Good Sister (9781250047786)

by Kain, Jamie

  When we are in the car alone together, he doesn’t start up the engine. Instead, he clears his throat and turns to me. “I’m beginning to feel like you were just using me.” His handsome cheeks redden a bit.

  “Why would you think that?” I’m not ready to give up all my cards. I don’t know when David’s thinking I love him might come in handy. And using is a harsh word. I don’t think I was, exactly.

  “Were you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Maybe you just wanted to hurt Sarah. Maybe I was part of your whole sibling-rivalry thing.”

  I lean over and take his hand in mine. Put on my most sincere face. “No. That’s not true. I didn’t mean for us to happen. We just did.”

  He smiles a little at this. “Yeah. Fate, right?”

  “Yes.”

  I lean closer and kiss him on the lips, feeling not at all turned on, yet wondering whether we should go somewhere and get it on before he takes me home. If we’ve got that vibe about us, it’ll only piss off Lena more.

  “Can we go to your place for a while?” I say against his lips when I break the kiss.

  “It’s full of roommates right now, not exactly private. What about your house?”

  I shrug. “Sure, we can try there.”

  I imagine Lena walking in on us. Maybe even in her bed.

  All of a sudden I feel as if I’m careening head-on over a cliff, and I can’t stop myself.

  I’m sitting in the seat where Sarah once sat, with the guy she once loved, and I am both repulsed and exhilarated. I don’t know where this flood of feelings is coming from, but I welcome it. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything this fucking real.

  A few minutes pass and we are pulling into my driveway. Lena’s car is there. I am not sure how best to play it, so I figure we’ll just have to see how things roll.

  “Your mom’s home?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Oh, God. I haven’t seen Lena since the memorial.”

  Right.

  I glance over at him to gauge his reaction to this idea. He seems a little on edge now, maybe thinking of his role in the whole betrayal thing.

  Good. Let him squirm a bit. It can’t hurt.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I mean, does she even know about us?”

  I shrug. “Who gives a damn what she knows?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, if you want us to be together, then you’d better get used to her knowing it.”

  “Right,” he says, not sounding too confident.

  I get out of the car and stand waiting for him in front of it until he gets his cowardly ass out and follows me into the house. Inside, I can hear Lena talking to someone in the kitchen. I contemplate taking David straight to her bedroom to create some real drama, but I can tell by his reaction that he won’t go for that.

  Instead, I lead him into the kitchen, where we sit down at the table and watch as Lena turns to see us there. She has her cell phone tucked between her face and her shoulder as she talks while dicing a cucumber on the cutting board.

  I go to the fridge and take out two beers, pop the top on each, and hand one to David. I dare her with my eyes to say something when she turns and looks at us for a long moment. She is processing what she sees, but I can’t tell exactly what her reaction is, so I take a long drink of the IPA I’m quite sure she didn’t buy with me in mind.

  “Look, I’m going to have to call you back,” she says into the phone. “Someone just arrived.”

  After saying her good-byes and setting aside the phone, she turns to us. “Hello, David,” she says evenly. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Hi, Lena, good to see you too.”

  “What’s brought you here?”

  David’s face goes white, and he looks to me for help.

  “Actually, Lena, David and I have been seeing each other.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wish I could take them back.

  All the satisfaction I thought I’d get from twisting the knife is just an ugly, little feeling. Lena’s expression goes from confused to angry in the blink of an eye.

  Inexplicably, I think of Krishna, and I feel like an utter, absolute shit.

  “Seeing each other?” She says the words slowly. “I don’t understand.”

  I can’t say any more. I don’t have the heart. I don’t know why I was stupid enough to come here with David now, so soon after we scattered the ashes. Suddenly I hate myself for it. I want to be anywhere but here.

  David looks at me again as if I might explain, but I can’t make my mouth form words.

  “It’s kind of, uh, unexpected, I know,” he says.

  Lena looks at me, and her expression hardens. “How could you?”

  How could I not? is probably the better question.

  Lena picks up a glass from the counter, looks as if she will throw it, then slams it down. It shatters, and her hand begins to bleed.

  I am frozen, watching her.

  “Oh, crap, your hand,” David says, springing forward to grab a towel.

  Lena backs away from him. “Get out of my house.” She clutches her injured left hand with her right.

  He stops, makes a gesture of surrender, and starts backing away.

  Still frozen, I know one thing for sure—I don’t ever want to see him again. So I guess we are breaking up for real now, but I don’t bother to follow him out the door.

  Asha

  I was lying in bed halfheartedly reading my English homework—incomprehensible Faulkner—when Rachel and David pulled up in his car.

  I have never seen the two of them together before, and the incongruity of it startles me for a moment. Maybe he bumped into her in the coffee shop, I think, and turn my attention back to my book, determined to stop drifting off and start sorting out all the different characters in the novel and whether any of them are likable enough to keep reading about. So far, every character in As I Lay Dying is pretty awful, and I’m not a big fan of the whole death theme, given recent events, but I’m sure the teacher didn’t have me in mind when she selected this book.

  I don’t wonder about David and Rachel again until I hear Lena’s raised voice and the sound of glass breaking. Soon after, David walks back out to the car, and I sit up, watching him intently, wondering.

