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“Don’t worry. I’m off to find myself.”
He shook his head. “Wizard talk.”
“Exactly.” I rose and stood there for a moment. Then I leaned down and hugged him. The surprise on his face wasn’t something I’d forget soon.
“That was a wizard hug,” he called as I started out. “You gave me some of your powers.”
I turned to him with a smile perhaps brighter than I’d ever given him before. “I hope so,” I said.
• • •
I didn’t fall asleep for a long time, but when I did, I slept late. I wasn’t going to school anyway, so I still took my time dressing and fixing my hair. I put on lipstick, too. My mother was waiting for me in the kitchen, hovering over a second or third cup of coffee. I knew she had been agonizing over the decision to send me to Spindrift. To help her along, I acted happier than I had in days.
Actually, I didn’t have to act. The prospect of starting something new and as challenging as this seemed to give me new energy.
After I ate something, she and I left to go to the hospital.
“Daddy found out that Greg was in his own room, postop.”
She paused and then told me Mateo had been arrested and charged with assault. The district attorney had moved to have him tried as an adult. None of that seemed to matter anymore. The only thing that might was his suffering remorse.
Once we checked in and found exactly where Greg was, my mother sat in the lobby and opened a novel to read.
I had to go to the third floor. When I arrived at his room, he was lying against the raised portion of his bed. Half his head was bandaged, and his good eye was closed. I saw that his breakfast tray had not yet been picked up. From the looks of it, he had eaten little.
The sound of my pulling a chair closer to the bed woke him.
“I’m not going to ask you how you are,” I said when I sat.
He smiled, but it looked like it was a little painful to do so. “How are you?”
“Frightened, angry, sad, when I’m not numb.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“Bringing you into all that.”
“Most of it was fun, even the dumb soccer game. And I won’t forget our walk on the beach.”
“We’ll do it again, maybe.”
“Maybe. Yes,” I said.
“Why did you say maybe first?”
“We won’t have as much opportunity—”
“Because of my eye. I’ll be all right. I’ll wear a pirate patch and maybe someday get a new eye. That’s not such a dream. My doctor told me about things being done for eyes in my condition.”
“I believe that. I did some reading on it and will do more,” I said. “But that’s not the reason.”
“So?”
“I’m going to attend a different school, Greg. It’s a school for wizards like me,” I said, thinking of Mickey.
“What?”
