I remember the first time I saw her.
She was walking along the pavement with her mother, her small hand tucked into the larger one. Her hair was a startling, pure white. It wasn't the yellowish white of old paper, nor the dull gray-white of my grandmother's hair. It was white like fresh milk, like the heavy clouds that hung over the city in winter, or like nothing I had ever seen before.
Her eyes were green. Not the green of ordinary grass, the leaves on the plane trees, or even the brightest crayon in my box. They were an entirely different shade. A green so deep and still that I stopped talking in the middle of a long sentence.
I had been telling my mother something about the market, the price of fish, and whatever else had been on my mind. But the moment I saw her, all the words simply vanished.
I didn't know what to do with my hands. I suddenly felt awkward and far too large standing there. I put my hands behind my back and pressed my lips together. I waited for her to say something, but she only watched me.
Her name was Nimue.
It was a difficult name to say at first. My own name was difficult too. People got it wrong all the time. They called me Her-me-own or Her-me-oh-nee.
It was actually Her-my-oh-nee.
I told her she could call me Mione. My mother called me that, and it felt right hearing it from her too.
Her mother explained that Nimue was a Welsh name meaning Lady of the Lake. I didn't know what that meant back then. I looked it up later in one of my heavy books at home, carefully tracing the letters with my finger.
. . .
We played hopscotch in her little garden. She drew the squares in the dark dirt with a stone she had found. They were much too small for our feet to land in, so I told her they wouldn't work.
She listened and made them bigger, scraping the stone across the earth.
I went first to show her how to play. She went second, stepping on the chalky lines three times in a row. On the fourth attempt, she finally made it without missing.
She gave me a genuine smile, and I smiled back.
Her fox was called Cinder. I asked if his name had something to do with fire. She said it did.
I reached out and touched his fur. It was thick and surprisingly soft. He let me stroke him, so I told Nimue that he liked me.
She said he liked everyone.
I knew she was lying.
I could tell from the way he watched people. Animals were selective. I had read that somewhere in a biology book. Or perhaps I simply knew it was true.
. . .
After that first visit, we played together almost every day. We met three times a week, sometimes four.
I brought my books with me. I brought books about everything I could find: the planets in the solar system, the ancient pyramids, and the strange creatures living in the deepest parts of the ocean, where sunlight never reached.
I wanted to show her all of it. I wanted her to know every single thing I knew so we could talk about them together.
She listened to me. She always listened.
But sometimes, while I was talking, she would simply stop listening. I could see the change in her expression. I noticed the way her eyes became perfectly still and how her mouth pressed into a thin, hard line.
I didn't understand it at first.
I was telling her things. Important things. Things she needed to know to understand the world. That was what I told myself. It was what I always told myself whenever I felt the urge to speak.
She once told me that she didn't like the way I talked to her.
It happened in her garden while we were sitting beneath the shade of a tree. I was telling her about the pyramids in Egypt. I explained the ramps, the enormous stones, and the workers who had built them without modern machines.
I was talking quickly. I was always talking quickly. I didn't know how to speak slowly. The words came pouring out of me like water from a tap I couldn't turn off.
She told me I talked too much. She said my tone was wrong. She said I sounded as though I thought she didn't know anything at all.
I hadn't meant it that way. I never did.
I just wanted her to know what I knew. I wanted everyone to know. I felt that if people knew enough, they wouldn't look at me as though I were strange. They wouldn't look at me as though I were too much for them to handle. They wouldn't treat me like something they needed to explain to other people.
I told her I would try to change.
And I really did try.
For two days, I tried very hard. I counted my words in my head. I slowed down my voice. I asked her questions instead of simply giving her answers.
It felt as though I were holding my breath the entire time. Like I was running in place and getting nowhere.
On the third day, we were building a castle out of wooden blocks on the floor. She was making a tall tower, and I told her she was putting the blocks in the wrong order because of their weight.
The words escaped before I could catch them. They came out fast and sharp, sounding exactly as they always did.
She didn't say anything.
She simply stopped moving, placed the wooden block in her hand on the floor, and looked at me.
It was that look.
The one that came from somewhere deep inside her. The one that said stop without making a single sound.
Her eyes were green. They weren't angry, and they weren't sad. They were simply green and perfectly still.
I stopped talking immediately.
My face grew terribly hot. I looked down at the wooden blocks, picked one up, and put it back down. I didn't say anything else. I couldn't.
She returned to building her tower. She didn't tell me she was angry. She didn't say anything at all.
She simply let me sit there with my face burning, my hands feeling empty, and all my words stuck in my throat.
It happened again after that.
And again.
