“But . . . but why can’t I come with you?”

“Oh, Rio,” she said. “The hospital’s not a place for children.”

“You said yourself how grown-up I am!”

“Too grown-up,” she replied gently. “And you shouldn’t be. You should be out there playing like any other eleven-year-old boy. Not stuck in here looking after me.”

“But I like looking after you!” he cried. “What if I don’t want to go all the way to America?”

The thought of being separated from her made him feel bare and exposed, as if someone had ripped off a thick overcoat he hadn’t known he’d been wearing. He shivered even though the heating was turned up full blast.

His mom sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “The hospital is a place for grown-ups like me . . . who need help.”

Rio wanted to protest. To keep protesting until she changed her mind.

But his mom had just started crying. Horrible, ugly tears that fell into her teacup and spilled over the edges. And even though it frightened him when she was like this, Rio took her hand in his. It was a warm, calloused hand from playing the violin, but it was also the softest hand he knew.

And Rio, who had never considered himself particularly brave, took the biggest, boldest breath of his life.

“Okay,” he said in a small voice. “I’ll go.”

4

The Phone Call

Rio thought it would take ages to drop off, but in fact he tumbled into a sleep so deep and vast, it was like he had sunk to the farthest depths of the ocean. A murky, indistinct place of shadows and strange, mysterious sounds that coiled around him. When he finally woke up, it was as if he’d had to take a submarine journey just to reach the surface.

As daylight peeped in through the blinds, he was confused. The bed was far softer than his bed back home. The air cleaner. And the noise. That didn’t sound like the hum of traffic.

The Pacific Ocean!

The biggest ocean on the whole planet—an area so vast, it was greater than all the continents combined. Rio flung himself out of bed and rushed to the window, ripped open the blinds, and then gasped.

In the bleached light of the bright day, it was dazzling. A patchwork of blue, emerald, and turquoise with white horses dancing like diamonds on the surface. The water stretched out forever until it melted into the sky—so you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other started. Something light and fizzy rushed through Rio’s veins, pushing the last bits of sleep out of his body. Then, as if sensing something coming up through the floorboards, he looked down. And immediately the bubbly feeling vanished.

“Mum,” he whispered as a wave of homesickness hit him hard in the chest.

He picked up his cell phone even though she’d explained she wouldn’t be able to send messages. Not because she didn’t want to. The doctor thought it best if she had a complete break. A break from what though? From him? Sometimes, in his darkest thoughts, Rio wondered if all this was his fault.