Thursday

1999

Sandra only lived fleeting moments of the next day on set. Most of the time, Sunny Sandy stood in for her. Sandra’s soul threatened to break under the tension between her mourning and her determination. Sandy didn’t have to feel anything. She only had to sing and smile.

After a lunch she didn’t remember eating, Sandra realized that surrendering to Sandy was easy. Looking back, she had been doing it her entire life. Every time her mother pinched her for whispering questions during church. Every time a teacher called her stupid. Every time a boy touched her without asking. Sandy was there. Sandy was who she was always meant to be. She was the one the world wanted.

When Dory called for the final scene of the day, Sandy was ready. She sat on her plain wooden stool in front of the green field on the backdrop. It was a country scene painted masterfully by artists who had never been to the country. It was unreal in its perfection. It was made for Sunny Sandy.

At Dory’s reluctant cue, the child actors took their places around her. He had been dreading the children all day. They arced around Sandy like the giant wooden rainbow arced over them all. It was colored with precise, unblemished curves showing every color of the rainbow in a strident technicolor hue. In the middle of its bend, the rainbow had large googly eyes and a small smile with dimples at the ends. It was Granny Rainbow, the character Sandra had created in honor of her Granny Ruth. Now, Sandy, Granny Rainbow, and these children were going to sing the last song of the show’s first season: a reprise of “Put On a Smiling Face.”

“Is Mrs. Nell ready?” Dory called to Caroline.

“Yes sir!” Then into her walkie, “Mrs. Nell to set, please.”

Nonaree Nell glowed as she walked into the sound stage. She was the network’s first country star, and Sandra had watched her with Mama on Sunday nights. Part comedian, part puppeteer, part singer, Nonaree was the woman that had made Sandra want to be on TV. If Nonaree could make it all the way from Cobbler’s Corners, Sandra could make it from Dove Hill.

Standing feet away from Nonaree Nell, Sandra would have made a fool of herself. She would have spoken first or, worse, said she admired Nonaree. Sandy was better than such unprofessional nonsense. This was a job—her job—and she was damn good at it. While Sandra wondered what Mama would say if she could see Nonaree Nell playing the rainbow tribute to her mother, Sandy waited for Dory’s cue.

Nonaree took her place behind Granny Rainbow as Sandy and the children waited. Sandy looked into their eyes. She was teaching them all what it took to succeed. They would carry on her legacy. These children and all the children watching at home on Saturday morning.

Sandra tried to take in the moment. The sweet faces of the children. Her idol only feet away from her. The friends she had made in the cast and crew. She didn’t want to forget it. She wished she had worn something more her style for this scene, but Dory had decided that her thigh-high pink dress was her only costume. Still, she had earned this moment, and she wanted to remember it.

Dory boomed from the director’s chair. “Ready the finale!”

Sandra felt the burning on her skin again. Nonaree was watching her. Dory was watching her. The children were watching her. The entire world was watching her. It hurt. She wanted her Mama to be there with her to celebrate just like she had been for all of the pageants. She was gone. She wasn’t coming back. Sandra reviled herself. She was supposed to be happy, but she was too weak.

“Action!”

Sandy smiled into the camera and waited for her cue. Like with Maggie, Granny Rainbow would sing the first round of the song, and she would join in the second. The children would join in the third. Granny Rainbow started up.

If you’re not feeling happy today…

Her voice was wrong. It wasn’t the award-winning croon of Nonaree Nell. It was brash, offkey. It sounded like Sunday mornings and uncomfortable dresses. It sounded like singing hymns in St. Bee’s. It sounded like her mother. Was she there after all? Breaking character, Sandra reached her head to look at Nonaree.

The children looked confused. Dory looked furious. “Cut! Damn it, Sandra…”

Sandra’s heart broke. Of course her mother wasn’t there. Behind the technicolor rainbow, there was only her idol looking frustrated. Sandra had known it all along. She wanted this, but she couldn’t handle it. She had made a mistake. She had failed.

