Chapter One
The first thing I noticed about my sister was that she was beautiful.
Not beautiful in the boring way people said it when they meant symmetrical face, clear skin, nice teeth.
I mean beautiful in a way that made me stare.
There was something familiar about her that irritated me because I couldn’t place it. Her eyes, maybe. Or the way she smiled with her whole face and then looked away like she regretted letting anyone see it. She had this soft, careful kind of prettiness that made her look like she belonged in old photographs.
She didn’t think she was pretty.
That was the second thing I noticed.
“I hate my nose,” she said.
We had known each other for less than two hours.
I looked at her across the restaurant table.
“You’re literally gorgeous.”
She rolled her eyes.
“No, seriously.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I’m not saying it because I have to.”
My little brother Trey was sitting beside me, tearing the paper wrapper off his straw into tiny pieces and dropping them into his water like confetti.
“You do look like SZA,” he said.
My sister groaned.
“Please don’t start.”
My mom laughed.
Apparently everyone had already had this conversation before.
Everyone except me.
That thought sat strangely in my chest.
Not painfully.
Just strangely.
I looked at my sister again.
My sister.
Even thinking the word felt dramatic.
I had always wanted one.
Not in the casual way kids said they wanted a puppy or a bigger room.
I had wanted a sister with actual ache behind it.
Someone to borrow clothes from.
Someone to call when I was mad at my mom.
Someone who understood the difference between needing advice and needing somebody to agree with me for five minutes before telling me I was wrong.
Someone who knew where I came from because she came from there too.
Except she didn’t.
Technically.
She was my stepsister.
The details of that still felt slippery.
My mom had explained it twice already, and both times I had nodded like I understood.
There had been a marriage.
Or almost a marriage.
There had been years I hadn’t known about.
People I hadn’t known existed.
And somehow, out of all of it, there was her.
Across the table.
Picking at the corner of a napkin.
Real.
I stared again.
She caught me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You keep looking at me.”
“I know.”
“That’s weird.”
“I know.”
She laughed.
And I swear to God, something in me relaxed.
Like my body had been waiting for that sound.
A server came by and dropped off another round of drinks.
I grabbed mine without thinking.
Took a sip.
Immediately froze.
The burn hit the back of my throat.
“Oh.”
I spat it back into the glass.
Trey’s eyes went wide.
My mom stared at me.
My sister covered her mouth.
“What?” I said.
Then she started laughing.
Hard.
Not cute laughing either.
Head down.
Shoulders shaking.
“What did you just drink?” my mom asked.
“I don’t know.”
“That was mine,” my sister said.
“What is it?”
She looked at me.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I definitely want to know now.”
“You just spit liquor back into a glass in public.”
“It surprised me.”
“You could’ve swallowed it.”
“I panicked!”
That made her laugh harder.
And then I was laughing too.
Not because it was that funny.
Because she was.
Because I liked the sound of us laughing together.
That realization came so quickly it scared me.
I leaned back in my chair.
Looked at her.
Then at my mom.
Then at Trey.
And something in the whole picture shifted.
It looked too complete.
Too easy.
Like a memory I hadn’t earned yet.
A weird little pressure built behind my eyes.
I blinked.
“This is going to sound stupid.”
My sister raised one eyebrow.
“Great start.”
I ignored her.
“Is this a dream?”
Nobody laughed this time.
My mom frowned.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked around.
The restaurant was loud.
Forks against plates.
Ice shaking in glasses.
A baby crying somewhere behind me.
A server calling out somebody’s order.
Everything felt solid.
Still.
I looked back at my sister.
“It just feels like a dream.”
She smiled.
“Why?”
I laughed, but it came out quieter than I meant it to.
“Because I never thought I’d have a sister.”
Something passed over her face.
Gone before I could read it.
Then she reached across the table and touched my wrist.
Warm.
Real.
“This isn’t a dream.”
My mom nodded.
“No, baby.”
Trey looked between all of us.
“You good?”
“Yeah.”
I smiled.
“I’m good.”
And I was.
That was the weird part.
I was really good.
Better than good.
Happy.
I looked at my sister’s hand on my wrist.
Then at her face.
And the thought came so naturally I barely questioned it.
Of course this was real.
Why wouldn’t it be?
Why wouldn’t I have something I’d always wanted?
⸻
Later, at the house, she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch while I twisted one of the curls near the back of her head around my finger.
“You’re annoying,” she said.
“I’ve known you for one day.”
“Exactly.”
“So technically you don’t know if I’m annoying yet.”
“I know.”
“You’re judgmental.”
“I know that too.”
She smiled without turning around.
The room was warm in that lazy evening way, the windows darkening as the sun dropped outside.
Trey had disappeared into another room.
My mom was somewhere in the kitchen.
The TV was on low, but neither of us was watching it.
My sister had been scrolling through pictures on her phone and criticizing herself in every single one.
Too big here.
Too awkward there.
Bad angle.
Bad smile.
Bad hair.
I finally snatched the phone out of her hand.
“Stop.”
She turned around.
“Give me my phone.”
“No.”
“Girl.”
“You’re pissing me off.”
“With my own face?”
“Yes.”
She laughed.
I held the phone up.
“This girl is pretty.”
“That’s me.”
“I’m aware.”
“So your opinion is biased.”
“How?”
“You’re my sister.”
My chest did that thing again.
That warm little tightening.
I looked down at the picture.
Then back at her.
“I like when you say that.”
She softened.
“What?”
“My sister.”
She stared at me for a second.
Then smiled.
Small.
Real.
“My sister.”
I looked away before I got emotional.
“Okay, don’t overdo it.”
She burst out laughing.
And then something happened.
Fast.
So fast I didn’t understand it at first.
There was pressure in my mouth.
I sat up.
My jaw opened.
Not because I opened it.
Because something inside my mouth forced it wider.
I reached up immediately.
“What the—”
Except I couldn’t say it.
I couldn’t close my mouth.
There was something between my teeth.
Hard.
Wide.
Plastic, maybe.
It stretched the corners of my mouth until they hurt.
I made a noise.
My sister turned.
“What?”
I pointed at my mouth.
She stared.
I tried again.
“Mm.”
“What are you doing?”
I waved both hands.
My eyes watered from the strain in my jaw.
The thing felt exactly like something a dentist would use to keep your mouth open.
Except I had no idea how it had gotten there.
My sister stood up.
“Are you choking?”
