She was wearing a pair of my old pajamas I hadn’t seen in years, a snowman stitched to the front. At seventeen, she still didn’t have any boobs, her body strangely ageless, suspended in sickness. She reminded me of a school trip my class went on years ago to a medical museum, where our biology teacher showed us a baby preserved by a Victorian surgeon in a jar. Like that baby, Grace always seemed to me both ancient and impossibly young.

“I thought you were Mum!” she said, spinning her chair to the right and then to the left, her version of moving nervously from one foot to the other. I walked towards her. Since we stopped seeing each other much, I didn’t know how to greet her anymore. If I bent down to kiss her I felt like I was kissing a granny. Hugging her was just way too awkward, but touching her shoulder felt too formal, weird in a different way. So I did what I always did: I left it up to Grace. My old pajamas sagged around her thin arms, usually covered in tiny bruises from all the injections. She lifted her hand up to find mine, light and delicate as an eggshell. I let her hold my hand for a moment and, through her touch, I felt the whole world between us.

“Your mum said I had to tell you off if you had your nose in the computer.”

Behind her glasses, Grace’s eyes rolled like marbles.

“She’s got this theory that it’s bad for my headaches to look at a screen, so she only lets me go on the Wishmakers forum, says I should support other sick kids. She says it’s a way we can give back to the charity for helping us so much.” Grace shrugged as she spoke, resigned to the fact that screens were just another thing she had to avoid, which was basically everything from horse hair to the internet.

“Oh,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say and I couldn’t imagine Grace’s life. I decided to change the subject.

“Sooo . . . who is GoodSam?” I said in the same tone I used when I was younger, talking with my mates about boys we liked. I knew the longer I stayed in Grace’s room, the longer I could avoid the questions about boyfriends and university applications that were sure to be waiting for me in the sitting room. Grace colored and looked away. I knew that feeling, knew how it was to panic that secrets you didn’t want to share were about to be exposed. Grace was embarrassed.

“Cara, please don’t say anything, he’s just a boy is all, a boy I’ve been talking to on the forum.”

“You fancy him, don’t you, Grace?”

Her cheeks went red and I realized, appalled, that her eyes had become watery with tears.

“Please, Cara, please don’t say anything. It’s nothing. He’s sick like me. I’m just trying to help him.”