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She realized once she was out on the sidewalk that it was almost midnight and she was still wearing her pajama top. Who at the hospital would let her in to see Bailey at midnight? Didn't visiting hours end by eight?
She backtracked and got her bike from the open garage. She didn't have very much time. Bailey was afraid of time.
She raced through the streets. The traffic lights on Wisconsin Avenue were flashing yellow.
The regular entrance to the hospital was mostly dark, but the emergency entrance was alight. Tibby walked in and past the assortment of miserable people in plastic chairs. Even emergencies grew boring after people waited for a few hours in this place.
Luckily the woman in the reception box had her head tilted down. Tibby walked right by. She struck out for an elevator.
“Can I help you?” a passing nurse asked her.
“I'm, uh, finding my, uh, mom.” Tibby lied badly. She kept walking. The nurse didn't come after her. She took fire stairs up to the main floor, hovered in the stairwell until the coast was completely clear, then sped to the elevator.
There was a tired-looking doctor in the elevator. Tibby rummaged around her brain for excuses, until she realized he really didn't care what she was doing. Obviously he had better things to think about than hospital security.
She got off at the fourth floor and immediately ducked into a doorway. The floor was very quiet. The reception area was to the left, but a sign indicated that room 448 was to the right. There was a nurses' station farther down the hall to the right. She barely breathed as she moved along the wall like a spider. Thank goodness, room 448 was close. The door was partially open. She slipped inside.
She stalled in the little vestibule. From there she could see Jay Leno up on the ceiling-mounted TV doing his shtick in silence. She could see no parents in the chairs by the windows. She had to make herself go in.
She was afraid she would see a different Bailey, a leftover Bailey. But the girl sleeping in the bed was the same as the girl she knew. Only she had tubes sticking out of her wrist and a tube in her nose. Tibby heard a high-pitched little gasp escape her own throat. There was more emotion bubbling around in there than she could hold back.
Bailey was so tiny under the covers. Tibby saw the flutter of pulse at her neck. Gently Tibby reached for Bailey's hand. It was made of bird bones. “Hi, Bailey, it's me,” she whispered. “The girl from Wallman's.”
Bailey was so small there was enough extra room for Tibby to sit on the bed next to her. Bailey's eyes stayed shut. Tibby brought Bailey's hand to her chest and held it there. When her own eyelids started to droop, she lay back gingerly, resting her head on the pillow next to Bailey's. She felt the soft tickle of Bailey's hair against her cheek. Tears slipped out of her eyes and went sideways into her ears and onto Bailey's hair. She hoped that was okay.
She would just stay here holding Bailey's hand for all time, so Bailey wouldn't be afraid that there wasn't enough of it.
That night was the celebration of Koimisis tis Theotokou, the Assumption of the Virgin. It was the biggest Greek Orthodox holiday after Easter. Both Lena and Effie joined their grandparents in the small, plain, lovely church for the liturgy. Afterward there was a small parade, and then the whole town got busy eating and drinking.
Grandma was on the dessert committee, so she and Effie made dozens of trays of baklava with every conceivable kind of nut in the filling for the delicate pastries. Grandma had intensified Effie's training now that the summer was almost at an end.
Lena had one glass of strong, rough-tasting red wine, and it made her feel tired and sad. She went up to her room and sat by her window in the dark, where she could watch the festivities from a bit of a distance. This was the way she liked to enjoy a party.
Down on the sidewalk and in the little plaza a few yards down from Kostos's house, the celebration became more boisterous after sunset. The men drank loads of ouzo and got very expansive once the music began. Even Bapi wore a big, silly smile.
Effie drank a few glasses of wine herself. There was no official drinking age in Greece. In fact, even their grandparents pushed wine on Effie and Lena on special occasions, which probably made Effie much less interested in drinking than she would have been otherwise. Tonight, though, Effie was flushed and exuberant. Lena watched her sister dance to a few songs with Andreas the waiter and then sneak off into an alleyway with him. Lena wasn't worried. Effie was carbonated, but under that she was possibly the most sensible person Lena knew. Effie adored boys, but even at fourteen, she didn't abandon herself for them.
