I shrug with one shoulder. “They’re not sure. There’s a lot of nerve damage. They say time and therapy might help, but I might never regain full use of it.”

Frankie looks into my eyes. “And you’re okay with that?”

Nobody has asked me this.

Everybody assumes that of course I’m not okay with it. That I’m the guitar prodigy whose rocket ship to fame has just come crashing back to earth, and it’s so tragic and unfair. But it isn’t; not really. Because this was my choice. And all the parts of me that aren’t my hands want to remember what it was like just to be myself. Maybe, eventually, weeks or months or years from now, I’ll start learning to play backward, with my right hand forming chords. Maybe I’ll try writing songs again. Now it will be just me, not something occupying me, attacking me. I wonder what my own songs will sound like.

I take a breath. “Yeah. I’m okay with that.” I readjust the bandaged hand on top of the blankets. It itches. “Guitar took over everything in my life. But it’s not everything. You know? That’s not all I am.”

Frankie’s smile widens slightly, her mouth going from one perfect shape to another. “Yeah,” she says. “It isn’t.”

“So,” I say, after a beat, “what do you think happened?”

Frankie takes a minute to answer. “I think . . . there was something strange going on out there. Something big. I’m not sure if it was just one person, or—or what, but I think it caused a bunch of crazy things lately. And I think . . .” She pauses again. “I think it’s over now. I think everything feels different. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” My voice is a whisper again. I look down at the carpet between us. “Hey, Frankie? I’m really sorry. Really sorry.”

She doesn’t answer. I can’t bring myself to look her in the face.

“How I talked to you that night . . .” I force myself to go on. “I’m not even sure what I was trying to do. But it wasn’t right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Frankie glides closer. She sits down on the bed beside me.

One thing I told her during that stupid fight was true. She doesn’t really know me. And now I realize that I never really knew her, either. I just liked the idea of her. Gorgeous, cool, confident. Loved by everybody. But I don’t know if this is the truth of her. I don’t know what’s inside.

I could change that. I could try, anyway.

It takes all the courage I’ve got, but I reach out and wrap both arms around her, the normal one and the big, clumsy, mangled one.

For a second she holds still, and I swear my heart is going to stop. But then she presses her face into the nook between my shoulder and the hollow of my neck.

She smells so good, it makes me dizzy.