Prologue
Even when you’re expecting crazy things to happen, there are possibilities you’d never consider. A few weeks before my twelfth birthday, I woke up with no elbow in my left arm. My arm stuck out of my shoulder like a stick. My hand was still at the end, but there was no elbow where it should have been.
I pinched myself to make sure I was awake. Ow! I wiggled my fingers. Nothing surprising. I flung my feet to the floor, which should have felt cold, but my feet were mostly numb. Quietly, I crept into my brother, Noah’s room. He was still asleep. I curled up next to him, trying to get warm under his blanket. He was cool too. He turned over and looked at me. His face was a dull beige. Mine was probably the same.
“I think we’re done, Noah,” I said. It sounded dramatic, even to me, but it was true. We were fading more and more each day.
“Done? No. We can’t lose hope,” he replied, but I could tell he wasn’t all that hopeful.
“When did things start to go wrong, Megan?” he asked sadly, wiping the sleep from his eyes (at least he still had two elbows).
“When we moved to Israel and discovered the magic tunnel?” I asked.
“No, things were great then,” he answered. “Remember how much fun we had?” He smiled for a moment. “All the magic?”
“Things were good when we started school and Elise went for the clinical trial,” I said.
We’d had trouble with the Hebrew then, but exciting and fantastic things were happening… Our little sister, Elise, who has Cerebral Palsy, had started talking and was slowly learning to walk. Since then, we’d made friends and were sort-of managing with school.
“I think it started with the pumpkin spice lattes,” Noah said hesitantly.
I thought about it for a moment and nodded slowly. He was right. That was just about the time things had started to go downhill.
