“What are you looking at?” Elle said, catching me staring.

“Nothing.”

The sky turned shades of cold metal, tin and zinc, and when she wheeled me outside into the thick stillness we both glanced up, searching for the first snowflakes. A pinprick of ice touched my tongue. When I lowered my head, Ellis was watching me with a wistful expression.

“What are you looking at?” I said.

“You.” She shrugged shyly. “It’s just nice to see you happy.”

Something warm ran down my spine, a droplet of sun.

The hospital garden looked spray-painted with winter, a silver powdercoat of frost laying atop everything. Other patients passed with their attendants, smiling benignly. We meandered down stone paths lined with witch hazel. I plucked a frond, idly broke off the ice whiskers. Ellis knelt suddenly before a bank of snowdrops.

“Oh my god,” she said.

“What?”

“This. Doesn’t it belong to you?”

She turned on her heel and held it up in both hands: a crown of woven witch hazel, spidery threads of red and gold, with snowdrops tucked into the braids like gems.

My mouth hung open. “Ellis.”

She rose to set it on my head. I grabbed the dangling end of her scarf.

“When did you do this?” I breathed.

“It was stolen long ago, Your Highness. We’ve been searching for many years. What a great irony, to find it here in our own kingdom.”

I laughed, a little wildly. “You are so ridiculous. I love you.”

She was trying not to laugh, too, and she blushed and lowered her eyes. My bashful prince.

Something hot stung my cheek.

“Oh, no. Vada. Don’t.”

Great. I was totally crying.

“I’m just—this is really nice,” I said. “Being happy again.”

With you.

I scrubbed my tears on her scarf, which earned a laugh. We got up to walk. Ellis hovered at my side and after a while I took her hand, walking close and slow, arm in arm. We circled a pond where thin glass leaves of ice floated atop dark water. On a bench across from us, a man in a beanie watched. Instinctively I turned around.

“What’s wrong?” Ellis said.

“Let’s go this way.”

We walked into a copse of spruce, the air spiced with balsam and menthol. The path bent and the civilized world disappeared and for a moment, we could’ve been in some forest deep in the heart of Maine, utterly lost. I started to relax, wrapped my arm around Elle’s waist. Then I heard footsteps crunching up the path.

I stepped away from her. “Want to head back? I’m kinda tired.”

“Okay.”

When she reached for my hand again I drifted a step farther off.

“Vada, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you avoiding people?”

“Just look at me.” I gestured at my ragged ponytail, the goofy crown, the wrinkled pajamas. “I’m not fit to be seen in public.”

“You’re not fit to be seen?” She moved closer, grasped my hand. “Or this isn’t?”

Again, instinct: I recoiled, shook her off.

Then immediately did a double take and said, “Ellis, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

But she was already stalking down the path, leaving.

“Fuck,” I growled.

She must have taken off running, because by the time I got out of the trees she was nowhere in sight. Fucking track star. No way could I catch up.

I trudged back to the wheelchair and tried to push it one-handed, but it kept veering off into the snow. So I started kicking it instead, which was a lot more satisfying.

Goddammit, Ellis. What did you expect?

Seeing my mom always put me in a bad headspace. Seeing the way other people saw us. When it was just us in our little fantasy world it was fine, but Mamá had to remind me how childish and unhealthy it was.

The lines are becoming blurred.

Come home. Be around other people.

You’ll grow out of it.

Like we were kids playing make-believe.

I ripped the crown from my head, but I couldn’t shred it with one hand. So I pressed it to my mouth to hold in a sob, because fuck emotional stability, apparently.

“Excuse me,” a man said.

I jumped. Beanie Guy stood beside me. Blond scruff, broad-shouldered. Ruggedly handsome. Fortyish.

“Need some help?”

For a bizarre moment I thought he was talking about the crown. I looked pitifully at the chair.

“Oh. No. Thanks.”

“Please,” he said, cracking a smile. “I won’t make you sit. But let me help.”

I really just wanted him to go away, but if I tried to tell him off I might burst into tears. Then he’d definitely go all Good Samaritan.

“Whatever,” I said.

He kept pace with me on the path back. I clutched the crown in a fist, and he glanced at it.

“Is she your girlfriend?” he said. “The redhead?”

I almost tripped. “What?”

“I saw you together. You looked happy.”

My fist furled tighter. Then I tossed the mangled vines into the snow. “She’s a friend. Not that it’s any of your business. Are you a patient?”

“No. My son was.”

“Oh.”

We walked in silence another half minute. I felt his eyes on me. Too avid, too interested.

“Was?” I said.

“He passed away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” The man’s eyes defocused. “It’s comforting, to see other people his age. Reminds me that life goes on.”

Beanie Guy was making me feel like a sublime shitheel. “What happened to your son?”

“He was in a car accident.”

I stumbled.

The man caught me, carefully avoiding my injured arm. The large hand on my hip made my skin crawl.

“I’m okay,” I said, not looking at his face.

“You’re Vada, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer. I stopped moving, stared at the ground. My vision swam, too bright, weirdly pixelated.

“Do you know who I am?” the man said.

I made myself look at him. “Your son was the other driver.”

He nodded. No emotion in his face, just that avid intensity. “My name is Max.”

“I’m really, really sorry—”

Max clapped a hand on my shoulder. The good one, but it jolted my whole body and pain jittered up my spine. “It’s okay, Vada. It was an accident. Not your fault.” The hand on my shoulder tightened like a pincer. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

“Why?”

He let go with a rueful smile. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to talk without Ellis around.”

Max said our names fluently, familiarly. As if he’d been saying them to himself, night after night, like a litany.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be talking without—”

“You were driving, right?”

My mind raced. This wasn’t a cop. Just the father of a dead kid. He seemed . . . sad. Merely sad, lonely, desperate to connect to some part of his son’s final moments.

Jesus, some kid was dead, some kid my age.

“Yes,” I said. “I was.”

“The police said you were sober. It was nice of you to be the designated driver for your . . . friend.”

A chill cascaded down my back.

“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled, edging away. “For your loss. But I really need to go. I’m sorry.”

Max didn’t stop me. He stood still in the winter garden, watching me backpedal and turn and run.

VADA: where the fuck are you?

VADA: all your shit’s gone from my room

ELLIS: In a cab.

VADA: bailing on me again

ELLIS: I just need some space. To think.

ELLIS: I’m not leaving.

VADA: I met Max

ELLIS: . . .

ELLIS: What did he say?

VADA: he said it’s okay we killed his kid

VADA: which maybe you should’ve fucking told me

VADA: before I learned it from the dead kid’s dad

ELLIS: I thought you knew. You were lucid that night.

VADA: I’ve been blocking out a traumatic event, Elle

VADA: did you not recognize the signs?

ELLIS: I thought you just didn’t want to talk about it. I was trying to distract you.