I shook my head violently.
“No?”
I shook my head again.
“What’s in your mouth?”
I pointed.
She leaned closer.
I grabbed her wrist.
Her face changed.
“What?”
I tried to pull the thing out.
My fingers touched my teeth.
Nothing else.
No plastic.
No metal.
Nothing.
But I could feel it.
Huge.
Solid.
Holding me open.
My heart started hammering.
I made another noise.
Louder this time.
My mom called from the kitchen.
“You okay?”
My sister looked toward the doorway.
Then back at me.
And suddenly—
the pressure vanished.
My mouth snapped shut.
I gasped.
My hands flew to my jaw.
My sister jumped.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth.
Everything was there.
Everything felt normal.
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Again.
Fine.
My sister stared at me.
“You scared me.”
“I scared me.”
“What did it feel like?”
I rubbed the side of my jaw.
“Like something was holding my mouth open.”
She frowned.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like one of those dentist things.”
She stared.
Then laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
Because she didn’t know what else to do.
“You’re weird.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
She sat back down.
I did too.
For the next few minutes, neither of us spoke.
The TV kept playing.
Someone laughed on-screen.
A car passed outside.
My jaw still ached.
I looked over at my sister.
She was scrolling again.
Normal.
Calm.
Real.
I wanted to ask if she had actually seen anything.
Instead I said, “Hey.”
She looked up.
“What?”
“You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”
Her expression changed.
Barely.
“Of course.”
“Even if it was weird?”
“Especially if it was weird.”
I nodded.
She smiled.
Then pointed at me.
“You’d better do the same.”
“I would.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She held out her pinky.
I laughed.
“You’re twelve.”
“Do it.”
I hooked mine around hers.
And for one strange second, the room went completely silent.
Not quiet.
Silent.
No television.
No traffic.
No refrigerator hum.
Nothing.
My sister’s smile disappeared.
I felt her pinky tighten around mine.
Then sound rushed back all at once.
The TV.
The kitchen.
The street.
Everything.
I stared at her.
She stared at me.
Neither of us moved.
Then she pulled her hand away.
“You hungry?”
I blinked.
“What?”
“I’m hungry.”
“You just ate.”
“So?”
I laughed slowly.
The moment dissolved.
She stood.
I watched her walk toward the kitchen.
And right before she disappeared around the corner, she looked back at me.
Not casually.
Not like she had forgotten something.
She looked at me like she was checking to make sure I was still there.
Then she smiled.
And left the room.
I sat alone on the couch.
My jaw throbbed once.
Deep in my gums.
I pressed my tongue against my teeth.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
I stopped counting.
Then laughed at myself.
Because that was ridiculous.
Everything was fine.
This wasn’t a dream.
Chapter Two
By the next morning, I had convinced myself the thing with my mouth hadn’t happened.
Not that I imagined it exactly. I remembered it too clearly for that. I remembered the ache at the corners of my lips and the panic of trying to speak when my mouth wouldn’t close. I remembered touching my teeth and feeling nothing there even though something had been holding my jaw open so wide it hurt.
But bodies did weird things.
Muscles cramped. Jaws locked. Nerves misfired. People got phantom sensations all the time.
Probably.
I didn’t look it up.
I knew myself well enough to know that looking it up would end with me diagnosing myself with some rare neurological disease at two in the morning, so I left it alone.
Besides, I had more important things to think about.
I had a sister.
The thought hit me again before I even opened my eyes.
I smiled into my pillow.
It was embarrassing.
I was twenty-something years old, lying in bed grinning because somewhere else in the house was a woman I had known for approximately one day.
My sister.
I said it quietly just to hear how it sounded.
“My sister.”
Still weird.
Still good.
There was a knock at my door.
“Are you awake?”
I sat up too quickly. “Yeah.”
The door opened before I could say anything else and she walked in carrying two mugs, wearing an oversized T-shirt and a bonnet.
I stared at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like I’m a zoo animal.”
I smiled and took the mug she offered me. “I’m adjusting.”
“To my face?”
“To you existing.”
She gave me a look, then climbed onto the end of my bed like she’d been doing it for years.
That was what kept getting me.
Nothing felt awkward.
I had expected awkwardness. There should have been some careful stage where we asked each other safe questions and pretended not to stare. Favorite color. Favorite food. What music do you listen to? What did you study? Do you have a boyfriend? All the boring things people asked when they were trying to turn a stranger into someone they knew.
Instead, we’d skipped something.
I didn’t know what.
But somehow we’d landed here.
She stole my blanket and pulled it over her legs.
“Okay,” I said. “Absolutely not.”
“You weren’t using this part.”
“It’s my blanket.”
“And I’m cold.”
“You brought me coffee. You didn’t buy rights to my belongings.”
She took a sip from her mug and looked at me over the rim. “You said you wanted a sister.”
I stared at her.
She smiled.
I snatched the corner of the blanket back.
She laughed, and there it was again—that strange little feeling in my chest. Recognition without memory.
I liked her laugh.
That bothered me.
Not because there was anything wrong with liking it. Because I knew it.
Somehow, I knew exactly what she looked like when she was about to laugh before she did it. Her eyes narrowed first. Her mouth pulled slightly to the left. If she was trying not to laugh, she’d press her lips together and look down.
I had noticed all of that yesterday.
That was possible.
People noticed things.
Still, when she laughed now, I had the overwhelming sensation that I’d heard it a thousand times.
I rubbed my thumb along the handle of my mug.
“What?”
I looked up. “Hm?”
“You got quiet.”
“I was thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
I rolled my eyes.
She smiled and reached for her phone.
Her lock screen was a picture of us.
I froze.
It disappeared almost immediately when Face ID unlocked the screen.
“Wait.”
She looked up.
“Go back.”
“To what?”
“Your lock screen.”
She hesitated.
Only for a second.
Then she locked her phone and held it toward me.
It was definitely us.
Not a picture from yesterday.
I knew what I had worn yesterday. I had been wearing jeans and a green top when I met her. In this picture, I was wearing a white dress.
She stood beside me with her arm around my waist.
We were outside somewhere. There were trees behind us, thick and green, and strings of little lights hanging overhead. My head was tilted against hers.
Both of us were smiling.
Not posed smiling.
Happy smiling.
I reached for the phone.
“When was this?”
She looked at the picture, then at me.
Her face went blank.
Just for a second.
Then she laughed. “You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“Seriously?”
