The Good Sister (11 page)

I know how to be unhappy. It never feels the same way twice. It is an emotion full of nuance and variety, nothing like happiness, which always feels the same and never lasts long.

“No,” I finally say, and it's like peeling back a scab, finding the tender, unhealed flesh beneath. “I don't know why I said that. Guilt, I guess.”

He scoots closer, puts an arm around me, and I don't pull away. I lean in, kiss him softly on the lips, as if picking at the scab some more, hoping to see fresh blood.

Eighteen

Sarah

Watching, watching, I am watching life without me go by, an endless movie. I have lost the remote control.

Watching Rachel and David together should be more painful than it is. It should be torture to see her lean in and kiss him now. She is there, and I am not. She still has a life to live, and I don't.

Instead of its feeling painful, it's bittersweet. I wish I could turn back time ten years or more. I wish I could remake our history into one in which Rachel was given what she needed instead of feeling like she had to take it. She used to be a sweet girl sometimes, always mercurial but occasionally lovely, the sister who, when she wasn't being a brat, brought me handpicked flowers in the hospital and sat beside my bed reading to me from the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, skipping over the boring parts and pausing to make fun of Ma when she acts like a racist.

But slowly, time and lack of attention let Rachel grow wild—a garden overtaken by weeds. She was always precocious, but once she discovered her power over the opposite sex, she changed.

Do I regret what I did to her?

Was it revenge for David?

Such questions are not as easy to answer in this strange afterlife as you might expect.

My favorite memory of Rachel is from our early days back in Marin, before I got sick.

We shared a room because Asha still slept in bed with our parents well past her fourth birthday, and Rachel used to have nightmares about a man climbing through the window and taking her. Whenever she woke up after one of those dreams, she would climb in bed with me and ask me to tell her a story to help her fall back to sleep.

One night, I was tired and cranky from her waking me up, and I couldn't think of a story. I'd always told her tales of fairies and princesses and magical castles, but this time, I told her she had to think of her story. She started to cry, and but after a couple of minutes, once she saw that I was serious, she quieted down.

“Once upon a time…,” she said slowly, her voice still wobbly with tears, “there were two sisters who lived in the woods. They had no parents, so the big sister, named … Sarafina, had to be responsible for both of them.”

Rachel nestled up against me, her small knees poking into my lower back, her hand tangled in my hair, stroking and twisting it like she always did when she shared my bed. I sometimes woke up in the morning after Rachel had slept with me to find random, crooked, little braids all over my head because she'd put herself back to sleep braiding my hair in the dark.

“Sarafina's sister was named … Raya, and one day when Raya was walking through the woods alone, something began to chase her.”

I had always kept my stories free of scary elements, not wanting to upset Rachel more than her bad dream already had, so I remember being surprised that Rachel's story included a chase.

“She could hear heavy breathing and footsteps behind her, and she ran as fast as she could all the way back to their cottage. When she got there, she slammed the door and locked it, and Sarafina was inside cooking their lunch.

“‘What's the matter?' she asked.

“‘Something's been chasing me,' Raya said.

“The girls went and looked out the window, but they couldn't see anything. Then Raya started to feel a little silly, like maybe she imagined the whole thing.

“‘Did you see it?' Sarafina asked.

“‘No, but I heard it.'

“Just then, they heard a loud thump on the door, and the whole house shook. Raya began to cry, but Sarafina was calm. She went to the closet and got out her bow and arrows. She slung them over her shoulder and climbed up the chimney, out onto the roof of the house. From there, she could see the evil troll that was trying to get in their door, so she took out one of her arrows and shot him dead right then and there. And the two sisters buried the evil troll in the forest and lived happily ever after.”

I remember this story so vividly in part because it became one we told over and over, making it more elaborate and detailed with each telling. I remember it also because it gave me the unshakable belief that I was responsible for protecting Rachel from anything that might harm her. I knew she saw me that way, and I wanted to be that kind of big sister.

