“Hey, kiddo,” he said and leaned against the door frame. “Hey,” I replied before flopping back on the bed. For the past hour, I had been moping around my bedroom. “You sound tired.” Even though I couldn’t see his face, I could picture the frown lines etched into his forehead. My dad had developed the habit of being perpetually worried when Cara first got sick. “Didn’t sleep well,” I told him. Last night, when we got back from our trip, our parents told us the good news—Cara’s white blood cell count was doing better, and she was being released from the hospital. After that, I went straight to bed. Even though I was worn out, I had stared at the ceiling until early morning, unable to fall asleep. A certain boy had been on my mind. “Too excited about Cara coming home?” he asked. “Yeah, something like that.” I picked a spot on the ceiling and studied it, hoping that my dad wouldn’t hear my lie.
