We’re usually so good
at looking normal. The food
in the fridge is where it should be.
The plates put away. The blankets strewn
across the couch because we use them.
“I’m kinda concerned about you guys,”
Kennedy continues,
her eyes darting around.
“Like, where is your sister?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Aren’t you even remotely concerned?”
My legs feel antsy.
I thought Kennedy would
come over and we would
chill and hang out,
and not really think
about what might be
going on in this family.
There’s a whole season
of quality escapism
we could be watching.
Or maybe a board game?
When was the last time
we did that?
Or maybe I should have opted
for soccer. Maybe playing alone
would have been better than
Kennedy here in this house
interrogating the inner workings
of our family.
We’re not okay. I get it.
But does it need to be
on display for anyone else?
“Like, what if
she’s in a snowy ditch
on the side of the road,
unconscious
and freezing to death?
“Or, like, what if something really
bad happened, like that girl
who was discovered in the woods?
You know, murdered.”
“Jesus, Kennedy.”
“That was a really terrible thing
for me to say. I’m sure she’s not dead.”
My face must be saying something
that my mouth can’t,
because Kennedy’s cheeks
turn three shades redder.
“I. Am. So. Sorry,” she says
with a deliberateness
that people reserve
for speaking in public,
but there’s no one else around
to hear her words.
Just me.
I shake my head.
It’s not out of the realm
of possibility. Bad things.
Horrible, unspeakable things
happen all the time
to good people.
The worst-case scenario.
You would think that a person
would have a quota
on the number
of worst-case scenarios
that happen in one’s life.
But they just keep happening.
“She’s only gone,” I say.
Not missing. Left.
I can tell by the shoes
that Ariana took with her.
The bag that is gone.
The snacks that are now empty,
which she must have packed.
But I don’t know the depth
to which she’s missing
from us.
Row
“Well, if Ariana,
a perfectly normal human being
living and breathing in this world,
is not here at this present moment,
then where do you think she went?”
I watch Kennedy open the fridge,
helping herself to the last seltzer water.
I’m slightly annoyed.
Because Kennedy gets to
navigate this house
with such ease,
because this isn’t actually
her family,
or her problem,
or her sister
who is gone.
She’s just here to hang out,
and I wish I could be a person
who could hang out too,
while keeping it all together.
I miss Ariana.
I miss the baby, too.
I want to tell Ariana
that it’s going to be okay,
we still have us,
but I think about how we both
wanted us to mean three.
“What if we Nancy Drew this situation?”
Kennedy says. The carbonation
in her can sizzles.
“What do you mean?”
She exits the kitchen,
and I follow her
to Ariana’s closed
bedroom door.
So many closed doors.
“Well, according to
my extensive knowledge
watching prime-time procedurals,
maybe we should search for clues.”
I know there’s nothing to be found
in Ariana’s room, because
whatever mysteries
Ariana harbors,
she carries with her
in her heart.
Somewhere away.
But I nod. “Um. Okay.”
Because even if she comes back
today, tonight, or tomorrow,
maybe I can find something
that will remind us both
of the sisters
we are meant
to be.
Ariana
“Who? Was? That?” my seatmate, Edward, asks.
“An old friend,” I say.
Edward turns around in his seat. “She looks like a rock star.”
Even without the guitar, he must be reacting to the way
her face looks perpetually badass. The way her hoodie
hangs from her shoulders, like even her clothes don’t give a shit.
“She’s in a band,” I say.
“You’re her friend?” Edward peeks his head around
to catch another glimpse of Alex.
“Not anymore.”
“Why not?” He turns back to me.
I shake my head. “It’s complicated.”
“Because she got too famous,” Edward says definitively.
“It’s not that.”
“Did you get in a fight?” Edward says.
I wish I could pinpoint something big and dramatic
that happened, something that people would be able
to react to and say, Yeah, I get it.
But it wasn’t like that.
How could I tell people that I
didn’t want to be her friend,
that I didn’t see myself in our friendship?
“All right, kid, why don’t you read some more about
immortal animals,” I say,
and pull my knit hat down over my eyes,
blocking out the morning light, blocking out Edward,
blocking out the feeling of something like loss.
Row
I am lying on Ariana’s bed
staring at a ceiling
holding the remnants
of a glow-in-the-dark galaxy.
Kennedy’s head is lost in the closet.
“I think I found something.”
She wrangles out
a wooden cigar box.
“What is this?”
Kennedy says,
and hands me the box.
It’s a box Ariana bought at a thrift store
because she said
it smelled like a lifetime
of memories.
Sweet and acrid.
Pungent and complex.
But I couldn’t place the smell
with any single memory.
It wasn’t the smell
of the cigar Dad once smoked
that time our uncle returned
from vacation in Cuba.
It wasn’t the smell
of our dead mother’s perfume,
which she would dab on her wrist
before leaving us alone
with a faceless babysitter.
But maybe
it was the smell
of doing something exciting,
of feeling special and wanted.
Maybe it was the smell
of being lived in.
The smell of an object
that harbored secrets
and memories
and weightless things,
like the sound of two girls snuggling.
Ariana
I wake to the sound of a truck shifting gears, barreling down
the highway in front of us. Edward isn’t next to me. But Alex is,
reading a thick British novel. Smelling like dark-roast coffee.
Reminding me of all the times last summer when
the water around us rose up as fog. When sounds of dishes
clattering drifted across the lake from summer cottages
where children lay tucked into bunk beds and life
was absorbed into the shadows of tall trees.