I looked closer.
There was something behind us. A building maybe. Brick. A patio crowded with people.
“I’ve never seen this picture.”
Her smile faded.
The room suddenly felt colder.
I looked at her. “When did we take this?”
She stared at me long enough that I started to feel stupid.
Then she reached over and took the phone.
“Yesterday.”
I frowned.
“No, we didn’t.”
“Yes, we did.”
“I wasn’t wearing that.”
She looked down at the screen.
“You changed.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
I laughed, waiting for her to laugh too.
She didn’t.
I searched her face.
“Stop playing.”
“I’m not.”
Something tightened in my stomach.
I took the phone again and zoomed in.
It was me.
There was no question about that.
Same face. Same smile. Same tiny scar near my eyebrow. Even the necklace was mine.
But I had never owned that dress.
At least I didn’t think I had.
I zoomed out.
My sister was watching me now instead of the picture.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You look weird.”
“I just don’t remember taking it.”
She was quiet.
Then she shrugged. “You were tired yesterday.”
I looked at her.
That explanation made absolutely no sense.
But something about the way she said it made me feel like disagreeing would make everything worse.
So I handed her the phone.
“Cute picture.”
She watched me for another second before smiling.
“Very.”
The conversation moved on.
At least hers did.
Mine stayed with the photograph.
⸻
By noon, I’d almost forgotten about it.
That was becoming a pattern.
Something strange would happen, I’d feel that cold little drop in my stomach, and then life would rush in behind it so quickly there wasn’t enough room to be afraid.
My mom wanted groceries.
Trey wanted food.
My sister wanted to go out that night.
Apparently there was a place she liked that wasn’t quite a club and wasn’t quite a bar. It had live music sometimes, DJs other times, and a small stage toward the back that people treated like it belonged to whoever was brave enough to climb onto it.
“You’ll like it,” she told me while digging through my closet.
I was sitting on the floor watching her reject my clothes.
“You’ve known me for two days.”
“And?”
“And how do you know what I’ll like?”
She pulled out a black top, considered it, and tossed it onto the bed. “I just do.”
There it was again.
I just do.
I should have asked more questions.
Instead I watched her disappear halfway into my closet and emerge holding a dress I had forgotten I owned.
“Oh, absolutely.”
“No.”
“You haven’t even seen it.”
“I saw enough.”
She held it against herself and turned toward the mirror. “You’re boring.”
“You’ve known me for two days.”
She met my eyes through the reflection.
Something about her expression made the rest of my sentence disappear.
Not because it was frightening.
Because for one second she looked sad.
Deeply sad.
The kind of sadness that belonged to something much bigger than a dress.
Then she blinked and it was gone.
“Stop saying that.”
I frowned. “Saying what?”
“That I’ve known you for two days.”
“But you have.”
“I know.”
She hung the dress back up.
I waited.
She didn’t say anything else.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “It just sounds weird.”
I watched her.
She kept looking through my clothes.
I almost asked again.
Then she pulled out a pair of pants and held them up with a disgusted expression.
“What the hell are these?”
I gasped. “Give me those.”
“These are criminal.”
“They’re comfortable.”
“They need to be comfortable in the trash.”
And just like that, I forgot to ask.
⸻
We left after nine.
The place was already crowded when we arrived, though not enough to make me regret coming. Warm amber lights hung over the bar, and the stage at the far end of the room glowed beneath deep purple spotlights. People filled the tables around it, talking over music that was just loud enough to make everyone lean closer.
My sister knew people.
A lot of people.
Every few feet somebody hugged her or called her name. She introduced me each time with such casual certainty that the words started doing something ridiculous to me.
“This is my sister.”
My sister.
My sister.
My sister.
Every time she said it, I wanted her to say it again.
I stopped caring how pathetic that was.
Eventually we found space near the stage. Trey had come with us, although he disappeared almost immediately after seeing someone he knew. My mom had decided she was too tired and told us not to come home making noise.
For the first hour, nothing strange happened.
I remember that specifically.
Nothing.
We drank. We danced. My sister made me take approximately forty pictures because she hated thirty-nine of them. I told her she was insane. She told me I didn’t understand angles.
At some point, I went to the bathroom and checked my teeth in the mirror.
Just once.
I smiled at myself.
Everything looked normal.
“Girl.”
A woman waiting behind me for the sink raised an eyebrow.
I realized I was still baring my teeth at my reflection.
“Sorry.”
She laughed.
I washed my hands and left.
When I returned, my sister was standing near the stage talking to the DJ.
I pushed through the crowd toward her.
“What are you doing?”
She turned around with a smile that immediately made me suspicious.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m about to ask.”
“You have a face.”
“What face?”
“A bad-decision face.”
She laughed.
Then the music stopped.
People groaned.
The DJ said something into the microphone that I couldn’t hear, and a few people near the stage started cheering.
My sister grabbed my hand.
I planted my feet.
“No.”
“Come on.”
“Where?”
She pulled.
I resisted.
She pulled harder.
And somehow, thirty seconds later, I was standing on the stage.
I hated her.
For approximately five seconds.
Then the first notes played.
I stopped.
The room seemed to stop with me.
It was gospel.
Not what I’d expected.
Not what anybody expected, judging by the noise that moved through the crowd.
But my sister lit up.
I had never seen someone’s entire face change that quickly.
She looked at me, grabbed both my hands, and started dancing.
I laughed.
She spun away from me and came back.
Then she sang.
And everything else disappeared.
Her voice was beautiful.
Not polished beautiful.
Not perfect.
Better than that.
It was warm and huge and alive, the kind of voice that made you understand why people closed their eyes when they sang about God.
I stared at her.
She laughed mid-note when she caught me looking.
“You can sing?”
She kept singing instead of answering.
I grabbed her shoulders.
“YOU CAN SING?”
She laughed harder.
Then I was laughing too, and we were dancing terribly, arms around each other, neither of us caring about the people watching.
For a few minutes, there was nothing strange about my life.
Nothing missing.
Nothing I needed to understand.
There was just her.
My sister.
I hugged her tighter.
She rested her forehead against mine.
And I thought, with such sudden certainty that it nearly hurt:
I love you.
I didn’t say it.
It was too soon.
Two days.
I’d known her for two days.
But as soon as I thought the words, her eyes opened.
She looked directly at me.
Her smile slowly disappeared.
For half a second, I wondered if I had said it out loud.