For the last time.

They wanted a doll. Someone who could smile even when she wanted to scream. She had tried to be her. She had tried to be Sunny Sandy. She couldn’t. She had too many feelings, too much of a heart. She was made of flesh. The world needed plastic. She couldn’t break down. Not where they could see.

She needed to run. To hide. But where could she run? Cast and crew were waiting on either side of the stage. Dory was standing in front of her glaring. With her world spinning and nowhere else to go, she turned towards the cloth field behind her.

She saw a door. Or at least the shape of one. It was a deep shadow of a rectangle. Somehow it appeared inside the field. She reached her hand forward. It went inside. She followed.

She didn’t know where she was going, but she left Sunnyside Square. She took what was left of her heart and ran. Behind her, she heard a voice that sounded like hers—only prettier. “Sorry about that, Dory.” The voice giggled. “Let’s take it from the top?”

She heard the crew reset the stage. “Reset! We roll in two!” They didn’t even notice she was gone. Her show would go on without her. It had what it needed. It had Sunny Sandy.

2024

Mikey woke when his alarm rang at 6:00. Senior day started early. Sleep had claimed him, but he was more tired than the day before.

He pitched himself out of bed and lumbered to the kitchenette. He almost fell asleep waiting on the coffee machine. His legs buckled when he fell asleep in the shower. As he wrestled the morning, he admitted it was a fight he was going to lose. He had won perfect attendance awards every year in grade school. His mother had never believed in sick days. That morning, Mikey knew she had been wrong.

He picked up his phone from where he had thrown it into his sheets. Bree had sent her morning briefing at 4:45. She survived on coffee and high-functioning anxiety. Mikey texted back.

“Hey. Feeling sick. Can’t make it. Sorry.” Bree read the message immediately. He thought of calling her. It would have been the nice thing to do. The right thing. But he couldn’t bear to hear her voice. This time, there wouldn’t even be any anger to hide in. She would know something was wrong. He turned his phone on vibrate and tossed it on the couch.

He sat down and noticed that his head had stopped spinning. He hadn’t realized it had been reeling like what he had heard of hangovers. He didn’t remember drinking that much the night before, but the empty bottle waited for him in bed.

Still, this wasn’t a hangover. It was less than that. And more. He didn’t just feel loopy. He felt like he was in the wrong place.

When he turned on the TV, the sound split his head with an axe. He turned down the volume, but the noise barely obeyed. Still, he needed the distraction. He clicked through the infomercials and syndicated sitcoms. Most people his age never even had a cord to cut, but Dove Hill local news and C-SPAN were free on cable. He hadn’t watched anything else since those Saturday mornings with Bree.

Joni Jarrett was just signing off when Mikey found channel 3. Mikey always felt bad for her having to start her day in the dark. During the hour’s changeover, the channel aired the low-budget ads for the dentist and the school and the national spots for fast food and a new diabetes medication. The fifth ad was different though.

In it, a large man whose stomach was too big for his suit stood in front of a lot full of clearly used cars. The oversaturated light and amateur production value proved it was local, but there wasn’t a used car dealership in 100 miles of Dove Hill. The man’s hair piece shook as he shouted his pitch. Mikey felt nauseous watching it shiver.

“Hey, hey, hey! Come on down to Papa’s Playhouse where the low prices aren’t pretend!” Mikey’s head cracked again as Papa’s shout made the TV impossibly louder. Under a slithering saxophone solo, the screen showed a line of cars that looked like they were manufactured well before the turn of the millennium. “Hurry quick because we aren’t hiding these deals! Seek them now before they’re gone!”

Mikey breathed a sigh of relief when Papa left the screen. It was 7:00: time for the channel 3 news. The music should have been the Muzak jingle that the station had used since the 1970s. Instead, it was Sunny Sandy singing her theme song. The piano that played along came from somewhere in Mikey’s apartment.

