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She blurred as my vision became flooded etness This wasn’t possible I’d just seen her the day before, and she was the picture of health She was happy and vibrant She fairly glowed How could that change so fast? How could she becoray departed?

I turned froht to breathe Struggled for an explanation After Erin’s baby After the Vandenberg children This? Now? Was life really so ile? So easily lost?

She touched et a e to hiain Did death really target the innocent? Did it zero in on the purest, most radiant souls?

"Can you please tell him I’ve had the best two days of my life?"

"I don’t understand," I said at last

A few of the customers had turned towardher hands on a towel, her expression curious Cookie stopped what she was doing and stilled

"I had asthies It was no one’s fault I ate a corn dog from Whips I’ve eaten a hundred They must’ve switched to peanut oil"

A soft cry wrenched from my throat, and I sank onto my elbows If not for the desk, I would’ve cru

"I just want Lewis to knoonderful a person he is He really has no idea He needs to know, Janey And he needs to kno much I loved him" She stepped closer

I couldn’t look at her In spite of all the bravado today, I was a coward after all

"Proetother As al to know on a visceral level that they were once alive and dynareeing at last, and she smiled "Thank you" Without another word, she slipped to the other side

I clutched the counter, digging in my nails as her life flashed before my eyes I saw the first time Lewis noticed her Or kind of noticed her She’d dropped her books in high school, and as a group of kids beside her laughed, he hurried over, picked the as he tried to catch up to his friends It was the everydayness that captured her He didn’t do it for accolades He just did it It was simply in his nature She was invisible until that day That day, that very minute, she decided to be seen

I saw her watch him at a talent contest inHe was lead guitar, and the entire event won him a trophy and a lot of female admirers Yet there wasn’t a jealous bone in Shayla’s body, because she loved him even then She was happy for hi an asthma attack at her fifth birthday party It was so bad, she had to be rushed to the hospital She wasn’t mad that she missed the party or the cake or the time with her friends from the hospital She was mad because she spilled red Kool-Aid on the dress herfor her It broke her heart, and she cried for hours, so her ain and made her a shorts set out of as left

I saw her the day she was adopted After she was tossed around a series of foster homes as an infant, her parents finally found her when she was three She was thin and sickly and had an oxygen tube looped under her nose and around her ears, but they’d recognized her anyway Said they’d been looking everywhere for her Even though she was pale with blue eyes and freckles, and they were dark and tall and beautifully exotic, she recognized the with the effects of the drugs, so weak she couldn’t breathe on her own, her heart couldn’t function on its own, so they connected her to asounds for ten days The nurses told her to fight with everything she had, so she did

I saw her come into the world on the filthy floor of a crack den Her mother had OD’d and was already dead No one noticed her at first No one called the police But it wasn’t their fault She’d been born invisible It was ato do with the cops, he wrapped her in a shirt stiff with dried blood on it and left her in front of an all-night liquor store

She turned back to me, a Cheshire smile on her face Only then did I notice the tattoo she had on the inside of her wrist INVISIBLE GIRL, NOW SHOWING

I stood in the present, still clutching the counter, shaking so hard with anger and indignation and outrage that it vibrated Small clear drops landed on the Formica under my face Tears had dripped off my chin The fury inside me took on a life of its own

"Charley" Cookie walked slowly toward me, her hands up, her voice soft