  Him and Rachel. Rachel and him, together. Why?

  What besides me could have gotten Lena mad enough to raise her voice like that?

  She and Rachel don’t fight, at least not since Sarah’s death, because Rachel has become the oddly obedient daughter lately. She goes to work, she comes home, she tests no limits other than smoking and drinking in the house.

  I don’t know why.

  David pulls his car out of the driveway and heads east toward his place, so I make a decision. Now is as good a time as any to talk to him. I will ride my bike to his house and find out whatever he knows.

  I put on a pair of black Converse and an old hoodie, pull my hair back in a ponytail, and creep down the stairs as quietly as I can, hoping to avoid any unnecessary talking to Lena now when she seems to be on a rampage.

  I pause at the bottom of the stairs, where I can clearly hear voices in the kitchen.

  “—don’t understand how you could do that,” Lena is saying.

  Silence from Rachel.

  “Is this some kind of mutual-comfort-in-grief relationship?”

  My stomach sinks. Rachel and David are dating?

  “Whatever,” Rachel says. “I guess. We’re not a couple. We’re just, like, whatever. Friends now. Like you said, the whole grief thing.”

  Something about the tone of her voice sets me on edge. What she’s saying isn’t the whole story, but Lena rarely chooses to question our lies because it’s easier not to.

  Lena sighs. “It can’t lead anywhere positive. You have to know that. The karmic debt you’d owe—”

  “Oh, what the fuck ever! Don’t start in on my karmic debt. We’re just hanging out a little is all!”


  I hear a chair scrape on the floor, and a second later Rachel rushes past, out the door, never noticing me at the bottom of the stairs eavesdropping.

  I watch her walk down the sidewalk, heading west toward the center of town, and decide I’m still safe to try talking to David now. I wait, holding my breath, hoping Lena stays put, and a few moments later I leave too.

  It’s a short ride to his house. My eyes water in the cool breeze on this windy day as I pedal up the hill. I have never talked to David on my own.

  I never saw in him what Sarah saw. I mean, I guess it would be normal for me to be a little jealous or whatever, since she started spending more and more time with him, but I mostly just thought he wasn’t good enough for her.

  Then again, what guy was good enough?

  I am both relieved and nervous when I see David’s car parked in front of his house. I lean my bike against the front porch and climb the steps to his door, my nerves jangling in my stomach, but before I can knock, he is standing at the screen staring out at me.

  “Oh, hey,” he says, sounding weary.

  “Hi, David.”

  “I was just at your house.”

  “So was I.”

  “Right. So you heard? Sorry about that.”

  “About what?”

  “That whole scene, your mom’s hand…” He trails off when he sees my look of confusion.

  I think of the broken-glass sound, Lena’s raised voice. “I’m not here about that,” I say, hoping he’ll relax and see me as an ally long enough to talk to me about Sarah.

  “Oh. Do you want to come in?”

  I glance toward the sounds of talking and a television inside. “Could we talk out here?”

  “Sure.” He steps out and lets the wood screen door slam shut behind him.

  He sits down on the top step of the porch, and I sit next to him. I think of the last time I was here, a few months ago, when I’d come to wait for Sarah to drive me to a dental appointment.

  The thought of this turns my stomach. Another mundane detail of my life, forever rendered pointless and horrible by my sister’s death. Will I think of her every time I go to the dentist? Every time I see this house? It feels like nothing can ever matter all that much again.

  Or like it shouldn’t matter.

  None of it.

  “I miss her a lot,” he says, his thin arms in a gray flannel shirt, resting on his knees.

  I think of Rachel and him together earlier. How much is a lot?

  “I’ve been thinking about the time before she died,” I say, “and how she died, and I guess I keep wondering what really happened, you know?”

  The air between us shifts.

  “What do you mean? She slipped and fell. Rachel saw it happen.”

  “Why was she there with Rachel, though? Do you have any idea?”

  He shrugs, and one of his knees begins to bounce. “Not a clue. I mean, I just figured they felt like going on a hike together.”

  “They never went on hikes together,” I say, watching him.

  “Really? Never?”

  “Never. Except for that day.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Do you know if Sarah was maybe upset about something?”

  He shakes his head. “No, nothing that I know of.”

  I sit and stare over at him, hoping he might come up with something if I wait long enough, but he doesn’t budge.

  “So,” I finally ask, “why were you and Rachel together this afternoon?”

  “Oh, that. Well, you know, now that you mention it, Sarah could have been upset about, um—”

  He glances over at me, but when our gazes meet, he stops talking abruptly, leaving the statement ambiguous.

  “What do you mean?”

  He looks away, out at the street, and sighs. “It’s just, we…”

  I hold my breath, unable to fill in the blank for him. Whatever it is he’s going to say, I don’t think I want to hear it, even if it’s the answer to the questions I have.

  “We weren’t getting along so great at the end, is all,” he finally says.

  “Why?”

  He shrugs. “It’s kind of hard to admit now, after, I mean, you know…”

  “What?” I say when he doesn’t continue.

  “I wanted to see other people, and she didn’t.”

