He holds my gaze as he takes in a breath. “Yes. There is someone.”
“I knew it!” Walter continues walking, and I sashay alongside him, tugging at his hand. “How’d you meet? What’s her name? What’s she like? Did she come to your games and swoon over you? Or—” I gasp again. “Or does she not like baseball? Is that why I’m hearing all this talk about giving it up?”
Walter smiles, looking more like his normal self. “No, she likes baseball. It’s more that . . . Well, she comes from a family with money—”
“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.” I link my arm through his as we start up State, the street that runs parallel to mine. “A rich girl.”
“You wouldn’t know it, though, from talking to her. She’s very humble.”
I roll my eyes. “You must really be over the moon. People always say that about girls with money, and it’s so rarely true. Except for Lydia.” Wait a minute. “Is it Lydia? It is, isn’t it?”
Walter chuckles. “No, it’s not Lydia.” He squeezes my arm. “I know she’s your best friend, and I don’t want to offend, but I wouldn’t describe her as a girl who you can’t tell comes from money.”
“Lydia’s so sweet, though. So selfless.”
“She is, yes.” Walter hesitates. “But in a rich girl kind of way.”
“How can you say that? She’s up the street this very minute helping out Mrs. Barrow with Cole. If that’s not sweet, then I don’t know what is.”
Walter smiles at me like my oldest brother, Tim, does when he finds me amusing. “I don’t want to fight about Lydia.”
“Fine.” Lydia isn’t perfect, of course, but she’s always polite to Walter when they happen to be together. Even if she does disapprove of us being friends.
Quarrelling isn’t how I want to spend our limited time together. I shake away my annoyance. “Well, whoever she is and however much pin money she’s accustomed to, I hope she knows how lucky she is to have caught your eye, Walter. But you should know that I will personally flog you if you give up baseball for her. Because unless you’re ready to marry her now—” My feet stop moving. “You’re not, are you?”
“No. Audrey still has some school to finish. And it’s early still. We’ve only been out a few times.”
That’s a relief. I’ve always expected Walter to marry, of course, but knowing I have time to adjust to the idea is nice. “It seems to me, then, that there’s still time for you to give baseball a try before you need a ‘dependable future,’ as you put it.”
Walter is quiet for the next block, and I can tell by the way he repeatedly buttons and unbuttons his coat that it’s a thoughtful kind of silence. “I suppose I’m just frustrated over how little playing time I’ve had recently,” he finally says. “You’re right. I’m still young, and I always expected there to be hard work. It’s just harder than I thought it would be, being out there all alone without Mother or you.”
“Well, you have Audrey now.”
His mouth quirks in a soft smile. “True.”
I squeeze his arm. “You’re close, I can feel it. I hate to think of you giving up when you’ve worked so hard. And—”
My gaze catches on something strange ahead on the sidewalk. A crumpled girl with long flames of hair who’s wearing a uniform identical to mine.
A scream rips through the bright blue afternoon—my own.
CHAPTER
TWO
I grasp my skirt to provide my knees freedom to run. “Lydia!” I’m yelling even though I know she can’t hear, that she’s not with us.
With Walter’s long legs and athleticism, he beats me to her bent frame. But he just gapes at her, same as I must have during the seizure I witnessed last month. I collapse beside Lydia and call to mind the questions I heard Dr. LeVine asking Mrs. LeVine last time. How long did it last? What were her arms doing? Her legs? Did she lose control of her faculties?
Even with my attempt to frame the moment in a list of scientific details, the sight of Lydia seizing has me biting in another scream. Her neck is angled back, and her eyes are rolled up, unseeing. Her throat makes a repetitive clicking noise, like the skipping needle on a record that needs turning over. Her arms are both extended, as if she’d been pushing someone away when the seizure struck, and her knees are tucked up beneath her rumpled, urine-soaked Presley school skirt.
“Oh!” Blood. A stream of crimson leaks onto the concrete. I want to curl into a ball and weep, but instead I lean closer to the sidewalk until I can see the source of the blood. A scrape on her right temple.
“What’s happening?” Walter’s words are hoarse.
“She’s having a seizure.” My voice is quiet but steady. “She must have been standing when it happened.”
“What do we do? How do we make her stop?” Panic oozes from him.
“We can’t.” My hands smooth Lydia’s hair, her skirt. “She has to come out of it on her own. But we need to get her home.”