I remember the first time I saw her.
She was walking with her mother along the pavement, her small hand tucked into a larger one. Her hair was a startling, pure white. It wasn't the yellow-white of old paper, and it wasn't the dull grey-white of my grandmother's hair. It was white like fresh milk, like the heavy clouds that hang over the city in winter, or like nothing I had ever seen before in my life.
Her eyes were green. They weren't the green of common grass or the leaves on the plane trees or the brightest crayon in my box. They were a different green entirely. It was a green so deep and still that it made me stop talking in the middle of a long sentence. I had been talking to my mother about the market and the price of fish and whatever else had been on my mind, but the words just vanished.
I didn't know what to do with my hands. I felt awkward and far too large standing there. I put them behind my back and pressed my lips together into a thin line. I waited for her to say something, but she just watched me.
Her name was Nimue. It was a hard name to say at first. My name was hard too. People said it wrong all the time. They said Her-me-own, or they said Her-me-oh-nee. It's actually Her-my-oh-nee.
I told her she could call me Mione. My mother did, and it felt right to hear it from her. Her mother said her name was Welsh and that it meant Lady of the Lake. I didn't know what that meant then. I looked it up later in one of my heavy books at home, tracing the letters with my finger.
. . .
We played hopscotch in her small garden. She drew the squares in the dark dirt with a stone she found. They were much too small for feet to land in. I told her they wouldn't work. She listened and made them bigger, the stone scraping against the earth. I went first to show her how. She went second. She stepped on the chalky lines three times in a row. On the fourth time, she didn't miss. She offered me a real smile, and I smiled back at her.
Her fox was called Cinder. I asked her if the name was like the fire. She said yes. I reached out and touched his fur, which felt thick and surprisingly soft. He let me do it. I told her that he liked me. She said he liked everyone. I knew she was lying when she said that. I could tell by the way he watched people. Animals are selective. I read that somewhere in a book about biology. Or maybe I just knew it was true.
. . .
We played together almost every day after that first visit. We met three times a week, and sometimes four.
I brought my books with me. I brought books about everything I could find. I brought books about the planets in the solar system, the ancient pyramids, and the strange animals that live in the deep sea where the sun never reaches. I wanted to show her all of it. I wanted her to know every single thing I knew so we could talk about them.
She listened to me. She always listened. But sometimes, while I was talking, she would just stop listening. I could see the change in her face. I saw the way her eyes would go perfectly still. I saw the way her mouth would press into a thin, hard line.
I didn't understand it at first. I was telling her things. They were important things. They were things she needed to know to understand the world. That was what I told myself. That was what I always told myself whenever I felt the urge to speak.
She told me once that she didn't like the way I talked to her.
It happened in her garden, while we were sitting under the shade of the tree. I was telling her about the pyramids in Egypt. I was explaining the ramps and the heavy stones and the workers who built them without any modern machines. I was talking fast. I was always talking fast. I didn't know how to talk slowly. The words came out of me like water from a tap I couldn't turn off.
She said I was talking too much. She said my tone was wrong. She said it sounded like I thought she didn't know anything at all.
I didn't mean it to sound that way. I never meant it. I just wanted her to know what I knew. I wanted everyone to know. I felt that if they knew things, they wouldn't look at me like I was strange. They wouldn't look at me like I was too much for them to handle. They wouldn't look at me like I was something they had to explain to other people.
I told her I would try to change. I really tried. For two days, I tried very hard. I counted my words in my head. I slowed my voice down. I asked her questions instead of just giving her the answers. It felt like I was holding my breath the whole time. It felt like I was running in place and getting nowhere.
On the third day, we were building a castle out of wooden blocks on the floor. She was making a tall tower. I told her she was putting the blocks in the wrong order for the weight. The words came out before I could catch them. They were fast and sharp, sounding the way they always did.
She didn't say a single word. She just stopped moving. She put her wooden block down on the floor. She looked at me.
It was the look. It was the one that came from somewhere very deep inside her. It was the one that said stop without making a single sound. Her eyes were green. They weren't angry. They weren't sad. They were just green and perfectly still.
I stopped talking immediately. My face got very hot. I looked down at the wooden blocks. I picked one up and put it down. I didn't say anything else. I couldn't.
She went back to building her tower. She didn't say she was mad at me. She didn't say anything at all. She just let me sit there with my face burning and my hands feeling empty and my words stuck in my throat.