  Did those other people include Rachel?

  No.

  Who would do something like that?

  Even if he would, I can’t believe Rachel would betray Sarah in such a shitty way. Not even she was that low.

  I swallow the dryness in my mouth. “Do you think she was depressed about that?”

  He shrugs. “She was just upset with me was all.”

  “Were you trying to break up with her?”

  “No. I just wanted to have, like, an open relationship.”

  “Right. Like that ever works.” I am disgusted on Sarah’s behalf, but I contain myself. I try to imagine Sarah wanting to kill herself over this unbelievable shit of a guy, and I can’t. She wouldn’t. She was too smart for that.

  “I’m really sorry. About everything.”

  I don’t know what I was hoping to hear from David when I came here, but it’s not his pathetic apology.

  Suddenly, I feel too antsy to sit still, too pissed off by this conversation to stay for another second. I stand up and descend the stairs, grab my bike, and start walking it down the driveway.

  David says nothing as I go.

  I feel as if an unspoken question hangs in the air between us, but I’m not sure what it is, or if I want to know the answer.

  Twenty-Nine

  Sarah

  I am selfish. I am a coward. I am anything but a saint.

  I deserved the cancer I got, only in reverse.

  The punishment before the crime.

  Except it wasn’t enough.

  I will need to explain some things, but I still don’t have the words for most of it.

  Especially not for Brandon.

  He was the kind of kid you meet on the Northern California coast. Creative, slightly adrift, educated in a halfhearted way. I know some things about him now that I didn’t know then. I know that his mother loved him dearly, that she has never recovered from his death, that his father, an alcoholic, is sunken deeper into his disease since the accident. I know they are troubled by the lack of closure to the case. They want to know who killed their son. They want someone to pay.

  They deserve that.

  I see now how much more selfish I could be than anyone ever thought possible. That’s the thing about being the good sister. People overlook too much. They forgive too often. I didn’t deserve the mark of sainthood just for having once been sick.

  Thirty

  Asha

  Back at school again. Permanently this time, I suspect. A truancy officer has gotten involved, and I’m tired of battling Lena anyway.

  I’m in English class with Ms. Abel. It is, or was, my favorite class, back when favorite classes were a thing I had. I loved to read and write and analyze. Now I forget what it’s like to love doing things. I want to remember, but the feeling eludes me.

  “Asha,” Ms. Abel says to me when she looks up from her desk and sees me sitting there waiting for the bell to ring to start class. “Could I speak with you for a moment?”

  I go over to her desk, and she has this look on her face. “I know you’re having a very difficult year.”

  I look down at her hands. She’s holding my poem about dead people’s things. I didn’t use to write poems—it was something Sarah did—but now it feels like the only thing that will come out of me when I pick up a pencil and try to write. It’s the first thing I’ve turned in for weeks. I keep thinking I’d better start doing some makeup work, but all that comes out of me are fractured words and phrases when I try to write whole sentences and paragraphs. Not literary analysis. Not five-paragraph essays.

  “This isn’t exactly the assignment I gave you, but it’s a very good poem.”
r />   I look into her eyes, then back down at the paper. It’s wrinkled, written in purple ink on a scraggly piece of notebook paper.

  “I want to help you pass this semester, so I’ll give you a bit of leeway on the type of assignments you turn in. Does writing help you process your grief?” she asks in a careful voice.

  Process your grief. It sounds like something that happens at the Department of Emotions. If I fill out the right forms and turn in the proper paperwork to the correct department, in six to eight weeks all will be well again. I’ll get an official certificate in the mail making it so.

  I shrug. Shift my weight from one hip to the other. I’ve never been all that friendly with Ms. Abel in spite of my love of the subject, so I don’t know what to do with her personal questions. It feels like she’s peeking into someplace private.

  “What if you spend some time just writing whatever comes out? And you turn that in for some credit?”

  I think I can do that, so I nod.

  “Good. And I was wondering if you might like to read this poem aloud to the class. It’s so moving, I was hoping your classmates could hear it.”

  “No.” I shake my head, blushing already. “I can’t.”

  “Would it make you feel uncomfortable if I read it?”

  Most definitely, but I’m too flattered by her compliment to say anything.

  “I understand if it’s too personal, but I think it might be cathartic to share it with the class.”

  Cathartic? I remember this word from studying the Greek tragedies. It’s like when watching a sad movie makes you cry and you get out all your sad feelings that way. I don’t know if I’m ready to let go of any feelings, but something about the idea of everyone else hearing those words …

  I guess I like the thought, because what is a poem without an audience? “Okay.”

  Ms. Abel smiles. “Thank you for sharing it. I’ll read it at the start of class.”

  I go to a desk in the back of the room and slump down in it, feeling shy now that I know what she’s going to do. Sin walks in, and like always lately, he is careful not to look at me.

  Nothing has changed since our drive to the coast. He was so sweet and thoughtful that day, but afterward, we are back to this. The cold war, or whatever it is. He is still mad at me, even if he says I’m forgiven. He still doesn’t trust me, still thinks I’m a skank for messing around with his brother. He hasn’t said it out loud, but I know how he thinks.