Then she pulled me into another hug.
Hard.
Hard enough that I could feel her heartbeat against mine.
Her mouth was beside my ear when she whispered something.
The music swallowed most of it.
“What?”
She pulled back.
I couldn’t hear her.
“What did you say?”
She shook her head.
“Nothing.”
The song ended.
The room erupted.
She grabbed my hand and bowed dramatically. I nearly fell over laughing.
We climbed off the stage together.
I was still smiling when I looked back.
The DJ was already changing the song.
People moved onto the stage.
Everything continued.
But something made me stop.
There was a phone lying near the center of the floor.
Brown case.
Mine.
I touched my pocket.
Empty.
“Oh, shit.”
I pushed back through the crowd and picked it up.
The screen lit when I touched it.
My face stared back at me.
Not my wallpaper.
A photograph.
Me.
My sister.
The same white dress.
The same trees.
The same lights.
Except this wasn’t the picture from her phone.
In this one, neither of us was smiling.
My sister was looking at the camera.
I wasn’t.
I was looking behind us.
At something standing between the trees.
I stared at the screen.
Someone bumped into me.
The phone slipped from my hand.
I caught it before it hit the floor.
When I looked again, my normal lock screen was there.
I stood completely still while people danced around me.
Then I felt a hand slip into mine.
My sister.
“You found it.”
I looked at her.
“Yeah.”
She squeezed my hand.
For some reason, I couldn’t make myself tell her what I’d seen.
Instead I looked toward the stage.
Another song had started.
Everyone was dancing again.
I looked back at my phone.
Brown case.
My phone.
Of course it was.
My sister tugged my hand.
“You coming?”
I nodded.
She started walking.
I followed.
And somewhere deep beneath the music, beneath the voices and the bass shaking the floor, I heard something click inside my mouth.
Just once.
Like a tooth settling into place.
Chapter Three
I woke up with my tongue pressed against my front teeth.
For a few seconds I stayed exactly where I was, eyes closed, moving it slowly from one side of my mouth to the other. Everything was there. Smooth enamel, familiar little ridges, the sharp edges of the teeth farther back. Nothing loose. Nothing hurting.
Still, I checked twice.
Morning light had already found its way through the curtains, illuminating the clothes I’d dropped on the floor sometime after we came home. One shoe had made it all the way to the doorway. My purse was hanging halfway off the dresser, and my phone was beside me in bed, tangled in the sheets like I’d fallen asleep holding it.
The brown case was the first thing I saw.
I remembered the picture immediately.
I had spent most of the ride home trying not to.
There were reasonable explanations for what I’d seen. Phones glitched. Pictures opened accidentally. I had been drinking. There had been flashing lights, loud music and several hundred bodies packed into a dark room. My brain could have filled in whatever it couldn’t see clearly.
All perfectly reasonable.
The problem was the dress.
I unlocked my phone.
For the next twenty minutes, I went through every photograph I had.
I started with last night. There were more than sixty pictures, most of them useless. Blurry shots of drinks. Trey making faces. My sister posing beautifully in one photo and immediately ruining the next by crossing her eyes. A video I didn’t remember recording in which the camera pointed mostly at the floor while we laughed about something incomprehensible. Several pictures from the stage.
Nothing with the white dress.
I kept scrolling.
Last week. Last month. Birthdays. Screenshots. Food. People I hadn’t spoken to in years. Pictures I’d saved and forgotten.
No trees.
No string lights.
No white dress.
Eventually I searched my photos for myself and went through those too.
Nothing.
I should have felt relieved.
Instead I opened my sister’s contact.
Her name sat at the top of the screen with a heart beside it.
I didn’t remember putting the heart there.
That was stupid enough that I actually laughed. Maybe she’d done it. Maybe I’d handed her my phone yesterday and she’d changed her contact because that seemed exactly like something she would do.
I opened our messages.
There was nothing.
Not nothing from yesterday.
Nothing at all.
No old texts. No pictures. No links. No missed calls. Just an empty thread and the little message bar waiting at the bottom.
That made sense.
Two days.
I had known her for two days.
I stared at the screen.
Then why had I expected something else?
A knock came at my door before I could answer myself.
I locked the phone and dropped it beside me.
My mother walked in carrying a laundry basket against her hip. She looked at the room, looked at me, and made the particular face mothers made when they wanted you to understand that they had noticed a mess but had decided, through extraordinary mercy, not to discuss it.
“You alive?”
“Barely.”
“You stayed out too late.”
“We weren’t even out that late.”
She made a sound that communicated exactly how much she believed that and started collecting a few things from the chair near my dresser.
I watched her for a moment.
There were questions I wanted to ask her. The problem was that I didn’t know how to ask them without sounding insane.
When exactly had she met my sister?
Why hadn’t I known about her before?
How long had everyone else known?
And, most importantly, why couldn’t I seem to remember the explanation she’d already given me?
I’d heard it.
I knew I had.
At the restaurant, she’d explained the relationship. There had been enough detail that I’d stopped asking questions. Yet when I reached for the memory now, all I could find were pieces that refused to attach themselves to anything.
A man.
A relationship.
Years ago.
Her daughter.
No face. No dates. No name.
I couldn’t even remember my sister’s father’s name.
“Mom?”
She was sorting socks. “Hm?”
“How did you find her?”
My mother didn’t look up.
“Who?”
I almost laughed. “My sister.”
Something changed.
Not dramatically. She didn’t freeze or drop anything. Her hands simply stopped moving for a moment before she continued folding.
“You know how.”
“I know. I just can’t remember.”
This time she looked at me.
I tried to make my face casual, which probably made me look considerably less casual.
She studied me for a few seconds before setting the laundry basket on the chair. She reminded me that we’d already talked about this, and when I told her I knew, she asked whether I’d been drinking before dinner yesterday too.
I threw a pillow at her.
She laughed and caught it.
The moment loosened.
Still, she didn’t answer.
I asked again.
My mother sighed in that exhausted way people did when they were being forced to repeat a story they considered settled. Years ago, she’d dated my sister’s father. It had been serious. Serious enough that marriage had been discussed, apparently, although it never happened. He already had daughters. Life happened. The relationship ended. Everyone moved on.
“And then?”
“And then what?”
“How did she become my stepsister if you never married him?”
My mother stared at me.
There it was.
The first real crack.
It was tiny.
A grammatical problem. A technicality. Something so small I almost felt ridiculous for noticing it.