But then I got sick, and well, and sick again, and well again. Hindsight, I know now, is the cruelest view of all. I can see now exactly how this twist of fate that was my leukemia diagnosis worked its way through my whole family, a disease that would destroy them rather than me. Rachel, most of all, suffered the damage of it. I'd never be the kind of sister who'd sling a bow across her shoulder and climb onto the roof to defeat evil trolls. I was a different kind of sister entirely—and not what Rachel was hoping for.

I was the sort of sister, ultimately, who was out for revenge.

Nineteen

Asha

I mark time now as what has passed since Sarah's death. There is my life before it happened, and here is my life after. The two parts are so different as to render me into two separate people. Once I was Sarah's sister Asha. Now I am only Asha, a person I never intended to be.

More than a month has passed since Sarah's death now, so the new me, the star-tattooed me, is over a month old, an infant in my grief.

It's Saturday night, and tomorrow is the big ash-scattering event that I am trying my best not to think about. I am sitting on the couch at a party I'm not sure why I've agreed to attend, watching the two people across from me groping and kissing and tangling limbs together. I don't want to watch them, but every time I scan the room, my gaze falls back on the spectacle.

I think I see Sin enter the room, but, no, it's a girl with dark hair wearing a shirt the same shade of green as his.

I want to leave, but I'm anchored to this spot, afraid if I get up, I'll have to see people and talk to people who want to tell me how sorry they are and how great it is to see me out again and how I'm so strong to be moving on and I must be so aware of Sarah's presence all around me, and blah blah blah.

Where is Sin, and why did he leave me here alone? I haven't seen him in what feels like an eternity but is probably more like a half hour. He disappeared with some girl I've never seen before, and I am perplexed that I feel a little jealous. Probably because he's my only friend here. I know some of these people, but they are not exactly my pals.

Sin heard about the party from Tristan, and because Sin's managed to hang on to his mom's van all day, he thought we should drive out here. I came, I'll admit to myself now, partly because I was hoping to see Tristan in some setting other than the claustrophobic space of his house, but no luck.

Now I just want to go home.

I'm tired from not sleeping well lately, and I'm annoyed at Sin for disappearing, and I'm mad at myself for even wanting so badly to see Tristan.

I sip my beer halfheartedly, not liking the yeasty taste of it—not liking beer at all, but someone handed it to me and it gives me something to do with my mouth while I sit here not talking to anyone—when a figure slouching against the wall catches my attention. It's him.

My stomach does a little joyous flip, and I down the rest of my beer in a few long, bitter gulps.

He's talking to a girl. Or rather, she's attempting to dance with him, writhing her body around to an old Outkast song that Tristan is doing little more than bobbing his head to. Not even that—maybe he's just nodding.

I will him to look over at me, and by some miracle he does. His gaze lands right on me, over the dancing girl's shoulder. He doesn't look away.

He stares. I stare. We have some sort of a moment.

I haven't eaten all evening, so the one beer is making me feel a little drunk now, a little less averse to being like the couple on the couch across from me, who have by now advanced from an upright position to a full-on lying–down-on-the-couch-and-grinding-hips-together one.

Tristan says something to the girl writhing before him, then he walks straight over to me.

“Hey. You're here.”

I'm not sure what to say to this brilliant observation, so I just try to look bored or something.

“Where's my little brother?”

I shrug. “He disappeared.”

Tristan sits down next to me, and my whole body goes on alert to the sensation of his thigh against my thigh, his hip against my hip, his arm now draped around my shoulders.

“Is he going to get pissed off if he sees me sitting here?”

“Maybe.” I don't want to consider that right now.

Sin must be busy, or maybe even gone. He's been weird and silent all day, and I almost wonder if he's been mad at me again over the hot-tub incident, but I haven't had the energy to ask.

Some part of me wants to punish him for not letting go of the whole thing, for not understanding, for being so weird about it. So what if I made out with his brother? It's not like Sin owns me.

