My Sister's Keeper Read online

  Why are terms of endearment always foods? Honey, cookie, sugar, pumpkin. It's not like caring about someone is enough to actually sustain you.

  "I understand what you're trying to do here," my mother continues. "And I agree that maybe your father and I need to listen to you a little bit more. But Anna, we don't need a judge to help us do this."

  My heart is a soft sponge at the base of my throat. "You mean it's okay to stop?"

  When she smiles, it feels like the first warm day of March--after an eternity of snow, when you suddenly remember how summer feels on the backs of your bare calves and in the part of your hair. "That's exactly what I mean," my mother says.

  No more blood draws. No granulocytes or lymphocytes or stem cells or kidney. "If you want, I'll tell Kate," I offer. "So you don't have to."

  "That's all right. Once Judge DeSalvo knows, we can pretend it never happened."

  In the back of my mind, a hammer trips. "But . . . won't Kate ask why I'm not her donor anymore?"

  My mother goes very still. "When I said stop, I meant the lawsuit."

  I shake my head hard, as much to give her an answer as to dislodge the knot of words tangled in my gut.

  "My God, Anna," my mother says, stunned. "What have we done to you to deserve this?"

  "It's not what you've done to me."

  "It's what we haven't done, right?"

  "You aren't listening to me!" I yell, and at that very moment, Vern Stackhouse walks up to our table.

  The deputy looks from me to my mother to my father and forces a smile. "Guess this isn't the best time to interrupt," he says. "I'm real sorry about this, Sara. Brian." He hands my mother an envelope, nods, and walks off.

  She pulls out the paper inside and reads it, then turns to me. "What did you say to him?" she demands.

  "To who?"

  My father picks up the notice. It is full of legal language, which might as well be Greek. "What's this?"

  "A motion for a temporary restraining order." She grabs it from my father. "Do you realize you're asking to have me kicked out of the house, and to have no contact with you? Is that really what you want?"

  Kick her out? I can't breathe. "I never asked for that."

  "Well, an attorney wouldn't have filed it on his own behalf, Anna."

  Do you know how sometimes--when you are riding your bike and you start skidding across sand, or when you miss a step and start tumbling down the stairs--you have those long, long seconds to know that you are going to be hurt, and badly? "I don't know what's going on," I say.

  "Then how can you think you're qualified to make decisions for yourself?" My mother stands so abruptly her chair clatters to the cafeteria floor. "If this is what you want, Anna, we can start right now." Her voice, it's thick and rough as rope the moment before she leaves me.

  *

  About three months ago, I borrowed Kate's makeup. Okay, so borrowed wouldn't be the right word, exactly: stole. I didn't have any of my own; I wasn't supposed to be allowed to wear it until I turned fifteen. But a miracle had happened, and Kate wasn't around to ask, and desperate times call for desperate measures.

  The miracle was five-eight, with hair the color of Silver Queen corn silk and a smile that made me feel like I'd been spinning in circles. His name was Kyle and he'd moved from Idaho, right into the homeroom seat behind mine. He didn't know anything about me or my family, so when he asked me if I wanted to go to a movie with him I knew it wasn't because he felt sorry for me. We saw the new Spider-Man movie, or at least he did. I spent all my time trying to figure out how electricity could leap the tiny space between my arm and his.

  When I came home, I still was walking about six inches above the ground, which is why Kate was able to blindside me. She knocked me onto my bed, pinned me by my shoulders. "You thief," she accused. "You went into my bathroom drawer without asking."

  "You take my things all the time. You borrowed my blue sweatshirt two days ago."

  "That's totally different. You can wash a sweatshirt."

  "How come it's okay to have my germs floating around your arteries, but not on your freaking Max Factor Cherry Bomb lip gloss?" I shoved a little harder, and managed to roll us, so that now I had the upper hand.

  Her eyes lit up. "Who was it?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "If you're wearing makeup, Anna, there must have been a reason."

  "Get lost," I said.

  "Fuck off." Kate smiled at me. Then she reached one free hand under my arm and tickled me, taking me by surprise so much that I let go of her. A minute later we had wrestled off the bed, each of us trying to get the other to cry uncle. "Anna, stop already," Kate gasped. "You're killing me."

  Those words, they were all it took. My hands fell off her as if I'd been burned. We lay shoulder to shoulder between our beds, staring up at the ceiling and breathing hard, both of us pretending that what she'd said had not cut quite so close to the bone.

  *

  In the car, my parents fight. Maybe we should hire a real lawyer, my father says, and my mother replies, I am one.

  But Sara, my father says, if this isn't going to go away, all I'm saying is--

  What are you saying, Brian? she challenges. What are you really saying? That some man in a suit whom you've never met would be able to explain Anna better than her own mother? And then my father drives the rest of the way in silence.

  To my shock, there are TV cameras waiting on the steps of the Garrahy building. I'm sure they're here for something really big, so imagine my surprise when a microphone gets stuck into my face, and a reporter with helmet hair asks me why I am suing my parents. My mother pushes the woman away. "My daughter has no comment," she says, over and over; and when one guy asks if I'm aware that I am Rhode Island's first designer baby, I think for a minute she might actually deck him.

  I've known since I was seven how I was conceived, and it wasn't that huge a deal. First off, my parents told me when the thought of them having sex was far more disgusting than the thought of creation in a petri dish. Second, by then tons of people were having fertility drugs and septuplets and my story wasn't really all that original anymore. But a designer baby? Yeah, right. If my parents were going to go to all that trouble, you'd think they'd have made sure to implant the genes for obedience, humility, and gratitude.

  My father sits next to me on a bench, his hands knotted between his knees. Inside the judge's chambers, my mother and Campbell Alexander are verbally slugging it out. Here in the hallway, we're unnaturally quiet, as if they've taken all possible words with them and left us with nothing.

  I hear a woman curse, and then Julia rounds the bend. "Anna. Sorry I'm late; I couldn't get past the media. Are you all right?"

  I nod, and then I shake my head.

  Julia kneels down in front of me. "Do you want your mother to leave the house?"

  "No!" To my utter embarrassment, my eyes get glassy with tears. "I've changed my mind. I don't want to do this anymore. None of it."

  She looks at me for a long moment, then nods. "Let me go in and talk to the judge."

  When she leaves, I concentrate on getting air into my lungs. There are so many things I have to work hard at now, that I used to be able to carry out instinctively--draw in oxygen, keep my silence, do the right thing. The weight of my father's eyes on me makes me turn. "Did you mean it?" he asks. "About not wanting to do this anymore?"

  I don't answer. I don't move a fraction of an inch.

  "Because if you're still not sure, maybe it's not such a bad idea, having some breathing space. I mean, I've got that extra bed in my room at the station." He rubs the back of his neck. "It wouldn't be like we were moving out, or anything. Just . . ." He looks at me.

  " . . . breathing," I finish, and do just that.

  My father stands up and holds out his hand. We walk out of the Garrahy Complex, side by side. The reporters come on like wolves, but this time, their questions bounce right off me. My chest feels full of glitter and helium, the way it