* * *

By the time the ghostly piano played its last phrase, Mikey was back in the center of the Square. No time had passed in the last day of his life. When he opened his eyes, Sandy’s were staring at him like he was a statue she was carving from stone.

“Now!” she said in a mechanical squee. “Where are my other friends?” Mikey knew it was time for another call-and-response. “Say it with me.”

After the compelled introduction, Mikey didn’t even try to fight. He remembered his part. Together, the two shouted, “Howdy dee! Howdy day! Where is everyone today?” When Sandy’s voice rose, it sounded like she was projecting to the last aisle of a crowded theatre.

The piano started up again. Its sound was distant. Was it still playing from his apartment? Or from the black above them? As its invisible mallets struck its hidden strings, the animals emerged from their rooms. One by one, they bounced towards Sandy and encircled her and Mikey. He could tell that they had also learned to not struggle against their matriarch.

Maggie stood to Mikey’s right side. Tommy was to his left. The others—now including a purple pig and a silver spider—completed the embrace. Mikey realized he had never seen them in full. They weren’t humanoid. They each kept their characteristic shapes. Maggie, Tommy, and the pig on all fours; the owl and the chickens on their talons; and the rabbit on its haunches. They weren’t humans, but they were people. With hearts and minds they were clinging to under Sandy’s uncompromising benevolence. Even before he was brought to the Square, Mikey knew that pain. These were his allies.

“Thank you for joining us, friends!” Sandy believed it was a kindness to pretend like they had a choice. In the past, one of them might have corrected her. Now they didn’t dare. “I’d like you to meet our new friend: Mikey Dobson!” The animals smiled at him with a commiserating kindness. “He’s a very good boy.” He didn’t want to know what Sandy would become if he wasn’t.

“Now what are we going to do today?” Mikey remembered that this is where every episode really started. Every day in Sunnyside Square started with a game, and each had very specific rules. Mikey had always liked that part of the show. He looked around the circle expecting one of his friends to answer Sandy’s question. When their lips pinched in silent fear, he remembered that this wasn’t the Square he had known.

“Oh! I know!” Her voice was that of a fairytale princess who had become an authoritarian monarch. “We’ll play Hide and Seek!” The animals stood quiet for a fleeting moment before the light coming from Sandy’s eyes turned harsh with confident expectation. Mikey’s friends cheered as demanded. He followed their lead.

The red rabbit raised his paw and asked eagerly, “Sandy! Sandy! Can I please help teach our new friend the rules?” Mikey noticed his foot thumping anxiously.

“Oh! That is such a sunny idea!” Sunny said. “Thank you, Rupert! That will be a very nice thing to do!” Rupert concealed a flinch when she gave his head a firm tap.

“Now, do we all remember the rules? I’m going to close my eyes and count to 100. Then you’ll all hide somewhere you feel safe. Then I’ll come find you.” There was a threatening fist in the velvet glove of that promise. “Mikey, Rupert will teach you the rest.” She giggled eagerly.

The animals nodded politely, and Mikey played along. Sandy placed her hands over her eyes like the young playmate she still should have been. “One, two—”

This was Mikey’s chance. He broke through the circle and towards the imposing front door. He took a short sigh of relief when he found it unlocked. As he ran out, he looked on with confusion at his animal friends walking grudgingly to their hiding spots. Didn’t they want to leave too?

Rupert was the only one to match Mikey’s speed. He called out to Mikey as the two ran out of the park. “Wait! Stop! That’s not how the game works. Not anymore…” Mikey didn’t stop to listen.

He first tried to hide in the post office right across the street from Sandy’s house. He flung open the door and started to enter. He had forgotten about the black behind the buildings. He caught his foot just as it was about to fall into an abyss swirling with trails of dust. Catching his breath for only a moment, he slammed the door as he ran around the Square.

Rupert did his best to follow along. “Mikey, let me help you. You know I’m your friend.” He wanted to trust Rupert, but he couldn’t trust anyone here.

