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That tracked. Shira had a habit of putting her foot in her mouth and then wondering why everything tasted like toes.

“It wasn’t some big moment where we had a showdown, she just finally snapped after months of us being compared to each other. Maybe it was the roundup that came out in Arthouse that called her work similar to mine, since mine came out first.” Her eyes were shiny. “She ended up doing it over text. We were friends for years, and she dumped me over text. Somehow that’s almost the worst thing of it all. Like, I thought of her as one of my best friends, and I didn’t even matter enough for her to tell me with her voice and her face that she couldn’t believe I’d stolen her ideas. At first that was all I kept asking for. I was like, Danica, can I call you? Can we meet up and talk about this? Because surely you’d see in my face that it’s not true.

“And it’s not true. She hadn’t even seen my work! All she knew was that it was also about my great-grandma and had some fantastical elements! Like, does she own the topic?” Her chest was heaving now with righteous indignation as her finger jabbed the air. “And I literally had work I’d done before I’d seen her own, so there was actual proof I couldn’t have stolen her idea, and she didn’t even care.

“I really spiraled after that. Like, was there some kind of chance I’d overheard something and subconsciously decided to use it in my own work? Or was it because I’m Jewish? Because she didn’t accuse Neena of stealing her idea, even though Neena obviously didn’t start her show until after Danica’s show came out. People are always accusing us of stealing things. Like Jewish and Israeli food! Jews have been in the Middle East and North Africa for thousands of years. So yeah, when we got kicked out of all those countries, we took our food with us wherever we ended up. It’s our food, too.”

Her eyes were now blazing with righteous anger as she continued. “So then I obsessed about what the real reason could be. Did she just not like me? Did she not like the two of us being compared? But, like, it didn’t matter.” She shook her head. “She’d already gone out there spitting fire, and it didn’t matter if it was really about something else. And then it was awful because I didn’t just lose her, I lost the whole friend group.”

“I’m sorry,” Leo said. And he was. If there was anything losing Shira as a teenager had taught him, it was that friend breakups were incredibly hard. If she were sitting closer to him and not on the outside seat, he’d offer her his hand again for strength. “Your other friends believed Danica?”

Shira slumped in her seat, silhouetted by the Newark skyline glowing outside the window. “I don’t know how much of it was that they believed her and how much of it was that they just chose her. Ellery and Nora told me that they weren’t taking sides, but they chose to continue the group chat with her instead of me. I see on social media that the three of them still hang out all the time. So that’s been a real mindfuck, too. Like, why not me? Is she so much more likable than me? Am I a bad friend?”

Leo had to admit to himself: Honestly, sometimes she was! (Case in point: He was still stinging from the assumption she’d made about him before.) But the good outweighed the bad over all these years, so he answered honestly. “No. You’re a good friend.”

She slumped against the window. Trees, nothing but dark skeletons at this time of night, whizzed past on the other side. Lights flashed over her face, highlighting the movement of her cheek that came from her chewing on the inside. “The mind-fuck didn’t end there. I kept spiraling. Like, so much of my life is outward-facing, and this was something that was internal, only mine, if that makes sense. And she was telling me that even my innermost self wasn’t me, that I’d stolen it from her. And even though I knew it wasn’t true, I knew it, this was my friend, and I believed everything she’d told me before, and it was hard not to believe something she told me now.” Shira drew in a deep, shuddery breath. “People only seem to like the performances I put on. They don’t seem to like me. And it made me think, do I even like me?”

“I like you,” Leo said.

She didn’t seem to hear him. “The whole thing has just…sucked.”

“I’m sorry.” Leo jumped in his seat as his phone finally buzzed with something relevant: His aunt was calling. He slapped it to his ear on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Hi, Leo,” said Aunt Ellen. His dad’s older sister. She didn’t sound like she was crying, which was good, right? If something really bad was going down, she’d probably be crying? “Do you want to meet us at County? The hospital? Your father’s just been admitted.” Leo’s heart nearly stopped before she hastily added, “He’s alive, he’s okay. They think he had a heart attack. It was scary for a minute there, but he pulled—”

For one second, all Leo felt was a pure, empty, gasping horror, and it threatened to make him fall apart. He had to fill the space with something else. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he shouted into the phone, suddenly full of righteous fury. Someone in front of them turned to glare in his direction, but Shira outglared them back.

