“She knew me or knew of me, or she knew my sister. She decided in the end that she’d put my sister right next to me. She didn’t do that for many people at all, as far as I can tell.”

“And your sister healed you?”

“Gave me a body again. Um. She made me seventeen again. Walked back the clock, as if it… I don’t know. So she didn’t take two years of my life from me in body, like she did in everything else. I’m physically nineteen now, apparently.”

“You said body, mind and spirit. She fixed one of the three. Did she undo the effect on your emotions?”

I drew in a breath, sighed heavily. I nodded. “She actually—she turned off my emotions. Suppressed them. Then she asked me what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“I remember thinking, you know, it was really possible she wanted me to say that I wanted to go back to liking her. And if she did think that, then it was unconscionable. Divorced from all emotion, I thought it was unconscionable.”

“Okay.”

“And divorced from all emotion, I thought I’d be fair. That I’d give her the benefit of a doubt. That I’d assume that wasn’t what she meant or wanted. I told her I wanted to remember.”

“To remember?”

“Those two years,” I said, my voice hollow. I drew in another deep breath.

Further down the street, a nine- or ten-year-old boy with straight black hair and brown skin looked at Jessica, his eyes widening, then he looked at me. He raised his hand, extending it toward Jessica as they passed one another.

She gave him a high five, then pushed his head, sending him on his way, toward the school.

“They weren’t good years.”

“Rationally? Divorced from emotion? I knew. I can’t forgive her. Ever. I can’t forget what she did, or she might do it again. To someone else. To me. I told her to fix my feelings and leave my brain alone otherwise.”

“It’s a heavy weight to carry,” she said.

“Those two years are really damn heavy,” I said. “Everything else is. But I’ve been holding on to that moment. I hate that I hold onto it, because she did it, but everything is tainted by her, so what can I do?”

“You hold onto it? How?”

“Being emotionless, putting those feelings away. My feelings and impulses got me into that whole mess in the first place. I hurt an awful lot of awful people, you know.”

“We’ve talked about that. You wrote letters outlining your thoughts and how you wanted to apologize to some of those affected.”