I would get excited about some new fact and forget my promise. The words would come out too quickly, too sharply, and in far too great a number.
Then she would look at me with that still gaze.
It wasn't anger. It wasn't anything I knew how to name. She would simply go quiet and wait for me to stop.
And I always stopped.
My face would burn with shame. I would look at the ground and try to make myself smaller. I would try to stay quiet.
Every single time, I promised myself I would do better. I promised I would hold my words back a little longer. I promised I would let her speak first. I promised I would become the kind of friend who listened instead of the kind who talked all the time.
And then I would forget again.
. . .
The day we took pictures, the sunlight was a deep gold, and the shadows stretching across the street were long.
My mother braided my hair into two neat plaits, pulling them tight and securing them carefully. She said I looked like a schoolgirl in a book.
I didn't know what that meant. I only knew that I wanted my hair to stay in place for once. I wanted to look nice for the photograph.
Nimue stood on the steps of the house with the green door. She wore a blue dress and smiled at us.
It was a real smile. The kind she gave when everything was exactly right.
We took three pictures.
The first was of all of them. The Keiths. Her father, her mother, her aunt, and Nimue. They stood close together, looking as though being close was the most natural thing in the world. As though they had always been that way.
The second photograph was of all of us together. My parents stood beside her parents, and I stood beside her. Her shoulder pressed against my arm.
The camera clicked.
The third photograph was just the two of us.
The girls, her aunt had said.
Only Nimue and me.
She took my hand in hers. Her fingers were warm. She told me to look at the camera and asked me to smile.
. . .
The next morning, she was leaving.
I knew because the door of the house with the green door was open, and a car was waiting in the street. I knew because my mother had told us we should go and see them off.
And I knew because my heart was beating too fast, and my hands felt cold.
She stood on the doorstep with her bag at her feet.
She was really leaving.
She took my hand. Her fingers were warm.
She said my name.
Mione.
She told me I was her friend.
She told me she was never angry with me.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry for everything. I wanted to tell her I would try harder. I wanted to tell her I would become a better person.
I wanted to ask her to stay.
But I didn't say any of those things.
I just stood there with her hand in mine. My throat felt tight, and my eyes were burning.
She told me that the way I talked made her feel small. That it made her feel as though she didn't matter. That it made her feel like I was looking down on her.
I hadn't known.
I hadn't known any of that. I had never realized it.
I just wanted her to know the things I knew. I wanted everyone to know. I wanted to be the one who knew the most, the one who had all the answers, the one who could explain the world to everyone else.
I hadn't known it hurt her. I hadn't known it made her feel small.
She told me that if I kept talking that way, nobody would want to be my friend.
Then she said she didn't want me to become sad.
She wiped my face with her thumb. Her hand was small, and her thumb felt warm against my skin. Then she hugged me and told me to be good.
I watched her climb into the car. I watched it drive away down the street. I stood by the iron gate, waving until it turned the corner and disappeared.
After that, the street was empty.
The house with the green door was quiet.
. . .
For days after she left, I kept looking at that house.
I looked every morning and every afternoon. I even looked before going to bed. I would stand by the window in my room and stare at the green door, waiting for it to open.
I waited for a little girl with white hair to come outside and wave at me. I wanted her to run down the path, take my hand, and say, "Let's play."
But the door never opened.
The street remained quiet. The house stayed empty.
I put our photograph on my nightstand. The one with just the two of us. Nimue and me, standing side by side with her hand in mine. Both of us smiling at the camera.
I looked at it as soon as I woke up and again just before I went to sleep. I traced her face with my finger, touching her white hair, her green eyes, and her small smile.
I thought about everything she had told me. I thought about the way I spoke and how it made her feel.
After that, I tried to catch myself whenever I started talking too much. When I spoke too quickly, I stopped. When my voice grew sharp, I pressed my lips together. When I started explaining something nobody had asked about, I closed my mouth and let the words die in my throat.
It was hard.
Harder than anything I had ever done before.
The words always wanted to come out. They pressed against the back of my teeth, crowded my tongue, and begged to be spoken.
But I held them back.
I tried.
. . .
My mother came into my room on a Thursday.
I hadn't heard the door open. I was sitting on the edge of my bed, holding the framed photograph tightly in both hands. My thumb rested against Nimue's face, and the glass had grown warm from the heat of my fingers.
I didn't know how long I had been sitting there in silence, staring at that frozen moment of the two of us smiling.
My mother sat beside me. The mattress dipped beneath her weight, and the springs gave a soft, familiar squeak. She placed a hand on my knee, her palm steady and comforting through the fabric of my pajamas.
"You miss her," she said.
I gave a small nod, not trusting myself to speak.