Sandy was coming. Her voice blared from her house like a tornado siren. “Twenty-two, twenty-three…”

Mikey passed more doors into the void. One for a bakery that didn’t exist. Another for what looked like a school. Then a church with a golden plaque reading “St. Beatrice’s.” All the while, Rupert hopped frantically behind him. “Please…”

Mikey only stopped when he came to a long window with a real room behind it. It looked like a library. Like Mrs. Brown’s bookstore. He threw himself through the door as its bell tingled above him. Rupert finally caught up to him when he was hiding between two bookshelves that must not have been touched for an eternity. From his hiding spot, Mikey could see the back of Sandy’s house through the window. Her garden was filled with statues of kind-looking creatures that he assumed were animals.

Sandy’s voice shined on. “Sixty-six, sixty-seven…”

Rupert hopped up to Mikey. With Mikey crouching, they were almost nose to nose. “Thank you. I was trying to follow you.”

“You’re welcome?” Mikey asked. Something old inside him knew he shouldn’t be afraid of Rupert, but he knew it wasn’t safe to trust him. It had been years since he had truly trusted anyone but Bree.

“Now listen,” Rupert continued. “Hiding like this is not going to work. That’s not how Hide and Seek works. Not now.” Mikey eyed him suspiciously. “The Square is too small for that. It’s not just about hiding your body. It’s about hiding your feelings. You have to be sunny. If she sees you looking scared or upset or angry or anything else…” Rupert’s muzzle quivered.

“Then…what happens?” Mikey asked.

“You’re Out.”

“Out? What does that mean?”

“Seventy-nine, eighty…”

Rupert huffed with frightened impatience. “We’re running out of time.” Mikey’s survival instincts held him in place. His bones told he should take up less space.

“Out,” Rupert explained desperately. “Into the black behind the buildings. It’s dark and dusty and—”

“Ninety-nine, one hundred. Ready or not, here I come!”

Mikey couldn’t move. Rupert matched his voice to the speed of his pounding feet. “Time and space don’t exist. It’s just you and the light beams too far above to see. You forget who you are: your thoughts, your feelings…even your name. Before long, you’re just…fine. Fine…but empty.”

Rupert’s ears twitched when he heard Sandy’s heels clacking on the bricks outside. Mikey saw the front of her pink skirt intrude into the window.

“Mikey,” Rupert begged. “You have to feel better. Now.”

Sandy heard Rupert’s whisper shake. Mikey saw her turn her rosy cheeks to stare through them. “Silly, Mikey! Silly, Rupert! There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just Sunny Sandy!” She continued her cheerful walk down the sidewalk.

Mikey lunged from his hiding spot between the shelves and shouldered past Rupert. “I’m sorry. For everything.” He bolted out the door so narrowly that he could smell Sandy as she reached for him. She smelled like a candy-scented permanent marker.

Mikey ran down the brick sidewalks and past more doors to Out. He didn’t know where he was going. He just had to get away from Sandy. As he turned the corner, his foot caught on the bend in the path. He tried to catch himself, but his elbow struck the ground. His arm vibrated down to the bone.

He heard Sandy’s heels walking up behind him. He couldn’t bear to look. “Oops! Did Mikey hurt himself? That’s what happens when you make mistakes. I’ll fix it.” Her sweetness made him want to vomit.

* * *

When he opened his eyes, he was back in his apartment. His heart was making his entire chest shake. He felt his phone vibrating from the other side of the couch. He didn’t have to look to know it was Bree. When it stopped, he saw that she had called twenty times in the last two hours. Had it only been that long?

He pressed the screen to call her back. Apparently she was not going to let him be sick alone. She answered halfway through the first ring.

“Hey, brother.” There was the worry he had been dreading. It only lasted a minute before the fixing started. “We need to get you feeling better now. We’re supposed to have the walk-through of the auditorium today. What do you need?”

“Hey Bree. Sorry I missed your calls. I was resting.”

