April was sitting at Gemma’s bedside. With her were two women Lyra assumed must be related to April. One of them had April’s warm brown eyes, and the same nest of curly hair. The other one kept a hand on April’s shoulder.
“Looks like you have some more visitors,” Kristina said, when Lyra and Caelum entered. She, too, had drawn a chair up to Gemma’s bedside.
“You’re awake,” Gemma said, sitting up. She was pale but smiling.
“You’re heroes,” April said through a mouthful of candy, pivoting around to face her. “Twizzler?”
Lyra shook her head. But Caelum took one.
“Come on.” The woman with the curly hair gave April a nudge. “Let’s leave them alone for a bit, okay?”
Kristina took the hint and stood up. “I could use a cup of coffee, actually.”
April frowned. “Yeah, sure. But we’ll come back, right?” She pointed a Twizzler at Gemma. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Gemma said, and rolled her eyes.
Kristina bent down to kiss her daughter’s forehead. “I’ll be right back,” she said.
Lyra almost laughed. And she nearly cried, too. The sun through the blinds looked almost solid. It was beautiful, she thought. It was all so beautiful.
She would miss Gemma.
Maybe Caelum knew what she was thinking, because he reached for Lyra’s hand and squeezed.
“How are you?” Gemma asked, after the others had left. “How are you feeling?” That was so like Gemma: she was the one who had nearly died, and still she was worried about Lyra.
“We’re fine,” she said. Caelum’s hand was warm in hers. It was both true and not true, of course. She was still dying, of a disease for which there was no cure.
But it was like Caelum had said: she wasn’t dead yet.
Not today.
Already, the words she’d taken from Dr. O’Donnell were beginning to turn, to flow, to do their work.
“April was right,” Gemma said. “You’re both heroes. I can’t believe you found me.”
Lyra wondered whether anyone had told her about Calliope. She knew that Gemma would be sorry, even though Calliope was broken, even though Calliope had killed people. That was the kind of person Gemma was.
“That’s what friends do,” Lyra said. “They find each other.”
Gemma beamed. It was like her smile split her face open, and sunshine poured out of it. “Exactly.”
The look on Gemma’s face, the way she smiled, the understanding that Gemma would mourn Calliope even though Calliope had never mourned anyone—all of it warmed Lyra’s whole body and moved her forward, to Gemma’s bedside, compelled by an instinct that for years had remained buried. But now it broke free of its casing. She made her body into a seashell and gathered Gemma in the curve of her chest and spine. She didn’t think about doing it. Her body just knew it, remembered the impulse, the idea of warmth and closeness, as if all along the knowledge had been there, working through her blood.
And for the first time ever, Lyra and Gemma hugged.
“Thank you,” Lyra whispered into Gemma’s hair, which still smelled, faintly, like smoke. Words were funny things, she thought. The best ones carried dozens of other words nestled inside of them. “Thank you,” she repeated.
I love you, she thought. Good-bye.
Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 28 of Gemma’s story.
TWENTY-NINE
THEY COULD HAVE BEEN ANYONE, going anywhere. There was a joy in that, in the absorption: they were caught up in the great big heartbeat of the world. They were infinitely large and infinitely small. They were a single vein of feeling, an infinitely narrow possibility that had somehow come to be.
They could have vanished, right there, from the bus stop, and who’s to say whether anyone would have noticed, what would have changed, and whether somewhere in the rippling universe a wave would turn or fall or change directions.
But they didn’t vanish.
They sat in the sun, sweating, holding hands, and avoiding the gum on the underside of the bench when they moved their legs. They breathed the smell of exhaust. They saw people pass, a wash of sneakers and colors and cell phones. They sat for hours without speaking, without moving, without impatience or desire. Their hands were so tightly intertwined that looking at them you could not immediately say whose was whose. The sun wheeled through the sky; it turned its infinite cartwheel and blinded them when they stared directly.
And Lyra, sitting there, knew at last that she had found her story. It was not, after all, a story of escape and fear and fences. It was not a story about power, and so, after all, she did not have to play the role of sacrifice.
The story, her story, was about a girl and a boy on a bench, holding hands, watching bus after bus arrive and leave again. And because it was her story, that was all right: there was no hurry, no rush to get anywhere. The universe slowed, and both the past and future fell like a shadow flattened beneath the sun. The girl and boy sat, and watched, and time dropped a hand over them. It held them there, together, safe, and in love.
And in her story, they stayed that way.
Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 29 of Gemma’s story.