The Good Sister (29 page)

“I wasn't exactly being honest.”

“You didn't like my shoes?”

“Not really. I just wanted to have something to say to you.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “I liked the way you sat there writing in your journal, not noticing anybody around you.”

“I noticed people. I was just too scared to look up.”

I am staring at a little pile of rocks and shells someone has made near the entrance of the tepee. I reach over and pick up a tiny crab exoskeleton, entirely intact somehow, its delicate legs and claws unbroken. I hold it in the palm of my hand and marvel at its beauty.

“You were so pretty,” Sin says.

My stomach leaps. He's never complimented me like that before. Never commented on my appearance at all, other than to critique my outfits.

He picks up the crab from my open palm and studies it. “Do you ever think maybe Sarah's been reincarnated as something else by now? Like maybe she's a crab, or a seagull or a new baby somewhere.”

“A seagull? You think my sister came back as a
seagull
?”

He shrugs. “She always liked them.”

“She was crazy.”

“She just didn't believe in speciesism.”

“What?”

“Like racism, but for animals.”

I laugh for the first time since we've set foot on this beach, and something hard and cold inside my chest melts. I start to relax.

“I don't think I believe in reincarnation,” I say, because it's impossible for me to imagine Sarah as anything but Sarah.

“I do, because I always feel this really strong sort of kinship whenever I see an alligator lizard. I think I used to be one in a past life.”

“So of all your past lives, the one and only that has stuck with you is the time you were an alligator lizard.”

“Yep.”

“You're crazy too.”

“I try.”

I close my eyes and try to imagine where Sarah might be right now, if there are such things as souls or heaven or hell or reincarnation. I imagine her watching us now. I try to feel her presence in the crashing surf and the wind.

And for the first time, I think I do. I think maybe she is whatever and wherever I want her to be. She is inside of me, and around me, and she is the crab Sin is placing back in my palm now, and she is the grain of sand clinging to my skin. She is everything and nothing, just as we all always have been and always will be.

“I have something for you.” Sin takes a package out of his pocket, little, blue velvet bag. He hands it to me.

I set the baby crab aside, then tug at the drawstring to open the bag. Inside is a bracelet made of beautiful glass beads, some swirls of color, some spotted, some translucent.

“I made the beads in Jess's glass studio.”

I look up at him, and I don't understand the emotion I see in his eyes.

“It's so pretty,” I say, then distract myself from the awkward moment by attempting to put the bracelet on, but my fingers fumble over the tiny clasp.

He stops me when I'm clearly not getting it right and secures the bracelet on my arm. When his fingertips graze the inside of my wrist, I feel it all the way in my core.

“The beads are good luck because I blew positive vibes into the glass.”

I laugh, but I stop when I see he's serious.

I feel my cheeks get hot because he keeps looking at me like he has something big to say. Feeling foolish, I look back out at the ocean and watch a surfer, his black wet suit glimmering in the sun as he skims a small wave. I've never tried surfing because I hate the cold Northern California water and the idea of sharks lurking beneath the surf. Great whites actively hunt this part of the coast, and it's not uncommon for surfers to be attacked, but there's never been an attack at Bolinas Beach. For this reason alone, I will occasionally swim in the water here on the hottest summer days.

But this beach feels safe for other reasons too. It's the beach of my happiest memories, the beach where Sin and I come when we're bored, where we lie in the sand for hours reading to each other and talking about nothing and everything. I guess, now that I consider it, this has become our place.

“Asha?”

It's rare for him to speak my actual name, and I look up, startled.

“Aren't you going to say anything?”

“About what?”

“The bracelet.”

“Oh! Sorry. I mean, thank you. It's really cool.”

For a moment, his face darkens, and I know I've said something to hurt his feelings.

“I know we're like best friends and all,” he says slowly. “But what if we weren't?”

“I'd die. I can't lose you and Sarah in the same year.”

“That's not what I mean. What if we were, like, not
just
friends?”

“What do you mean?”

He sighs, and a pained look crosses his face. “When I said I wasn't into girls anymore, I wasn't exactly telling the truth.”

“You weren't?”

“I was just, I don't know, kind of confused.”

He's stopped wearing dresses and other girlie stuff, I realize. I hadn't noticed until now, but pretty much all he wears these days are normal guy clothes.

“Confused why?”

“Because you were so clearly into Tristan, and you were the only girl I wanted to be with.”

He says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world, and like I'm a fool for not knowing. And maybe I am.

I think of all those times we shared the same bed, all the countless hours we've spent together, and me clueless as I could possibly be about Sinclair Tyler.

I look at him, and for the first time I start to see him for who he is, and not who I need him to be.

“Say something!”

“I love you,” I say before my brain has even decided to speak the words. My heart has taken control of my lips, and there's no stopping.

He looks stunned. “You do? Like a friend, you mean?”

“No. Yes. I mean, I love you like a friend, and I love you like I love you.”

He scoots over so that our legs are tangled together and our lips are only inches apart.

“You mean like this?” He kisses me.

It's not a kiss like any I've ever felt before. It's warm and slow, and it holds a question between us that I know I have to answer. I feel my whole self melt against him, and I can't compare this feeling to anything in the history of my life. I am visiting a new world, embarking on I don't know what.

When we stop kissing, he looks at me for a while, and this time it's this sort of soft, blurry looking that I can't turn away from. It's like we're seeing each other for the first time, but we already know all the details. He's always been Sin to me, funny, weird, quirky Sin. My best friend. But now he's this other guy. He's the one I love, here with me all along but somehow brand-new.

“The reason I got so mad about Tristan is because of this.”

I don't need him to explain that “this” is the feelings that have been growing inside of us, like a baby in the months before the mother's belly is big. Still small and secret, but no less real.

“I know,” I whisper, and it's true that some part of me did know before the thoughts had even formed.

“I guess I didn't want to admit how I was feeling and risk us not being friends anymore.”

“Yeah.”

I blink away the tears that are no longer threatening to form a downpour. I could explain them away as being because of the wind, but I don't need to.

“I was stupid. I mean, I don't know what I was thinking doing anything with Tristan—”

“Never mind about him. It's over, and I'll kick his ass if he ever tries to touch you again.”

I smile, knowing he's not joking but also aware that it won't be necessary. Tristan has returned to his old self, unaware of my existence, as it should be. He is his own universe, and I don't want or need to be a part of it anymore.

“Are you still afraid of what will happen if we are a couple and then it doesn't work out?”

He shrugs. “Not anymore. We can just go back to being friends, right? It's not impossible.”

“But what if we hate each other?”

“We've gotten past me hating you before.”

I smile, remembering with a pang how awful it felt to have him angry at me. There will be more moments like that if we become more than friends.

But then, there is no if. It's happened, whether we meant for it to or not, and now there's only the chance to try to see what happens next.

I take his left hand and hold it between my hands, warming it and noticing the way his long, slender fingers brush against my wrist again.

“You're the first person I've ever said that love thing to, you know.”

“The first guy you've ever loved? Or just the first one you've told?”

“The first guy I've ever
loved,
of course.”

“I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

He leans in close again, so I can feel his breath on my cheek. “The feeling is mutual.”

For the first time since Sarah died, I know she is with me. Not in that cliché watching-over-me-on-a-cloud kind of with me, but with me in this feeling that washes over me. She is everything I have ever known about love, and she's taught me how to know this feeling now.

Picking up the tiny crab shell, I cradle it in my hand for a moment, then crawl out of the tepee. When I reach the water's edge, I say good-bye, and I toss it into the fathomless, blue ocean.