“It’s fine. What can I do? What do you need to feel better?” He could hear her biting the impatience in her tongue. Bree always wanted to fix the problem. Understanding it wasn’t important. Mikey knew this wasn’t the kind of problem Bree could fix. She couldn’t so much as understand it even if he could explain it somehow.

“I’m okay. I slept in, and it helped. What happened with the seniors?”

“Don’t worry about it. I made it work. What matters is tomorrow night. Are you going to be able to debate?” It was more a demand than a question, but it was a demand from desperation. Mikey couldn’t let his sister—or himself—down. Not again.

“Yeah. Of course. I’ll be fine. I’m going to go into the office to catch up on some work. Then I’ll meet you at the high school.” He tried to convince them both with false confidence. Part of him hoped Bree would hear the dishonesty.

“Okay. That sounds smart.” She paused. “Mikey…” He could hear the uncertainty in her breath. He wished she would ask again, demand he tell her the truth. It was the only way he could.

“What’s up?”

“Remember, tonight is at 6. Don’t be late.”

He knew better. “See you then.”

Mikey didn’t bother to shave or change before he went to the office. He knew Dove Hill well enough to know he wouldn’t see anyone on his route on a Thursday morning. Still, he put on some deodorant and a baseball cap just in case.

When he arrived, he was still reeling. By then, he knew it couldn’t be from the wine more than twelve before. He thought he might be even less stable without it lingering in his blood. The dizziness was from hide and seek with Sandy. As he climbed the weathered stone stairs, his shoelace caught in one of the cracks. He tried to catch himself but landed on his elbow. Exactly where he had struck it running out of the bookstore. His eyes squeezed shut in fresh pain.

* * *

He was still feeling the crash when he opened his eyes to see the inside of a doctor’s office. Or at least a caricature of one. The walls were a sickly sky blue painted with large clouds. The clouds would have been a comfort if they were not lined like sheet metal. Between the sharp clouds were anatomical diagrams of what he thought were supposed to be humans. The artist had seen a human but never been one. Instead of ligaments and skin, the people in the diagrams were made of large colorful shapes arranged in the frames of men and women.

Someone was holding a sign in front of Mikey. He had seen something like it when he saw Dr. Tate as a boy. It showed six cartoons of Mikey’s face ranging from a Mikey with a crying Mikey on the left to a smiling Mikey on the right. The crying Mikey was the picture of pure pain. The smiling Mikey’s lips were stretched so tightly that the skin was splitting around them. It was Sandy’s smile. From left to right, the Mikeys were labeled “Bad,” “At Least You’re Trying,” “Not There Yet,” “Good Effort,” “Almost Enough,” and “Good.” Sandy’s pink-pointed finger was hovering between “At Least You’re Trying” and “Not There Yet.”

“Dr. Percy,” Sandy chimed. She sounded like the pleading ingenue she had been once. “You can make Mikey better, can’t you?” Mikey looked up from the sign and saw Sandy talking to a purple pig in a doctor’s coat standing on his hind hooves. His other animal friends were standing along the walls waiting on their turn to speak. Mikey wasn’t sure if they had chosen their silence.

“Of course, I can,” Dr. Percy answered with over-rehearsed confidence. Sandy’s tone had told him the answer. She coughed politely to tell him to finish his line. Dr Percy looked at Mikey and smiled through, “I’m a doctor. I can always make you feel better.” His voice carried a sad knowledge.

“Oh good! I know we can always count on you, Dr. Percy!” Sandy cheered. The other animals joined in her ritual joy. Mikey knew he had to play along.

“Thank you, Dr. Percy. I am so thankful for your work.” As he reached his other hand to shake Dr. Percy’s hoof, Mikey’s broken elbow throbbed in improper pain. Sandy discreetly pursed her lips when Mikey recoiled before completing the gesture.

“You’re welcome, Mikey,” Dr. Percy sighed. “It’s what I’m here for.”

“Shouldn’t we call for Nurse Silvia?” Sandy dictated.

“I suppose so.”