She gently took the photograph from my hands and placed it on the nightstand, angling it so it would catch the light. Then she set down a ceramic cup of hot chocolate. Steam curled into the air in thin white ribbons. Beside it, she placed a single chocolate biscuit on a small floral plate.
I looked at the photograph again. At Nimue's face, captured in that little moment. At the way her hand was tucked firmly into mine.
My mother let out a long, heavy sigh.
It was the kind of sigh she made when she was about to tell me something she didn't want to say. The same sound she made before explaining why I couldn't go to a party or why a favorite toy couldn't be repaired.
"Besides," she said, "you shouldn't fixate on one thing. You know the Keiths are traveling, don't you? They are spending the whole year going through England and France."
I looked up at her, my eyes wide.
I hadn't known that.
Nimue hadn't told me. She had only said they were going to a farm. She had mentioned that perhaps I would see her again the following year.
She hadn't told me they would be gone for an entire year.
My mother gently patted my head, her hand warm against my curls.
"Her family wants her to see the world. They want her to experience it while she still can."
Something cold and heavy settled in my chest. A sharp, stinging sensation began to build behind my eyes.
"What do you mean, while she still can?"
My mother looked at me.
Her expression reminded me of the one she had worn when the old neighborhood cat died. It was the same face she made when I asked why the children in my storybooks didn't have mothers.
It was an expression that tried to remain strong but looked terribly tired.
"Nimue has been ill. She has been ill for a very long time. Before this year, she had never left her home. She had never met any other children either."
I knew that part of the story.
She had told me about it at the park one afternoon while I was on the swing and Nimue was swinging beside me. I had heard the words then, filing them away in my mind like a historical fact or a line from a poem.
I hadn't thought about what they really meant.
"Last year, she underwent a treatment. Something went wrong. Her body reacted badly to the medicine. She was unconscious for three days and couldn't walk for an entire week. It took a month before she was truly herself again."
My mother's voice was very soft. It was the same gentle tone she used when reading me a bedtime story after a long day. The same voice she used when I was ill and she sat beside my bed, resting her hand against my forehead to check for a fever.
"In the past, children with her condition didn't always survive. They are trying new things now, and there are new treatments available. She has another one scheduled for next year, when she turns five."
My mother paused.
"This one is more dangerous than the last. It always has been. There's a chance she might not survive it."
I didn't cry at first.
I sat there with my hands clenched in my lap. My mother's words echoed through my ears, repeating themselves over and over.
I looked at the photograph on my nightstand. I looked at Nimue's small, quiet smile.
I thought about her hand in mine. I thought about the way she said my name, making each syllable sound special. I remembered how she had wiped away my tears with her thumb at the front gate.
And then I cried.
I cried the way I had when I was very little and fell on the pavement, scraping my knee until it bled. Back then, I hadn't known how to make the pain stop.
It felt just like that.
I cried with my whole body.
My shoulders shook with every sob. My breathing broke into ragged, wet gasps. My face grew hot and soaked with tears, and my throat turned raw from the sound of my own crying.
My mother held me.
She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me against her chest. The wool of her sweater felt slightly scratchy against my cheek, but I didn't mind. She didn't tell me to stop crying. She didn't say everything would be okay.
She simply held me while I cried and cried and cried until the room grew dark.
I cried until I felt completely empty inside. I cried until I was too exhausted to move a single muscle. I cried until my eyes were swollen and red, my nose was running, and my throat hurt.
I cried until I couldn't cry anymore.
I lay on my bed with my mother's hand resting on my back, her fingers moving in slow, comforting circles. The room was dark now. The photograph was still on the nightstand, though I could only make out its outline.
Nimue was smiling in the picture.
Nimue was holding my hand.
And Nimue was somewhere on a farm, or in a city, or inside a car traveling along a road that led somewhere I couldn't follow.
I thought about the way she looked at me whenever I talked too quickly, when my voice became sharp, or when my words piled on top of one another like wooden blocks ready to fall.
She had never looked at me as though I were strange. She had never looked at me as though I were too much for her to handle.
She looked at me as though she were waiting for me to stop.
Not because she wanted to leave, but because she wanted to hear me.
She wanted to really listen to me.
It was what I had always wanted from everyone else.
I closed my eyes. Her face appeared in the darkness. Her white hair, her green eyes, and that little, secret smile.
"Come back," I whispered.
The room was quiet. The house was dark. The street was empty.
. . .
Three days passed.
Then four.
Then five.
Before long, two whole weeks had passed since the car had turned the corner and disappeared.