But I’d been calling this woman my stepsister for two days.
Everyone had.
My mother sat down on the edge of the chair.
For the first time since I’d asked, she looked genuinely confused.
Not nervous.
Not caught.
Confused.
She repeated the word slowly, as if she’d never heard me use it before.
Stepsister.
Then she smiled.
“Oh. You know what I mean.”
I didn’t.
Apparently my face said so.
“She might as well be,” my mother added. “You girls clicked immediately.”
That was true.
It was also not an answer.
I wanted to push, but I suddenly felt tired. Not sleepy. Heavy. The kind of exhaustion that arrived when an argument had gone on too long, except we hadn’t been arguing.
My mother picked the basket back up. Before leaving, she told me there was food downstairs and that my sister had already gone out.
I sat upright.
“Where?”
She shrugged. Somewhere with a friend, apparently. She’d be back.
The disappointment I felt was wildly disproportionate.
I hadn’t even known the woman existed three days ago.
Now she’d left the house for a few hours and the place felt emptier.
That should have embarrassed me.
Instead it made me sad.
I got out of bed.
⸻ The house was quiet in daylight.
Not unusually quiet. Just ordinary late-morning quiet: refrigerator humming, pipes ticking somewhere behind the walls, a neighbor’s lawn mower starting and stopping outside. Trey had left too, although nobody seemed to know where he’d gone, which was normal enough that no one appeared concerned.
I ate standing at the kitchen counter and thought about nothing on purpose.
It lasted approximately four minutes.
Then I went looking for family pictures.
There wasn’t a dramatic reason for it. At least that’s what I told myself.
Our hallway had always been crowded with them. School portraits, holidays, birthdays, relatives I recognized mostly from funerals and Facebook. My mother had never been particularly organized about it. A picture from fifteen years ago might hang beside one from last Christmas with no logic beyond the fact that she liked both frames.
I walked slowly.
There I was at eight, missing a tooth and furious about having my picture taken.
Trey as a baby.
My mother younger than I remembered her ever being.
Grandparents.
Cousins.
Christmas.
A beach.
Another Christmas.
I reached the end of the hallway.
No sister.
Of course there wasn’t.
She hadn’t grown up with us.
I turned around.
Something caught my attention.
There was a frame on the small table beneath the thermostat.
I’d walked past it twice.
I picked it up.
My mother was in the picture.
She looked maybe ten years younger. Her hair was shorter, and she was standing beside a man I didn’t recognize. He was tall, dark-skinned, smiling directly into the camera with one arm around her.
Beside him stood two girls.
One was my sister.
Younger, but unmistakably her.
The other girl was older.
I recognized her too.
Everyone would have.
I stared at the photograph for so long my arm began to ache from holding it.
The famous sister had been a joke at dinner. Something Trey mentioned casually because apparently the absurdity of discovering a sister who was related to an actual celebrity required less explanation than the dessert menu.
Seeing her in a family photograph was different.
It made everything suddenly physical.
There had been a man.
There had been children.
My mother really had known them.
I brought the frame closer.
The picture had been taken outside a house. My mother stood at one end. The man beside her. His daughters beside him.
Four people.
There was space at the edge of the photograph.
Not empty space exactly.
More like someone had been cut out.
I tilted the frame.
A hand rested on my sister’s shoulder.
It wasn’t the man’s.
His hands were visible.
It wasn’t her sister’s.
Both of hers were folded in front of her.
The hand entered the photograph from the right edge, fingers resting casually against my sister’s shoulder.
Someone had been standing there.
Someone the photograph no longer showed.
My stomach tightened.
I turned the frame over.
The backing was old. Dust had settled into the corners.
I opened it.
The photograph slipped into my hand.
Nothing had been cut.
The edge was intact.
I looked again.
The hand was still there.
It simply ended at the border.
Perfectly normal.
Someone had been standing outside the shot.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
This was getting ridiculous.
I put the photograph back.
As I did, I noticed writing on the reverse.
Blue ink.
My mother’s handwriting.
A date.
I read it twice.
Then checked my phone to make sure I wasn’t somehow misunderstanding the year.
The picture had been taken when I was thirteen.
I knew exactly where I’d been that year.
I knew the house we’d lived in. I knew my school. I knew the ridiculous haircut I’d gotten that summer and regretted for months.
I also knew my mother had never mentioned these people.
Not once.
I heard the front door open.
I shoved the photograph back into the frame so quickly I bent one corner.
My sister walked in carrying a shopping bag.
She saw me standing in the hallway and smiled.
“There you are.”
Something about hearing her voice immediately calmed me.
That scared me more than the photograph.
She came closer, noticed what I was holding, and stopped.
Her smile didn’t disappear.
It changed.
I looked down at the picture, then back at her.
“You were little.”
She stepped beside me.
For a while we looked at the photograph together.
Up close, I could smell her perfume. Something soft and warm that I had started associating with her without realizing it.
She pointed to herself and groaned about her eyebrows.
I laughed despite myself.
Then I asked how old she’d been.
She told me thirteen.
My fingers tightened around the frame.
We were the same age.
I looked at the photograph again.
My sister leaned her head against my shoulder.
It felt so natural that for several seconds I forgot why I was uncomfortable.
Then she said something quietly.
“I hated that day.”
I turned toward her.
She was still looking at the picture.
I waited.
She didn’t explain.
I asked why.
Her eyes moved to the right side of the photograph.
To the hand.
Then she took the frame gently from me and returned it to the table.
“Come on. I bought you something.”
That should not have worked.
It did.
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the kitchen, talking about a bakery she’d found and insisting she’d bought the best thing there before immediately admitting she’d eaten half of mine on the way home.
I followed her.
I laughed.
I called her greedy.
Within minutes we were sitting at the kitchen table sharing what remained of a pastry directly from the bag.
The photograph stayed in the hallway.
For a while, I forgot about it.
Again.
That evening, I passed the table on my way upstairs.
The frame was gone.
I stopped.
There was a pale rectangle in the dust where it had been.
I called for my mother.
No answer.
I called my sister.
Nothing.
I stood there looking at the empty spot, trying to remember whether one of them had moved it.
Maybe they had.
I went upstairs.
My sister’s bedroom door was open.
She wasn’t inside.
I’d never been in her room before.
I stepped through the doorway.
Her things were everywhere in a way that made the room immediately feel lived in. Clothes over a chair. Makeup scattered across the dresser. A half-empty water bottle on the nightstand. A pair of shoes kicked beneath the bed.
