After lunch, we went home and, to pass the time, I wrote some more in my notebook until I could go to Eleni’s. My brain felt like a giant chainsaw buzzing in my skull, so I wrote that down. On her bed, my sister’s huge padded bra looked like a mutant crustacean ready to pounce, so I wrote that down. And my brother was playing music that sounded like a dizzy horse had fallen into a row of metal garbage cans, so I wrote that down, too.

Then I told Mom I’d finished my homework, which was almost true, and Dad dropped me at Eleni’s house.

Eleni and Anastasia had finished the story for Greek school and were watching the first Harry Potter movie on TV, which Eleni and I knew pretty much by heart. Eleni kept saying the lines and looking at Anastasia, but Anastasia didn’t seem to know them. I was mouthing them silently, because how can you not when you know something that well? Not that Eleni noticed. Anastasia was sitting super close to Eleni on the sofa, which made me want to growl like a mean dog, but I controlled myself. I sat on the other end of the sofa with Eleni in the middle and Anastasia at the end.

Then Anastasia, not watching TV at all, tucked her feet under Eleni and said, “Let’s have a sleepover at my house next weekend. We can make cookies and do makeovers on each other.”

She didn’t invite me. I acted as if it didn’t bother me, because that’s how you’re supposed to behave. Which means the way you act can be a lie as well.

“OK. Can you come, Lexie?” Eleni asked, holding her hand out to me. I took it, but I was wincing. Did I want to go? Did I want to be left out? Which was worse?

I was still wondering about that when there was a close-up of Harry Potter’s scar, which made Anastasia ask Eleni about hers.

Now, Eleni’s scar is like a sacred, frozen river running across her chest. No one gets to see it except family. It’s proof of how hard she had to fight just to stay here. With me. With all of us. But mainly with me. Mom says it’s the line left behind when the string trying to pull her up to heaven broke, but to me, it’s where I was cut away, making us into two people when we were really one.

“I want to see it!” Anastasia said, clapping excitedly like it was a new gadget or something. I was about to snap, “Well, you can’t!” when Eleni gently raised her yellow long-sleeved T-shirt with TALK TO THE HAND written on the front.

Eleni wasn’t blue anymore, but she was still pale and skinny. Under her shirt, she had a white crop top on, and the scar ran from above it, near her neck, to underneath it by her belly button. Anastasia gasped and whispered, “Wowwww.” She ran her finger along the trail of rippled shiny skin and added, “That is so cool!”

I sucked air into my lungs. One thing that scar was not was cool. Eleni nearly died. She still could. And the thought of that made my insides clamp together.

“Yeah,” Eleni said, looking a little unsure because she knew as well as I did that cool wasn’t even close to what that scar stood for. “I guess it is.”

“Oh. My. God,” Anastasia said. “I just had an idea! We could pretend we’re, like, twins or something and that’s where we were cut apart!”

That did it.

With my eyes scorching, I leaped out of the chair and bolted from the room. Struggling to breathe, I grabbed my coat from the hook and flung open the front door. Then I sprinted down the road like I was being chased by a lion, my legs slamming on the sidewalk, pushing, pushing, pushing me away from there. Tears streamed down my face and I breathed loudly and quickly so I wouldn’t scream. I ran all the way home, which isn’t far, but I was absolutely not allowed to walk it on my own.

When I got to our front door, I slammed against it, gasping for air and trying not to cry. I pounded on it and, eventually, Kat opened it, staring at her phone. She turned her back on me and walked down the hall, saying, “OK. Keep your shirt on.”

“Why’re you back?” Mom barked from the living room. “Didn’t come on your own, did you?”

I ran up the stairs, panting, “Elias…walked me…to the end of the road. And I…I ran the rest!” Which was a lie I told my own mother.

“He’s supposed to walk you to the door!” Mom came out and stood at the foot of the banister. I raced upstairs so she wouldn’t see my face.

“You crying?” she hollered in her usual caring, gentle, sensitive way.

I bit my lip.

“Lex! Why’re you crying?”

“I—er—I forgot,” I said, thinking quickly but still not looking at her. “I’ve got more homework. Don’t yell at me! I’ll do it now!”

“Oh my God!” she yelled with a laugh. “Calm down, will you? Me? Yell? As if.”

Then she cracked up because she knows she’s the world’s biggest yeller. She yells even when she’s saying hello to the sweet old lady two doors away. “Just don’t lie about it next time,” she added.

And I thought, Hah.

I wouldn’t count on it.