So I look away when people come in, and I study, and sometimes I drift off a little because of the hospital noises. Today, there’s nobody else in the infusion room, just me and the florescent lights and a bird on the tree outside the window who looks like he’s trying to pick a fight with another bird on the tree outside my window, and I close my eyes for what feels like a second, but must have been longer, because…now there’s someone here, in the chair two over from mine.

The first thing I notice is he’s the first person I’ve ever seen in here who looks about my age.

The second thing I notice is the way his hair curls behind his ears.

He’s watching something on his phone, but I’m thinking you’re pretty you’re pretty you’re pretty hard enough that I guess he hears it, which honestly is probably possible considering exactly how hard I am thinking it, and he looks up at me with an eyebrow quirked.

“Sorry,” I say.

He keeps looking at me.

“Not a lot of young people here,” I explain.

“There’s that six-year-old with leukemia,” he says. “He’s always bringing those trucks that are the size of his arms and just”—he mimes it—“smashing them together. I think it’s supposed to be violent, but there’s something kind of…romantic about it? Like the trucks just can’t stay away from each other. They don’t want to drive around like the other trucks. They want to…I don’t know. Dance. He’s a little kid. I’m sure they’re just dancing.”

“What,” I say.

“Oh, you don’t know the kid?”

“I’m only here once a month.”

He cranes his neck to look at my IV bag, like it’s going to be some special color. They all look the same. “What are you in for?” he says.

A lot of the people here have central lines, but I just have an IV going into my hand, since it’s not like they need easy access to my veins. He has the same setup.

“DMARD infusions,” I say.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Rheumatoid arthritis.”

“Oh, no way,” he says, in the same voice you’d use if someone told you their uncle had the same birthday as you.

“Mmhmm, since I was nine.”

He nods at the notebook in my lap. “What are you working on?”

“What’s on your phone?”

He grins. “I asked you first.” I hope he doesn’t have cancer. His eyelashes are so long. He can’t lose those eyelashes. This is the worst thing I’ve ever thought.

I hold my notebook up to my chest and stare him down. He’s pale, in both a white way and a sick way, but his eyes are this bright sparkly green.