I wake up the next morning underneath my fluffy comforter.

Rainbow in my arms.

Dishes clink in the kitchen like any other morning, and I can smell coffee brewing.

Charlie.

Getting the sticks and seeds and bark ready.

Having his usual coffee.

Black. No sugar.

Maybe it was all just a bad dream. A horrible nightmare.

When I push the covers off me, I see I’m still wearing Mrs. Dickerson’s Willow Creek sweatshirt and shorts from the bottom drawer of the dresser in her spare room.

And I know it’s no dream.

I drag myself out of bed, my arms, legs, and whole body tired from the heavy load.

The floorboards squeak underneath me as I tiptoe down the hall and peek around the corner to the kitchen.

“About time,” Tobin says to me, stuffing a piece of bacon in his mouth and snapping in another blue puzzle piece. “Look, Lemonade. We only have one yarn ball left.”

Debbie turns around from the stove.

“Good morning, Lemonade.” She smiles. “I’m making breakfast sandwiches with eggs and bacon. Grab a plate, honey.”

“I’m not hungry,” I tell her, pulling a chair out next to Tobin.

He’s staring at me like I’m some kind of alien who just crash-landed out in the yard and then came in for breakfast.

“What are you looking at?” I ask him.

“What do you think I’m looking at?” he says.

“I mean, why are you staring at me like that?”

“Then why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

“Tobin!” I say, exasperated.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess because I want to know how you are and I don’t know how to ask you, so I’m just watching you to see if I can tell on my own. But I can’t tell on my own, so I guess I’ll just have to ask you anyhow.”

“That depends on how Charlie is,” I say, turning to Debbie.

She comes over to the table holding an open-faced breakfast sandwich with sunny-side-up eggs that are runny in the middle and two burnt-on-the-edges strips of bacon on top. She’s wearing her faded Levi’s with holes in the knees, a yellow T-shirt, and a matching bandana in her hair. She has blush on her cheeks and small silver hoops in her ears.

“I got a call from the hospital this morning, honey.” She places a warm hand on my head. “Charlie is awake and doing well. He’s going to be just fine, Lem.”

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

I lay my head on my arms on the table and cry. I probably have yolk stuck in my hair and bacon grease too, but I don’t even care.

I just cry and cry and cry.

Debbie is sitting next to me, her head on my shoulder. “Sweet girl,” she says softly. “I know how hard things have been for you. It’ll get better, I promise you it will.”

“I—I don’t know how,” I sputter through the tears.

“What do you mean, honey?”

“How to make it better,” I tell her, lifting my head up to face her.

I feel Tobin’s hand on my other shoulder then, and I turn to face him, wiping my nose with my forearm.

“By making lemonade, that’s how.” He pats my shoulder like you pat a German shepherd. “You said you know how to make it, isn’t that right?”

“I used to know,” I tell him. “But I think I forgot.”

“Well, it’s probably still in there somewhere,” he says matter-of-factly, and then goes back to his yarn ball.

I turn to Debbie.

“He makes a lot of sense sometimes.” She smiles at me.

I look at him.

He’s examining a blue puzzle piece over his wire-rims. Then he finds just the right spot for it and snaps it into place. He looks up at us and smiles.

“What?” he asks.

I turn to Debbie.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, he does.”