On cue, Dr. Percy and the rest of Mikey’s friends joined Sandy in calling, “Oh, Nurse Silvia!” Immediately, a silver spider with the calm air of a veteran nurse entered the room through the white wooden door.

“Yes?” she said hopefully. Mikey could tell she wanted to help. She hoped she would be allowed to.

“We need your help to fix our friend Mikey,” Sandy explained. “You always know just what to do.”

With Sandy’s last sentence, the hope left Silvia’s eyes. She knew that she was not going to be allowed to do what needed to be done. Only what Sandy demanded ever so sweetly.

“Okay, everyone.” Silvia recited. She looked at the rest of the animals as though she were teaching teenagers about the letter S. She knew how unreal this was. “We know how we heal our friends in the Square. Count with me now!”

The animals started counting in unison. “One.” Mikey saw Sandy pucker her lips. “Two.” She reached down to his elbow. His nerves screamed for him to move it, but he knew he couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been nice. “Three.” On three, Sandy kissed the part of Mikey’s bone that had broken through his skin. Somewhere, the piano played a triumphant melody.

“There,” Sandy said with pride. “All better.” Mikey felt nothing. The bone was still.

He looked into Sandy’s eyes. He expected to see malice or spite. The look of someone gloating in their punishment of his transgressions. What he saw made his blood stop cold. Sandy truly thought she had cured him. She thought she had helped.

Before Mikey’s blood could continue pumping, Sandy and the animals erupted in cheer. They all thanked Sandy and told her how special she was. Sandy grandly turned to Dr. Percy and Silvia. “No, no, friends. I didn’t do anything. It was all Dr. Percy and Nurse Silvia. Let’s thank them together.”

“Thank you, Dr. Percy and Nurse Silvia!” the whole room chorused. The two helpers beamed painfully through the applause.

Dr. Percy knew his next line. “Of course, it’s our job.”

Nurse Silvia didn’t want to speak. She had to. “You’ll always feel better when you go to the doctor.” The hairs on Mikey’s neck raised with the sense of watching eyes.

* * *

When the stone surface rematerialized under his palms, Mikey still sensed that he was being watched. He turned his head to see a sweaty young man in a tight tank top staring at him like the animals had stared at him in Dr. Percy’s office. “I’m good. Just checking the foundation,” Mikey shouted with attempted ease. The man waved and jogged away. Mikey went to wave back and felt his arm tighten. It was still sore, but it wasn’t broken. When he looked down, there was no sign it ever was.

His blood rushed to his head as he stood up. If he had been dizzy when he fell, he had become a spinning top. His stomach convulsed either from motion sickness or from the afterimage of what he had last seen in the Square. When he walked under the ringing entry bell and lumbered his way to his desk, he felt like he needed something to steady his nerves. He remembered a bottle of champagne he had opened months ago to celebrate a win in an employment discrimination lawsuit. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk. It was still there. Looking in the dusty bottle, he could tell it had gone bad. None of the bubbles had survived. The bottle’s lip tasted like mothballs, and the liquid felt like stale water on his tongue. He drank it anyway.

He settled in to work before realizing he had left his laptop in his car. He figured it would be fine. What was the worst that could happen? Still determined to play his part, he opened an unmarked file he had tossed to the side of his desk. Inside he found the purchase agreement for Quality Care’s acquisition of Dr. Tate’s clinic. Mikey wondered if Dr. Percy ever had to deal with buyouts. He laughed to himself as he realized that Sandy would never allow such a thing. His eyes grew heavy as he pored over the bulletproof boilerplate he had written.

* * *

Before he could turn to the second page of jumbled jargon, he was back in Sandy’s house. Someone had taken him from Dr. Percy’s clinic and tucked him into a bed that was too big for his body. His feet only reached halfway down, and his limbs drowned in the sharply starched white sheets. The bed set in the dead center of a room lined in the same haunted sky and cutting clouds as the clinic. Above Mikey’s head loomed a large letter M carved into the ceiling’s dark wood. This was his room. He wondered how many other people had their own rooms in Sandy’s house.