There were photographs tucked around the mirror.
I moved closer.
Her with friends.
Her family.
Her famous sister.
My mother.
Trey.
I stopped breathing.
There was a photograph of me.
Not the white dress.
Another one.
I looked younger.
Maybe sixteen.
My hair was different. My face rounder.
I was asleep.
My head rested against someone’s shoulder.
My sister’s.
She looked younger too.
She was awake, smiling at whoever had taken the picture.
My hand shook as I pulled it from the mirror.
I flipped it over.
There was writing on the back.
Not my mother’s.
Hers.
Two words.
Found you.
My jaw tightened.
Pain shot through the roots of my teeth so suddenly that I dropped the photograph.
I grabbed the dresser.
For one terrible second, I felt it again.
Something hard.
Something too large.
Something pressing between my teeth from the inside.
I clamped my mouth shut.
The pressure pushed back.
My eyes watered.
Then I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned.
My sister stood in the doorway.
She looked at me.
Then at the photograph on the floor.
Then at my hand gripping the dresser.
Neither of us spoke.
Slowly, she walked into the room.
She picked up the photograph.
For the first time since I’d met her, she didn’t smile at me.
She looked tired.
Almost defeated.
She slid the photograph back beside the mirror.
I waited for her to explain.
She didn’t.
Instead, she reached up and touched the side of my face.
Her thumb rested gently against my jaw.
The pressure in my mouth disappeared.
I stared at her.
Her eyes were wet.
And for reasons I couldn’t explain, seeing that frightened me more than anything else had.
She leaned forward and rested her forehead against mine.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then she whispered, almost too quietly for me to hear.
“You weren’t supposed to remember yet.”
Chapter Four
For a few seconds, I forgot about the photograph.
I forgot about the impossible date on the picture downstairs, the hand entering from outside the frame, the pressure in my mouth, all of it.
There was only one sentence.
You weren’t supposed to remember yet.
My sister seemed to realize what she’d said at the same moment I did.
Her hand dropped from my face.
“What does that mean?”
She stepped away.
I waited for her to answer, but she walked toward the window instead, folding her arms across herself. Outside, the last of the daylight had turned the neighboring houses blue around their edges. Someone was walking a dog on the opposite sidewalk. A car slowed at the corner, turned, disappeared.
Everything outside her bedroom looked painfully normal.
I asked again.
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
It was the worst possible answer.
The fear I’d been carrying since yesterday had mostly been soft until then. Something I could reason with. Something I could make smaller by calling it coincidence, exhaustion or a glitch.
Now it hardened.
“You know what’s happening to me.”
“No.”
“You just said I wasn’t supposed to remember.”
“I know what I said.”
“So explain it.”
She turned around.
Her eyes were still wet.
That confused me more than anything.
If she’d looked guilty, I could have been angry. If she’d looked frightened, I could have demanded answers. Instead she looked like someone watching a bad thing happen for the second time.
I bent down and picked up the photograph.
Sixteen-year-old me slept against her shoulder.
The picture was old enough that the corners had softened. This wasn’t something printed yesterday and planted in her room. At least it didn’t look like it.
I held it toward her.
“You’ve known me.”
She didn’t answer.
“How long?”
Nothing.
“Were we friends?”
Her face tightened.
“Were you actually my sister?”
Still nothing.
“Did something happen to me?”
That did it.
Her eyes closed.
I knew before she answered that I had finally asked the right question.
“I can’t do this with you.”
She moved toward the door.
I stepped in front of it.
Normally I would’ve hated myself for doing something so dramatic, but there was a photograph of my teenage self sleeping against the shoulder of a woman I had supposedly met two days ago. Social etiquette had officially lost jurisdiction.
She wouldn’t look at me.
I asked what had happened.
She said my name quietly, almost pleading.
I didn’t move.
Then she did something I hadn’t expected.
She hugged me.
There was no warning. One second I was angry and demanding answers; the next her arms were around me so tightly that my face pressed against her shoulder.
I stayed stiff.
She didn’t.
She held me like she’d missed me.
Not for two hours.
Not for two days.
For years.
My anger didn’t disappear, but something else moved underneath it.
I slowly wrapped my arms around her.
She exhaled.
Her whole body seemed to soften.
And that familiar feeling came back.
Home.
I hated it.
I hated that I could stand in a room with evidence that this woman had lied to me and still feel safer when she touched me.
When she finally pulled away, she wiped quickly beneath one eye and told me there were things she couldn’t explain yet.
Couldn’t.
Not wouldn’t.
I noticed the difference.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know what it’ll do.”
“What what will do?”
She looked toward the hallway.
Not at anything.
Just toward it.
I followed her eyes.
Nobody was there.
When I looked back, she’d already taken the photograph from my hand.
“Please trust me.”
I almost laughed.
“That’s crazy.”
“I know.”
“You won’t even tell me what I’m trusting you about.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying you know.”
“Because I do.”
My frustration rose so quickly that my eyes burned.
She reached for me again.
I stepped back.
That hurt her.
Good.
At least I wanted it to.
I left the room.
My mother was downstairs when I found her.
I didn’t ask about the photograph.
I asked something easier.
“What was I like at sixteen?”
She looked up from the television.
The question seemed to amuse her. Apparently I had been dramatic, stubborn, convinced I knew everything and incapable of keeping my bedroom clean.
None of that was useful.
I asked where we’d lived.
She named the house I remembered.
I asked where I’d gone to school.
She named the school I remembered.
Who were my friends?
She remembered most of them.
What did I do for my sixteenth birthday?
That took her longer.
She looked toward the ceiling as if the answer might be written there.
“Dinner, I think.”
“With who?”
“Us.”
“Just us?”
She frowned.
I watched her search.
Then she smiled with relief. “You wanted that cake with all the strawberries.”
I remembered the cake.
I remembered taking pictures of it before Trey stuck his finger into the icing.
I remembered my mother yelling.
I remembered laughing so hard I almost dropped my phone.
I did not remember my sister.
I went upstairs and found the birthday pictures.
There were seventeen.
In the first, I stood behind the cake.
In the second, Trey was reaching toward it.
In the third, my mother was slapping his hand away.
I smiled despite myself.
Then I reached the fourth.
My smile disappeared.
There was an empty chair beside me.
Nothing strange about that.
