Disclaimer…I own nothing except the characters I create. The quote in the summary is a Swedish proverb.

Author's Note…I hit a bit of a writer's block with this chapter, partly because it was pretty momentous for what it's worth, and partly because it's Johanna who is telling it. I love writing Johanna's part; it's like an extreme mental exercise. Children are very observant, I believe, much more so than we realize, so I have her picking up on the little things. But as I am no longer a child, just a moody teen, I have to be on my toes to kind of get into her state of mind. This makes for some very boring days. Hopefully this installment won't be. By the way; I have Johanna use some 'big words' in her mind for the simple purpose of avoiding repititon.

"No river can return to its source, yet all rivers must have beginnings."

-Native American Proverb

The first time I saved a person's life, I was five years old.

Shawn and Hilary were so proud of me. Hilary told me that I deserved a Superman cape, because of what I was doing. Each time I had to have another test taken on me, or another doctor had to fiddle around with my blood or my heart or my lungs, she added another charm to my charm bracelet. There's a silver heart from when I got something called an EKG, which sounds scary but it's really not that bad; a stethoscope just like the one my mom wears in the Clinic from when I got a chest X-ray; an "A+" from when I had to get a blood test; and a slice of pizza the size of my thumbnail because the night before; I couldn't eat anything.

We were having all our meals at the hospital then, and Megan was stuck with a tube down her throat that fed her, so I stayed upstairs with her that night while Shawn and Hilary had dinner in the hospital cafeteria. Shawn thought I should be with them, considering tomorrow was such a big day and all, but Hilary decided I should hang out with Megan. "Talk about your feelings," she advised us.

Hilary was always telling us to do stuff like that.

As soon as she left, Megan announced that she didn't want to talk about her feelings.

I grinned at her and, because I wanted to do everything exactly the way she did, I agreed.

I remember Megan looking very satisfied then. "Good," she said, and pulled out a deck of cards. We played 'Battle' for half an hour with each other, silently. Megan kept trying to teach me to play 'Spit,' but I was too busy examining her to pay attention.

Megan wasn't completely bald, but I can't say she had hair either. It was more like little blonde patches here and there. Usually, it was completely hidden with an army bandanna, but Megan had it off today.

When I first moved in with the Rightman's, Megan had long blonde hair, all the down to her waist, with the ends dyed purple. It looked like she had put it in a ponytail and dipped the tip of it in violet ink. Hilary hated it, and let everybody know it, but I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

Six months later, after her treatment had began; Megan woke up with all that beautiful hair on her pillow, no longer attached to her head.

She screamed and ran from the room, looking for Hilary. It woke me up, and I went from my side of our room to hers, put the hair in the plastic bag I kept under my mattress, and waited.

I waited for two and a half hours before Megan finally came back in. She took one look at the bag, one look at the mirror and her bald head, and gave me simple instructions: "Bury it." And I did just as she asked except for one small purple lock that is hidden in the locket charm of my bracelet. This is how I know I will never forget Megan; a small part of her will always be with me.

Anyway, after a while we got bored of 'Battle' and decided to paint each other's nails. I did Megan's first and, since I was only five, I smudged the black polish all over Megan's fingers, so I had to go especially slow. To keep me from getting bored, Megan talked to me:

"Does my hair look bad today, really bad, or just plain awful?"

"It looks good."

"Do you think that the boy in the next room likes me?"

"Maybe."

"I wonder if he thinks I'm pretty."

"I think you're pretty."

"Do you think Mom would let me go on a date with him?"

I tried to wipe the nail polish from Megan's pinky finger and hoped she wouldn't notice the black paint bleeding onto her skin. Really, she didn't need the extra layer; her fingernails were already dark around the edges. "Hilary would never let you do that while you're sick."

"Really? I think Mom would."

"I'm telling you, Hilary wouldn't even let you do that in your dreams." Or nightmares.

Megan tilted her head to the side. "When are you going to start calling her 'Mom?'"

"She's your mom," I told her. "She's my Hilary."

"But if she's not your Mom," Megan said carefully, "then you're not my sister."

My head snapped up so quickly that my hand twitched and knocked over the nail polish, spilling it into one of the little valleys of the bed. That bed was just like the map in the back of Megan's textbook: bumpy where there were hills; deep in between the mountains. "If what I'm going to do tomorrow doesn't make us sisters, then what does?"

Megan's eyes got all big then, and didn't say anything for a while. Instead, she started painting my nails right out of the small, black puddle. Unlike me, she did a perfect job and didn't smudge one bit.