Oia, tonight, had two equally vivid full moons, one in the sky and one in the sea. If Lena hadn't known better, she wouldn't have been able to pick the original.
In the moonlight she saw Kostos's face. He didn't notice Lena's absence or care. She felt sure of it.
I wish you cared, Lena told him telepathically, and then wanted to take it back.
She watched Kostos approach her grandmother. On her tiptoes, Valia hugged him and kissed him so hard, Lena wondered if she might strangle him. Kostos looked joyful. He whispered something in Valia's ear that made her smile. Then they began dancing.
Dinky, small-town fireworks erupted from the plaza. In a way, those were the most awe-inspiring kind, Lena decided with a tiny chill. Unlike the Disney World variety, these homemade ones had a sweet crudeness you could respond to. They showed the effort and the danger, while more polished presentations hid it.
Kostos spun Grandma around. Laughing, she managed to keep her feet under her. He ended the song with a dramatic dip, bending Grandma practically in two. Lena had never seen her grandmother look so happy.
Lena studied the faces of the girls on the sidelines. She could tell that Kostos owned the lust of what few local teenage girls there were in Oia, but instead he chose to dance with all the grandmothers, all the women who had raised him, who had poured into him the love they couldn't spend on their own absent children and grandchildren. It was just a poignant fact of island life that whole generations left to set up real lives in other places.
Lena let the tears dribble past her chin and down her neck. She wasn't exactly sure what she was crying for.
Even after the late hour at which the party ended, Lena couldn't sleep. She sat by her window watching the moon. She waited for breezes to feather the edges of the sea-moon. She imagined all the happy inhabitants of Oia falling into deep, drunken sleep.
But as she craned a little out the window, she recognized another pair of elbows in the far window of the second floor. They were Bapi's wrinkly elbows. He was sitting at his window, staring at the moons, just like she was.
She smiled, both inside and out. She'd learned one thing in Santorini. She wasn't like either of her parents or her sister, but she was just like her Bapi—proud, silent, fearful. Lucky for Bapi, he had found the courage once in his life to seize a chance at love from a person who knew how to give it.
Lena prayed on these two moons that she would find that same courage.
Lena slept in the next morning. Well, she didn't sleep in. She stayed in bed hours after she woke, because she couldn't figure out what to do with herself. She was fitful, both energized and apathetic.
Effie ended the morning when she banged in, needing to raid Lena's closet for something or other. “What's the matter with you?” Effie asked over her shoulder while rummaging shamelessly through Lena's things.
“I'm tired,” Lena claimed.
Effie looked suspicious.
“How was last night?” Lena asked to deflect attention.
Effie's eyes brightened. “It was unbelievably great,” she gushed. “Andreas is the best kisser. Much better than any American boy.”
“You mentioned that,” Lena pointed out sourly. “Besides, you're fourteen.”
Suddenly Effie stopped jangling hangers. She was completely motionless.
“What?” Lena demanded. Effie made her nervous whenever she was quiet.
“Oh my God,” Effie breathed.
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“What!” Lena shouted.
She cringed when she heard the rustle of paper and saw what Effie was holding. It was the drawing she'd made of Kostos.
“Oh my God,” Effie repeated, slower this time. She turned to Lena, as though seeing her sister through new eyes. “I can't believe you.”
“What?” Lena's vocabulary seemed to have come down to that one word.
“I cannot believe you.”
“What?” Lena shouted again, sitting up in bed.
“You are in love with Kostos,” Effie accused.
“No I'm not.” If Lena hadn't known she was in love with Kostos before, she did now. Because she knew what a lie felt like.
“You are too. And the sad thing is, you are too much of a chicken to do anything about it but mope.”
Lena sank into her covers again. As usual, Effie had summed up her complex, anguished mental state in one sentence.
“Just admit it,” Effie pressed.
