Yolk(69)

It was still dark out when we waited for the school bus that first morning. There was another kid at our stop, and the three of us stood in silence. The bus was quiet when we got on, everyone still half-asleep. There was something adult about how subdued it seemed. I was convinced they could hear my galloping heart. I followed my sister into the aisle. When she beckoned me to sit with her a few seats from the front, I was shocked. When she asked if I knew where to go for first period, I could feel their eyes on us. She was so loud. It was as awkward as if she had burst into song. I heard whispers and giggling. I wanted to shush her when she asked if I had money with me. The rules were so clear, yet I could see June had no idea.

I saw how she walked by herself into school, past the clusters of kids catching up after summer.

I hadn’t known that other sixteen-year-olds vaped surreptitiously into their lockers all wearing white Air Force 1s and white sweatshirts.

I hadn’t known that they spent all vacation at their food service jobs or at summer school while June was mostly at home taking online classes.

There was so much I didn’t know.

Juniors were glamorous in a way June wasn’t. They were cultured. They knew when to smile and how to smile so they still looked mean. They knew where to buy lipstick that looked like gloss but was somehow matte. And their earrings bore evil eyes of various sizes. Every single junior girl other than my sister wore shirts that stopped exactly half an inch above their pants. Without exception. And they knew all the dances but laughed goofily through the choreo as if they didn’t.

I was ready to learn it all.

And I learned to see June the way they did.

I learned to sit in another seat near the front of the bus.

I learned to leave campus for lunch because pretending not to see her in the cafeteria seemed cruel.

She had friends, I told myself. They were just friends no one else wanted.

The journal entry’s from freshman year. “She needs to grow up! This is not okay.” I flip a few more pages.

“She needs to wash her hair at least 3x a week.”

“Tell June not to talk so much.”

“Tell her not to laugh when no one else finds it funny.”

“Make her stop selling candy.”

Ours was a football school, and twice a year, our star cheerleaders sold candy for fundraising. June had taken to selling rival, cheaper, better candy at exactly the same time. She also regularly sold Hot Cheetos because we didn’t have them in the vending machines. It was bad enough that my parents worked in restaurants. I lived in constant fear that kids would talk to me about my sister the Cheetos girl. I didn’t have anywhere to hide. There were only six Asian kids in a school of two thousand.

I open the orange notebook, the one from senior year. June was long away at Columbia by then. Here the rules apply only to me. I’d gotten into bullet journaling by then, and beside each handwritten date is another number. My weight. Most days feature a string of numbers, the entries crossed out and rewritten over and over. My weight after peeing. Before and after the gym. Before and after drinking water, eating two inches of a six-inch subway sandwich, a bag of Baked Lay’s, not eating at all. I remember how it felt, pushing the surface of the digital scale with my toe, stepping on with my eyes closed, praying for a miracle.

I climb onto the edge of the tub and screw the vent back into place.

I stow the diaries in my bag. As well as the cigarettes.

I’m awake now and I need something. A diversion. I pad downstairs, phone in hand. Avoiding the creaky parts of the steps.

The family pie’s sitting on the table. They’d all had a slice, but I hadn’t. I pop open the lid, muscles clenched so as not to make a sound. I lick my finger to catch a crumb and dissolve it in my mouth. Then I break off a piece of crust. It melts on my palate. The doughy butteriness floods my senses. I open the dishwasher, again tensing to dampen the noise, and reach for a fork, but since there are none, I grab a pair of chopsticks. I poke into the pie, in a dotted line, perforating a small slice for extraction, and eat it standing in four bites. I brush the crumbs off my house dress, close the lid, and toss the chopsticks into the sink.

Guided by my phone flashlight, I walk over to the enormous lacquered armoire next to the looming black television and open its doors. A silk butterfly charm dangles off the rounded knobs. Inside are our photo albums. There’s one for each of us. All our photos used to be kept in paper envelopes from the drugstore until I organized them in color-coordinated albums. I grab my favorite. The red one. The one assigned to June. As I open it, a page falls to the floor, separated from its glued binding. She was always the cutest kid. Sweet, expressive eyes, always in the middle of something. There are three photos to a page, and in the center one she’s about four, cross-legged on the floor, looking up at her porcelain clown doll, the one that she broke, propped up on a chair. I slot the page back in and put it away.

The fridge rumbles. I look back into the kitchen. That slice of pie was way too small. I’m aching for a proper slice now that I’ve broken the seal. I get up. This time I get a butter knife and cut a good-size wedge. It’s a calorie bomb, but I want it. I deserve it. I came home and I’m owed. I slide it onto a paper towel and then, using my hands, I mash all the stray crumbs together to make one giant crumb and eat it. They’re mine.

I hear myself sigh.

Body humming with sugar and fat, I help myself to a glass of water and peer at the pie box again. Dread creeps along the ridge of my shoulders. There’s only a third left.