Good Sister (9781250047786)

by Kain, Jamie

  This makes no sense. It’s like a thunderstorm raging overhead, clouds black and heavy with water, but no rain coming down.

  I want to cry, need to cry, but the storm won’t come.

  “You still okay?” Sin says, more solicitous than usual, as he wipes the tattoo clean one last time.

  I leave my foot propped up on his lap because I know he still needs to put some antibacterial stuff on it.

  “I’m fine,” I lie.

  He knows I’m not. “I mean about Sarah. You gotta go to the funeral after this, right?”

  I don’t know what to say. Do I have to go? What will happen if I don’t?

  If I don’t mourn Sarah’s death, does that mean she’s not really dead?

  If only I had such control.

  Before I left the house this morning, Lena had given me a business card with the address of the memorial service and told me to be there at noon. It was already twelve thirty.

  “You can’t skip your own sister’s funeral.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  He stops putting away his supplies and gives me a look. “That’s messed up.”

  “I don’t believe she’s really dead, so I’m not going to mourn.”

  I sound ridiculous now, and I’m not fooling Sin for a second, but I don’t want to say the stuff that needs to be said. Instead, I shrug and try to look defiant.

  “You mean like you think someone else’s body was just found out at the coast, and that someone just happened to look exactly like Sarah?”

  I don’t expect him to argue with me, and it takes me by surprise. I guess I was hoping I’d get sympathy, not a bitchy attitude.

  “No, I mean … I don’t know what I mean.”

  It was easy to love Sarah, with her angelic blond beauty and her sweet, long-suffering nature. If I had been creating her life, the movie version, I couldn’t have cast anyone more perfect for the role of cancer sufferer than Sarah Kinsey. And in the movie version, if Sarah had to die, it would have been from cancer, just like she was supposed to, or else she’d live on happily ever after. She would not have died unexpectedly from a fall off a cliff.

  Sarah couldn’t be gone. She had to still be out there somewhere, even if it was only her disembodied spirit, floating off into forever.

  “I’ve been wondering something,” he says. “But don’t get mad at me for saying it, okay?”

  “What?”

  “Do you think she really fell by accident?”

  “Of course,” I say, the one sounding bitchy now. “She wouldn’t like … jump, or anything. And Rachel was there. She saw her fall.”

  “Maybe she faked it. Like maybe her cancer came back, or she was worried it had returned, and she didn’t tell anyone. That would be a pretty good reason to be depressed and jump off a cliff.”

  But Lena would have known if Sarah had been sick again.

  Even if it had been true, it wasn’t a good reason for Sarah. She’d lived with the disease for so much of her life, for her it was as much a fact about herself as having blue eyes and blond hair. She was thankful for each day she had alive in a way that only a cancer survivor could be.

  “She. Wasn’t. Depressed.”

  But I am not as convinced as I try to sound. The police—and everyone else—took Rachel’s story of Sarah’s accidental fall at face value. They’d had no reason to question it, and no evidence suggested anything but yet another tragic accident on the treacherous Marin coast. The newspaper reported such stories with horrible regularity.

  Our conversation is interrupted by the aroma of weed and Tristan’s entrance into the room. All the air whooshes from my lungs as I take in the sight of him, shirtless and stoned, his dreadlocked, brown hair pulled back into a messy ponytail.

  I am so in love with him, I never manage to produce a coherent sentence when he’s around. Yes, in love. It’s true. For me and nearly every other girl in this corner of Marin County.

  Though I’m at a distinct disadvantage to the rest of them since I’ve only known him for two years, and I’m not even sure he realizes in any concrete way that I exist.

  He goes to the refrigerator without saying a word, removes a glass of something green and sludgy that I know from experience is the barely palatable spinach smoothie their mother, Jess, makes as her specialty breakfast drink, then leaves the room without looking at or acknowledging either of us.

  I’d strip naked for him in a second. I know this about myself. I’m presently, officially, a virgin, but I’d give it up for him. That’s sort of been my secret plan since the first time I laid eyes on him.

