“Well, fresh air’s supposedly good for us,” I said.

“Breathing: the miracle cure everyone’s been looking for.”

He smiled at me. We were at the bottom of the porch steps. Gnats swarmed the light above the screen door, and the ancient glider creaked softly. It felt like we were waiting for something, but I didn’t know what.

And then the quiet evaporated as everyone returned to the cottages, surrounding us with a maelstrom of laughter, and conversations, and coughing. The movie had ended. A couple of girls from the second floor pushed past us without apology, and suddenly, standing there felt unbearably awkward. So I told Lane I’d see him around, and then I went inside.

CHAPTER NINE

LANE

I LIKED SADIE’S theory about living and dying being the same thing, and I wanted to believe it. But the thing was, although I might not have been dying, I wasn’t really living, either. I was doing what I’d always done: keeping my head down, working hard, planning for the future, and trying to ignore the present. Like Harbor, Latham was someplace to get through on the way to somewhere else.

I had an appointment with Dr. Barons on Sunday, and when he pulled up my vitals on his tablet, I could tell I was in trouble. He stared down at the screen, his expression dismayed.

“Lane, buddy, what’s going on here?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

I tried to look innocent, like I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I had a pretty good idea. I still wasn’t feeling that great, although it was nowhere near as bad as it had been on Saturday morning. I’d been so focused on keeping up with my schoolwork that I’d ignored my test scores—the ones I couldn’t study for. I’d overdone it, and now Dr. Barons was going to . . . what? Give me a strike for being sick?

“How are you feeling right now? On a scale of one to ten?”

Four, I thought.

“Two,” I said.

“I wish I believed that.” Dr. Barons frowned, and I shifted uncomfortably, hating that he could tell. “But you’ve lost weight, you’re running a fever half the time, and you’re barely sleeping.”

He said it like I was this grand disappointment, as though having a fever was as shameful as flunking an essay, or forgetting to do my homework. I’d read enough about TB to have its list of symptoms memorized: cough, fever, fatigue, chest pain, chills, loss of appetite, coughing up blood, weight loss.

“Right, but all of that’s normal,” I said. “It’s in the pamphlets or whatever.”

Dr. Barons shook his head.

“New symptoms are always worrying. You should be getting better at Latham, not worse.”

I hated that he was right, that I wasn’t okay, and this wasn’t some bullshit checkup. I didn’t want to be at Latham, but more than that, I didn’t want to need to be here.

I kept quiet, and Dr. Barons sighed.

“I don’t want to have to update your parents with news like this,” he said, “when earlier this week, it looked like things were on the mend.”

“They are,” I insisted. “I am.”

And then I fucking started coughing, right there in his office. It was the air-conditioning, cranked up so high that I was shivering even in my Stanford hoodie. I took out my handkerchief just in time, and Dr. Barons watched me, his face eerily calm, and his gaze unnervingly sharp. I didn’t cough up blood or sputum or anything, but it still sounded pretty rough.

“A decline like this worries me,” he said, taking a stylus out of his lab-coat pocket. “So what we’re going to do is make a couple of preventive changes. We’ll add you to the monitor list so a nurse will check on you during rest periods to see if you need anything. And I’ll put you down for a sleeping pill every night at eight.”

I stared at him in horror.

“You can’t do that!” I said.

This couldn’t be happening. I didn’t need some nurse hovering over me and forcing me into bed when it was still so early. I’d never have any privacy, or get anything done.

“I can fix it,” I promised. “Honestly. I didn’t realize it was that bad, or I would have eased up.”

“Exactly. You were just trying to keep up with the schedule, but it was too taxing. So we’ll make some accommodations and see if we can stave this off before—”

“That’s not what I meant!” I interrupted. He had it all wrong, thinking that Latham was too much for me to handle, that I’d gotten worse from a couple of bullshit classes and nature walks. I’d been planning to ask him about doing my AP work, but now that I had to admit what was really going on, I knew he’d never allow it.

So I confessed everything. How I’d been studying during the rest periods. That I wasn’t having trouble sleeping, I was staying up to work. And sure, I wasn’t feeling great, but I hadn’t realized it had gotten that bad. I just didn’t want to lose everything that I’d worked so hard for. I didn’t want Latham to ruin my perfectly planned-out future.

After I finished, Dr. Barons was quiet for a moment. I could feel his disapproval hovering there like a giant doom cloud. And then he sighed.

“Lane,” he said, “I don’t think you understand how serious this is. I’m not suggesting you slow down, I’m insisting that you stop. You’re not at a school, you’re in a medical facility, and you need to get with the program. Immediately.”

I’d never seen an adult look so angry at me, or so disappointed. I was actually being scolded—for studying. In the weirdness of Latham House, where it was easier to fail your meals than your classes, I’d gotten it wrong once again.

“Can I trust you to do that?” Dr. Barons pressed. “Or do I need to transfer you to the hospital wing for round-the-clock care? Because I’m going to be blunt here, Lane. If you keep going like this, that’s where you’ll wind up.”

It hit me then, as I sat on the crinkled paper of the exam table, how monumentally stupid I’d been. When I’d arrived at Latham, I hadn’t felt that sick, so I’d figured I wasn’t. And then I’d seen how easily that could change. I could either get better, or I could keep up with my old classes from my old life. I couldn’t do both.

Everyone else had known that. And I should have, too. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it, because admitting it meant acknowledging the possibility that the odds might not be in my favor. And that possibility was terrifying.

I wasn’t surrounded by sick kids, I was one of them.

“Yeah,” I said hollowly. “You can trust me.”

“Good.”

Dr. Barons smiled, and I tried to smile back, but I couldn’t think of anything to smile about.

“Is there any way we could forget about the sleeping pills and nurse checks?” I asked. “I’ll go to sleep at lights-out and everything. I swear.”

The doctor considered this, staring at my chart.

Please, I hoped, putting it out there into the universe for any deity that might be listening, I’ll do the stupid nature walks and yoga if he just grants me this one thing, if he lets me keep some small measure of dignity in this place.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll hold off for the time being. So long as I see an immediate improvement.”

“You will,” I promised, relieved.

“Fantastic.” Dr. Barons put away his stylus. “Oh, and Lane? Your hall nurse will come by shortly to collect any study materials that might be in your room.”

Of course she would. Because it wasn’t enough that I had to be here, now I had no escape. I was completely severed from everything.

So fine, I’d play by Dr. Barons’s rules. And once I got this TB thing under control and went home, I’d try to figure something out. But I’d rather get well enough to leave than stay sick enough for Dr. Barons to keep me here.

Just the thought of what it would mean to follow the schedule taped above my desk overwhelmed me. It would mean that just like everyone else, I was a patient here. One who was expected to endure an endless stretch of hours every afternoon, with no internet and no phone and no friends and nowhere to go and nothing to do except lie in bed and wait. I saw now why everyone crowded the TV room, and read graphic novels, and ransacked the DVD shelves, and saved their board games.