LOVE HEALS

THE SEPARATION

Now that Lisa was 13, she was a delicate and beautiful girl.

Willow Grove was not rowdy, but it was not empty either. It panted softly through creaking floors, muffled jokes, and the muted hum of lives struggling to stitch themselves back together.

Lisa was learning how to be again, not just survive.

Her days broke down into small routines: breakfast in the same spot, drawing after group time, helping Rosa clean the art room. But the part she looked forward to most was quietly sitting with Sky and David.

Sky was all hard angles and quick smart, always drawing in black pencil, drawing savage women with crazy eyes. She never called anyone "friend." But she always saved Lisa's chair and growled if someone else sat in it.

David, though, was gentle. He loved patterns, order, and Lego towers. He didn't actually speak, but when he did, it was about colours, constellations, or why the number four was safe.

The three of them fell into a rhythm without needing to force it.

They took over the art room on a Saturday when it was raining outside. Sky was drawing a storm cloud behind a warrior girl. David was building a castle wall. Lisa sat watching them and then carefully pulled out her own pencil.

"What are you drawing?" asked Sky, glancing over.

Lisa hesitated. "Us.".

It was a simple sketch: three lanterns floating side by side in the night sky. One with jagged lines, one made of bricks, and one patched with pieces from others — but all glowing.

David leaned over. “That’s… cool.”

Sky smirked. “Okay, fine. You’ve got some skills.”

They watched a movie together in the standard room that night, curled under the same blanket, sharing popcorn. For the first time in a long while, Lisa laughed, not nervously, not softly. She laughed until her chest hurt.

Later, when the lights dimmed, she added to her notebook:

“They don’t ask me to be okay. They sit beside me when I’m not. Maybe that’s what friendship really is.”

She wasn't better yet. None of them were. But in that fragile space, built with pencils, plastic blocks, and compassion, they were building something

The news came on a hushed Thursday.

Rosa coaxed Sky and Lisa in after group time, her expression kind but unreadable.

"David's been matched with a family," she said softly. "He leaves next week."

Lisa blinked.

Sky frowned. "Seriously?"

"His new adoptive parents have been coming by for a while," Rosa continued. "You must have noticed."

They had. The nice woman and man with the puzzles, who consistently inquired about David's space maps. Lisa recalled him smiling when they were there. Smiling widely, the kind of smile he didn't quite often wear.

The three sat together later that evening in the art room. David was copying constellations onto a worksheet.

"So, you're leaving?" Sky asked, trying to sound aloof.

David nodded. "I think. I think it'll be fine. They're nice. They listen."

Lisa bit her lip. "That's good," she whispered.

But it didn't feel good.

It felt like being left behind once more. Like losing something warm, Lisa had only just started to believe in.

Sky had nothing much to talk about that evening. She just slammed shut her sketchbook.

The day came, and David showed up smiling to say goodbye to the people who had made his stay at Willow Grove a heaven. They greeted him with jubilant hugs but held back their tears so David could depart happily and smile.

The vacant chair stayed empty, and it felt like an absent piece of a puzzle that left everything out of kilter. David was the gentle middle, the calm when Sky got too strident and Lisa too quiet. Without him, the art room sounded too empty. The evenings drew out longer. The silences felt heavier.

But time, stubborn and slow, kept going.

Weeks passed.

Sky eventually came to sit in David's chair. Not in place of him. Simply because it was still within their group.

They began to do things differently. Not to forget him, but to continue on.

Sky taught Lisa how to use ink pens and charcoal. "You have soft lines. Let's ruin them a little," she teased, giving her a brush dipped in black paint.

Lisa, in turn, helped Sky write letters. Sky was terrible with words, but she wanted to send something to David. Lisa helped shape the sentences, filling in the spaces between Sky’s strong feelings and her tangled thoughts.

“Thanks,” Sky mumbled, cheeks pink. “Don’t tell anyone I’m capable of feelings.”

They still miss him; naturally, they did. But there was a life to get on with.

Lisa was 16, the sky was almost 17, and they were teenagers.

It happened on a Monday afternoon.

Lisa was sketching in the art room when Rosa showed up, her face pale and serious.

Rosa blurted it out fast, as if it hurt to say the words. "There was an incident…" Sky has been taken in."

The words hit like ice water.

Lisa's pencil slipped away. "What are you telling me? What did she do?"

"She was involved in a fight on the front steps. Someone was sent to the hospital. The police are alleging she had a knife."

"No," Lisa panted. "Sky would not.."

But she knew. Knew Sky's anger was wild and hot, especially if she felt cornered or ignored.

They had seen it explode before, in broken pencils, in slammed doors. But not like now.

The next day, Sky disappeared.

No calls. No visits. Just a vacant bed. An unfinished picture in art class. A silence more painful than any put-down had ever been able to cause.

Lisa spent hours and weeks in their mural room, eyes tracing the birds, stars, and lanterns they'd painted side by side. Sky's work had been zany and bright, a layer of black paint on top of all that soft stuff. Messy. Gorgeous. Real.

The others wouldn't talk about it.

But Lisa couldn't keep the pain from her chest away. Sky had been her rock after David left. Her shield. Her fire.

And now, she was gone, too.

Lisa found one day a crumpled note stuffed behind the radiator in Sky's old desk. It was a note written, scribbled, in all capitals:

"If I ever mess up, just know I tried my best, and you will always be my best friend. I'm sorry."

Tears twisted the words.

Lisa gently folded the note and tucked it into her notebook, next to the sketch of the three lanterns.

That night, she wrote:

"I don't think Sky is evil. I think she's hurt. I think the world disappointed her before she ever had a chance. And I won't forget her."

There was additional painting in the ensuing weeks, not to erase the pain, but to give it voice.

She added one more picture to the mural:

A broken lantern. Not shattered, but dark. Still clutched by two others.

The light blaze had not gone out.

Hope, too, as with Sky, was disordered.