  Totally inappropriate thoughts, given the occasion, and that at this very moment I’m supposed to be standing around near my sister’s urn and contemplating the brevity of life.

  Now that Tristan is gone, Sin says, “Have you ever thought it was possible somebody pushed her?”

  This idea startles me, then makes me want to throw up, because I haven’t considered it for even a second. I’m still stuck in the denial stage, looking for some way to make Sarah alive again.

  But I know this is beyond stupid. “No! Of course not. Rachel was there with her, for God’s sake.”

  Sin says nothing because he thinks my sister Rachel is about as trustworthy as a rattlesnake. She may have a petty, vindictive streak, but she’s not a murderer. Not in a million years.

  “Hmm,” he finally murmurs.

  “What? What does that mean?”

  “The trail where she fell isn’t all that narrow, at least not that I can remember. It’s hard to imagine her falling accidentally.”

  I want to stab him in the hand with one of the tattoo needles for saying that.

  Since this isn’t an option, I finally bring up the other reason I’ve come here today besides getting a tattoo. “Will you go with me, to the funeral?”

  “Sure,” Sin says casually as he digs around for something in his tackle box full of tattoo stuff. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  He pulls out a little packet of antibacterial ointment, and a bandage.

  “No bandage,” I say. “I want to be able to see it.”

  He rubs the ointment on my skin, and when he’s done, a large, glistening black star, two inches around, surrounded by a spray of smaller stars, adorns my ankle.

  Black, like darkness. Black, like Tristan’s eyes. Black, like the weight in my chest that feels as if it might bury me alive.

  Three

  Rachel Anne Kinsey

  I’ve never been to a funeral before. I look at the little crap brochure someone has handed me with my sister’s name printed on the front in fancy script. Sarah Jade Kinsey. Printed below that are the dates of her birth and death, dates I know too damn well and don’t want to be reminded of.

  Then, a quote somebody must have thought to write down for just this occasion while Sarah was still alive, or maybe it was something she’d written herself in a journal (it would be just our mother’s style to read it) or a school essay. It was some shit she’d once said when asked how she felt about dying: I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of forgetting to live.

  Right on, Sis. That Sarah. She always knew how to produce a cliché inspirational quote for her own funeral handout.

  No, not a funeral. It’s a memorial service, I read, when I flip to the second page. You see, even our free-loving, acid-dropping, idol-worshipping parents can fall for the sales pitches of the funeral-industry assholes, who must have convinced them to print up this little keepsake I am staring at now.

  I’d have expected something more bohemian from them than this lame-ass assembly at the Spirit Friends Temple of every goddamn person who knows us. Maybe a gathering to toss flower petals into the ocean where Sarah drowned while someone plays the guitar and sings “Kumbaya.” But whatever. I’m glad we’re here and not there, and probably the suddenness of Sarah’s death caught them so off guard, they just went into robot mode and started doing whatever the funeral people told them to do.

  The petal tossing wil
l come later, and in private, for each of us, along with our own guilty baggage we may or may not attempt to throw into the Pacific along with the flowers.

  Guilt. It’s my new best friend, my hobby, maybe even my full-time job.

  I’m sitting in the front row of the temple, with an empty seat to my left where Asha is supposed to be, and my whimpering, sniffling mother to the right. Next to her is her asshole boyfriend, Ron, and beside him sits our dad, Ravi, alone.

  He must be pissed Lena brought her boyfriend, but I am working hard at not giving a crap.

  Candles flicker at the temple altar around the dark blue urn that contains the ashes of what used to be Sarah (when the coast guard found her body, it was already too bloated and wrecked from being in the ocean to make an open-casket service possible, or so I’ve been told).

  As a form of self-torture, I’ve tried a few times to imagine what my sister must have looked like, her moon-pie face all stretched out like a balloon, seaweed tangled in her long hair, her body no longer the 110 pounds of perfection her cheatin’-ass boyfriend probably once thought it was.