It happened again after that.
And it happened again.
I would get excited about a new fact and I would forget my promise. The words would come out too fast, too sharp, and far too much. And she would look at me with that still gaze. It wasn't anger. It wasn't anything I could name. She was just still, waiting for me to stop.
I would stop every time. My face would burn with shame. I would look at the ground and try to make myself smaller. I would try to be quiet. I would promise myself, every single time, that I would do better. I promised that I would hold the words longer. I promised that I would let her speak first. I promised that I would be the kind of friend who listened instead of the kind who talked.
And then I would forget again.
. . .
The day we took pictures, the sun was a deep gold and the shadows on the street were long. My mother put my hair in plaits. There were two of them, pulled tight and neat. She said I looked like a schoolgirl in a book. I didn't know what that meant. I just wanted my hair to stay down for once. I wanted to look nice for the photograph.
Nimue stood on the step of the house with the green door. Her dress was blue. She was smiling at us. It was a real smile. It was the kind she gave when something was exactly right.
We took three pictures. The first was all of them. It was the Keiths. Her father and her mother and her aunt and her. They stood close together, appearing as if they were used to being close. It looked like they had always been that close.
The second was all of us together. My parents stood beside her parents. I stood beside her. Her shoulder pressed right against my arm. The camera made a sharp click.
The third was just us. The girls, her aunt said. It was just Nimue and me. She took my hand in hers. Her fingers felt warm. She told me to look at the camera. She told me to smile.
. . .
The next morning, she was leaving. I knew because the house with the green door was open and the car was waiting in the street. I knew because my mother said we should go see them off. I knew because my heart was beating too fast and my hands felt cold.
She stood on the step with her bag at her feet.
She was actually leaving.
She took my hand. Her fingers were warm. She said my name. Mione. She said I was her friend. She said she was never mad at me.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry for everything. I wanted to tell her I would try harder. I wanted to tell her I would be a better person. I wanted to tell her to stay here. I didn't say any of those things. I just stood there with her hand in mine. My throat felt closed and my eyes were burning.
She said the way I talked made her feel small. She said it made her feel like she didn't matter. She said it made her feel like I was looking down at her.
I didn't know. I didn't know that. I never knew. I just wanted her to know the things I knew. I wanted everyone to know. I wanted to be the one who knew the most, the one who had all the answers, the one who could explain the world. I didn't know it hurt her. I didn't know it made her feel small.
She said if I kept talking like that, nobody would want to be my friend.
She said she didn't want me to get sad.
She wiped my face with her thumb. Her hand was small and her thumb felt warm against my skin. She hugged me. She told me to be good.
I watched her get into the car. I watched the car drive away down the street. I stood at the iron gate and waved until the car turned the corner. The street was empty then, and the house with the green door was quiet.
. . .
For days after she left, I looked at that house. I looked every morning and every afternoon. I looked before I went to bed. I would stand at the window in my room and look at the green door. I would wait for it to open. I would wait for a girl with white hair to come out and wave. I wanted her to run down the path and take my hand and say let's play.
The door never opened. The street stayed quiet. The house stayed empty.
I put the picture on my nightstand. It was the one with just the two of us. It was Nimue and me. Her hand was in mine. Both of us were smiling. I looked at it the moment I woke up. I looked at it right before I slept. I traced her face with my finger. I touched her white hair, her green eyes, and her small smile.
I thought about the things she had said to me. I thought about the way I talked. I thought about how it made her feel. I tried to catch myself after that. When I talked too fast, I stopped. When my voice got sharp, I pressed my lips together. When I started to explain something that nobody had asked to understand, I closed my mouth and let the words die in my throat.
It was hard. It was harder than anything I had ever done before. The words really wanted to come out. They pressed against the back of my teeth. They crowded my tongue. They begged to be said.
I held them anyway. I tried.
. . .
She came into my room on a Thursday. I didn't hear the door open. I was sitting on the edge of my bed, the framed picture held tight in my hands, my thumb resting on Nimue's face. The glass felt warm from the steady heat of my fingers. I didn't know how long I had been sitting there in the silence, staring at the frozen moment of our smile.
My mother sat beside me. The mattress dipped under her weight, the springs giving a soft, familiar squeak. She put her hand on my knee, her palm feeling steady and calm through the fabric of my pajamas.
"You miss her," she said.
