Louisa barely looked like herself. She was pale, and Vivi didn’t mean just the girl’s tight-featured face. There was a white paper quality to her, a thin fragility that was as unlike Louisa as anything. Their unexpected meeting had started with flat greetings and petered out into awkward silence.

“I wish I could make you feel better.”

Louisa sighed impatiently. “It isn’t about you. It’s up to me to make me feel better. I’m the star of my own story.”

After a briefly unattractive fishface, Vivi said, “I don’t know what that means.”

“Now that does make me feel better.”