Except a plate sat in front of it.
A slice of strawberry cake.
A fork.
A pink napkin folded beside the plate.
I zoomed in.
The fifth photograph showed the same chair.
Empty.
The sixth was taken from a slightly different angle.
Someone’s hand was visible beside mine.
Only a hand.
Brown skin.
Long fingers.
A silver ring.
I knew that ring.
I’d seen it yesterday on my sister’s hand.
I dropped the phone onto my bed.
No.
I picked it back up.
The seventh picture wouldn’t load.
Neither would the eighth.
The ninth opened.
The chair was empty again.
I stared until my eyes hurt.
Then I opened the information panel beneath the photograph.
The date was my sixteenth birthday.
The location was our old house.
Nothing had been edited.
At least nothing the phone could detect.
I heard movement outside my room.
My sister passed the doorway.
She didn’t stop.
I almost called her.
Instead I watched her disappear down the hall.
For the first time since meeting her, I wondered whether wanting a sister so badly had made me willing to accept one without asking where she’d come from.
That night I locked my bedroom door.
I told myself it wasn’t because of her.
Sometime after two in the morning, I woke to someone knocking.
Three soft taps.
I sat up.
Another three.
My phone said 2:17.
I waited.
Three more.
I got out of bed and crossed the room.
My hand hovered over the lock.
“Who is it?”
No answer.
I leaned closer.
There was breathing on the other side.
Then my sister whispered my name.
I unlocked the door.
She stood in the hallway wearing the same oversized T-shirt from that morning.
Her face was pale.
“What?”
She looked past me into the room.
Then at me.
“Were you sleeping?”
“Obviously.”
She didn’t smile.
She reached for my hand.
“Come sleep in my room.”
I stared at her.
“Why?”
She squeezed my fingers.
“Please.”
I should have asked.
I should have made her explain.
Instead I followed her.
When we reached her room, she locked the door behind us.
I climbed into bed beside her.
Neither of us spoke.
The room stayed dark.
After several minutes, I felt her hand find mine beneath the blanket.
I let her hold it.
Just before I fell asleep, I heard three soft knocks coming from somewhere down the hallway.
From my bedroom door.
⸻
Chapter Five
In the morning, neither of us mentioned the knocking.
I tried once.
My sister was brushing her teeth when I asked whether she’d heard it again after I fell asleep. Her eyes met mine in the mirror, toothpaste foaming around the toothbrush in her mouth.
She rinsed, wiped her lips and told me the pipes made strange noises at night.
I stared at her.
She stared back.
We both knew that was ridiculous.
Apparently we were going to pretend anyway.
The strange thing was that I let her.
Maybe because I was tired of being afraid.
Maybe because the sun was out.
Everything frightening seemed less intelligent in daylight.
Or maybe because my sister had made breakfast.
She was terrible at it.
The eggs were overcooked, the toast was nearly black and somehow she’d managed to leave the bacon both burned and chewy.
I ate all of it.
She watched me take the first bite and warned me not to say anything.
I told her I hadn’t.
“Your face did.”
“My face is grateful.”
“Your face is rude.”
I laughed.
For almost an hour, we were ordinary.
That was becoming my favorite thing about her.
She could make ordinary feel precious.
We spent the afternoon out of the house. No mystery. No photographs. No questions. We went shopping because she insisted my closet needed intervention, and somewhere between arguing over a pair of sunglasses and sharing a pretzel in the food court, I decided I wasn’t going to ruin the day by interrogating her.
There would be time.
That thought comforted me.
There would be time.
At one store she held up a yellow dress.
I immediately shook my head.
She insisted.
I told her yellow hated me.
She looked personally offended by the statement and shoved the dress into my arms.
Ten minutes later I walked out of the fitting room wearing it.
Her entire face changed.
“Oh.”
I looked at myself.
The dress was annoyingly perfect.
I hated that she was right.
She came up behind me and adjusted one of the straps. Our eyes met in the mirror.
For a moment neither of us said anything.
Then she smiled.
Not the teasing smile she’d been wearing all afternoon.
Something softer.
“I remember this.”
My stomach dropped.
She seemed to hear the words only after she’d spoken them.
I turned.
“Remember what?”
Her hands fell away from the strap.
She recovered quickly. She said she’d meant she remembered seeing something similar on me yesterday, but we both knew that wasn’t what she’d meant.
I didn’t push.
Not there.
I changed clothes.
She bought the dress before I could stop her.
Later we sat in her car eating fries from the same carton. I had spent the last ten minutes stealing the crispy ones until she finally moved the carton away from me.
I watched people cross the parking lot.
An elderly couple held hands near the entrance.
A little girl was screaming because her mother wouldn’t let her ride inside the shopping cart.
Two teenagers were taking pictures against a wall.
Normal people having normal days.
I wondered if any of them had photographs they couldn’t remember.
My sister nudged my arm.
“You disappeared.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“You do that.”
“Do what?”
“Go somewhere.”
I told her I was thinking.
She asked about what.
I almost lied.
Instead I asked whether we’d been close.
She stopped eating.
I kept my eyes on the parking lot.
“You and me. Before.”
Silence filled the car.
I didn’t look at her.
Eventually she asked how much I remembered.
“Nothing.”
That seemed to hurt.
I finally turned.
Her eyes were fixed on the fries in her lap.
I told her about the birthday pictures.
She didn’t seem surprised.
That was answer enough.
“We knew each other.”
“Yes.”
The word was so quiet I nearly missed it.
Everything inside me went still.
“How?”
She shook her head.
“You said you’d trust me.”
“I said nothing of the sort.”
That almost made her smile.
Almost.
I asked if we’d been friends.
She stared through the windshield for a long time.
Then she said, “You were my sister.”
My throat tightened.
“How?”
“I can’t tell you that yet.”
Anger flickered through me, but it couldn’t compete with the ache underneath it.
“How long?”
She looked at me.
“Long enough.”
It was infuriating.
It was also the first honest answer she’d given me.
I reached for another fry.
She slapped my hand away.
I laughed.
She did too.
The tension broke.
Not completely.
Enough.
On the drive home, she sang along with the radio.
I watched her when she wasn’t looking.
I wondered how many times I’d done that before.
⸻
That evening, I found Trey sitting on the back steps.
He was scrolling on his phone, hood pulled over his head despite the warm air.
I sat beside him.
He glanced at me, then went back to his screen.
“Did I know her before?”