He could feel the artificial sunlight coming in from a large heart-shaped window to his left. In his periphery, he could see that the window opened onto the spherical cage formed by the park’s tree limbs. He remembered that the stairs from the entranceway rose into black. From there, he hadn’t been able to see a second story. How was he on one? Was his room the only one with a roof?

As his heart raced to a higher tempo, Mikey tried to soothe his rising fear by looking out the window. He pushed up with his arms only to feel the unhinged bone shift. No one had closed his wound since Sandy’s failed kiss. He opened his mouth to scream, but he remembered the rule. “If you can’t say anything nice, you won’t say anything at all.” After the last time, he didn’t bother to try.

He laid his head back on his pillow. It felt like it was filled with fiberglass insulation. He winced before remembering this was probably the safest place in the Square. At least he was alone. At least Sandy didn’t light up the dark room with her blinding effervescence.

Mikey heard scuttling coming from the window sill he couldn’t see. He held his breath and felt six points of pressure on his foot. They were soft and pliable like fingers made of the fuzzy pipes he had once used in arts and crafts. The fingers crawled up his leg, then onto his stomach, then through the valleys of skin over his rib cage.

His nerves began to form a scream in his throat. There was a spider crawling near his mouth. “Shh…” it said calmly. He noticed that, in the barely sunlit room, her silver felt made her look like an old woman. Like the kind of nurse you only see in picture books. “It’s okay, honey,” she whispered. “You’re safe here.” Nurse Silvia sitting on his chest. 

Mikey’s eyes flashed with remembered fear. Sandy couldn’t see him in the dark, and she couldn’t hear him in the quiet. But could she still feel him? Silvia recognized the terror in his eyes. “It’s alright, Mikey. I know you’re scared. You’d be a fool not to be. But Sandy can only feel what she can see. That’s all that’s left of her.” There was a sadness in this last assurance. “Now let me fix you up for real.”

Mikey’s nerves started to relax. There was a spider in his bed, but she was a friend. He remembered that she had wanted to help him in the clinic. She just hadn’t been allowed. “Thank you, Silvia.” It was the first genuine thing Mikey had said in the Square.

“It’s what I do,” Silvia answered. “Come on now. I can’t move the sheet myself.” Mikey lifted the sheet to expose his bare bone to Silvia.

“Is that okay?” he asked.

“That’ll do, dearie. Now,” she said as she climbed onto the end of his bone. “This will sting a bit.” Mikey nodded. He chose to trust Silvia.

His spider friend then began to weave a cast around his elbow. As she spun it tighter and tighter, the bones began to line up again. Mikey couldn’t tell where her silk came from, but it shone like faint moonlight in the dimness of the room. When she was finished, Mikey realized he had not been breathing. This time, it wasn’t from fear. It was from awe. And gratitude. His arm still hurt, but he could already feel it healing.

“There now,” she cooed. “That should be a start.” She scurried back onto his chest.

After a silent moment, Mikey began to find his words again. “How—how did you do that? It was incredible.” He had been terrified to let her so close to him even though he knew she was a friend. It didn’t make sense. She was a spider nurse crawling on his chest in a giant’s bed sitting in a dark room in a place he knew didn’t exist. But letting her touch his wound had let her help it start healing.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, Mikey,” Silvia said with pride. “Sandy doesn’t like my methods, so she takes care of the healing herself.”

“Or she tries to.”

“She tries her best. She just doesn’t understand that healing isn’t pretty. It’s messy, even ugly. But it’s real. And it helps. Never perfectly and certainly never easily. But it helps if you let it.

Mikey hoped what Silvia said was true. He needed to heal a lot more than his elbow.

Silvia continued to smile at him with a grandmother’s warmth. “Now, try to get some rest. It’s nap time now. Sandy will call us for snack time soon.” Silvia climbed out the window, and, for just a fleeting moment, Mikey felt calm—even in the Square.