Her face was pale and her hair was stuck to the sides of her head. I don’t know why, but suddenly I thought about earthquakes. I reached forward and took her hand and it felt cold, damp. Her eyes closed again and she kept wincing, as though what she saw burned her from the inside out. She shook her head like she was fighting something and then, suddenly, the shaking stopped and her head was still. Even though the music was still playing, I was surrounded by an overwhelming sense of quiet. Quiet so loud that I could hear it. Finally, she opened her eyes and we sat together on the couch holding hands. We must have fallen asleep that way because when I woke our fingers were still intertwined.

Matilda

I don’t like being in cramped, loud places, so no matter how many times Lavi begged me, I rarely ate lunch in the cafeteria. Within the first few weeks of school, I figured out how to sneak into the auditorium and almost always ate my lunch there.

I packed the same thing every day—a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and apple juice in a thermos. I would sling my legs over the armrest of the chair, eat my sandwich, and stare out the window until it was time to go back to class. One time a janitor came in looking for something, but I slid down low and got really quiet and after a few minutes he left. My mother was keeping a more watchful eye on me, so sitting out on our porch until all hours of the night was getting more difficult. Instead, I sat in that big empty auditorium, thinking.

Mostly, I thought about Franny.

I wondered what she was eating for lunch. No matter how many times she tried, she never liked peanut butter and jelly. I think she hated feeling that her mouth was stuck together. Panic would fill her eyes, and I imagined that she feared she would never be able to pry her lips open again.

I loved it for all the reasons she hated it.

I liked how the peanut butter got thick and sticky and made it hard to swallow and then right at the moment you thought things were going to get worse, the jelly came to the rescue.

Franny and I, we always saw things differently.