Thirteen.

“So where’s Sunshine?”

“It’s a No Day.” It was the third one in a row.

“Do you worry about these No Days she has?” Polly asked.

“Yeah, a lot.”

“Do you think she’s hiding something?”

“Probably. But she doesn’t owe me the truth all the time.”

Polly sighed dramatically. “I go away to my grandma’s for one holiday vacation and now you have a new best friend.”

“Madison is not my best friend,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Then what is she?” Polly had trapped me in a corner with that setup.

I stuck out my tongue. “A normal friend.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

“Speaking of dating,” Polly went on, “Tom is taking me to dinner tomorrow.”

“Wow, third date. That practically makes him your boyfriend.”

“Practically.”

Tom and I didn’t know each other very well. He was in the yearbook club with Polly. He was tall. He liked colorful, mismatched, extravagant socks. He sucked with computers. I liked him. He felt like a real person. Sometimes, high schoolers don’t feel like real people.

“So you like him, then?” I asked Polly.

“I think I do, actually.”

“Then I’m happy for you. And if he does anything to hurt you, I’ll beat him up!”

Polly pushed the plate of pizza rolls over toward me. I took an extra one and thought back to what Madison said at the sushi restaurant.

“Hey, Polly. Do you think I eat enough?”

“Uh.” Well, that question clearly made her uncomfortable. “Usually?”

“Usually?”

“Well, I don’t know Jamie. You never eat breakfast, and you stopped bringing lunch to school. And I know you’re tight on money at home, so…”

“So you don’t think I eat enough.”

“I just want you to be healthy,” Polly corrected me, covering her bases. Maybe she thought I would get angry or upset, but I wasn’t. Actually, I was relieved.

“You’re right,” I said with a smile. “I’ll try to eat more.”

Polly watched as I took another pizza roll off her plate and shook her head. “Sunshine really has rubbed off on you, Jamie. Believe it or not.”

I think I believed it.

Friday was another No Day. I was starting to understand them a little more, even if I didn’t know exactly how or why they came about. When I walked into Biology, she wasn’t at my desk. She wasn’t talking to Amanda or the brunette girl, who I learned was named Claire. She was reading a textbook, but her eyes weren’t moving. They were dull today.

“Hey, are you busy after school?” I asked her at the tail end of Biology. She looked at me only for a second and nodded her head. These days, the No Days, would often overlap with school, but no one ever noticed. How did no one notice? It was night and day. But only two months ago, I couldn’t tell the difference either.

I knew what would happen if I asked if Madison was alright: she would don another forced smile, ramble on about the weather or how pencils work, and tell me over and over how fine she was. Sometimes I wondered if there really was a brighter Madison Bell, or if it was only this girl and the pane of rose tinted glass in front of her.

“Maybe tomorrow then,” I said, and vowed to get to the bottom of it.

On Saturday, my mom wanted me to run some errands. I asked Madison if she wanted to come along and she miraculously agreed. It seemed the streak of No Days had finally broken!

Everything was better with her company: the car engine more cooperative, the traffic lights less frustrating, the sky brighter and bluer.

“It’s such a nice day,” Madison said looking up at the sky. For January, the temperature was remarkably warm. The snow on the ground glistened in the heat of the sun.

“Is the sky that different when you’re colorblind?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I know when it’s a nice day and when it’s not.”

“Well we only have to do some grocery shopping. Then we can watch TV or something.”

Walmart was crowded on a Saturday afternoon. Extremely crowded. I grabbed a cart and went straight for the groceries.

“They have clothes here?” Madison asked.

“Yeah, they have everything. Have you never been to Walmart?”

She shook her head.

“Well, you’re in for a treat then.”

I grabbed some bread, snack cakes, cheese, juice, peanut butter, mac and cheese, washcloths, and a large bag of store-brand chips. When I satisfied my mom’s grocery list, I led the way to the other side of the store where the clothes were.

“This shirt is only eight dollars? But it’s so cute!” It had a butterfly on it.

“I can’t afford to buy anything else,” I said to her without looking up from the pajama rack, “but if you have money you should get it.”

I leafed through the clothes, knowing full well I couldn’t afford any of it, until I came across a yellow pajama set. The shirt had white trim over the sleeves and in the middle, written in cursive, were the lyrics: “You are my SUNSHINE”. I bit down on the inside of my cheek. Wow…

“I think you should get this one,” I said to Madison, and held up the pajama set to her chest. I’d never seen her in pajamas before. Maybe I never would, but if she bought these, I could imagine it.

“Alright,” she said simply, a real smile on her lips. “I think I will!”

The two of us walked through the kid’s clothing department on our way to the school supplies; I needed to buy some editing pens for the Writing Workshop.

“I know it’s silly to think one pen is vastly different than any other, but it’s a preference, you know?” I turned to Madison, but she wasn’t listening. Her eyes lingered on something at the end of the aisle, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I watched her for a moment: her bright, distracted gaze, lips slightly parted, a word, a thought, waiting on the tip of her tongue… until I crashed the shopping cart into one of the support pillars. It shocked Madison back into the present.

“Sorry,” I sighed. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

Madison nodded quietly, stealing one more glance at the kids’ clothes, before following me through office supplies.

I found my pens, but Madison hadn’t said anything in a long time. I thought she was lost in the dull area of her mind, but her eyes were bright and focused. She kept looking around on the shelves. I really didn’t understand this girl sometimes…

On the way to the checkout lanes, we passed the toy’s section and I lost Madison to one of the end-caps. I was about to call her name when she picked up a box from the shelf. She turned it over and read the back, her lips moving ever so slightly.

A minute later, her eyelids fluttered and she put the box back on the shelf. She looked up to find me, watching and waiting two aisles over. She put on one of those forced smiles and hurried to catch up to me.

“What were you looking at?” I asked.

“Just some stuff.”

“Anything fun?”

She shook her head. Hm…

“Would you want to look at toys with me?” I asked. She stared at me blankly, like she didn’t understand, so I admitted: “I like looking at the Legos.”

“Alright,” she said quietly, and I led the way back up the aisle past the end-cap she was looking at. Polly Pocket?

After a month, I felt like I’d made a breakthrough. Maybe it had some level of nostalgia to it, but these toys, this store… something brought out the brightness in her. I just had to figure out what.