I couldn’t sleep that night. Not because of my headache—my deep-brain EMP float had eased that. It was because I couldn’t stop thinking about Leo. To me, he had always been the definition of dignity. But now he had been knocked so far down, every one of his expectations had fallen to the level of simple survival. A place where one’s own self-respect had to be sacrificed on a regular basis just to make it through the day.

The idea of basic human dignity being stripped away was way on the edge of my radar. People whose lives were so far removed from mine, they might as well have been on a different planet. It’s like the way my parents always change the channel whenever some ad comes on for a charity about starving people in terrible places. It isn’t just a case of “not my problem.” It’s “not my universe.”

But what happens when someone’s future is stripped away—their entire life hamstrung right in front of you? Someone who, in a sense, you love, although you’d never use that word to describe it—but what is friendship if it isn’t some kind of love?

On Tuesday Leo called me. He left a message while I was at school. He was the only person I knew who actually left voice messages—same as the Leo from my world. It was comforting.

“It’s Leo Johnson,” he said, “from Publix.” Like he needed to remind me. “Yeah, so meet me at St. Clair Park at four o’clock today.”

It would mean ditching football practice—an inexcusable offense—but my priorities had shifted.

St. Clair Park was actually St. Clair Memorial Park. A cemetery. The place where Angela was buried. Leo was waiting for me when I got there, and led me to her grave.

“I wanted you to see it,” Leo said. “I don’t know why, I just wanted to show it to you.”

Angela’s gravestone was pink. Seeing that gravestone made it painfully real. According to the date, she died a year and a half ago. On April Fools’ Day, like it was all some cosmic practical joke.

“I’m glad you had me come here,” I told him, even though I wasn’t, really. But he needed to do this, and I respected that. I could withstand a few nightmares if it eased his. “She would have hated that it was pink,” I told him.

Leo laughed. “Got that right. But my parents still saw her as their little princess.” Then he got serious again. “I’ve been getting more memories of things that couldn’t have happened,” he said. “Not big ones, just little things.”

“Like what?”

“Like, did you once break your arm at a birthday party?”

“Ha!” Now there was a memory I’d prefer to forget myself. “Freaking Norris. He was swinging at a piñata and missed.”