I gave a small nod, not trusting my voice to stay steady.
She took the picture from my hands and set it carefully on the nightstand, angling it so it caught the light. She put a ceramic cup of hot chocolate beside it, the steam curling into the air in thin white ribbons, and a single chocolate biscuit on a small floral plate.
I looked at the picture. I looked at the way Nimue's face was captured there, and the way her hand was tucked firmly into mine.
My mother gave a long, heavy sigh. It was the kind of sigh she used when she was going to tell me something she didn't want to tell me. It was the sound she made before she explained why I couldn't go to a party or why a favorite toy couldn't be fixed.
"Besides," she said. "You shouldn't fixate on one point. You know the Keiths are traveling, don't you? They are going through England and France for the whole year."
I looked up at her then, my eyes wide. I didn't know that. Nimue hadn't told me. She had said they were going to a farm. She had said maybe she would see me next year. She hadn't said they would be gone for a whole year.
My mother patted my head, her hand feeling warm and soothing against my curls. "Her family wants her to see the world. They want her to see it before it's too late."
I felt something cold and heavy settle in my chest. I felt a sharp, stinging sensation begin to build behind my eyes.
"What too late?" I asked.
My mother looked at me. Her face looked like the one she made when the old neighborhood cat died. It was the face she made when I asked why the children in my storybooks didn't have mothers. It was a face that tried to be strong but looked very tired.
"Nimue has been sick. She has been sick for a long time. She never left her home before this year. She never met any other children before this year."
I knew this part of the story. She had said it at the park on that afternoon when I was swinging and she was swinging right beside me. I had heard the words then. I had filed them away in my head like a fact about history or a line from a poem. I hadn't thought about what they really meant in the real world.
"Last year, she had a treatment. Something went wrong. Something in her body fought against the medicine. She was asleep for three days. She couldn't walk for a whole week. It was a month before she was truly herself again."
My mother's voice was very soft. It was the way it sounded when she was reading me a bedtime story after a long day. It was the way it got when I was sick and she sat by my bed with her hand resting on my forehead to check for a fever.
"In the past, children with her condition didn't always survive. They are trying new things now. They have new treatments. She has one scheduled for next year, when she is five. It's more dangerous than the last one. It's always been more dangerous. There's a chance she might not make it through."
I didn't cry at first. I sat there with my hands gripped in my lap. My mother's voice echoed in my ears, the words repeating over and over. I looked at the picture of Nimue sitting on the nightstand. I looked at her small, quiet smile.
I thought about her hand in mine. I thought of the way she said my name, making the syllables sound special. I remembered the way she wiped my tears with her thumb at the front gate.
And then I cried.
I cried the way I cried when I was very small and I fell on the pavement and scraped my knee until the blood came and I didn't know how to make the hurting stop. I cried with my whole body.
My shoulders were shaking with every sob. My breath came in ragged, wet gasps. My face felt wet and hot, and my throat went raw from the sound of my own voice.
My mother held me. She put her arms around me and pulled me against her chest, the wool of her sweater feeling slightly scratchy against my cheek. She didn't tell me to stop. She didn't say it would be okay. She just held me while I cried and cried and cried until the room went dark.
I cried until I felt completely empty inside. I cried until I was far too tired to move a single muscle. I cried until my eyes were swollen and red and my nose was running and my throat was sore. I cried until I simply couldn't cry anymore.
I lay on my bed with my mother's hand resting on my back, her fingers moving in slow, comforting circles. The room was dark now. The picture was still on the nightstand, though I could only see its outline. Nimue was smiling in the frame. Nimue was holding my hand. Nimue was somewhere on a farm, or in a city, or in a car on a road that led somewhere I couldn't follow.
I thought about the way she looked at me when I talked too fast, when my voice got sharp, and when my words stacked on top of each other like blocks that would fall.
She never looked at me like I was strange. She never looked at me like I was too much for her. She looked at me like she was waiting for me to stop, not so she could leave, but so she could hear me. She wanted to really hear me. It was the way I wanted everyone to hear me.
I closed my eyes. I saw her face in the dark. I saw her white hair and her green eyes and her small, secret smile.
"Come back," I whispered.
The room was quiet. The house was dark. The street was empty.
----
Three days passed. Then four. Then five. Soon a full two week had gone by since the car turned the corner and disappeared.
