“But why me?” I say. “I can get around as I am. Why not go to the terminal ward of Newford General and help the people there? There are all sorts of people way worse off than me.”

Jack shrugs. “I could say that maybe it has to do with preserving that light inside you—making sure it gets to shine on the way it’s supposed to. Or maybe it’s only because the crow girls like you. You’ll have to ask them. But me? I’d just let it be done. Change the wheel I was on and get on a new one that makes sure I was worth the fixing up.”

There’s no shame in reclaiming the health you once had, Honey says. You’ve had more than your fair share of suffering.

“But I’ve had more than my share of good, too—like all the friends I’ve got. Some people don’t get even one.”

“Yeah,” Joe says. “And somewhere out there, one of those people will get you for a friend, and it might just save their life. But they might not survive if you’re not healthy enough to go out and make your rounds the way you used to.”

Before the accident, I spent a lot of time volunteering at the food bank and the old folks home and anyplace else where I thought I might do some good. Joe’s right. I haven’t done any of that for way too long.

“And then there’s your art,” Geordie says. “I know how much you miss it. Maybe what you don’t realize is how much everybody else does, too. I’ve talked to people who say it changed their life. Once a girl told me it saved her life. Having this poster on her wall from one of your shows reminded her every day of how important it was to connect to people, instead of hiding from them.”

“You never told me that.”

“Doesn’t make it not true,” he says. “And then there’s—”

“Okay, okay. I get the picture. I’m a saint.”

“You’re no saint,” Joe says, “but you’re good people. Take the gift that’s offered to you.”

If you need to bargain with the idea of it, Honey adds, consider this healing as payment for all the hurt that was done to you as a child.

I give her a slow nod. “I guess I can do that.”

Farewell and Remember Me

Geordie

It was so weird to be back in our hotel room in Sweetwater. Jilly sat in her wheelchair, the young twenty-something she’d been in the otherworld replaced once more by what she called the Broken Girl. Her gaze was on something on the other side of the window, but I don’t think she actually saw anything out there in the growing darkness.