A week after the sighting of Fiona and Vicky, Jack and Glenda Sedge came to see me. An unlikely pair, Jack in his sweatshirt, Glenda in her tan coat, they followed me to the living room and settled on the couch. I sat opposite. I had last seen Jack in May, when he returned some drawings of Maddy’s. Six months is a long time in the body of an almost-eighteen-year-old. He had bulked out in the chest, cut his hair, lost his pimples, and started to shave. Maddy would never know this composed young man.

“You’ve grown, Jack.”

“I’m taller than my dad now.”

“I didn’t mean your height.”

He flashed me his shy grin. “How are you?” He looked at his hands: a normal question with impossible answers.

“Fine.”

He glanced up, relieved.

“We all miss Maddy,” said Glenda Sedge in the gravelly voice that the cruel among her pupils no doubt taunted her for. “So much. You’ve been in my thoughts these months.” Her brown eyes sought mine. I blinked away my customary response to uninvited warmth. Maddy too had been buoyed up by that voice and that smile.

“As you know, there was a huge response to Maddy’s animation, even from people who didn’t know the whole story.”

“The clip went viral online,” said Jack. “One week it was trending top ten on YouTube. We took it down,” he added.

“At least she got to see it projected on the day,” I said. “She heard the applause.”

Maddy had been sleeping a lot by that time. We nudged her from her dream to watch the march live on television, pointing out the size of the crowds and taking turns to read the signs out loud: No Oil in Our Soil May the Facts Be with You. There’s No Planet B. She listened with an inward-looking smile. At one o’clock the speeches were streamed from a stage on Third Street. The last speaker introduced the animation with the words we had agreed on, and the screen at the back of the stage crackled to life. Maddy had been medicated and was resting her weightless self against me, her shoulders made of something flimsier than bone, her eyes in their shadows fastened to the television screen. As the applause went on and on, the joy on her face was something to behold.

“She went downhill so quickly after that,” I said to Glenda. “I guess the whole thing went out of our minds.”

“The idea of someone with so little time left not only pouring herself into a campaign, but making a film of such power. I don’t have the words. The reason we’re here,” she continued smoothly, as if she had practiced this part, “is to see if we might use Maddy’s animation again. It could be just as powerful now—”

“Now that she’s gone?”