Alex thrums her fingers against the cover of the book,
reminding me of the way she used to thrum her fingers
against a plexiglass hull and the hollow beat
thumped against my core.
Reminding me of the times she’d say one tiny thing,
like, I’m really glad I came back here this summer,
and I’d feel our friendship hover momentarily
over our shared sense of loss, like my mother,
like her brother were right there with us.
Last summer, I thought that’s what I wanted.
To have a friend who understood. Who experienced
the same feelings as me.
But I feel that sense of hovering again, on this bus,
and I try to push it away. It’s not what I want now.
Alex turns the page in her book.
She glances over. “Oh, good. You’re up.”
Row
I open the lid,
but it’s empty.
“I don’t get it,”
Kennedy says.
“Why does your sister
keep an empty cigar box
in the depths of her closet?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
But part of me wonders
if it’s because
we all keep
boxes of emptiness
in the depths
of our closets.
I thought that maybe
opening the box
that Ariana keeps
tucked away in the back of her closet
would release all the emotions
we’ve tucked away
in the back of our minds
since Mom died.
But I open and shut the lid
and I still feel
nothing
because when Mom died,
we cremated our emotions
and scattered them in the ocean
along with the ashes
of her tiny frame.
“It’s just a box,”
I say, and hand it back.
Ariana
“Listen, I hope you don’t mind. I asked the kid
to swap seats for a minute, and he got real excited about telling
my roommate about how the Egyptians built the pyramids
pre-invention of the wheel. Apparently they used a lot of boats.
“She’s a classics major with a minor in archaeology.
Egyptology is kinda her jam,” Alex continues.
What’s college like? I want to ask her.
What’s your major? How did you decide?
Do you think there is a major for people like me,
girls with dead mothers?
But I don’t ask Alex any of these questions.
“Yeah, of course,” I say. “I feel like
I haven’t spoken to you in forever.”
“You haven’t,” Alex says.
I give her a little laugh. But she doesn’t think it’s funny.
This wasn’t supposed to happen in my idea of escaping.
This is not the way this bus ride is supposed to unfold.
I was supposed to watch the snow fall
and the countryside disappear.
Sit idly as nothing happened. Talk to no one.
But Alex sitting next to me is like the moment before
you receive a test back, one you didn’t study for,
hoping there’s a chance that everything will
work out fine, but knowing that it probably won’t.
“Did you know that there are some types of jellyfish
that are immortal?” I say instead.
“Huh?” Alex twists her face at me,
like she’s trying to figure out
how jellyfish relate to her unanswered texts.
I point to the animal encyclopedia stuffed
into the seat-back pocket. “It’s what they’re teaching
kids these days in those things called books.”
“Better than teaching them about drugs,” Alex says.
Neither of us laughs. But it’s funny, in the morbid,
only-funny-to-us kind of way.
“That’s messed up,” I finally say.
“I know,” Alex says.
I forgot how good it feels to feel—
different with someone else.
Row
Kennedy frowns, but takes the box back.
“How is this not a clue?
It had to contain something, right?”
She flips it around, examining the corners,
still finding nothing.
“What do you want me to do?
Swab it for forensic evidence?
Send it to a lab for DNA testing?
“How is rifling through my sister’s closet
going to tell us anything
about where she went?”
Kennedy wedges the box
back into the closet,
then lies down on the carpet,
sighing dramatically.
“You have a good point,
Nancy Drew.”
I roll my eyes.
“It’s the twenty-first century.
Everyone’s secrets are hidden
on their phones.”
Kennedy bounces back up.
“Geez, Row. You’re a natural,”
Kennedy says, and reaches for her phone.
“Let’s scour her socials.
See if she’s posted anything
we can use,” she says.
Row
I reach for my phone
and glance at the screen.
I pull up the last text
from Ariana.
Four days ago,
when she was driving home
from the grocery store.
I love you, sis.
Ariana had gone
to the grocery store
to restock
our fridge
with milk and eggs.
She bought us a frozen pizza.
She made me eat a salad.
But Ariana
had come home.
This morning,
there was only one egg left
in the carton
and someone needed
to buy more milk.
Even when we didn’t get along,
even when we’d argue over small things
like who ate the last yogurt
or who didn’t empty the dishwasher
or who was the reason we were running late
for school,
there was a part of her
that was still my sister.
The part of her
that could text
just to say,
“I love you.”
Ariana
There was nothing magical about that night last summer.
There were no wispy clouds or peppered stars.
I rearranged a row of wooden chairs
in front of a ceremony arch adorned
with
wisteria for a wedding
at the Wyndover Lodge while dressed
in an ill-fitting uniform
and faced a losing battle against bugs.
“What are you doing?”
A girl slumped into a seat
in the back row. She unscrewed
a water bottle and drank from it
while following me with her eyes.
She wore beat-up All Stars,
and her hair was all frizzy, like mine.
The bridge of her nose was red and peeling,
and I could see a nasty burn on her shoulders.
I assumed she was a guest of the hotel.
The groom’s wayward sister, perhaps.
My coworker returned with two lemonades in hand.
“Oh, hey. Alex meet Ariana.
Ariana, my cousin Alex,” she said,
and waved generally in our directions
while ice clinked against the glasses she held.
“Moving these chairs because
guests’ thighs might touch,” I replied.
“For real?” Alex shaded her eyes with her hand,
like she was trying to inspect the situation.