His thumb stopped.
Interesting.
“Trey.”
He sighed.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if I knew our sister?”
He looked uncomfortable.
“You keep calling her that.”
My stomach turned.
“What else would I call her?”
He shrugged.
“Her name?”
I stared at him.
Something was suddenly wrong.
Not with his answer.
With me.
I knew her name.
Of course I knew her name.
I’d heard it dozens of times.
People had called it at the club.
My mother had said it.
Trey had said it.
I had said it.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came.
My heart began beating harder.
“Trey.”
He looked at me.
“What is her name?”
His expression changed.
“What?”
“Say her name.”
He laughed nervously.
“Why?”
“Just say it.”
His mouth opened.
Then closed.
He frowned.
I watched the confusion spread across his face.
He tried again.
Nothing.
We stared at each other.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then the back door opened.
My sister leaned outside.
“There you two are.”
Both of us turned.
She smiled.
Immediately, the name appeared in my mind.
Mara.
Mara.
Of course.
Mara.
I looked at Trey.
His face relaxed.
“Mara, Mom wants you.”
She rolled her eyes. “She always wants me when I’m comfortable.”
Then she disappeared inside.
I grabbed Trey’s arm.
“You couldn’t remember.”
He pulled away.
“Yes, I could.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“I just blanked.”
“So did I.”
He stood.
“You’re making it weird.”
“Trey.”
He opened the door.
I asked him to wait.
He didn’t.
Before he disappeared inside, he looked back at me.
For the first time, my little brother looked afraid.
“Stop asking questions.”
Then he shut the door.
⸻
Chapter Six
Her name was Mara.
I wrote it on my hand before bed.
It felt stupid.
MARA.
Black ink across my palm.
I stared at it while brushing my teeth.
Mara.
My sister’s name was Mara.
I rinsed my mouth and looked into the mirror.
My teeth looked normal.
I pressed a finger against one of my incisors.
Solid.
The one beside it.
Solid.
I worked my way across the front row.
Every tooth stayed exactly where it belonged.
I was beginning to think the mouth thing was stress.
That explanation had become less convincing now that apparently my childhood photographs were changing, but I was desperate enough to let separate impossible things have separate reasonable explanations.
I went to bed.
When I woke up, the ink was gone.
Not faded.
Gone.
I stared at my palm.
I checked the sheets.
Nothing.
I had used permanent marker.
I got up and went straight to the bathroom.
The marker was still beside the sink.
I uncapped it.
Wrote the name again.
MARA.
I waited.
Nothing happened.
I felt ridiculous.
Then I looked in the mirror.
For half a second, someone was standing behind me.
I spun around.
Empty bathroom.
My pulse jumped.
I looked back at the mirror.
Only me.
I laughed quietly.
“Nope.”
I left.
Some things did not deserve investigation before breakfast.
Downstairs, Mara was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee.
Seeing her calmed me immediately.
Then I remembered that this itself was strange.
I sat across from her.
She glanced at my hand.
The smile left her face.
“You shouldn’t do that.”
I looked down at the name.
“Why?”
She reached across the table and rubbed her thumb against the ink.
It smeared.
“Because you don’t need to.”
Apparently I did.
I told her what had happened with Trey.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she leaned back and looked toward the window.
I waited.
Finally, she asked whether I trusted her.
“No.”
She laughed.
It surprised both of us.
I smiled despite myself.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She looked down.
I softened.
“I want to.”
That mattered to her.
I could tell.
She reached across the table.
This time I gave her my hand.
Her thumb passed over the letters again.
“You know me.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“I know two days of you.”
She shook her head.
“No. You know me. That’s why this is happening.”
I felt cold.
“What’s happening?”
She looked toward the doorway.
Again.
Always checking.
Then she leaned closer.
“You’re remembering me before you’re supposed to.”
I stared.
Before I could ask anything else, my mother walked into the kitchen.
Mara released my hand immediately.
The conversation died.
My mother didn’t notice.
Or pretended not to.
She started talking about dinner.
I watched Mara while my mother spoke.
Mara wouldn’t look at me.
The ink on my palm had smeared into a gray shadow.
By lunchtime, it was gone again.
⸻
The next few days were normal.
Suspiciously normal.
I started keeping notes.
Not on my phone.
Paper.
A small notebook I bought without telling anyone.
Every night, I wrote down what I remembered.
Mara likes honey in her coffee.
Mara hates pickles.
Mara sings when she’s nervous.
Mara has a scar near her left knee.
Mara knew me before I knew her.
Trey knows something.
Mom’s old photograph disappeared.
Three knocks.
White dress.
Found you.
I kept the notebook beneath my mattress.
Every morning I checked it.
Nothing changed.
For four days.
On the fifth morning, one sentence was missing.
Trey knows something.
I stared at the space where it had been.
The page wasn’t torn.
There was no eraser mark.
Everything above and below remained exactly where I’d written it.
The sentence was simply gone.
I rewrote it.
Hard enough that the pen nearly tore through the paper.
Trey knows something.
Then beneath it I added:
Things can disappear from here too.
That sentence remained.
I didn’t tell Mara.
For the first time, I had something she didn’t know.
It felt terrible.
It also felt necessary.
⸻
Chapter Seven
The phone mix-up happened on a Friday.
Mara convinced me to go back to the same place we’d gone before, although I resisted at first. Something about the club had lodged itself inside my memory incorrectly. I remembered having fun. I remembered the stage. I remembered Mara singing.
But whenever I thought about the end of the night, I felt uneasy.
The photograph.
The thing between the trees.
The click inside my mouth.
Still, I went.
I was beginning to understand that loving Mara made me reckless.
Not romantic love.
Something older.
Something embarrassingly simple.
I wanted time with my sister.
Even if I couldn’t remember the time we’d apparently already had.
The club was busier than before.
Trey came again. So did two of Mara’s friends. We danced. We drank. Mara stole my phone repeatedly to take pictures of herself. At one point she disappeared onto the stage with a group of women and came back sweating, laughing and demanding water.
For nearly three hours, nothing happened.
I relaxed.
That was my mistake.
Near midnight, someone bumped hard into our table.
Several drinks went over.
People jumped back.
A purse hit the floor.
So did at least four phones.
Everyone bent down at once.
By the time we collected everything, nobody knew which phone belonged to whom.
It was funny at first.
Mara held up a phone with a glittery pink case and asked who had committed the crime of owning it.