Good Sister (9781250047786)

by Kain, Jamie

  Our friendship’s vanishing before my eyes leaves me feeling so empty I’m afraid I will collapse in on myself, like one of those buildings in Las Vegas that’s being demolished so as not to fall on all the others around it.

  How does he even know I’m here if he isn’t looking? He must catch a glimpse at the doorway so he knows where in the room not to look. Or maybe he just senses my presence because we were so close. He should know where I am just by scent, or vibes in the air, or something.

  I watch him sit in a seat three rows over, five desks up. Not beside me like before. I study the back of his head. He put some kind of purple tint in his hair, but you can barely tell. Jenna Carson sits down beside him, laughing at something that must have happened in the hallway, and I look away. Down at my notebook. I take out a pen and start drawing a black swirl, doodling without thinking.

  The class fills up and Ms. Abel is talking about expository essays due Friday. I don’t remember this assignment, but I will do what she asked. I will write down something, whatever comes out, and turn it in. I’m not sure I care about passing tenth-grade English, but I like the idea of seeing what comes out of me. I like the way I felt after writing the poem—sort of clean—and I want to feel like that again. It’s as if I’m grasping some little part of Sarah when I write.

  “Before we get started on today’s reading, I have something special to share with you,” Ms. Abel is saying.

  I feel my face start to burn. I should have told her not to say it’s my poem, I think in a panic.

  But then she already knows, because she says, “One of your classmates has written a poem that is quite good, and I’ve asked permission to read it aloud to all of you.”

  She is using her Very Serious voice, the one that makes everyone get quiet and listen. I’ve always wondered how she could do this, because it’s not a stern voice. It just has some quality that makes kids shut up and take notice. People glance around to see if they can spot whose poem it could be. It’s pretty unusual for Ms. Abel to compliment anyone’s writing—she’s an old-school teacher, stern and quick to point out errors—and even more unusual for her to want to read it aloud.

  She clears her throat and begins to read my words:

  In a room that’s silent now,

  This is all that’s left behind:

  A jewelry box

  A journal

  A pair of jeans

  An unmade bed because she hated making the bed

  A cell phone that doesn’t ring

  Everyone knows not to call

  And the battery is dead

  An alarm clock glowing red: it’s 3:29

  Or 4:15 or 1:25 or any number at all because

  Time is the thing that matters least now.

  The coroner cannot give the exact time of death

  Though we all want to know—

  Was it dark, light, morning, night?

  Perhaps daytime, they say, at high tide

  When the water would have covered the rocks

  A kindness to spare us, or the truth—

  It doesn’t matter because

  Time has ceased to pass since

  And no detail like the time of death can

  Erase the fact of an empty room

  That holds the things she left behind.

  She uses just the right tone of voice, careful and with no emotion to get in the way of the words. But you can tell she’s touched by it. She looks sad as she’s reading. I feel my eyes well up with tears, and I blink hard, then swipe at my cheeks before anyone looks back at me.

  When she finishes, people know it’s my poem of course. Some kids turn and give me kind of sad or understanding looks, and I feel awkward from all the attention, so I start doodling again. What I don’t expect when I look up again, when Ms. Abel has moved on to asking everyone to take out their copies of As I Lay Dying, is to find Sin staring at me. He’s turned sideways in his desk, and I don’t know what the look he’s giving me means, but then he looks away. Five minutes later, a text causes my phone to buzz.

  I take it out of my pocket, careful to keep it in my lap, and read Sin’s message: u r beautiful. I want us to not b mad at each other.

  My heart swells up so much I can hardly breathe. I will stay away from Tristan for real. I will never touch him again, so long as Sin and I can go back to the way things were.

  I text back, you 2 … and me 2.

  I watch him read the message and slip the phone back in his backpack.

  The rest of the class period is agony. I try to pass the time by paying attention to the book, but Faulkner is so hard to understand, and the class discussion is too much to follow. I just want to put my head down. I start writing in my notebook, thinking I will come up with something else I can turn in for a grade. I write about what I remember from the first few chapters of the novel, about my confusion with the stream-of-consciousness style—while writing in my own stream-of-consciousness style—and this passes the time.

  When the bell rings, my chest goes tight, and I look over to see if Sin is going to wait for me. He does. I feel this huge relief, like crazy just-got-pulled-back-from-the-cliff relief.

  “Hey,” he says. “Good poem.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What are you doing after school?”

  “Lena wants me to clean out Sarah’s room.”

  Apparently, we are not one of those families who will keep the room as a monument to the last day Sarah spent there. No, that is not the Kinsey way. We will transform the room into a meditation space for Lena, or perhaps a yoga studio, or a stylish yet comfortable guest suite.

  “Ah. The inspiration for the literary work?”

  “Sort of. I mean, I go in there and try to put stuff in boxes, but it’s hard. I don’t know what to keep, what to give away.”

  He pauses, as if considering his options. “I’ll help.”

  This is the best idea I’ve heard since, like, forever. “Okay,” I say, containing my joy in a careful voice.

  “Come on.” He gestures for me to follow as he heads for the door.

