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watering the plants.
    I see her first. An hour has passed and Louis is busy weeding the flowers, his back to the gate, when I hear the whir of a bicycle going down the street. The girl is wearing a skirt over
leggings, a black shirt, a leather bag slung across her chest. She could have been any other girl, if not for the magenta hair.
    A moment later, her bike tilts to the ground and she is falling. She must have bounced on a pothole, a tiny hump. I can’t see a thing, except for her legs under the wheels. She has
screamed before the spill—a loud, crisp
Ah!
—and now she is groaning, trying to push herself up. She starts to cry. She produces a soft sound like that of an abandoned kitten.
    Louis runs to the gate when he hears her scream. He wraps his fingers around the gate’s bars.
Don’t let her in,
I implore to him in my head.
Don’t talk to
her.
    Then Louis does the one thing he has never done ever since helping me into this house: he opens the gate and steps out.
    Louis bends over the girl, hands on his knees, and talks to her. The girl stops crying long enough to raise her head and reply. He offers his hands and helps her up. She’s nearly as tall
as Louis. She wobbles on her feet. They look down at the same time, presumably at her torn leggings, the wounds on her legs.
    Louis lets her hold his arm. He looks up, sees me through the bedroom window. I shake my head—
Don’t. Let. Her. In.
—even though I already know what he is going to do.
    He lets her in.
    He swings the gate as wide as it would go and tells her something. An invitation. A permission. The magenta-haired girl hesitates for a second, looking at the gate, probably remembering the
first time she was there.
    She steps across the perimeter—I see her exhale, she has held her breath before stepping through—and walks down the driveway with her head bowed. She sits on the porch steps. Louis
rights the bicycle and wheels it into the front yard.
    I watch all this with growing horror. When the girl glances over her shoulder, I duck and wheel away from the window like a criminal.
    I hear them outside my door. They’re in the living room. “I’m sorry to put you out like this,” the girl says. “Thanks for helping.” The last word dissolves
into sobs. “I’m so sorry.”
    “It’s all right,” Louis says. “My name is Louis.”
    “Ivy,” the girl says, her voice shaking.
    “Why don’t you sit here, Ivy?” Louis says. “I’ll be back with the first-aid kit and a glass of water.”
    I have been hoping to catch Louis mid-stride, but by the time I open the door and wheel out, he is already in the kitchen, and I’m left facing the girl. She is sitting on one of the chairs
and staring into space.
    She turns to me and her shoulders jerk in surprise. I see her glance quickly at my bound leg. “Oh,” she says. “Hello.”
    “Hi,” I say.
    Louis sweeps in at that moment, carrying the kit and a glass of water. He hands the water to Ivy.
    “This is my brother, Jonah,” he says.
    “Hi,” Ivy says.
    “Hi,” I say again, like we’re a broken record. “Listen, I need to talk to my brother for a minute.”
    Louis joins me in the room. “What?” he whispers after closing the door.
    “What do you mean ‘what’?” I point to the living room. “What are you doing?”
    “You can’t expect me to just leave her on the ground,” he says. “She could hardly walk.”
    “But she
knows
Meryl. Why would you even invite her inside?”
    Louis shakes his head and walks out to tend to his new patient.
    When I leave my room, Ivy is taping down the gauze Louis holds in place on the large wound on her knee. Her leggings are on the floor. Her left elbow is bright with topical antiseptic.
    “Damn,” Ivy says, sniffling. “Those were new leggings.” She chuckles weakly.
    Louis says she can’t ride back on the bicycle again and offers to call her a cab. Ivy and I sit in awkward silence as Louis talks on the phone. She looks antsy and