He swallowed hard. “It did. But Elena needed a new wheelchair.”
I just stared at him, completely stunned.
“Her old chair was barely working,” he said quickly, the words rushing out of him. “The wheels kept sticking, and she kept pretending she was fine, but she wasn’t. She missed lunch twice last week because it took too long for her to get across the building.”
“Alejandro…”
But I couldn’t get a word in. Once he’d started speaking, there was no stopping him.
“Her family doesn’t have money for a new one right now,” his voice got smaller, filled with a heavy empathy. “So I sold the guitar.”
I sat down on the edge of his bed without meaning to. Elena was his classmate. She was a sweet girl with sharp eyes and a lovely smile, and she always had a book on her lap when I picked Alejandro up from school events. She had been paralyzed after an accident when she was little; I knew that much. But I didn’t know her chair had gotten that bad.
