“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Oli asks.

“I mean, it wasn’t anything in particular. It’s a long story.”

“From the beginning, then,” Oli says. “If you want.”

The kindness of strangers makes Lark anxious, sometimes, and he searches Oli’s face for some reluctance, a sign that he’s only being polite. Lark knows he will think he’s said too much, no matter what. He’s already talked too much about himself, but Oli’s looking at him, waiting. “Right before we left, I got mono, so that was the start of it,” he says.

“Like the kissing disease?”

Lark dredges up a breathy laugh. “Yeah. From all the kissing I was doing.”

“You weren’t getting around much?”

Lark rolls his eyes like Oli had made a cheap joke. Considering Lark was in a band named after a Star Trek episode, maybe Oli shouldn’t have expected tales of youthful romance, but Lark is good looking in a fragile, eccentric way. Oli thinks he could have been popular when he was younger if he’d wanted to be.

“No,” Lark says, though. “I was too shy. And I wasn’t really interested in ‘getting around.'” He puts air quotes around the phrase. “I found the whole talking to people, making friends thing kind of hard.”

That moment in Lark’s life had shown up the truth of some of his worst fears. He had a place in his small social group, but it had a lot to do with his talent. It had to do with the music. To Max, he was a songwriter; he was a pianist. He was a friend only as an afterthought and out of habit.

Dana, maybe, cared about him, the real him. Cared more than Max, at least. That much was clear even then, in the depth of his mono exhaustion. Lark knows he tried not to think about it. He edged around his feelings for her.

He remembers Dana sharing his bed when he first got sick, after Max fell asleep in the living room, too high to drive. Lark had folded himself up so carefully, terrified he would touch her by accident, brush a hand against her spine while he slept. Dana only in her underwear. Lark kept his eyes closed.

She took a photo of him that night, asleep under the room’s ugly fluorescents. On the DSLR’s preview screen, the awful lighting made it look like an old film photo: washed out, magicless, Lark’s skin a sallow yellow against the white bed sheets, his platinum hair brassy. His features were narrow and peaceful, like a Russian icon’s.

She called it The Saint in a caption on her website, and he secretly agonized over why, what it meant.

“It was the first time I really needed help,” Lark says, pulling himself away from the past. “I hadn’t learned how to ask for it.”

Oli nods. “Have you figured out how yet?”

Lark shrugs.

It was the middle of May, a little less than a month before we were due to head west, when I got sick. After a few days of feeling a bit off, incredibly draggy, I woke up to the worst sore throat I’d ever had and a middling fever. A bad cold, I thought. I was so tired, I could barely drag myself out of bed, but I figured it was no big deal.

I only had one sick day left, and I didn’t plan on wasting it actually being sick. When I went to brush my teeth, though, I looked like a stranger in the mirror, my jawline so swollen and puffy I looked like someone else.

The shock of it made me feel worse. I sat down on my bed, my heart slamming, half-convinced I had mumps or something, cancer of the lymph nodes.

I called in.

After giving up my co-pay at a local urgent care, I was seen and diagnosed with exceptionally typical mono. My doctor sent me for a blood test that would confirm it but told me there was nothing to do but rest until I felt better. It’ll probably take a couple weeks, she said.

I croaked Weeks? I had relaxed when she said it was mono, thinking for some reason that wasn’t so bad, but weeks sounded insane to me then. Like forever.

Unfortunately, we can’t do much to hurry it along, but it’s not serious. You should feel better in two to four weeks, maybe tired a little longer, she said, added, No contact sports for at least a month. Lots of water, lots of rest.

I went home and slept. I went to work exhausted and shivering the next day. Slept again on breaks. Called Max on my way home to tell him I couldn’t practice over the weekend. Went home, went back to sleep.

When I woke up again, it was almost noon. A Saturday. Dana was kneeling on the floor next to my bed, stroking my arm to wake me.

Reed let us in, she said. I hope you don’t mind. Max wanted to check on you.

Max, though, had stayed downstairs talking to Reed. Dana reported to them how sick I was, feverish and exhausted and still swollen-faced. She brought me water and Advil, sent me back to sleep.

She woke me around dinner time, heated me some soup. Reed and Max tried to get me to join them smoking a joint. I refused and fell asleep again, sitting on the floor, my face against the arm of the sofa, half dreamed the rest of the night.

Dana saying We should put him back to bed.

Max drawing on my bare forearm, pressing hard enough I rose up to consciousness, but it didn’t seem important enough to move or open my eyes. He’s really out. Laughing and laughing.

Reed asked me why I didn’t tell him I was sick. I hadn’t seen him and hadn’t thought about it. If you need anything at all, you can tell me, you know?

I told him that I knew that, of course. But it hadn’t occurred to me that I needed anything. I never knew what I was supposed to ask for.

I wanted things to stop.

I wanted to sleep.

There was nothing anyone could do for me.