because you think you’re the expert in everything these days doesn’t mean you’re always right, Charlie.”

I bit back an angry retort. Finally, when Lisa got tired, she whimpered. Her legs began to buckle and we let her sit. I wrote down the date and time in a little pad.

I started exercising Lisa every weekend.

“You’re being too hard on her,” Pa would say to me. I felt as though I were holding both him and Lisa upright. There were days when she would resist us angrily, dragging her weight back into the chair and dropping her hands from the walker. Sometimes, it was as though she wasn’t present at all. I was always exhausted afterward.

After two weeks, Lisa could stand for a longer amount of time. But her eyes were still hopeless.

—

“I want to take Lisa to a neurologist,” I said.

Pa was outraged. He slammed his hand down on the rounded edge of the kitchen sink. “No, no,” he yelled, slapping with each “no.” “No! She’s just a child, leave her alone.”

I tried to speak in a reasonable voice. “We have to find out what’s wrong, Pa.”

“Uncle is helping her,” he said, turning his back to me. “He said she’s coming along well. She just needs a few more sessions.”

“Pa, Uncle doesn’t see every—”

He put his hands over his ears. “You’re trying to kill me.” He turned on both taps full blast and bent over the sink. The conversation was over.

—

“Just a little longer,” I said quietly.

Lisa kept trying to sit down. Her face crumpled up like a little child’s and she began to cry, not even trying to hide it. She made small whimpering sobs and her cheeks glistened with tears.

We let her sit down.

“Oh dear heart.” Pa wiped her eyes with his white handkerchief. I couldn’t watch.

That night, as I lay on my mattress, I felt Lisa’s anguish rip through me. It was as though each sob tore into the soft flesh on the inside of my chest. I longed for Ryan’s arms around me, to hold and comfort me. And then I turned away and I was crying, stifling my sobs so she wouldn’t hear.

—

A few days later, Ryan and I were in the small ballroom, practicing the overhead lift again. We were now able to get through it without someone spotting us. I’d done this lift easily with Julian, but Julian was in a class by himself. I had to run to Ryan and jump, then he held me by the hips and lifted me straight into the air while I arched backward. It was terrifying because I was so high, probably eight or nine feet up, in a position where I couldn’t do anything to save myself if he dropped me or I lost my balance.

Today, for some reason, I glanced down in the middle of the lift. I could see the top of his tousled hair, the highlights gleaming in them, and then all was lost. I pitched forward and Ryan threw himself underneath me so that I wouldn’t get hurt when I landed. We wound up in an undignified heap on the floor.

He lay there beneath me, unmoving. I was terrified he’d hit his head on his way down. “Ryan! Are you all right?” I felt his neck, trying to figure out where his pulse was. That was when I realized his eyes were open, and he was laughing silently. “What?”

“That’s your idea of first aid? Strangling me?”

I leapt off of him. “Very funny.”

“You almost killed us both, and you’re mad at me.”

“You’re right.” I reached out a hand to help him up. “I’m sorry. I just lost my concentration.”

“I was watching you in the mirror. Why were you looking at my hair in the middle of our most dangerous lift? Do I have dandruff?”

The truth popped out before I could stop myself. “You have these pretty bronze highlights.”

His expression became this complicated blend of embarrassment, irritation and satisfaction. Then he said, “Let’s move onto the next part.”

That was the body ripple. With his body covering mine, one arm wrapped around my stomach, my right hand in his left, my other arm behind his head, we undulated together before I twirled out into the whip turn. At the beginning, we had been out of sync, so that his chest was moving upward while mine was going down, and his hips were done before mine got started. But now we had it perfectly synchronized. We were supposed to look sexy during the move, which meant he bent down so I had my head against his jaw, my face partially turned to his, as if we were about to kiss.

I tried to take the step into my turn but found I couldn’t move. Instead, Ryan tugged on my hand until I’d turned around and was wrapped in his arms. His eyes were closed and he was rubbing his cheek against mine as he bent me backward over his arm.

“Would you still rather dance with Keith than with me?” he whispered against my ear.