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and swarm the lower level of the house. I plunk down on my bed and start flipping through a magazine for inspiration, when Kristina slips inside my room. I hide my surprise. Her face is pale, makeup-free. Her hair hangs in wet strings to her shoulders. She’s wearing Hello Kitty pajamas. I expect her to look more mature or grown-up after hooking up with Devon but there’s no visible change.
    She tiptoes to my bed and sits on the edge of it like she used to do when we were kids. She was always the one who had nightmares, not me, but she pretended to sleep in my bed to keep me safe.
    We stare at each other without speaking, and then a ghost of a smile turns up the corners of her mouth. “I screwed up,” she says, and remorse crackles in her voice. “With Devon.” She pauses and sighs. “I wish I hadn’t done that. I mean, it didn’t make me feel the way I thought it would. I guess I thought it would make me feel more alive, you know?”
    I have no clue but nod. I want to ask what it did feel like. If it changed her.
    “I don’t even love him. And it was almost like…well, it wasn’t like when we used to kiss for hours. I’m such an idiot.” She laughs, but it’s a strange sound that’s far from happy.
    Under the circumstances she could have done a lot of worse things. But I don’t know how to say that to her. Words won’t even form in my head. My mouth seems to have no connection to my thoughts or my brain. I don’t have experience saying what’s really on my mind. Especially to her.
    Kristina sits up straighter, pushes her hair out of her eyes, and studies a photograph framed and sitting on my bookcase headboard. It’s the two of us when we were six and nine, wearing inappropriate two-piece bathing suits Mom picked out. We’re standing back to back, smiling at the camera.
    I love the memory of that day. I’d thought she was the coolest girl in the world. She’d won a sand-castle-building contest and shared her ice cream prize with me even though I’d knocked her castle over accidentally after the judging. I thought she could do anything. When she became a teenager though, she stopped finding me cute and I didn’t know how to talk to her anymore. My stomach pretzels with the anxiety of not knowing what to say to her. My own sister.
    I reach my hand out as if to touch her, but pull back when she glares at me.
    “Well, I guess you had to lose your virginity sometime?” I mutter and study the bright yellow walls as I speak, and I know even the dried paint can hear the lack of conviction in my words. It’s not what I mean to say, not what I want to convey to her.
    I wish she hadn’t done that with Devon, but not for the reasons she might think. I believe she deserved her first time to be special. Not because she felt like she had to. “Yup. At least I won’t die a virgin.” Her voice is as rough as the first sketches of my art project.
    “You won’t die at all.”
    She shakes her head and pushes herself off my bed, her expression betraying her anger. “How do you know that, Tess? Did the doctor send you a guarantee? If so, I’d like a copy of it.” She hurries out my door and slams it behind her. The sound of her feet storming down the hallway is like the rat-tat of a woodpecker pecking wood.
    Click.
    She locks her door behind her.
    On the floor below, laughter and clinking cutlery and glasses float through the air. I imagine Mom raising a toast to everyone, the way she loves to do, forgetting for the moment the tragedy in her own home. A tear runs down my cheek. It drips into my mouth and the salty taste taints my tongue.
    I want to go to Kristina and hold her hand. I want to hug her and stroke her hair like she used to do for me. When she used to put my hair in pigtails and add ribbons and pretend I was just as pretty as she was.
    I want to reassure her that I would have done the same thing if I found out I had cancer, even though I don’t have a guy I could even kiss, never mind lose my