  I trail after him, kind of breathless with relief that we are talking again. Sin isn’t mad at me anymore. This fact dances and tumbles in my head, whirling like a little kid trying to make itself dizzy. I had almost given up hope. But there he is, his thin back leading me down the hallway, toward our lockers. I have to make sure I never, ever, ever lose him again.

  And I realize something. That sense of danger about our friendship, it’s mostly because I need him so much in order for me to stay sane. It’s because in this vast world of unreliable people, he is the one I know I can rely on.

  * * *

  I have not ventured into the dark, hidden places of Sarah’s room before. I have stuck to the safe territory—the tops of dressers, the bookshelves. It feels wrong to invade her privacy, even though she is gone. Is there even such a thing as privacy for the dead? I think so, I decide, as I sit on my knees on the floor of the closet and pull out pairs of shoes.

  I want to know what happened the day Sarah died, but I’m not sure I want to know what might be hidden in the truth of it.

  Having Sin here gives me confidence, but still this process makes me want to throw up. The idea that her feet will never fit into this pair of sandals or that pair of boots … it’s further and further proof that she will not be coming back anytime soon. Or ever.

  Sin is going through a dresser, placing items of clothing into a box. I don’t want to see any of it, because every time I try to give away a shirt or a pair of pants, I think maybe I should keep it and wear it myself if I ever lose ten pounds. Then I think, no way, I’d be depressed every time I saw the stuff. Then I think, but if it’s gone, I won’t have that little piece of her.

  And I get nothing done.

  The shoes are not so difficult since I can’t very well turn my size-nine feet into size eights.

  After working my way through all the shoes, I pull out a shoebox from the bottom of her closet. I can tell by
the weight that it doesn’t hold a pair of shoes, and besides that, it is decorated with little pen-and-ink doodles of swirls and stars and hearts and animals. It looks like something Sarah might have done in her middle-school days, which means this box has been around for a while. The brand of shoes it once held has been obscured by white cardstock glued to its sides and top.

  Sin is still busy sorting through Sarah’s clothes, folding them all carefully and placing each piece in a cardboard box that says FARM FRESH on the outside.

  I try not to look at the stuff as he puts it in the giveaway box because then I recall different times she wore a certain shirt, a certain pair of jeans. And what if someone else wears her stuff? They won’t even know anything about Sarah when they do, won’t know she’s gone, which bothers me. I think maybe we should burn the box of clothes when it is packed. Maybe Sin shouldn’t be folding it all so carefully, but I don’t want to commit to doing one thing or another, so I say nothing.

  I open the box, feeling guilty as I do so. Inside are some letters, a couple of rocks and seashells, a journal I am careful not to open, and beneath all that a blue shirt folded up. I recognize it as one of Sarah’s. It’s a delicate silk tunic edged in crocheted lace. I don’t know why she would keep it in here. Maybe she was trying to hide it from Rachel, who borrows and ruins things, but it isn’t Rachel’s style. I take out the contents on top of the shirt, then the shirt itself. From within it falls a piece of newspaper folded up small.

  When I hold up the top, I can see that it is streaked with stains, brownish in color, like old blood. Was this why she’d hidden it? Was she too in love with the shirt to get rid of it after she’d ruined it?

  But … it doesn’t look like it has even been washed. Like no attempt has been made to remove the stains.

  Sin notices and comes to take a closer look. “Is that blood?”

  “I don’t know.” The hairs rise on the back of my neck.

  Something isn’t right. Or maybe I’m prone to thinking the worst, now that the worst has already happened.

  I imagine possibilities. Stomach cancer. She could have been vomiting blood. Maybe she didn’t have the heart to put us through it all again.

  He bends and picks up the piece of newspaper. As he unfolds it, I see that it’s one section of the Marin IJ, folded small. The cover section. On the cover is an article about the hit-and-run accident that happened in February, in which a guy who’d been hitchhiking along Highway One had been killed. The car that had struck him—and the people in it—had fled the scene and hadn’t been found.

  “Let me see that.” I take the paper from Sin.

  He is frowning in a way that makes me nervous.

  “Do you think…” He begins to ask, but doesn’t. He knows better than to complicate matters right now.

  I don’t think.

  No. Absolutely not.

  Hearing footsteps in the hall, I look up to see Rachel standing in the doorway, just home from work and still wearing her black barista apron. She eyes the article in my hands curiously. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” I say, not wanting to betray Sarah’s secrets, even if I don’t yet know what they are.

  She comes closer. “Let me see.”

  I ignore her outheld hand.

  But she needs only to look over my shoulder to see that it’s an article about the dead guy. His name was Brandon Ashcroft, a guy from out of state who’d been backpacking along the California coast.

  “So what’s all this?” Rachel asks, looking at the box of stuff I’ve been going through.

  “I don’t know.”

  She surveys it all. “Come on, Nancy Drew. You can figure it out.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You found Sarah’s private stash. This is where she keeps all her deep, dark secrets.”

  “It’s just some old stuff,” I say, but Rachel picks up the stained shirt and cocks an eyebrow at me.

