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couldn’t wait to tell Margaret about the insane coincidence of their sending me to see the slob who’d blubbered during her song. I imagined her saying maybe he wasn’t a slob, maybe he’d been really moved. Maybe it was the power of art, maybe he would have cried if he’d heard Billie Holiday. I was halfway to my car when I remembered why I couldn’t tell her.”
    I said, “You imagined her saying all that?”
    “Word for word. But of course it wasn’t her. So where was it coming from? Me? Or was she talking to me?”
    I said, “Stuff like that happens to me all the time.”
    Aaron said, “The worst part is, there’s no one I can tell.”
    I said, “You just told me .”
    “That I did,” he said.
    We saw my parents approaching. Aaron started talking faster. “Listen. One day this summer, let’s go for a ride. Hang out.”
    That would be nice, I would have said, if I could have spoken. That was what the staircase spirit told me I should have said. The spirit whispered, “By summer, he won’t recognize you on the street.”
    I nodded like a bobble-head doll as Aaron backed away. Then my parents scooped me up, and we got into the car.
    Aaron faded into the rainy background, speckled with the blossomlike faces of kids from Margaret’s school. I despised them for being alive when my sister was dead. A winnowing had taken place, like picking teams for a game. Everyone else had wound up on the team of the living, leaving Margaret behind, chosen last, to play on the larger but more unpopular loser team of the dead.
    “Poor kid.” My mother meant Aaron.
    “Poor everybody,” said Dad.
     
    I DIDN’T HAVE TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL . My parents worked it out so I could skip final exams and get the A’s I would have gotten anyway.
    Samantha and Violet called to tell me again how sorry they were. I knew they meant it, they cared about me. I hated the sound of their voices. Every time the phone rang, I still thought it might be Margaret.
    They were the ones who told me that Margaret’s graduation had featured a blown-up portrait of her onstage, an angel beaming at everyone who came up to get a diploma. Her friends and teachers and Aaron all gave tearful speeches, and they showed the video of her performing “My Funny Valentine” at the Senior Show. It seemed like an odd song to sing at your own memorial service.
    The principal had called to invite us and ask if we wanted to speak. Everyone said they understood why we didn’t go, we needed to heal our own way. Some people probably thought we were weak. But I was glad not to have to sit there, trying not to turn and stare at everyone trying not to turn and stare at us.
    The summer yawned before me, a pit of boredom and pain. A dull pressure knuckled inside my chest, and I began to wonder if heart problems ran in our family. Sometimes at night I woke to a hammering inside my chest, as if my heart were trying all the exit routes from my body. I pictured my parents coming in to find I’d died in my sleep. I was glad the idea of a heart attack frightened me so badly. As much as I missed Margaret, I didn’t want to join her.
    My father cooked our favorite meals. He’d always been a good cook, but now the less we ate, the harder he worked. He made chicken pot pies with buttery crusts, lamb with flageolet beans, swordfish pounded thin and fried with bread crumbs, capers, and lemon. He never complained when the food went back to the kitchen untouched. Everything tasted like Styrofoam, and we had to sit perfectly still if we didn’t want to catch sight of Margaret’s place at the table. There was always too much food and not enough air in the room. Our efforts at conversation were punctuated by sighs that were partly sadness and partly just trying to breathe.
    One night at dinner, Mom said, “Nico, darling, why do you keep touching your chest?”
    “My heart hurts,” I said, and everything stopped, as if I’d dropped a heavy plate, still rattling, on the