That was the beginning of it all. The disease entered all of their lives.

Marlene was in and out of the hospital for seven months. What leukemia really was…what it really meant…Scarlett didn’t really get the details. She understood more from watching how the rest of the family reacted. Her parents stopped paying as much attention to the hotel. They did what they needed to, but they reserved most of their energy for the hospital. They closed doors more often, physically huddled together more.

Lola, at thirteen, was already very responsible, very popular, very perfect. She could easily have become a queen of her class, but she softened her ambitions to spend as much time with Marlene as she could. She started doing things around the hotel without being asked.

Spencer, at fifteen, still messed around—but Scarlett noticed that he started to make much more deliberate efforts not to get hurt. He went to the hospital regularly to entertain Marlene, covered up his excesses carefully (and there were plenty), and picked up all the slack when it came to Scarlett. While everyone else was busy, they cemented their already strong bond.

And so, the pairs were set, and they had never altered. It was Lola and Marlene, Spencer and Scarlett from then on.

The Powerkids were Marlene’s “class”—part of a charity surrounding the group of kids in her unit. Even though she had been in remission for two years, the Powerkids were still the center of her life. The Powerkids gave Marlene a social calendar that easily rivaled Lola’s. She went to basketball games at Madison Square Garden and baseball games at Yankee Stadium. She saw the Rockettes every Christmas. She went on special tours of the Bronx Zoo where they let you feed the monkeys. She had met the mayor, at least a dozen major league sports players, and a handful of TV stars. She had also gotten to switch on the lights on top of the Empire State Building one night.

It had definitely crossed Scarlett’s mind once or twice that having cancer was a serious boost to your social life.

She went back to the Orchid Suite and sat on her bed. A fat pigeon landed with a heavy thump on the outside of the window air conditioner and stared in at Scarlett. It shook out some feathers and squatted there, apparently finding her an engrossing sight.

Lola entered, smiling brightly and carrying a steaming mug of coffee, which she handed to Scarlett. Lola was already dressed in a pretty white sundress, imprinted faintly with white dots. Her fair hair was wound into a loose knot on the back of her head, and her pink diamond earrings flashed warmly.

“She won’t let me shower,” Scarlett said.

Lola looked at the dress hanging from the wardrobe door worriedly, then fished around in the Drawer of Mysteries—the massive, slightly unstable top drawer of her dresser in which she kept special samples of expensive products and magical clothes-fixing devices. She removed a small baby-blue package of what appeared to be wipes of some kind.