  From the corner of my eye, if I turn my head just so, I can sort of see David. He cries freely, tears streaming down his face and getting soaked up by his beard. His body shakes occasionally with the intensity of his grief, and I kind of envy that. I sort of want to wail and throw myself on the floor and show everyone how much pain I am in, but that shit is pretty hard to fake.

  Because what I feel is not grief, exactly. It’s more like horror at what I—and my life—have suddenly become.

  I’m not sure I ever loved David. I realized, as soon as Sarah died, that what I’d loved was taking him from her. I had a guy of my own. Still have him. AJ couldn’t be here today, mostly because I didn’t ask him to come and also because I couldn’t have him and David in the same room without some crazy daytime-talk-show brawl going down.

  Weird how love works—or doesn’t work in this case.

  David is not my type. He’s the kind of guy who sits in the park playing his conga whether anyone is listening or not, likes to talk about the meaning of life, and is just as happy with the girl’s paying as anyone. He is not what most people would call a real man.

  He believes in free love because it looks good on paper and not just because it’s convenient for him.

  But Sarah was clearly crazy about him, and he probably loved her about as much as any dude could love a girl who might drop dead of cancer in the near or distant future.

  If I weren’t such a player, I’d have left well enough alone. But I saw the way he looked at me.

  My stomach growls, but no one seems to notice. I wish I at least had a piece of gum or something in my purse, and I wonder how long this crap is going to last, and will there be food after?

  I know this is not something I’m supposed to be thinking now. I’m supposed to be so wracked with grief that I can’t eat. I’m supposed to get nauseous at the thought of food, not be fantasizing about a chicken burrito.

  I wish I had a watch so I could see the time, and then I wonder if I can get away with sliding my hand into my purse and pulling out my cell phone to look at the clock on it. Better not. The little brochure thing I’m holding says that there will be a slide show of images from Sarah’s life, along with a chance for loved ones to speak about her. How long can that shit last? All day, knowing these motherfuckers.

  Lena asked me if I wanted to speak here, and I said no, and she got pissed, and I said, well, maybe I’ll change my mind so chill the fuck out. But it’s not going to happen. I can’t get up there and spew half-truths about how much I loved my sister, how tragic her death is, blah blah blah.

  It’s tragic, okay, whatever. But just as my feelings about David are complicated, so are my feelings for Sarah. I mean, is being forced to live in the same family for eighteen years the same thing as love?

  And speaking of family, where the hell is Asha? Leave it to her to skip out on her own sister’s funeral. My thought vibes must have reached our mother, because she looks up from her sniffling to the empty seat on my left and whispers, “Where is she?”

  I shrug. Don’t meet her eyes. She looks away.

  Asha’s probably somewhere getting drunk with that little shitbag best friend of hers. He creeps me out, the way he doesn’t seem all that much like a guy, and yet he doesn’t act all flaming gay either. He’s like a sexual in-between.

  The lights go dim in the room, and somewhere, someone turns on some music. The sound of Sarah’s all-time-favorite makes-me-roll-my-eyes-and-gag song, “Both Sides, Now” by Joni Mitchell, comes through unseen speakers, and the slide show begins on the wall in front of us. I try not to engage in any eye rolling or pre-vomiting. An image of Sarah from what looks like maybe a few months before she died is the first to appear along with Joni’s voice singing about angel hair and ice-cream castles in the air.

  Yeah, yeah. Here come the waterworks all around me. I feel sad too, but for none of the right reasons.

  From behind me, I hear more sniffling. Soon it’s coming from all directions.

  I look away from the image on the wall and down at my skirt, which I spent half of last week’s paycheck on just for this occasion. I smooth my hands over it, until I reach the hem, and I cross one leg over the other. I don’t smoke a pack a day or anything, but right now I’d give anything for a cigarette, or a shot of tequila, or both.

  That is what I spent the other half of last week’s paycheck on. Serving up coffee drinks at Sacred Grounds is not exactly the glamorous life I’m destined for, but it and my fake ID keep me steadily supplied with my vices, making it hard to quit. Most of my more ambitious friends are eagerly awaiting acceptance letters from the colleges of their dreams, but at the age of eighteen, I graduated a semester early thanks to not failing any classes and not giving a crap about college prep, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what I want to do with my life past next weekend.

