“And what will I do with Matty if you die?” she asked.

“I won’t die.”

She lifted her hands. They were smeared with his blood. “Really?”

“I won’t.”

“You have a fever.”

“I can’t go, Ava.”

For several seconds she watched him, silent.

“Fine,” she said at last. “You drink more water. You eat something. If you keep it down, you stay. If you don’t, you go to a hospital. I’ll drag you to the car myself.”

He tried to answer back something smart, but instead his head started hurting again. Sleep caught him in a spiderweb grasp and pulled him down to enticing black, where time didn’t have to be lived through.

The black thinned enough for a voice to float through. He could hear crunching. Then a hand wiggled his shoulder. His eyes opened to see Matty sitting beside him, cereal bowl in his cross-legged lap, lifting a plastic spoon. Lucky Charms.

“She brought milk,” Matty said, chewing. “Cereal. She made pancakes for you. Do you want pancakes? I told her you like them, but only if there’s syrup. She said there’s no syrup, but she made them anyway. You want pancakes or cereal?”

Jack hauled himself into a sitting position. He sat there in the blanket fort. A bloodstain the size of his hand on the quilt below him. In the hearth, the fire fed on a new log and water steamed from a pot. The box of Lucky Charms stood on the floor by Matty. Next to it was a plate of sliced apples. Pancakes. A cup of water.

“She said you have to eat this when you wake up.”

Jack took the plastic cup and drank. He ate an apple chunk. He willed it down. He felt ragged. The bandage on his ribs was wet and the skin around discolored. Purple, green. He caught Matty staring at it.

“I’m all right,” he said.

“You look bad.”

“I’m not bad.”

“Does it hurt?”

He nodded. “It hurts.”

“What happened?”

“Just me being stupid,” he said. “Will you get me some clothes?”

Jack thought about Ava peeling off his clothes. Then he tried not to think about it.

Matty put down his bowl and jumped up and went to a neat stack of clothes by the duffel and brought the stack to Jack. T-shirt, pajama bottoms, socks.

So. She’d gone through the duffel.

“Can you help me?” he asked Matty.

Matty shoved the pajamas up over each of Jack’s legs and then Jack lifted himself off the blanket so Matty could pull them over his hips. He didn’t trust his legs to stand. When they finished he sat with his head to his chest, inhaling slow breaths. One breath, two.

Half dressed. Quite the accomplishment.

All your life you wait, and you meet a girl finally, and you look like this?