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Center. I recognize the place right away—the hospital is close to Yorktown Heights, and I go there for all my checkups and treatments. Specifically, I’m in a private room in the children’s hospital. The building is sleek and modern, and several of the doctors there specialize in treating muscular dystrophy.
    The last thing I remember is riding in the ambulance. The paramedics must’ve sedated me after we left the Unicorp lab. Now an oxygen mask is strapped to my face and an IV tube hooked to my useless left arm. My chest still hurts, but not as much as before.
    I feel strong enough to breathe on my own, so I reach for the mask with my good hand and take it off. Then I turn my head on the pillow and look around. Aside from the machines monitoring my vital signs, the room is empty. I’m not surprised that my mom isn’t here—she hates coming to the hospital because it upsets her so much—but I thought I’d see Dad. He was in the ambulance with me, stroking my hair as the paramedics put me to sleep.
    I lift my head and look for the call button to summon a nurse. Before I can find it, the door to the room opens. I expect to see my father, but instead a bald girl in a hospital gown steps inside.
    The girl quickly shuts the door behind her. She’s skinny and short, only five feet tall, and about the same age as me. As I look closer I notice she isn’t completely bald—there’s some black fuzz at the top of her head. There’s also something wrong with the left side of her face. Her left eye looks swollen, almost squeezed shut, and her lips are bunched in the left corner of her mouth. I don’t know what kind of illness she has, but it looks serious.
    As the girl steps toward my bed, her bunched lips form a lopsided smile. “I knew it,” she mutters, slurring her words a bit. “You’re Adam Armstrong, aren’t you?”
    â€œWhat?” My throat is sore. I can barely whisper. “How do you—”
    â€œI was a year behind you at Yorktown High.” She stops a few feet from my bed. “I’m Shannon Gibbs, remember? We were in the same biology class.”
    I study her face, trying to place it. When I took biology in tenth grade there was a petite freshman girl who hardly talked to the other students but constantly pestered the teacher with questions. I didn’t pay much attention to her because she was a year younger, but I noticed she was smart. She was the only kid in biology who got higher grades than me.
    â€œOkay, hold on, I’m remembering something. Did you do an extra-credit report? On the nervous system?”
    Her smile broadens. “Yep, that was me.”
    â€œYou made those clay models, right? Of the brain and the spinal cord?”
    Shannon laughs. “Oh God, those models! I was up all night making them.”
    â€œIt was worth the effort. They were very realistic. Truly disgusting.”
    â€œAnd wouldn’t you know it? That’s where I got my tumor. Right where the brain connects to the spinal cord. Ironic, huh?” She taps the back of her head, just above the neck. “The cancer messed up the nerves in my face, and the chemo made my hair fall out. That explains my lovely Frankenstein look.” She does a monster imitation, widening her eyes and flailing her arms. Then she points at me. “I remember your report too. Wasn’t it also about the brain?”
    I nod. “The brain’s limbic system. Where all our emotions come from. The hippocampus, the amygdala, and the cingulate gyrus. The tangled tongue-twisters of hate and love.”
    â€œYeah, I remember you put a ton of jokes in the report. You were funny. Definitely the funniest guy in the class.”
    That was my strategy back then, playing the class clown. I cracked jokes and drove my wheelchair at breakneck speed down the hallways and generally behaved like an idiot. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me,