My Sister's Keeper Read online

  There's really no way to explain why I need to know that she's okay, at least now, even though I have taken steps that will put an end to that.

  For once, though, someone seems to understand. Jesse stares out the window of the car. "Leave it to me," he says.

  *

  We were eleven and fourteen, and we were training for the Guinness Book of World Records. Surely there had never been two sisters who did simultaneous headstands for so long that their cheeks went hard as plums and their eyes saw nothing but red. Kate had the shape of a pixie, all noodle arms and legs; and when she bent to the ground and kicked up her feet, it looked as delicate as a spider walking a wall. Me, I sort of defied gravity with a thud.

  We balanced in silence for a few seconds. "I wish my head was flatter," I said, as I felt my eyebrows scrunch down. "Do you think there's a man who'll come to the house to time us? Or do we just mail a videotape?"

  "I guess they'll let us know." Kate folded her arms along the carpet.

  "Do you think we'll be famous?"

  "We might get on the Today show. They had that eleven-year-old kid who could play the piano with his feet." She thought for a second. "Mom knew someone who got killed by a piano falling out a window."

  "That's not true. Why would anyone push a piano out a window?"

  "It is true. You ask her. And they weren't taking it out, they were putting it in." She crossed her legs against the wall, so that it looked like she was just sitting upside down. "What do you think is the best way to die?"

  "I don't want to talk about this," I said.

  "Why? I'm dying. You're dying." When I frowned, she said, "Well, you are." Then she grinned. "I just happen to be more gifted at it than you are."

  "This is a stupid conversation." Already, it was making my skin itch in places I knew I would never be able to scratch.

  "Maybe an airplane crash," Kate mused. "It would suck, you know, when you realized you were going down . . . but then it happens and you're just powder. How come people get vaporized, but they still manage to find clothes in trees, and those black boxes?"

  By now my head was starting to pound. "Shut up, Kate."

  She crawled down the wall and sat up, flushed. "There's just sleeping through it as you croak, but that's kind of boring."

  "Shut up," I repeated, angry that we had only lasted about twenty-two seconds, angry that now we were going to have to try for a record all over again. I tipped myself sunny-side up again and tried to clear the knot of hair out of my face. "You know, normal people don't sit around thinking about dying."

  "Liar. Everyone thinks about dying."

  "Everyone thinks about you dying," I said.

  The room went so still that I wondered if we ought to go for a different record--how long can two sisters hold their breath?

  Then a twitchy smile crossed her face. "Well," Kate said. "At least now you're telling the truth."

  *

  Jesse gives me a twenty-dollar bill for cab fare home; because that's the only hitch in his plan--once we go through with this, he isn't going to be driving back. We take the stairs up to the eighth floor instead of the elevator, because they let us out behind the nurse's station, not in front of it. Then he tucks me inside a linen closet filled with plastic pillows and sheets stamped with the hospital's name. "Wait," I blurt out, when he's about to leave me. "How am I going to know when it's time?"

  He starts to laugh. "You'll know, trust me."

  He takes a silver flask out of his pocket--it's one my father got from the chief and thinks he lost three years ago--screws off the cap, and pours whiskey all over the front of his shirt. Then he starts to walk down the hall. Well, walk would be a loose approximation--Jesse slams like a billiard ball into the walls and knocks over an entire cleaning cart. "Ma?" he yells out. "Ma, where are you?"

  He isn't drunk, but he sure as hell can do a great imitation. It makes me wonder about the times I have looked out my bedroom window in the middle of the night and seen him puking into the rhododendrons--maybe that was all for show, too.

  The nurses swarm out from their hive of a desk, trying to subdue a boy half their age and three times as strong, who at that very moment grabs the uppermost tier of a linen rack and pulls it forward, making a crash so loud it rings in my ears. Call buttons start ringing like an operator's switchboard behind the nurse's desk, but all three of the night-duty ladies are doing their best to hold Jesse down while he kicks and flails.

  The door to Kate's room opens, and bleary-eyed, my mother steps out. She takes a look at Jesse, and for a second her whole face is frozen with the realization that, in fact, things can get worse. Jesse swings his head toward her, a great big bull, and his features melt. "Hiya, Mom," he greets, and he smiles loosely up at her.

  "I am so sorry," my mother says to the nurses. She closes her eyes as Jesse stumbles upright and throws his sloppy arms around her.

  "There's coffee in the cafeteria," one nurse suggests, and my mother is too embarrassed to even answer her. She just moves toward the elevator banks with Jesse attached to her like a mussel on a crusty hull, and pushes the down button over and over in the fruitless hope that it will actually make the doors open faster.

  When they leave, it is almost too easy. Some of the nurses hurry off to check on the patients who've rung in; others settle back behind their desk, trading hushed commentary about Jesse and my poor mother like it's some card game. They never look my way as I sneak out of the linen closet, tiptoe down the hall, and let myself into my sister's hospital room.

  *

  One Thanksgiving when Kate was not in the hospital, we actually pretended to be a regular family. We watched the parade on TV, where a giant balloon fell prey to a freak wind and wound up wrapped around a NYC traffic light. We made our own gravy. My mother brought the turkey's wishbone out to the table, and we fought over who would be granted the right to snap it. Kate and I were given the honors. Before I got a good grip, my mother leaned close and whispered into my ear, "You know what to wish for." So I shut my eyes tight and thought hard of remission for Kate, even though I had been planning to ask for a personal CD player, and got a nasty satisfaction out of the fact that I did not win the tug-of-war.

  After we ate, my father took us outside for a game of two-on-two touch football while my mother was washing the dishes. She came outside when Jesse and I had already scored twice. "Tell me," she said, "that I am hallucinating." She didn't have to say anything else--we'd all seen Kate tumble like an ordinary kid and wind up bleeding uncontrollably like a sick one.

  "Aw, Sara." My dad turned up the wattage on his smile. "Kate's on my team. I won't let her get sacked."

  He swaggered over to my mother, and kissed her so long and slow that my own cheeks started to burn, because I was sure the neighbors would see. When he lifted his head, my mother's eyes were a color I had never seen before and don't think I have ever seen again. "Trust me," he said, and then he threw the football to Kate.

  What I remember about that day was the way the ground bit back when you sat on it--the first hint of winter. I remember being tackled by my father, who always braced himself in a push-up so that I got none of the weight and all of his heat. I remember my mother, cheering equally for both teams.

  And I remember throwing the ball to Jesse, but Kate getting in the way--an expression of absolute shock on her face as it landed in the cradle of her arms and Dad yelled her on to the touchdown. She sprinted, and nearly had it, but then Jesse took a running leap and slammed her to the ground, crushing her underneath him.

  In that moment everything stopped. Kate lay with her arms and legs splayed, unmoving. My father was there in a breath, shoving at Jesse. "What the hell is the matter with you!"

  "I forgot!"

  My mother: "Where does it hurt? Can you sit up?"

  But when Kate rolled over, she was smiling. "It doesn't hurt. It feels great."

  My parents looked at each other. Neither of them understood like I did, like Jesse did--that no matter w