That’s when it dawns on me: not only is Ms. Barrantes a nurse, she works here. She probably has special access, can find out things you normally couldn’t.

Except the purple-haired lady is suddenly standing, motioning for Ms. Barrantes to lower her voice. “Simone, please. Simone, listen to me. I understand you’re upset. I do. But just because you work here doesn’t mean you can . . . look, I promise you, I promise you, that as soon as I know something about Q, anything, I will walk right over to you personally and I will—”

My lap vibrates.

I call out, “Ms. Barrantes!”

I hold up the pager, a beacon of quivering red light.

86

The walk to conference room C is the longest, but Ms. B’s on a mission to break the world record for arrival time. I jog to keep up.

The hallway walls are lined with charts of our body systems—the skin cross-sectioned and layered. And it hits me—I’m just skin draped over bones.

I mean, I knew that, but.

It’s weird because when our bodies, our organs, are working, we think about them nearly never percent of the time.

Ms. B sets down her phone, turns to me.

“I’m happy you’re here,” she says while we wait for the doctor. “Surprised. But happy. He misses you, Jamal. When you two stopped hanging out, he wouldn’t talk about it, but he took it hard. And then his dad decided to be an asshole and get cancer . . .”

I frown. “Huh?”

A small smile. “Just a dumb joke Mr. B used to make.” She shrugs. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Jamal. Figured we could use some levity, you know?”

“Levity’s cool,” I say. Because I want Ms. Barrantes to have everything she needs: her son, levity, not-so-funny jokes, peace.

Ms. Barrantes nods. “I didn’t know you two were hanging out again.”

“Yeah,” I say, because correcting her right now seems stupid, selfish.

“No wonder he was so excited for this party. I know . . . I know my son isn’t the most social. I try not to push him, but . . . I just want him to be a kid. To have fun. And he tries . . . he tries . . . so hard.”

“He’s an awesome kid. An awesome human.”

She swipes at her tears. “He really is.”

And then footsteps louder, louder, until they stop outside the door.

Someone just standing there, waiting.

Which makes me think it’s bad.

Because you don’t wait for good news, right?

You race in, you explode in, because there’s almost no bad way to deliver good news.

Ms. Barrantes doesn’t seem to notice. “You sure you feel okay, Jamal? You call your sister?”

“I left her a message.”

“Try her again.”

“Okay, I will.”

“You don’t have to wait here with me. You can go. I can call you with news.”