  She has this look in her eyes, like a snake preparing to strike. “Was this in the box? With that?” She nods at the article, sounding calmer than the situation calls for.

  I say nothing.

  “So what?” Sin asks. “Do you know something we don’t?”

  Rachel expels a breath of disbelief and drops the shirt on the bed, rolls her eyes at us, and walks out.

  “Idiots,” we hear her say on the way out the door.

  My stomach twists and turns. Shadowy, ugly possibilities dance around the edges of my thoughts, and I don’t want to consider them.

  But it’s all so obvious. Maybe Sarah was there when that guy died. Maybe she knew what happened. Maybe she was involved in what happened, if the shirt had anything to do with it.

  Why wouldn’t she have said anything though?

  David springs to mind. Had she been protecting him by saying nothing? Had he been driving the car that killed the hitchhiker?

  No, she was too honest. She’d had come forward, no matter the cost.

  I’m pretty sure.

  Sin picks up the shirt and folds it into a small square, which he puts back into the box. Then he takes the newspaper and does the same. Each item I’ve scattered on the bed, he places carefully back into the box, then he puts the lid back on and places the box inside the larger cardboard box of stuff we plan to keep. But what if Mom sees it? I think but don’t ask.

  He looks at me carefully. “Maybe you should keep this stuff in your room.”

  “What about Rachel?” I love that Sin knows what to do without having to ask.

  “She could have already come in here and gone through this stuff if she’d wanted to find something.”

  Nothing makes any sense. What does Rachel know that she isn’t saying? And what does any of it have to do with anything?

  I don’t want to think that the most obvious explanation could possibly be true, and I’m not sure truth is what I want to find anymore.

  Maybe Sarah left this stuff here because she wanted me to find it. Was it supposed to tell me something she never had the courage to say?

  “Do you want to take a break?” Sin asks.

  “Yeah … no. I mean, I don’t know.”

  “Let’s take a break.”

  “No, we have to get all this sorted. What if there’s more…” More stuff hidden is what I intend to say, but the words stall out on my tongue.

  He watches me as I turn and start pulling out the drawers of Sarah’s nightstand, looking for I don’t know what. My insides are tightening up and hardening now. I pull out entire drawers and dump their contents on the bed. Bottles of nail polish mingle with papers and jewelry and pens and earrings and all the other random crap that accumulates in a drawer. Something inside me feels monstrous and scared and out of control now. My hands are shaking.

  Sin sits down on the end of the bed and picks up a folded piece of paper, opens it, and reads it. Then he sets it aside and does the same with another piece, and another. He understands now that we are no longer sorting a dead girl’s stuff into what to keep and what to get rid of.

  We are looking for answers I’m terrified to find, while I am sure I can’t let anyone else find them first.

  Thirty-One

  Sarah

  Little sister.

  Flesh of my flesh,

  Bones of my bones,

  Heart of my heart.

  She found the box that tells the tale I could not tell.

  At the top of the list of things I wish I had never done, I struggle to order the events. Which one thing is more awful than the next?

  Here is the dirty secret, the story for which I have no pretty words.

  Something changed about David. I can’t say when, but I knew things were different between us, and I made the mistake of asking him about it on the way home from a party. We’d been in Point Reyes Station, at the house of someone who was celebrating the release of an album I can’t even remember. We’d both been drinking, he more than I.

  I should never have agreed to drive, but I did. I kn
ew I was more sober than he was, and I’d thought … only two drinks.

  I’d had two drinks. Maybe three. More than enough for a girl like me who almost never drank.

  I was angry at David for seeming distant, so I asked him what was wrong, and he told me. All about Rachel, and him, and how he was in love with her.

  It made terrible sense. Perfect, horrible sense.

  The hills were dark, like sleeping creatures spread out around us on a cloudy, moonless night. This is what I remember most—how black it was, how lightless. Wisps of fog hung around us, covering the darkness in gauze.

  Why was I driving? I asked myself so many times. I should have pulled over, insisted on walking, anything. I should have, and given another chance, I would have, but I didn’t when it counted.

  Fate. That’s why. I understand now that it was time for me to meet mine.

  I started crying as David talked about his feelings for Rachel so openly, you might have thought he was telling a friend and not the girl who loved him like a puppy dog.

  I cried, and I looked at him across the darkness of the car, and I never saw the hitchhiker.

  Not until he was in front of the car, so close there was no swerving away.

  Too late.

  I remember only the screech of tires, the unfathomable thud of metal against flesh, the shock of a body against the windshield of the car.

  I remember a frozen moment of surprise, feeling as if time had stopped.

  The next moments were a blur of terror. I don’t recall opening the car door or getting out.

  He is lying on the cold earth, amid the wild wheat growing at the side of the road. I feel as if I am moving in slow motion as I go to his side and kneel down there. I am having too many thoughts at once—is he alive, and call 911, and what have we done, and it’s my fault, and it’s David’s fault, and why were we even arguing, and God this can’t be happening, and what will happen to me, and will I go to jail, and what if he’s really dead—

  “Check his pulse,” David says, standing over me.