  Not Sarah though. When I look up again, I see a picture of her at the age of five or six, wearing a stethoscope and an oversize white shirt she called her doctor shirt. She spent so much time in the hospital, it wasn’t any big mystery why she always knew she wanted to be a doctor or a nurse.

  One year one thing, the next year the other. Back and forth endlessly, except for that one year when her cancer came back and Lena decided it was time to give alternative medicine another shot. Sarah developed a short-lived fascination with studying Chinese medicine and becoming an acupuncturist before she went back to the nurse career path.

  It was both sweet and pathetic, this girl who likely wasn’t going to make it to adulthood, busily planning for her future. Part of me always wanted to point out to her that she might as well slack off and have some fun, not go around acting like she had a big future to live for. And another bitchy part of me enjoyed watching her waste her time.

  Yes, I am a bad sister. The absolute worst you will ever meet.

  But this is what you have to understand about me—I became invisible when Sarah was diagnosed with leukemia. I was not a genetic match for donation purposes, but Asha was. So she got to be the hero, and I got to be the dumb little kid everyone forgot about. Not that I’m bitter or anything. These days, I know how to get what I need.

  I look back up at the slide show and am stunned to finally feel a wave of grief wash over me as big as any natural disaster. It’s crazy; what finally gets me is the image of Sarah in a sort of nurse’s uniform, standing on the front porch smiling wide. I’m pretty sure David took that picture. It’s from last summer, when Little Miss Perfect did a volunteer stint at the hospital taking people’s blood pressure and writing down vital signs. My eyes burn with furious tears, and I might let out a few good sobs, except that a loud door-slamming noise interrupts the flow of my grief.

  I turn with most of the other people in the room and see Asha stumble through the double doorway, followed by her weird-ass friend Sinclair. She looks drunk, and not at all dressed for the occasion, in her ripped je
ans and faded green tank top. Her long, dark hair spills over her shoulders looking like it hasn’t been brushed in days—like me, she inherited Dad’s dark hair and green eyes, but unlike me, she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

  Because almost every other seat is full now, she is forced to weave her way up the aisle to the front row, to her designated seat, but Sin follows her, so there’s an awkward scrambling for a second chair. Someone two rows behind gives up his aisle chair, moving it forward to be next to Asha’s, then takes another seat that requires much shuffling and apologizing.

  All the while, the Sarah slide show plays on, but I am unable to look at it now, not when I have my reeking-of-whiskey sister beside me, taking up all the space in the room.

  She has a crazy way of doing that. I’ve never figured out what her game is, or where she gets her nerve, but she is an energy vortex. When she’s near, I feel like I need to go take a nap.

  I glare at her, and she looks back at me through eyes that appear not to give a damn about anything. I think, maybe this is her thing, that she never seems to care just how catastrophic she is.

  I don’t even bother looking at the emo. Instead, I let my gaze travel over Asha’s inappropriate attire, but it stops at her ankle. She has the legs of her jeans rolled up to capri length, and a new tattoo—a cascade of black stars—is on the outside of her right leg, the one closest to me. I can see that it’s real by the way her skin is red and raised around the edges of the fresh ink.

  I know she has done this on purpose. She has figured out a way to create maximum drama even in silence.

  She used to call Sarah Starlight. It was one of their many cutesy habits, coming up with tongue-in-cheek hippie nicknames for each other.

  My stomach cramps, and I start to sweat. If I try hard enough, I might be able to lose my breakfast croissant right there all over Asha’s fresh tattoo.

  I wonder if Lena or Ravi sees the tattoo. It’s impossible not to notice, since Asha is not wearing shoes or socks, only a ratty, old pair of gold-embroidered thong sandals, and a silver toe ring on one toe. She has her toenails painted dark blue, and this, I know, is also for Sarah, the color of night sky.