Hermione found herself standing by the window more often than not. She would climb onto the little wooden stool to reach the windowsill, then press her forehead against the cool glass until her skin felt numb. Her breath fogged the pane in a small, translucent circle, disappearing and reappearing with every exhale.
Across the street, the house with the green door remained perfectly still. The curtains were drawn tightly, showing only their pale backs to the world. Nobody came out onto the doorstep. Nobody walked down the path.
The street seemed larger and emptier than it had ever been.
Hermione also began stopping in the middle of her sentences.
Her mouth would be open, the words already halfway out, but then she would simply close it. She would press her lips into a thin line and let silence fill the space where her voice should have been.
Whenever she did that, the air in the room seemed to grow heavier.
Her mother noticed the change.
Jean noticed everything about her daughter, from the way she held her books to the way she tied her shoes. She began to ask questions, but sometimes stopped herself before the words could form. Instead, she would simply watch from the doorway and wait.
Hermione tried talking about the planets as she usually did. She wanted to mention Saturn's rings, Jupiter's ancient storm, and the enormous mountain on Mars that stood three times taller than Mount Everest.
But she only made it halfway through her first sentence before the words died.
Her eyes drifted toward the house with the green door. She looked at the particular window where Nimue had stood on her last day, her little hand pressed flat against the glass.
Jean walked over and rested a steady hand on her daughter's shoulder.
"Hermione."
The girl blinked, bringing her eyes back to her mother's face.
"What?"
"You stopped talking again."
Hermione lowered her gaze to her hands. They were empty and felt strangely heavy in her lap. There was no book for her to hold, no paper or pencil to keep them occupied.
They simply rested on the table, open and doing nothing.
"I was thinking," Hermione whispered.
Her mother didn't ask what she was thinking about.
She already knew.
At night, Hermione lay in the darkness of her bedroom, looking at the photograph on her nightstand. Moonlight fell across the frame, allowing her to study Nimue's face.
She looked at Nimue's hand tucked into hers and the little, secret smile on her friend's lips.
Hermione traced the glass with her index finger. It felt smooth and cold beneath her touch. She followed the delicate outline of Nimue's cheek and the white hair that looked almost like silk in the photograph.
She thought about all the things she would tell Nimue when they met again.
She thought about the planets, the pyramids, and the strange, glowing creatures living in the deepest parts of the sea.
She thought about how she would speak this time.
She would be slower. She would be more careful.
She imagined Nimue listening to her, her head tilted slightly to one side and her green eyes following Hermione's moving lips.
Then she thought about the farm where Nimue was staying. She pictured wide fields and farm animals. She imagined Nimue walking through tall grass, her white hair catching the sunlight as her little hand brushed over the soft woolly backs of sheep.
Then she thought about next year.
She thought about Nimue turning five. She thought about the treatment her mother had mentioned and the possibility that Nimue might never return.
Hermione buried her face in the softness of her pillow.
She didn't cry.
She felt as though she had cried enough for an entire lifetime.
She simply lay there with her eyes wide open, the photograph resting on her nightstand and the image of the green door etched into her mind.
She waited for morning.
. . .
The next morning, Jean found her standing by the window again.
The sun was already up, casting long shadows across the pavement. The street was slowly coming to life, with the distant sound of an engine breaking the morning quiet.
But the house with the green door remained still and silent.
"Mione."
The girl turned her head.
Her mother stood in the doorway, holding a steaming cup of tea. Her hair hung loose over her shoulders, and her face looked soft and tired.
"Come down for breakfast, sweetheart."
Hermione looked back at the house across the street. She stared at the green door and the empty doorstep where they had stood together for the photograph.
"She said she would come back," Hermione said. "She said maybe next year."
Jean crossed the room, her footsteps soft against the carpet. She stopped beside her daughter and placed a hand on her shoulder, her thumb rubbing a small, comforting circle.
"Maybe."
"Do you think she will?"
Her mother remained quiet for a long moment. She looked at the house with the green door, then down the length of the street, where the morning sun was slowly climbing above the brick rooftops.
"I think she will try," Jean finally said. "I think she will try very hard to come back to you."
Hermione looked up at her mother's face.
She searched for the thing she always looked for whenever she wasn't sure someone was telling her the truth. She wanted to find the difference between something real and something said merely to make her feel better.
Jean's eyes were steady and clear. Her hand felt warm and reassuring on Hermione's shoulder. Her expression was the one she wore when she was telling Hermione something she genuinely believed to be true.
Hermione looked back at the house one last time.
She saw the green door, the empty doorstep, and the window where Nimue had once stood with her hand pressed against the glass.
"Okay," she said.
She took her mother's hand, her small fingers fitting inside Jean's palm.
Then they went downstairs to have breakfast together.