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She pulls it toward her and glances at it before taking a sip of too-hot tea and having to spit most of it back out. “I will if you will.”

“Deal,” I say as we’re joined by the new girl.

“Hey,” she says, pulling out the chair across from me. “I’m Brandy.”

“Sasha,” I tell her, giving her a once-over. She’s pale and skinny but doesn’t have an IV tree following her around or any permanent machines attached to her like Layla and me. And Layla wasn’t lying about her having Nadine beat at chest.

“Want to do meditation with us later?” I ask her.

“What’s it like?” Brandy picks up a piece of her unbuttered toast and eyes it the same way she had been the window the first time I saw her, like maybe it has something important to share with her and her alone.

“Lame,” Layla warns her. “But Nadine doesn’t go, so I never miss it.”

“Sure.” Brandy reaches across the table and snags my schedule, turning it around so she can read it right side up. “Except it can’t be that lame. There’s an exclamation point in the title.”

“Makes it even lamer,” Layla says around a mouthful of apple.

“No, you’ve just got to say it emphatically,” Brandy says. “This is meditation with MELODY!”

She yells the last word, slamming her palm when she does. Over at another table, Nadine and Jo both jump and Nadine knocks her plain yogurt over.

“Footless freak,” Nadine mutters toward us as she goes to get some napkins.

Brandy ignores her, pulling out the pager that we’re all too familiar with and setting it on the table. She’s decorated hers with sugar-skull stickers.

“I hate carrying this thing around,” she says, spinning it with one finger. “It’s like waiting for a boy to call, but if he never does it will actually kill me.”

My hand goes to my hip, where my own pager is pressed against my skin. Like my LVAD, sometimes I forget it’s there, but for a different reason. I can still feel the flutter in my chest, but that along with the low hum of the motor have faded into the white noise of my daily life. I forget about the pager because it is eternally silent.

“Does Sasha know the game?” Brandy asks Layla.

“What game?” I ask, but Layla’s mouth is full of tea, and she points me over to Brandy.

“I came up with something to kill some time, so to speak,” Brandy says, tipping me a wink. “It’s a little twisted, but if you’re not into knitting or scrapbooking it does the trick.”

“Uh, it’s a lot twisted.” Layla tosses the rest of her apple across the cafeteria to land in the trash. “But if Karen comes in here with puppy dog eyes and tries to hand me knitting needles I might cave.”

We slip out through the common room, avoiding Karen’s glance from the windows, where she is surrounded by the preteens and a few of the littler ones. Layla’s room is warm, and I strip my sweatshirt off as soon as we’re inside, realizing the cardiac center is probably the only place I’ll ever be able to wear a tank top in public again without my scars and LVAD attracting stares.

Layla sprawls onto her bed and I follow, tucking my legs in so Brandy can fit too.

“If there’s not enough space I’ll take my foot off,” she offers. “Perks of the prosthesis.”

“So what’s the game?” I ask.

“All right.” Brandy hands Layla her tablet. “Layla said you’ve got a fussy side. So don’t get all puffed up on me.”

“A fussy side?” I ask Layla, who shrugs, flipping open the cover.

“You’ll see. This game, it’s not . . . well, it’s like fun, but not funny. Get it?”

“Like my joke about all of us waiting for someone else to die?” I ask.

“That’s so dead–bang on,” Layla says. “You don’t even know.” She pulls up the local news station, scanning through recent articles. “Two dead on interstate crash this morning,” she reads aloud.

Brandy whips out her phone. “Where?”

Layla scrolls a little more. “Vinton County.”