Free Revealed by Amanda Valentino Page B

couldn’t have been much older than we were, and she looked more like an Endeavor cheerleader than a medical professional. Her blond ponytail was high up on the back of her head, and when she saw the three of us standing there, she gave us a bright smile.
    â€œWell, hello there!” Her voice was chipper. There would have been nothing surprising to me if she’d added, Give me an E! and waved a pair of pom-poms madly in the air.
    My mom’s always saying people are like books and you can’t judge by the cover, but come on—if this woman was the only thing between us and Vice Principal Thornhill, we were so at his bedside.
    â€œHi,” I said, smiling at her.
    â€œHi!” she sang back, her white-toothed smile growing, if possible, even wider. “Can I help you? Oh, that is just the nicest bouquet.”
    I could practically hear Nia smirking beside me. “We’re here to see our dad,” Callie said.
    The woman’s blue eyes widened with sympathy. “Now, aren’t you three just the sweetest?” She squeezed her shoulders and face with pleasure at our sense of filial responsibility. “Tell me, honey, what’s your dad’s name?”
    I wasn’t sure if I was the honey she was referring to, but I answered anyway. “Mister—” I began, but Nia cut me off.
    â€œRoger Thornhill,” she said, taking the flowers from Callie and holding them out as evidence of our good intentions.
    For a second it seemed to me that something changed behind the sympathetic mask the nurse’s face had become, and I wondered if Mr. Thornhill might be sicker than we’d thought. Maybe he was even . . . But then she was walking over to the nurses’ station, murmuring, “Let me just make sure now’s a good time.” She picked up a phone and dialed it, speaking softly into the receiver. She listened briefly, then hung up and came over to where we were standing.
    â€œHave a seat,” she urged, still grinning broadly. Then she came over and stood so close to us that for a second I had the crazy idea that she was going to pull us into a group hug. Instead, she kind of urged us backward until we were up against a row of seats lining the wall between rooms 333 and 334. The back of one of the plastic chairs pressed into my calf, and without actually deciding to, I found myself sitting down. Next to my head was a clear plastic box, and when I turned to look at it, I saw it was emblazoned with the words in case of emergency, lift cover, press button. Beneath the plastic was a red button, and I wondered with a shudder what kind of emergency would be so dire you’d need more help than you could find in the Critical Care Unit.
    The nurse went back to her station, and I realized that once again, Nia, Callie, and I were sitting together and waiting to see Mr. Thornhill. I thought of the expression Amanda loved to quote: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
    The more things change, the more they stay the same.
    The nurse busied herself behind the counter that hid the surface of the desk from us. Her eyes never once looked in our direction, and at first I thought she was just very engrossed in her work, but after a few minutes her focus started to seem . . . unnatural somehow. Like she wasn’t not looking at us so much as she was trying not to look at us. I told myself I was being crazy. She was a nurse. She probably had a dozen people to keep alive. Surely this woman had more important things to think about than three high school kids waiting to see their “father.”
    Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something weird was going on. I glanced over at Callie and Nia, but it was hard to know if the tense expressions on their faces were the result of anything more than the fact that we’d just lied our way into a hospital to see a man who may have been attacked by the very people who caused our friend to go on the