Or maybe it is.

“Remember when I caught you pulling up your pants?”

“Yeah.” My cheeks burn at the embarrassing memory. “What about it?”

“That was kind of hot, walking in on you like that.”

“You've already seen me naked.” I don't know where my boldness comes from, but I like it.

“You should be naked more often. It suits you.”

“It suits you too,” I say, sickened by my own lameness.

“I'm opposed to clothing.”

“Even when it's cold out?”

“Especially when it's cold out.”

I can't think of anything to say to this, so an awkward silence follows. I stare at him. He stares at me. We have another moment, this one far more intimate than the last.

“You don't look like you're having much fun here,” he finally says.

I shrug, wishing I had another beer. Something to do with my hands and mouth that won't get me into trouble.

“How about we find some place a little quieter?”

This is the best idea I've heard in my entire life. I conveniently decide Sin has abandoned me. “Yeah,” I say, but Tristan's already standing up, tugging at my hand.

I rise and follow, floating almost. Giddy with my newfound fortune.

“This house,” he says as he guides me upstairs, “is amazing. Did you get the tour yet?”

“No. Do you know the people who live here?”

“My mom's second husband.”

Sin, in typical fashion, never mentioned this. I didn't know him when his mother was married to either of her husbands, and Sin doesn't like to talk about them much. I recall his saying something about his stepdad being an asshole, but not that he was rich.

This house is pretty deluxe, I notice as we move away from the horde of teenagers. It's kind of a funky hippie place, but much nicer than usual. Trust-fund hippie. The stair railing is some kind of carved wood in a swirling pattern that isn't fancy like in most expensive houses, but is instead expensive looking while still funky. Like some artist was high when he worked on it.

Tristan leads me down a hallway past three or four doors, then to a pair of double doors that he opens into a room lit by a few small, glowing lamps, one on each side of a giant bed. The room has a high, wood-beam ceiling, like a church, and something about the dim lighting reminds me of churches too.

Not that I've been inside many, but I've seen plenty of them on TV. And once, the summer after fifth grade, my grandmother had celebrated Sarah's going into remission with a trip for all of us to Paris, where we'd visited cathedral after cathedral. Mostly I remembered people walking through these supposedly sacred spaces talking on cell phones and taking cheesy pictures. Here, a woman in front of an altar, grinning fakely; there, a guy next to a stained-glass window of a saint loudly speaking Spanish into a cell phone.

This room feels the same to me—the mundane and sacred all mixed together.

But I am only fully aware of my hand in his, growing sweaty. I take advantage of his closing the double doors behind us to wipe my hands on my skirt.

The doors block most of the sound of the party down below. Now we are in a different world, someone else's bedroom.

“That's better,” Tristan says, and I notice finally the sound of soft music coming from hidden speakers.

Had he come in here ahead of time to set the ambience, planning to bring someone up here? Me, maybe? Or had someone else prepared the room for his or her own romantic encounter? I weigh the possibilities for a moment before Tristan takes my hand again and I tense up, losing the ability to think complex thoughts.

“You're not a virgin, are you?”

I was not expecting this question, out of the blue and so blunt.

I almost point out that I'll soon turn sixteen, as if this is evidence of anything one way or the other. But I don't. I'm not embarrassed to be a virgin. I like the possibility of it, the not-yet-ness of it. It fits me.

Or at least it did until now. I'm here with Tristan for a reason, for not-yet to become been-there-done-that.

Understanding dawns on his face. “You are, aren't you?”

This is what I've been imagining for a long time, all my fantasies wrapped up in one guy. And it's nothing like I imagined.

How have I gotten so lucky that he notices me? That he actually wants
me
? And why don't I feel lucky?

“Yeah,” I say, my voice barely audible.

This person I become with Tristan—I barely know her. I don't know where she's come from, or how she got into my body. I guess she is the new Asha, the one born after Sarah's death.