The Kaleidoscope Sisters

by Ronnie K. Stephens

  Scientists will tell you that what make up a human are a series of genes twisted into a ladder, but Quinn knew better. What makes a human is the carousel of memories you leave behind. Life isn’t as short as people pretend. The end of a life has nothing to do with coffins and dirt and beating hearts; the end of life is a forgotten face, a voice that no longer has sound. Quinn understood this, and she made a promise to herself that she would never let the most human parts of Riley slip from her. She would keep Riley alive one or way or another.

  Chapter Twelve

  Friday was the last day to visit Dr. Howe for a brief checkup before the girls went back to school and Jane went back to work. Jane and Quinn watched Riley closely during the weeklong break, hesitant to accept the energetic and carefree person who had manifested over the past couple days. Ironic, Jane thought, that she had spent the last two years wishing Riley would bounce back, only to distrust the recovery when she did. Jane wondered if she would ever be able to look at Riley without seeing a coffin too small to hold all her daughter had become. How was a mother supposed to carry all this?

  Jane sighed, then went to her bedroom door and called down the hall. “Quinn, Riley—time to get moving! We’ve got an appointment with Dr. Howe in an hour!”

  Jane folded the robe over her body. Gooseflesh rose on her skin where the water clung. Jane walked to the bathroom where steam still filled the room like an early morning fog. Funny, she thought. The brain and the daylight both seemed to wake up in a haze. Of course she had coffee to help her along. She picked up her mug from the counter, laughing at the blue and pink words printed inside, just below the brim: YOU’RE MY FAVORITE UNICORN. Quinn had given her the mug for Christmas several years ago, a tradition that had begun almost by accident. Though the mug had a thin crack stretching down one side and a small chip in the handle, the gift remained Jane’s favorite.

  Jane finished getting ready, then went to the pantry to gather food for the girls. They wouldn’t have time for breakfast, so she pulled two energy bars from a box and set them on the counter. She had picked up a few opal apples from the farmers market. She washed two of them, one for her and one for the girls, then used the apple slicer to split each of them into eight even pieces. Riley would want almond butter with hers, so she spooned a little into a small Tupperware and snapped the lid shut. She placed all the food into a paper bag and hurried the girls along with another shout down the hall.

  * * *

  Jane laughed at the girls, both half asleep, as they stumbled into the kitchen.

  “Did you brush your teeth?”

  “Yes, mother,” Quinn grumbled.

  “Riley?”

  “Yep.”

  “All right. I’ve got some food to eat in the car. Grab a drink if you want one.”

  Quinn opened the refrigerator and stared into the light as though the shelves were covered in math equations. After a few moments, she reached for a caramel Frappuccino.

  “Get me a Yoohoo!” Riley said, her voice startling Quinn.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Quinn responded, sliding a yellow box from the back of the refrigerator. She started to hand the box to Riley, then thought better of the idea. “Better let me put the straw in for you. I’ll give you the drink in the car.”

  The three of them filed out the door and to the car, where Quinn elected to ride in the backseat with Riley. She would have an easier time helping Riley with her breakfast that way, but the decision was not without sacrifice. Being so far from the radio meant that their mother would get to choose what they listened to during the drive. This usually meant that the girls were subjected to a TED Talk or an audiobook.

  Quinn pushed a thin, white straw through the foil covering on Riley’s box of Yoohoo.

  “Remember not to squeeze the box, kid. You’ll get milk all over yourself.”

  Of course there wasn’t any actual milk in the box. Quinn chuckled at the blue lettering that proclaimed Yoohoo a “chocolate drink,” a perfectly ambiguous designation that only worked because few kids were discerning enough to question what was in their favorite foods.

  Riley took the box and began sipping while Quinn dug through the paper bag. The apples would be hardest to eat in the waiting room, so Quinn pulled them out and set them on the console between her and Riley. She then pulled the Tupperware from the bag, unsnapped the lid and set the almond butter in one of the cupholders on the console. She dipped an apple slice into the almond butter, then bit into the fruit. The sweet crispness of the apple was perfectly complemented by the creamy saltiness of the almond butter.

  “Thanks for remembering the almond butter, Mom,” Quinn called up to her mother.

  “Oh, do you like them with almond butter, too?” their mother replied. “I didn’t realize. I hope I packed enough for you both.”

  “Duh. I’m the one who showed Riley how good almond butter tastes on apples.”

  Quinn rolled her eyes at her mother, trying to mask her worry. Her mother had been forgetting things ever since Quinn returned from the other realm. At first Quinn had tried to explain away the memory loss, but the lapses were getting harder to ignore. Was this what Aimee meant when she said that things would be different?

  The girls finished their apples and started in on the energy bars, each staring out her window, trying to ignore the audiobook their mother had chosen for the ride. The narrator’s voice was nasally, though, and Quinn had a hard time blocking out the sound. Their mother preferred smaller streets to the major roadways since the busier roads were constantly under construction. This morning she wove through a side street with a private golf course on one side, sprawling houses with stucco walls and terra-cotta roof tiles on the other. The grass was overgrown, brushing against the side of the car whenever they passed a sharp bend in the road. Quinn thought the way this particular street snaked through the city center, despite the near-perfect grid that the city planners had designed, was wonderfully ironic.

