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Summary: Part 3, Section 1

From the beginning of Part 3 to Klara’s conversation with Miss Helen

Josie’s coldness towards Klara after the Morgan Falls trip continues, and the Mother also begins shutting Klara out. A few days later, Josie’s health deteriorates. She spends her days in bed, resting and watched over by Melania Housekeeper, who tells Klara to go outside. Klara obeys, and on her walk around the property begins making a plan to ask the Sun to provide special nourishment for Josie in the way he once did for Beggarman and his dog. 

Dr Ryan visits Josie often, and she begins to grow stronger, spending her days sitting up in bed and drawing. The doctor’s visits lessen, and Rick comes instead. Klara sits off to the side in Josie’s room during these visits at the request of Melania Housekeeper, to stop any possibility of physical intimacy between the kids. Rick and Josie begin regularly to play the bubble game, in which Josie draws a picture and Rick has to add and fill in speech bubbles. The final products illustrate their inside jokes and memories together, until one day, when the mood between them grows tense, they begin communicating their emotional frustrations with one another through the drawings in the game. Tensions rise, as Josie tries to provoke Rick by drawing oblique and passive aggressive images that he refuses to write speech for. Things come to a head one afternoon when Josie starts to demand that Rick try to grow up and apply for one of the colleges that accept unlifted kids like him. She points out that their plan won’t work if Rick doesn’t try to enter society with her, and Rick reacts by filling in a picture with a passive aggressive message that hurts Josie’s feelings. He leaves, and Josie refuses to confide her feelings in Klara. 

Josie becomes more lethargic with Rick no longer visiting, until one morning when Klara comes into her room to find that she’s drawn a picture for Rick as a gift. Klara deduces what it is and offers to bring it to Rick for Josie, who accepts Klara’s offer. As Klara is leaving, Josie asks her if it is dull to live with a sick kid; Klara tells her that being with Josie is never dull, and that she is happy being Josie’s AF.

Klara goes to Rick’s house with Josie’s drawing. When she arrives, she finds the house to be dilapidated and clearly of lesser rank than Josie’s. Rick accepts the drawing and is elated upon seeing it; it is a picture of the kids together with the caption “Rick and Josie forever.” Klara tells Rick that Josie was unkind to him, but that her unkindness stemmed from a fear of losing him. Rick confesses that he feels as though Josie is trying to trap him, and asks how sick Josie is. Klara tells him that Josie is very sick, but that she has a plan to save her that involves going alone to Mr McBain’s barn. At that moment, Rick’s mother appears. Rick tries to keep her from talking to Klara for too long, but his mother—Miss Helen—goes on long rambling tangents. She tells Klara that she once saw Josie’s mother with Sal after Sal’s death, and Rick tries to get her to stop talking. Rick goes outside and his mother asks Klara to help Rick study for the college exams, and to convince Josie to push Rick harder to try and get into Atlas Brookings, a college that accepts unlifted kids.

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