Anneliese had had two best friends before. Her best friend from home was Batty's daughter Lucie. She was older than Anneliese by a few months and so was a grade above her in school, so Anneliese had a different best friend at school. She and Clara had been in the same class since the first grade. But Anneliese hadn't seen Clara since her mother got sick. At first Anneliese had stayed home from school to help take care of her mother, and then when Batty had sent her to the hospital, Anneliese had waited by the phone for news of her. She'd been waiting for two weeks when school had ended for the summer. Lucie had been waiting with Anneliese whenever she could, and eventually she got Anneliese to leave her apartment. But by then, Anneliese couldn't stand to hang around doing nothing. She took on odd jobs all day every day, except for the times Lucie could persuade her to play marbles or street ball. And aside from the worry that hung over Anneliese, it hadn't been a bad summer so far.

Now the worry over her mother was gone, though Anneliese still missed her. But now Anneliese had neither Lucie nor Clara to play with. She did have Henry and Ellen, but they were littler than her and were her siblings anyway, so they didn't count as best friends. Anneliese wasn't used to having younger siblings, but she'd seen Lucie with hers. Lucie only had two brothers, not two brothers and two sisters, as Anneliese now did. Lucie thought her brothers were annoying but sometimes cute, though she made Anneliese swear not to tell anyone that last part. Lucie would let her brothers play with her and Anneliese sometimes, if they weren't too bothersome. Sometimes Lucie had to help take care of her brothers, and sometimes they fought something awful. Anneliese hadn't gotten in a fight with Henry or Ellen yet, but they could be kind of annoying sometimes. They wanted her with them all the time, even when they weren't playing together and so Anneliese could only play with one of them. Then Henry and Ellen would fight over her. Annoying as that was, Anneliese was a little flattered that two people liked her enough to fight over her, even if they were just little kids.

Still, Anneliese wanted some older company. A new best friend in Risembool, she was thinking. Then she'd have three best friends from three different places. Anneliese thought she'd found that in Katie Renbak. She really liked her now, though at first they'd gotten off to a rocky start. When they first met, Katie had asked if the Elrics were adopting Anneliese.

"No way," said Anneliese. "I'm just staying with them until my mom gets better. And anyway, Edward Elric is my real father."

"So?" said Katie testily. "Both my dads are my real dads, and they adopted me."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Does so! The people who gave birth to you, that doesn't always mean they're your real parents. My dads both love me and so they're my real dads."

Anneliese had known a girl who'd had two moms, but she couldn't imagine having two dads. Especially since Anneliese herself had never had any dads until just the day before. "That's still weird," Anneliese told Katie. "Everything about this place is weird."

If they'd been in the city, Anneliese could have easily avoided Katie after that. But Henry and Ellen were still the only kids Anneliese really knew in Risembool, so she had to play with them. They liked to play with other little kids, and the only other big kid who played with little kids was Katie. Eventually Anneliese got over her bad first impression and asked Katie why she didn't hang around kids her own age.

"Oh, I dunno," Katie had answered. "Little kids are cute. And funny. And I guess . . . you know what you're getting with them. They don't lie to you, or if they do you can almost always tell. You don't have to guess whether they like you or not."

"Is that why you don't like me?" asked Anneliese. "Because I'm bigger?"

"Nah. I just got mad at you because you said my dads weren't real."

"That's not what I said."

"Close enough. But whatever. It's not your fault you didn't know. And you're not like some people, who smile all fake and then change the subject when I bring up my dads. You're honest, at least."

"I don't get what it's like to have two dads. I don't even know what it's like to have one dad. Not really."

"Well, I've never had any moms, so I guess we're even."

Playing with Katie was a lot more fun after that. The little kids had divided into two solid football teams, which they called "Anneliese's team" and "Katie's team." The two girls quickly developed a friendly competition. And sometimes, they would leave the little kids behind and play just the two of them.

They still brought up their parents occasionally, and Katie had been appalled to hear that Anneliese's mother had gone to a hospital. "My daddy's a doctor and he doesn't like hospitals," she said. By then, Anneliese knew that Katie called one of her dads "daddy" and the other one "papa." "He says it's not smart to get a lot of sick people together. Diseases spread more easy that way."

"Batty told me that if my mom had stayed home, she would've gotten us sick."

"Yeah, sometimes my daddy will take a sick person to our house if they have little kids or an old person they might get sick. Right now we have a patient at home, but she's not sick. She's recovering from surgery. But most of the time he just tells a sick person's family members to give them their own room and clean it a lot and wash their hands a lot too. Like when he adopted me, a lot of kids at my orphanage were sick. He made a special room just for sick kids, and he and the orphanage workers were the only ones allowed in. I guess . . . that was the closest he got to working in a hospital." She had stopped looking at Anneliese then, and was staring at a far-off tree. "I was the only kid who tried to break the rules. I wanted to help take care of my friends. Doctor Renbak - my daddy - he got so mad at me! But eventually he let me help. He made me wear these big gloves - and I was only five, so my hands were tiny then. He made me wear a mask, too, and wash my hands and take extra baths. . . . I worked so hard to help my friends. But some of them still died."

Anneliese felt strange. She wanted to hug Katie, but the idea made her nervous for some reason. She said, "I tried to take care of my mom for as long as I could. But she kept getting worse. And then Batty made her go away and for a long time I had no idea what had happened to her. She didn't die, but it was still really hard."

"Yeah," said Katie. "It was hard. But then my daddy brought me home and promised to be there for me always. That made me feel a lot better." She looked at Anneliese. "And you, your dad brought you home, too, didn't he?"

Anneliese folded her arms and looked away. "I don't really think of him as my dad," she said. "I call him Ed, you know. I don't know how to feel about him."

"Do you like him?" asked Katie. "When he hugs you, do you feel safe and strong and happy?"

Anneliese didn't know how to answer that. The thought of hugging Ed made her queasy and it was hard to say why. Even hugging her mother - well, she liked hugging her mother. But she couldn't say she did it in order to feel safe. "I like him okay," Anneliese said, then changed the subject.

Anneliese had been in Risembool for about two weeks when she went inside Katie's house for the first time. Risembool summers were the kind you never wanted to spend indoors, so going inside to play was rare. But Katie had wanted to show Anneliese her paper doll collection, so in they went.

"Shh," Katie's papa told them as they came inside. "Your daddy's with our patient and we don't want to bother them." Katie nodded and led Anneliese to her bedroom.

Katie's paper dolls had the prettiest clothes. Anneliese's favorite was a lacy red number with buttons all along the sides. She put the dress on a doll that had short brown hair like hers. She and Katie made believe that two of the dolls were spies who went to fancy parties undercover. They were looking for a special locket that held a secret code inside it. The spies were about to break into the Duchess's powder room when Katie's papa invited them into the kitchen for a snack. Well, there were worse stopping places, when it came to make believe adventures.

But Anneliese never made it into the kitchen. When they stepped into the hallway outside Katie's room, Anneliese saw Katie's daddy pushing a wheelchair into the sitting room. And the woman sitting in the wheelchair - Anneliese knew her.

Anneliese pushed past Katie's papa, not caring that it was rude. She raced down the hall until she was standing right in front of Dr. Renbak's patient. "Mom," she said, trying her best not to cry. "You're here."

Mom threw her arms around Anneliese, holding her close to her chest. "Yes, sweetheart," she said to Anneliese. "I'm here."

Anneliese couldn't hold the tears back anymore.