Twisted Fate(23)

“Are you really high?” she asked.

I turned down the music. “No,” I said. “But I ran into Graham and that kid is on some serious drugs.”

She frowned. “He’s got a prescription for his learning disability,” she said.

“How do you now that?”

“Because I was talking to him about stuff. About moving and Virginia and starting school and all that. If you didn’t have detention every night you might get here when he’s working on his car after school and you could talk to him too.”

“Okay. Well, anyway.” I didn’t want to get distracted by Graham again so I kept on talking about what was important. “What do you think about what I’m saying?” I jumped up on the bed and turned up the Distillers again and grabbed her hairbrush and screamed into it along with Brody Dalle. “Don’t go!”

She laughed. “You sound like you did when we were little and Mom and Dad would go out for the night.”

I nodded and started laughing too. “C’mon, Al, let’s build a fort and get some ice cream. We’re just fine without them.”

She shook her head at me and looked like she was about to cry. Then finally she said, “Syd, you’re nuts,” and got up on the bed with me and we both started jumping and dancing and shouting, “Don’t go!”

And I couldn’t stop laughing. I was having fun with my sister for the first time in years and years. We didn’t need to be apart at all. We could really be like this. I tore my Tony Hawk poster down from my side of the room and went over and hung it over her bed.

“Don’t tell me you don’t think he’s hot!” I yelled over the music.

She rolled her eyes. “Please, Syd,” she said in a mock-sophisticated tone that sounded just like our mom, “I may not skateboard but I’m not blind.” She handed me a thumbtack and pulled the top of the poster up so it would be perfectly straight.

Then she went into her closet and she got out Sparkle Pig. The stuffed animal we used to fight over when we were little. He was a little pig in a T-shirt that had glitter writing on the front that said “Sparkle.” She tossed him to me.

“Seriously?” I asked

“I know you said you hate him now. But, uh . . . actually . . . I know you don’t.”

I made Sparkle Pig dance up to her and scream “Don’t go!” and then flopped down on the bed. “Sparkle Pig, you are mine,” I said to him and set him on my pillow. “Mine and mine alone.”

I tossed him back over to Ally, but he just landed on her bed.

“Ally, listen,” I said. “I think you and I should really be unified. No more fighting. No more attitude. We’ll be stronger that way. Richards is right.”

I remember how she looked at me then; like she was scared and confused. She sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. I thought she would be happy that I had figured some things out. I thought she would be happy I wasn’t acting like a bratty little punk and wanted to hang out with her. But the way she looked . . . it was like I just told her she had a month to live.

“But we are together,” she said. “Aren’t we?”





Syd came home late as always because she had detention and I was already doing homework in our room. Daddy had a meeting with some folks at the harbor and Mom was shopping.

When we were little kids and they would be gone for a long time, we used to make up plays. I would always be the princess and she would be the witch. Or I would be the damsel in distress and she would be the mad scientist. I would be Wendy and she would be Peter. The only time she wanted to be a good guy is when she wanted to be Pocahontas.

When our parents came home we’d show them the play we made up and they would laugh. One time when I was eight, they went away for the entire day to some boat auction and we made up a play about two orphans that had everything in it: songs, dancing, jokes, costumes. It was mostly Syd’s idea. She was really good at coming up with characters. We went through our parents’ closet and put on their clothes. Syd wore Dad’s shoes with one of our princess dresses and clomped around and we fell on the floor laughing so hard.

I remember Mommy marveling at us: “How do you do those different voices?!” Sometimes I wished we could still play those games together.

Syd dumped her books on the bed and then opened the window and fished out a pack of cigarettes from the bottom drawer of our dresser.

“Can you stand by the window if you’re going to smoke?” I asked her. I had long given up on telling her about lung cancer and the general grossness of smelling like an ashtray.

She moved closer to the window and didn’t argue or have some snappy comeback, which is when I realized something was wrong. Syd rarely did anything you asked. Maybe for Declan and Becky, but not for me or Mom or Dad. She looked out the window into the little woods.

“You okay, sis?”

She exhaled a cloud of smoke and nodded, then shrugged. She went over to the speaker and took my iPod off right in the middle of Rihanna’s “Stay” and then put hers on. Something with a lot of yelling.

“I saw that kid Graham over by the skate park,” she said.

“Cute, right?” I ignored the fact that she just took my music off because I was so used to it and because I honestly didn’t care that much.