Read The Good Sister for Free Online

stepping around fallen leaves because I don’t want them to poke my overly tender bare feet. I’ve left my sandals inside Sin’s bedroom—another reason I have to face him.
    At the door, the wolf-cat Buddha is waiting to be let out. But when I open it, he turns and runs under the table. Whatever, dumb cat. I trudge through the kitchen and down the hallway to the closed door with the sickly sweet poster of kittens in a basket. Sin, always big on irony.
    I knock on the forehead of a blue-eyed white Persian, and I call out, “Sin?”
    I expect this to be a long, painful process, but he jerks the door open immediately and there we are, face-to-face. Before I can say a word, he throws my sandals down the hallway, slams the door, and I hear the lock click.
    â€œSin?” I say stupidly. “Can we talk?”
    Suddenly my whiskey buzz has worn all the way off, and I am feeling a little queasy again. But I know I won’t throw up. I never do unless I drink cheap tequila.
    â€œGet the fuck out of my house!” he yells through the door.
    I blink at the kitten poster, stunned. This definitely isn’t about my not following the tattoo-care rules. Don’t I get a little leeway for having a dead sister? For today’s being the day of her freaking funeral? For having to face the horrible question of how she died?
    Isn’t this my best friend who just sat with me through the most grueling hour of my life, saying good-bye to the only member of my family that I love without hating too?
    She can’t be gone. She can’t be gone. She can’t be gone.
    And if she is, and if Sin hates me now, I am alone in the world. Totally fucking alone.
    I feel tears prickling at my eyes, blurring my view of the kittens and their little paws perched on the edge of the basket. Immensely sorry for myself now, I turn and leave.
    I can’t go home, so I ride my bike to the park in the center of town, find the sleeping bag I keep stashed in a tree for hanging out at the park, lie down under the shade of a redwood, and stay there for the rest of the day staring up at the branches, as if waiting for them to reach down and lift me into the sky, away from all of this.

Seven
    Sarah
    Ticktock goes the clock—
    We wait and plan
    for our lives to begin
    Never realizing all the while
    Life is half-done, and before we can catch our breath
    It will be gone.
    Ticktock
    Goes the clock.
    I sometimes think in poetry here in the great Whatever. The words arrive, neither good nor bad. Like snowflakes they drift into my mind and come out, little bits of the truth I am beginning to grasp.

Eight
    Rachel
    In the weeks after Sarah’s memorial or funeral or whatever it was, I feel like I’m stoned all the time, but not the good kind of stoned. More like a bad trip where you want to tell every dumbass you see what you don’t like about them, and when you’re not feeling like that, you just want to go to sleep.
    I avoid David, which is fine because he must be avoiding me too. He sends me a couple of texts but doesn’t call or anything when I never answer. I am not sure what to do with him now, and I just fucking don’t think about it.
    AJ, my Official Boyfriend, comes over a few times but says I’m acting like a bitch so he leaves, and I haven’t seen him in a week. He’ll come back whenever I call and say I’m sorry, which will be I don’t know the fuck when.
    I just want everyone to disappear. Or I want to disappear. Or both. I go to work, I come home, I smoke, I sleep. I am losing weight. AJ pointed this out to me, said I’m getting too damn skinny, but whatever. Who cares?
    The worst part though is the nightmares. Ever since the memorial service, I wake up every night, my body drenched in sweat, my throat closed up even though I’m trying to scream. In the dream, which is always the same, I am with Sarah on the trail where she died, and we are arguing about whose turn it