  She had begun to notice the patterns that the city used to help people navigate. She saw that streets moving laterally, west to east and vice versa, followed a chronological sequence, decreasing as they approached downtown and increasing as they moved toward the neighboring town. The streets running north to south and vice versa were laid out alphabetically, so Quinn could anticipate the first letter of each street as they approached. This made remembering the street names a little easier. Currently, they were moving east on Sixty-First Street toward Yale Avenue, where the pediatric hospital sat atop a hill overlooking one of the larger parks in the city.

  Quinn had virtually memorized the various routes her mother took to get to the hospital, yet she seemed to notice something new each time. Distraction is a powerful thing, she thought. Pushing one thing from the mind set her senses on edge until every sound, every color popped like an overexposed photograph.

  At the doctor’s office, she flipped through Brown Bear, Brown Bear for the eighth time. Her mother and Riley had been with Dr. Howe for more than an hour. She tried not to be concerned, but she had been to enough appointments to know that Dr. Howe was seeing something he didn’t expect. Riley’s checkups rarely took more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Had the bulb healed her? Would their mom know that Quinn had done something? She was usually wary of Riley’s good days. Being even more suspicious if Riley showed unexpected improvement just made sense.

  * * *

  “Quinn? Quinn Willow?”

  The voice yanked Quinn from her thoughts. She looked up to see a woman in teal scrubs standing in the doorway between the waiting room and the patient rooms.

  “Yes, I’m Quinn.”

  “Your mother is asking for you. I’ll show you to her.” The woman smiled, and Quinn fixated on the hot-pink smudge across the woman’s front teeth.

  Quinn rose, walking deliberately slower than usual. Whatever had taken Dr. Howe so long, Quinn was sure that the news would be bad for Riley. She shuffled behind the nurse, who moved swiftly through the corridor and stopped so abruptly that Quin
n nearly ran into her.

  “Quinn!” she heard her mother shout from inside the room. “I’m so sorry we took so long, honey. Come in!” Jane’s voice sounded excited—the bulb must have worked! Quinn tried to hide her joy, pushing her eyebrows low and opening her mouth slightly, the way her theater teacher had taught her. She must have worn her confusion well, because her mother began rambling, the words pouring from her high-pitched and frantic.

  “Oh, you just won’t believe what Dr. Howe found, Quinn. Wait’ll you hear. Riley’s heart—he used a stethoscope, but he couldn’t hear anything—Riley’s heart is . . . better—that technician, oh, what’s his name—the ultrasound didn’t show any stenosis—”

  “Mom, slow down,” Quinn interjected. “You’re not making any sense.”

  Her mother stopped speaking and took a breath. “Riley’s heart shows no signs of stenosis.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’s better.”

  Dr. Howe entered the room carrying several papers that resembled the ultrasound Quinn had watched after Riley was born; something was different about them. Quinn studied the black-and-white masses, the bits of red and blue, but she couldn’t pinpoint the difference. Dr. Howe began to explain, marking on the printouts as he spoke.

  “With Riley’s heart, we’re used to seeing this narrow area here,” Dr. Howe gestured, drawing a black circle around one part of the white mass, “fail to siphon oxygenated blood into the bloodstream, allowing the blood to move back into the heart. Each of the valvuloplasties widened the area so that the blood would flow out into the bloodstream properly. Unfortunately, the walls of the heart thicken as Riley ages, and the last procedure was unsuccessful. That’s why you noticed Riley struggling more and more to catch her breath. Now, normally I’m able to listen to the blood flow and identify the severity of the prolapse—that is the amount of oxygenated and unoxygenated blood mixing—but today I wasn’t able to hear anything out of the ordinary. We checked Riley’s heart with the ultrasound, and that confirmed that the passage has somehow widened enough to filter the blood normally.”

  “How is that possible?” Jane asked. “I watched the ultrasound and I saw the pictures, but hearts just don’t . . . get better, do they?”

  “What I see on the screen is a healthy heart. That much I know. As far as how the heart healed, I’m as confused as you are.”

  Quinn had been studying the pictures, trying to discern what was different about them.

  “The purple!” she exclaimed. “There’s no purple in these pictures!”

  “That’s right,” Dr. Howe said, turning to Quinn. “Just two days ago she was showing major blowback struggling to move into the bloodstream. Now, for whatever reason, everything is simply normal.”

  Riley had been sitting on her mother’s lap, tracing the seams between floor tiles as though she were looking for some escape from the dizzying conversation. When she spoke, her voice was small and full of air.

  “Does this mean I’m—I’m not going to die?”

  Dr. Howe’s jaw tightened. He furrowed his brow, his face suddenly much darker than usual. “That’s a difficult question. What I see is a healthy heart. What I know is that conditions like yours don’t just correct themselves. There’s no way for me to tell you how your heart will grow and if the degeneration will return.”

  “But—right now, I’m okay?” Riley pushed.

  “Yes, right now you appear to be perfectly healthy.”