When she was done, she looked at me. "This…thing you're going to do tomorrow?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you sure you want to do it? Because you don't have to, you know."

It was an easy question. This was Megan; how could I not want to do it?

Megan looked at me expectantly.

"I wouldn't do it for anybody," I told her, trying to sound as grown-up as possible, "besides my sister."

XXXxxxXXX

James stares at me for a moment, and puts his head in his hands again. "Life or death," he asks again, just to make sure. "You can't be serious."

But from the look on his face, he can tell that I'm about as serious as they come. I want to feel bad for James, I really do because he has no idea what's going on, but it is just so hard. There are bigger things going on right now and it's not his fault that he doesn't know what they are but…it doesn't stop me from wishing that he would do something--anything--besides counting off our weird little family unit as 'flying towards the fan.'

"Johanna," he says slowly. "You have to tell me what's really going on."

"But--"

"No buts." He takes a breath, long and deep. "Just the truth."

XXXxxxXXX

A couple months ago, our teacher taught us the absolute coolest thing about history. She told us that our textbooks only tell us a half of the story, the winner's half. There's a whole other part to it that we'll never learn…the loser's side. "All we know," she told us that day, "is what the champions want us to."

I remember this one girl who, until that day, I had never really liked, raised her hand. "What if the war's still going on," she asked Mrs. Curtis. "Whose story do we hear then?"

I thought that Sarah Norden was the smartest girl in the world.

Mrs. Curtis had looked confused at first, like she didn't know how to answer. Then she looked satisfied. "That, Sarah, remains to be seen."

Andrew K. raised his hand. "But what if someone asks? Which side do they hear?"

Mrs. Curtis had seemed thrilled. "Well, Andrew, that depends."

"On what?"

She smiled like the Cheshire cat from Alice In Wonderland. "Whoever you ask."

XXXxxxXXX

James looks at me, and I can see that he wasn't going to leave until he had an answer.

So I try to explain what happened three years ago. I tell him about Shawn and Hilary and I even tell him about Megan. I tell him how they weren't just good, they were the best. I tell him about Megan's purple hair. I tell him about Shawn's apple pie. I tell him about the room Megan and I shared, about the rug that stretched from one side to the other like a bridge. And I tell him how happy we were and how I was so sure that this was going to last and I tell him what happened when we realized Megan was sick and I tell him how much Shawn cried, but how Hilary wasn't even able to and I tell him how scared I was, how very scared I was, and I tell him tell him tell him but it is just not good enough.

I am nearly at the part when the doctor figured out how to save Megan when I notice I am crying. It's not the movie kind of crying where it just leaves your cheeks looking shiny, it's the kind that you use your whole body for.

I open my mouth to finish my story, but like I said; my entire body is crying, including my mouth. I cannot finish, even though I want to so bad.

I guess this is what happens when you try to talk about a war that's not over yet.

"You donated bone marrow," James says. It's only four words, six syllables, but it takes him a while to get them out. Like if he keeps them in, they aren't true.

I try and say yes but I choke on the word. I can only nod.

"And she needs more?"

I do not even attempt to talk again; just nod.

"And your mom is never going to let you go," James mumbles quietly to himself.

James doesn't seem to know how exactly to respond, even though it's just to himself. I guess it's like writing an essay about something you have not studied; you just do not know where to begin.

But even if James doesn't know where to begin, he certainly has an idea of where to go. He trudges over to the closet heavily, like there is a giant weight on his chest, digs through the wrinkled clothes that hide the floor and eventually pulls out the purple plastic Speedo knapsack I got at swimming party last year. Like he is doing a routine he has practiced so much he doesn't even have to think about it to do it right, he folds some clothes and fits them perfectly in the bag.

When he is done with this, he goes into the hallway and turns on the computer. It wakes up slowly, the screen taking its sweet time to light up. When it is finally working, and is on the lookout for any action to respond to, James logs on to our slow internet and then he shifts, so I cannot see whatever the monitor is showing him.

Finally, he turns back to me. "Johanna," he says warily. "Go back to your room and set your alarm for 5:15. We'll have plenty of time to sleep later."

"What's going on," I ask, just to make sure.

"There's a 6:50 flight out to Washington this morning. We're on it."

Even though James tells me to try and get some rest, I watch him through the crack between my door and the wall. He doesn't go through the process of turning off the computer, just presses the button and watches the screen go black. Then he goes over to the couch and looks at my mom, who is quietly snoring, using the phone as a pillow. Very gently, James pulls out the cover from underneath her and rests it on top of her, like a blanket of protection.

And that's when I realize; she's not coming with us.