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have chosen to gather before heading off to their afternoon activities. I pressed my free hand to my ear, trying to hear better.
    “Where are you?” I moved away from the crowded concrete circle by the front entrance and onto the lawn.
    “Zoe, I’m . . . I’m at the hospital.”
    “The hospital ?” For some reason, I thought of the twins. Could one of them have been in an accident? The possibility made my heart drop. Tommy and Luke could be super annoying, but they were also adorable. Last year, when they were in second grade and neither of them had their front teeth, Tommy would pronounce Zoe “Thoe.”
    “I’m sick, Zoe,” said Livvie.
    “Wait, you’re sick?” I was still thinking about the twins. “Hang on a second . . . what?”
    “I’m at UH,” said Olivia.
    University Hospital was only a few blocks from the Fischer Center, where NYBC was located. We’d driven by it everyday on our way to and from dance classes and performances, its glass towers telling us we were just minutes from our destination or that we’d begun the journey home.
    “But you were just at the doctor’s office.” I knew, even I said it, that it was a stupid thing to say. It wasn’t like there was no way to travel from the doctor’s office to the hospital.
    Olivia’s voice was freakishly precise. “The doctor found a bruise on the back of my leg,” she said.
    “I saw that!” I shouted, remembering the bruise from when I’d slept over Saturday night. It was dark purple and spidery, and I’d almost asked her about it, but then we’d started talking about something else and I’d forgotten.
    Livvie continued. “Well, she saw it and she asked how I’d gotten it, and I said I didn’t know, and then she found this other one on my arm—on the back—”
    “I didn’t see that one,” I admitted. Why was I interrupting her? I pressed my lips together to get my mouth to stop asking questions.
    “It’s there,” Olivia told me, as if I’d doubted her. “I saw it in the mirror. Anyway, then the doctor started asking about the bruises, and how long I’ve had the fever, and then my mom said that I’d been really tired lately and she asked if maybe I could be anemic. And Dr. Weiss said she wanted us to go to the Med Center.”
    The Med Center was a cross between a doctor’s office and an emergency room. They had X-ray machines and doctorsand stuff, but I didn’t think you would go there if you were having a heart attack. “Yeah,” I said, “I know where that is. Remember when my dad stepped on a nail last summer? My mom and I took him.”
    Looking back at that conversation, I can’t help wondering: Did I know? Did I know what was coming, and did I think that as long as I wouldn’t let Livvie say the words, they wouldn’t be true?
    “They took blood,” she went on. “And they found abnormal cells.”
    “Abnormal cells,” I echoed.
    “Abnormal cells,” she repeated. “And they said they wanted us to go to UH so they could do a bone marrow aspiration. That’s when they take some bone marrow out of your pelvic bone with a needle.”
    “A needle ? Oh God, Liv.” I clutched my arm in sympathy, even though I knew that wasn’t where your pelvic bone was.
    “My dad came,” Livvie said. Her voice caught for a second, but she didn’t cry. “He came to meet us, and the doctor said that they’d found blasts in my bone marrow.”
    “What does that mean?” I whispered.
    “They admitted me,” she went on, ignoring my question, “and they put in this thing called a central line. It’s so the medication gets right into your body.”
    “The medication?” My voice was a whisper.
    “I have leukemia, Zoe.”
    I gasped.
    “But that’s . . . that’s impossible.” It was impossible. I knew it was impossible. How could Olivia have leukemia? “There’s a . . . I mean, there has to be some mistake. How could you be getting medicine already?” Somehow that was the most implausible part of what she’d