Hermione found herself standing at the window more often than not. She would climb onto the small wooden stool to reach the sill, pressing her forehead against the cool glass until the skin felt numb. Her breath would fog the pane in a small, translucent circle that vanished and reappeared with every exhale.
Across the street, the house with the green door remained perfectly still. The curtains were drawn tight, showing only their pale backs to the world. No one came to the step. No one went down the path. The street felt larger and emptier than it ever had before.
She began to stop in the middle of her sentences. Her mouth would be open and the words would be halfway out, but then she would simply close it. She would press her lips together into a thin line and let the silence fill the space where her voice should have been. The air in the room seemed to grow heavy whenever she did this.
Her mother noticed the change. Jean noticed everything about her daughter, from the way she held her books to the way she tied her shoes. She started to ask a question, but then she stopped herself before the words could form. She simply watched from the doorway. She waited.
Hermione tried to talk about the planets as she usually did. she wanted to mention Saturn's rings and Jupiter's ancient storm and the massive mountain on Mars that was three times taller than Mount Everest. But she only got halfway through the first sentence before the words died. She looked out at the house with the green door. She looked at the specific window where Nimue had stood on her last day, her small hand pressed flat against the glass.
Jean walked over and put a steady hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Hermione."
The girl blinked, her eyes focusing on her mother's face. "What?"
"You stopped talking again."
Hermione looked down at her hands. They were empty and felt heavy in her lap. There was no book in them. There was no paper or pencil to keep them busy. They were just resting on the table, open and doing nothing at all.
"I was thinking," Hermione whispered.
Her mother didn't ask what she was thinking about. She already knew the answer.
At night, Hermione lay in the dark of her bedroom and looked at the photograph on her nightstand. She studied Nimue's face in the moonlight. She looked at Nimue's hand tucked into hers and the small, secret smile on her friend's lips.
She traced the glass of the frame with her index finger, the surface feeling smooth and cold. She traced the delicate outline of Nimue's cheek and the white hair that looked like silk in the picture.
She thought about all the things she would tell Nimue when they met again. She thought about the planets and the pyramids and the strange, glowing animals in the deep sea. She thought about the way she would say the words this time. She would be slow. She would be careful. She imagined the way Nimue would listen, her head tilted to the side and her green eyes watching Hermione's mouth move.
She thought about the farm where Nimue was staying. She pictured the wide fields and the farm animals. She imagined Nimue walking through the tall grass with her white hair catching the bright sun and her hand trailing over the soft wool on the backs of sheep.
Then she thought about the next year. She thought about Nimue turning five. She thought about the treatment her mother had mentioned and the chance that Nimue might not return.
She pressed her face deep into the softness of her pillow. She didn't cry. She felt as though she had cried enough for a lifetime. She just lay there with her eyes wide open, the picture sitting on the nightstand and the image of the green door etched into her mind. She waited for the morning light to come.
. . .
The next morning, Jean found her at the window again. The sun was already up, casting long shadows across the pavement. The street was slowly waking with the sound of a distant engine, but the house with the green door remained still and silent.
"Mione."
The girl turned her head. Her mother stood in the doorway with a steaming cup of tea in her hand. Her hair was loose over her shoulders and her face looked soft and tired.
"Come down for breakfast, sweetheart."
Hermione looked back at the house across the street. She looked at the green door and the empty front step where they had stood for the picture.
"She said she would come back," Hermione said. "She said maybe next year."
Jean crossed the room, her footsteps soft on the carpet. She stood beside her daughter and placed her hand on Hermione's shoulder, her thumb rubbing a small, comforting circle. "Maybe."
"Do you think she will?"
Her mother was quiet for a long moment. She looked out at the house with the green door. She looked down the length of the street and watched the sun climbing over the brick rooftops.
"I think she will try," Jean said at last. "I think she will try very hard to come back to you."
Hermione looked up at her mother's face. She searched for the thing she always looked for when she wasn't sure if someone was telling her the truth. She looked for the sign that told her what was real and what was just a wish.
Jean's eyes were steady and clear. Her hand felt warm and grounding on Hermione's shoulder. Her face was set in the expression she made when she was telling Hermione something she knew to be true.
Hermione looked back at the house one last time. She saw the green door, the empty step, and the window where Nimue had stood with her hand pressed to the glass.
"Okay," she said.
She took her mother's hand, her fingers small inside Jean's palm. They went down to breakfast together.