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three months ago, my dad beside me in the passenger seat, and my mom in the backseat, and both of them swearing they trusted me, even as I crashed into our garbage cans.
    My Mom: “Don’t worry. Nobody ever died at two miles an hour.”
    My Dad: “Snails?”
    My Mom: “Lemurs.”
    My Dad: “Shrews. Wait. How fast do shrews move?”
    My Mom: “Shrews move incredibly fast. They’re predators. They take emergency ten-second naps, and the rest of the time, they hunt. You lose.”
    My Dad (grinning): “You win.”
    Me: “Um. Should I start the car again?”
    I haven’t actually gotten my license. But I know how to drive at top speed, because they showed me that, too, in the middle of the night, illegal on the highway, far out of town. I’ve never done it alone, but I did it with my parents. I drove really, really fast.
    If I could drive really fast to another town, I could die there. Possibly in a hotel. And save everyone the catastrophe of watching me go.
    Eli, I think. No matter what I do, this is going to utterly disaster her.
    And all night, I’m thinking about how whatever I heard coming out of the sky, it wasn’t English, and it wasn’t even really words. But it was familiar. I felt it in my bones, in the strangest way.
    I felt like something was ringing me like a bell.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................

    I wake up at 4:30 a.m., sweating, panicked, heart pounding, coughing. My skin feels tight enough that I’m not sure it’s not ripping. I walk shakily to the bathroom and look in the mirror. I look like me. Just the in-pain version.
    I dream for the rest of the night, weird faces, and feathers, and I keep feeling smothered, as though something’s pressing against my mouth and nose, and as though there’s something in my lungs. I wake up again, and it’s seven. The sun’s rising, and I’m coughing and convincing myself not to freak out.
    I can’t get rid of the feeling of my skin pinching too close to my bones, snagging on itself. My mouth feels weird too. My cough’s epically worse than it was last night.
    So, no school. Instead, doctor, where I put on my own backless white gown, with name embroidered—small perks—and my own slippers.
    I’ve been known to pretend things about these events. Usually, it’s the Black and White Ball.Truman Capote. My backless white is a gown constructed of silk and petticoat, and maybe some nice netting made of Audrey Hepburn’s soul. (Audrey was invited, but did not attend.) Except that at that famously glamorous party, I don’t think anyone’s gown was bottomless. No joy like the feeling of frozen upper thighs against an examining table.
    This is a children’s hospital, though, so there are other things worse than me. I’ve seen curtains pulled shut suddenly, and on the other side the unmistakable sound of parents sobbing. I’ve seen the Make-A-Wish people roaming the hallways, costumed and ready for action, and sick kids looking like the world has flipped over and given them everything they ever wanted at the last possible moment.
    What they want, inevitably, turns out to be things made of trying to be the same as everyone else. Once I saw a certain floppy-haired teenage singing idol in red leather pants shambling his way down the hallway to make someone’s wish come true. A while later, I saw him leave, looking brain-broken.
    Classic mistake: he’d shown up convinced he’d make the blind see and the dying live. It doesn’t work that way. Famous people aren’t magic. Despite their thoughts to the contrary.
    A kid comes tearing around the corner, hairless and bleating like some kind of very hungry, quite large baby bird. He’s chasing a clown, though, not running from a doctor, so it’s not terrible.
    The clown pauses in my exam room doorway and juggles her rainbow pom-poms. The three-year-old patient claps his hands wildly and looks at me with huge, excited