Aunt Ellen was irritatingly calm. “You were rushing home anyway. It wouldn’t have helped you to know your father was getting shocked back to life while you were far away. Now you have somewhere concrete to go.”

“You should’ve told me anyway.” He was still shouting, and more of the people in the surrounding seats were starting to look over, probably gauging whether or not to flee to the next car.

“Well, I’m sorry, then.” She didn’t sound sorry at all. “Just come to County as soon as you can, okay? I love you.”

“Love you,” he grumbled back automatically, and she hung up. He lowered the phone slowly into his lap, eyes trained straight ahead at the scarred leather seat back. Someone had scribbled a heart, and then next to it someone had scribbled a dick. He found it hard to believe someone hadn’t added the I yet. Maybe he should do it. He felt suddenly like he was back on the school bus, snickering with his friends as they poked holes in the seat with pencils. Everything smelled like erasers.

“Leo?” Shira said, placing her hand on his. He jolted back to this time, this place. “What happened?”

He told her everything he knew, which wasn’t much. She kept her hand on his, squeezing his knuckles occasionally. “So I need to get to County right away,” he finished. “I know I drove us to the station. Can I call you an Uber home from the train? If there’s no one there, I’ll wait with you until the car comes. Or a car home from the hospital? It’s not that far away.”

“I’ll come with you to the hospital,” she said immediately. “If that’s okay. It’s also okay if you don’t want me there, but…I’d like to be there for you.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “Oh. Sure. I guess. Okay.”

They were quiet for the rest of the train ride. Shira kept her hand on his the whole time; he never flipped his over to hold hers, but he liked knowing it was there in case he needed it. Mostly Leo stared out the window. Instead of the trees and buildings flashing by, he saw a movie playing out again and again on the smeared glass. Leo arriving to the hospital. Aunt Ellen in tears in the waiting room, barely able to form the words You didn’t make it in time, he’s gone. Leo standing there in shock, realizing that the story of him and his father would end here, with years of grudging silence and then a tense dinner once a week, and he’d never get to have an actual adult conversation with him. That things could never, ever change.

Somehow he’d thought he’d always have time. Which was stupid. Every year his dad’s hair was a little grayer, the skin on his throat a little looser, his belly a little rounder. What if his time had run out?

He should text his mom. Let her know. He reached for his phone again, then stilled. Last he’d heard, she was in Morocco, vacationing in a riad with a crystal clear pool in its courtyard and an assortment of eclectic guests, one of whom she thought might be a Hapsburg. He didn’t want to disturb her vacation. She would probably have zero interest in rushing home to care for his father, but she might want to rush home to take care of him. And he was an adult. He didn’t need someone to take care of him.

The train screeched to a stop. Shira tugged Leo to his feet, then into the aisle. “We parked over here.”

Somehow he blinked and he was at the hospital, everything around him white and gleaming, his nose filled with the odors of disinfectant and urine. Hopefully he hadn’t been the one to drive here. Shira was towing him by the hand, periodically stopping to speak with people at desks to make sure they were going in the right direction.

And then they were in a waiting room, chairs hard and orange, TVs overhead playing some talk show where everybody seemed to be laughing the entire time. Aunt Ellen was there, clasping his shoulders and pulling him in for a hug that threatened to squeeze all the air out of him. “I’m glad you made it.” She was older than his father by a few years, short and stout as a teapot, with a blocky gray bob and a raspy voice she swore she hadn’t gotten through smoking. “They asked me to step out for a minute so they could do a test or change a bedpan, I don’t know. I just listened to them.”

“So he’s okay?” Leo said, blinking hard as if he were coming out of a dream. Everything around him felt surreal: the bright white lights overhead, the sound of someone crying in the distance, the smell of baked beans on his aunt’s shirt, the women on TV laughing laughing laughing with too many teeth.

“He’s okay.” Aunt Ellen stepped back. “They’re going to keep him for observation for another night or two, and then he’s going to have to start seeing a cardiologist, but they caught it in time. He’s going to be okay.” She fixed him with a squinty glare. “So you might want to see your way to forgiving him. Who’s this?” She turned to Shira before Leo could even process what she’d said. “Your girlfriend? When did you get a girlfriend?”