Free Revealed by Amanda Valentino Page A

find the main entrance even following the instructions of the signs posted everywhere. We locked up our bikes at the crowded bike rack just outside the enormous, slowly revolving door, and Callie was about to step into it when I put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back.
    â€œWait a sec,” I said.
    She turned to me, a confused look on her face.
    â€œI think we need some kind of story about why we’re here.” For a minute, I wondered if I was being paranoid, but then I thought about why Thornhill was here.
    Probably I wasn’t being paranoid enough.
    â€œLet’s say we’re his kids,” Nia suggested. “And we’re bringing him this.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out the bouquet, which was only slightly the worse for wear.
    â€œIt’s not a total lie,” Callie said. “We are his kids.”
    â€œBut we’re not his children ,” I pointed out.
    â€œA minor discrepancy,” Nia assured me, and a second later, we’d swished through the revolving door and into the overheated, antiseptic-smelling lobby.
    Our story served us well on the first floor, where a tired-looking woman with crispy red curls issued us passes that read nia thornhill, callie thornhill, and hal thornhill. Even though it was just a sticker, wearing the name tag made me feel like a different person, as if I really were Vice Principal Thornhill’s son. I wondered what Hal Thornhill was like. Did he win spelling bees? Have to serve detention when he missed his curfew? I imagined him bouncing a quarter on his bed after he made it, then nodding with satisfaction at the tightly pulled bedspread.
    â€œSo, what, are we triplets?” asked Callie as we rode up to his floor in the slow-moving elevator. I could tell from her voice that she was nervous, and I reached over to take her hand. Her warm fingers slid easily into mine and she gave me a gentle squeeze that I read as Thanks .
    â€œIf we get to the point where they want to know our birth order, we’ve got bigger troubles than whether or not we’re triplets,” Nia answered.
    The number on the panel switched from two to three and the elevator gave a small ding as it stopped. A second later, the doors slid open and we were looking down a corridor at a wall with a sign that read critical care unit with an arrow beneath it pointing straight ahead. My mom, who’s addicted to this show about doctors so busy flirting with one another and making witty, snappy comebacks that they can barely find the time to save lives, would have known whether critical care was better or worse than intensive care. To my ears, critical and intensive both sounded pretty awful.
    Nia put her hand on my arm and I looked over at her as the three of us stepped into the corridor. “I just want to make one thing clear, okay?” she asked. Her voice was deadly serious.
    Callie and I nodded.
    â€œIf it should come to it,” she said, pointing at her chest, “I’m the oldest.” She let go of my arm and started walking down the corridor, adding, “I am sooo tired of being someone’s little sister, you have no idea,” before she pushed through a pair of swinging doors marked CRITICAL CARE UNIT in six-inch-high letters.
    On the other side of the doors was a large open area with numbered doors leading off it. Ahead of us was a circular nurses’ station with no nurses. The space was hushed, only the occasional beep or whir of a machine. Immediately to our left was room 334, the name ATWOOD, C. on a small tag next to the room number. The next room was 333, and this one had two names, KNIGHT, E. and FELTZ, L. Our passes said THORNHILL, R. CRIT CARE , 330, and I was starting to think maybe we’d just be able to walk into Thornhill’s room without having to utter the lie “our dad” again when a nurse walking at a brisk pace emerged from a room on the other side of the waiting area.
    She