The hotel where they were having the wedding was super fancy.

Our family stood in the reception room together, wearing glittery dresses, pinchy shiny shoes, and sharp suits. Mom and Aunt Soph, their nails perfectly painted and their arms linked, stood beside each other, and next to Aunt Soph sat Eleni, grinning at me like a smiley-face emoji.

She was in a wheelchair and she was pale. She had a portable oxygen machine beside her, a tube going into her nose, and a nurse pushing her chair. The situation was bad: Eleni needed a new heart. I would have offered her mine, but I knew our families would freak out at that idea, because I kind of needed it myself. Eleni was on a transplant list, and as bad as that was, it wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that someone else had to die in order for her to stay alive. Someone our age and our size. And that was more awful than any of us could bear to think about.

So we distracted ourselves. It was Uncle Dimitri and Christina’s wedding, after all.

Christina looked like a movie star. She had a long, cream, lace wedding dress, and her hair was half up and decorated with white flowers.

“I’m her,” Eleni said gazing at her.

“Uh-uh. I’m her. You can be her.” I pointed to Christina’s great-grandma, who was about a hundred and ninety and was wearing a gold flowery dress.

Eleni giggled. “You’re her.”

“You are.”

It went on for a while. I won’t bore you.

There were lots of nail polish colors on the guests’ nails so we named them, and I wrote them down in my notebook. Which I took to the wedding. Which Mom wasn’t happy about.

Nail Polish Colors

• Sunset Over Goldfish Mountain

• Sugar Addict’s Dental Fillings

• Very Smelly Cherry Jelly

• Dragon on Fire in a Far-Away Land

• Puke of a Screaming Leprechaun (Kallie’s)

It was fun.

No one really watches you at weddings, so you can get into all kinds of stuff. Nicos and Elias were having a who-can-eat-the-most-meze competition, and Kat and Kallie were making some younger cousins get them drinks, like they were their slaves. Eleni, in the wheelchair next to me, was counting things. Don’t ask me what.

After the meal, Mom, in a blue dress and silver heels with her hair falling down her back in loose curls, danced with Pappou, who was in a fancy suit. Dad, all in white because he thought he looked stylish (wrong), sat with Uncle C talking and laughing.

Eleni and I were alone at the table. Well, her nurse was there, but she was busy eating and saying how delicious everything was.

It was time to have that conversation with Eleni. So I took her hand and said, “I’m sorry. That I lied.”

Eleni tried to wrinkle her nose, but the breathing tube was in the way. “I shouldn’t have told you to,” she said. “But I never thought you really would.”

I smiled but my stomach was churning.

“Forget it,” Eleni said. “It’s OK. We’re all talking again, and that’s what matters.”

“It’s not OK,” I mumbled. “I need to make it right. I need to tell them the truth.”

“The necklace has disappeared anyway,” Eleni said, “which is a shame because it would have looked soooo pretty on Christina.”

I bit my lip.

She didn’t get to wear it, and it was all my fault.

After a zany hour of the adults holding hands and dancing in circles to the Greek band and pinning thousands of hundreds of dollars (as Eleni called it) on Uncle Dimitri and Christina, it was time for the speeches.

As my dad made a whole series of cheesy dad jokes in his koumbaros speech, I gazed at the ceiling and took a deep breath. When he finished, I walked over to the bride and groom’s table, whispered in the middle of Uncle Dimitri and Christina’s heads so they could both hear, and they nodded.

Dimitri called over his friend George, who was doing the introductions, and he went on stage and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention, please? We have one more speaker this evening. A big round of applause for…Lexie Efthimiou!”

A ripple of applause went around the room. The spotlight landed on me, and I walked slowly to the stage. My feet felt as heavy as space boots on the moon, and I lifted and put them down like I was figuring out gravity. Panic gripped me and I felt the urge to turn and run, but I kept going.

Spotlights are roasting hot. How do singers do it?

Faces in the darkness turned my way as I stood in front of the microphone. It looked like a dark ocean full of hungry sharks.

“Um…” I began. The microphone whistled loudly, deafening everyone. George ran over and tapped it a couple of times, which did precisely nothing, but I think it made him happy.

“I’m Lexie. Dimitri’s niece,” I said in a croaky voice. I chewed the inside of my lip as they clapped again. I don’t know why they were clapping, because I hadn’t really said anything yet.

“I…er…well, I have something important to say.”

Mom was looking at me in shock. I’d never gotten up in front of everyone willingly in my life, and she couldn’t figure out what I was doing. I looked over at Eleni in her wheelchair, and even though I couldn’t see her face in the darkness, I knew she was grinning at me.

I took the deepest breath I could take without my lungs exploding and said, “I know I should be up here talking about Uncle Dimitri and his amazing girlfriend, Christina—”

“WIFE!” everyone yelled.

“Wife! Sorry! Wife. But that’s not what I want to say. This is a happy night, but the last few months haven’t been happy at all, and—”

“Lexie-mou,” Dad boomed, his voice so loud he didn’t need a microphone. “This is not the time—”

“Dad, this is the time,” I said. “I have something to say.”

The wedding hall fell silent.

“Our family has just been through the most difficult year of our lives, which I’m sure everyone here knows about. Our Yiayia died and my family didn’t talk to Eleni’s family for six months.”

Somebody shouted something, but I didn’t hear what it was, so I kept going.

“I told a lie, and now it’s time to tell the truth.”

The spotlights burnt into my skin. Someone turned the main lights up a little so I could see their faces. I blinked hard and looked at my mother with tears in my eyes. My hands were clammy and hot and I wiped them on my dress.

“Mom,” I began, “I’m sorry to tell you this in front of everyone, but…” I took a breath and swallowed. “Yiayia did want Eleni to have the necklace.”

My mother stared at me and put her fingers over her mouth.

“She…she told us the night of the engagement party. She promised it to Eleni. Not because she didn’t want you to have it, but because she made a deal with Eleni so she’d stay alive.”

Tears stung my eyes and my throat closed up, because it was so hard to tell my mom the truth. I knew how much it was going to hurt her. There was a rumbling of talking now, but Mom was still glaring at me, so I added, “I’m so sorry I lied to you.”

Dad stood up. “Lexie, come down,” he said. “You don’t need to do this.”

“I do,” I said, trying not to cry. “Because there’s something else I need to tell you.”

I waited until the whole place was silent. And then I dropped the bomb.

“I was the one who took Yiayia’s necklace.”

Well.

That made the roof blow off.