  Riley turned to her mother. “So, I’m going to turn seven? I get to have another birthday?”

  Their mother opened her mouth to respond, but she burst into tears before she could speak. She tightened her embrace around Riley, pulling Quinn to them with her free hand. The three of them cried together, and Quinn realized that, for the first time, she and her mother were letting Riley see their grief. They had spent the better part of her life mourning in private, after Riley had gone to bed. Then she recognized that they weren’t crying out of grief at all. After almost seven years, what they shared was pure, unbridled joy.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The ride home was quiet. Not the uncomfortable way people paused their conversations in elevators or the haunting silence of a school hallway after a student passes away—more like the way air seems to vibrate after a lightning strike. Quinn kept her eyes closed, focusing all of her energy on the absence of Riley’s labored breathing. She had become so accustomed to the ragged gasps that the car felt empty, as though they had left a part of the family in Dr. Howe’s office. She rode shotgun and felt safe in the front seat. More importantly, she felt like Riley was safe on her own. Quinn had protected Riley since her sister was old enough to crawl. What would she do now that Riley was better? She hadn’t considered what being a big sister meant beyond taking care of Riley and making sure she never felt alone.

  * * *

  Quinn and Riley returned to school the following Monday, and their mother went back to work. The three settled into their routine, with one noticeable difference: Riley had energy in the evenings, so she and Quinn busied themselves by going for walks, visiting the park, and wandering through the butterfly garden until dinner was ready. Riley had become adamant about bathing herself almost overnight, which Quinn appreciated at first, but after a few nights she realized how much she relied on her time with Riley. She suggested that Riley practice reading her chapter books out loud while Quinn followed along, which Riley also refused. Most sisters long for their younger siblings to become more independent; Quinn wasn’t most sisters. Riley no longer needed Quinn, and Quinn felt lost without someone to look after. Even her mom, who had leaned on Quinn so heavily the past year, didn’t have much time for her; she had taken up reading again, too, something Quinn hadn’t seen her do in several years. The house, which had so often felt more like a hospital than a home, was finally at peace. Everything was right in the world. Everything except Quinn.

  * * *

  Between her annual state tests and Riley’s drastic improvement over the last month, Quinn had all but forgotten about Aimee and Meelie until her English teacher introduced their last major assignment before summer.

  “You will all complete a research project to close out the year. Each student will select a historical figure from the jar on my desk. You’ll need to learn enough about your historical figure to impersonate them at an after-school event.”

  Screw this, Quinn thought. Why did teachers always have presentations at the end of the year?

  “You will interact with parents and answer their questions as part of your grade—”

  Quinn tried to tune out her teacher and focus on the assignment sheet in front of her. Though she loathed presentations, there was a bright spot: research was one of her favorite pastimes. According to her mother, she had been curious since the day she was born. She also preferred working alone since Riley’s condition often required spontaneous doctor’s visits. Of course, Riley hadn’t been to the doctor or had any trouble with strenuous activity in almost two months.

  “Quinn!” the girl next to her whispered, forcing the air from her lungs so that the sound exited like a sharp, ethereal slap.

  Quinn stared at the girl. Her face was familiar. Emmy, maybe? They had shared at least one class every year since first grade, but Quinn had long since accepted that she didn’t have space in her life for friends. Most people spoke to her with a sympathetic lilt that grated on her anyway.

  The girl flicked her thumb toward the teacher’s podium and made her eyes wide.

  “Ms. Willow,” the teacher said sternly.

  Quinn looked up to see her teacher holding out the jar. She walked to the front and drew a folded slip of paper, then returned to her seat. She waited until the other students turned their attention back to the teacher, then read the words: Amelia Earhart, pilot. The name sounded familiar.

  She thumbed the teleidoscope around her neck as she cycled through where she might have heard of Earhart. Instinctively, she raised the tube to her ey
e and peered into the lens. She often stared into the vast mulberry expanse to calm herself. Something about the juxtaposition of a wide, dust-colored section and the pair of dim circles hanging in the corners gave her peace.

  Quinn’s teacher flicked off the lights and began lecturing. Quinn searched for the light from the projector, aiming the teleidoscope toward the bulb until the picture inside the tube brightened. Then Quinn saw something she hadn’t noticed or, at the very least, didn’t remember: moving through the sandy semicircle at the bottom was a small, white speck. When Quinn squinted, the mysterious object took shape. She was staring at Meelie’s hen. The rest of the scene began to manifest into a single, concrete image: the exact spot where Quinn had entered the other realm.

  * * *

  “How was school?” Quinn’s mother asked when she and Riley returned from their usual walk.

  “Fine,” Quinn shrugged.

  “Well, don’t talk my ear off,” her mother chided.

  Quinn pulled plates and cups from the cabinet. “There’s nothing much to say. Classes are winding down. Teachers are tired. Students are tired. We’re all just counting the days to summer.”

  “So no homework?”

  “A little. I have to do some research for English.”

  “What about?”

  “Some woman from the Great Depression. A pilot or something.”

  “I always wondered what flying would be like. I used to pretend to be a pilot when I was Riley’s age, running around the backyard with goggles and a bicycle helmet strapped to my head.”