forward and slightly upturned.
The way they smile
and plead for attention.
I glance at my sister’s stats.
Ariana has a thousand photos.
Ariana has a thousand followers.
But I’m not convinced that Ariana
has any friends.
Kennedy kinda looks at me
in a way that suggests she knows
something is up.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
She sets down her phone.
“We can talk about whatever is going on.
Because obviously something is going on.”
I ignore Kennedy.
It’s a serious contradiction,
to want to be heard, to want to be listened to,
to want to feel what I feel without clothing it
in unruffled indifference
and then not letting
Kennedy in.
Why do I act this way?
Why do I say the things
that I say?
Why do words sometimes come to me
all at once like an unstoppable nosebleed,
or sometimes never at all?
Why do we want to be our true, real, full selves,
but only around certain people?
Maybe it’s because with sisters,
you can say and be the person you are,
and there’s no choice in whether or not
to accept you. They just do,
because you’re sisters.
At least that’s what
I always believed
would be true.
I thought Ariana and I
had a solid relationship,
that our fights were normal
sisterly fights. About using
all the hot water. About eating
that last yogurt. About who was going
to tell Dad about the nail polish
we spilled on the carpet. Or the soda
we spattered on the wall.
But I don’t know what
keeps her up at night.
I don’t know whether she worries
about test scores or fitting in
or finding her place
in the world.
It’s like Ariana
doesn’t want me to know her,
and I don’t know if she wants
to know me.
Maybe I shouldn’t expect
this much out of my sister.
Maybe I should let
other people in.
Kennedy sits quietly behind me,
watching me scroll
through Ariana’s feeds.
She points to more photos
and asks who everyone is.
“I don’t know,” I say.
I don’t know what Ariana sees
for herself next year,
but it scares me,
her leaving.
This time
and forever.
Ariana
When we arrived at the party, we could hear voices
and music from down the road.
There were acres of land between us
and the next plot, so there was no one
around to tell us to turn the volume down.
The party spilled onto the porch and into the fields.
Inside, I overheard a girl wearing boots
that looked like legitimate work had been done in them
talk about the record labels
and the patriarchal bullshit of the industry.
The room pulsed with confidence.
People had their shit together.
It intimidated me, for sure,
but I also felt this thrilling sense
that maybe this is what life could be like
in five or ten years.
Maybe I would be like the woman
with the loudest laugh in the room,
or the one with stories about
bad dates and terrible bosses.
Maybe instead of trying to make myself small,
I would be the woman
shouldering her way through the crowd,
barking at people as her beer splashed around.
I stood in the kitchen of the farmhouse,
sipping on cheap beer, trying to soak it all in.
Wanting to etch it into my brain
so that I could open it back up
and study this moment like a textbook.
A song came on and it throbbed under my skin,
and I was wedged in a conversation
I only sort of wanted to be in
because it made me feel less of a nobody
in a crowd full of somebodies.
I listened to the song play from the other room,
but no one was dancing.
From across the crowded kitchen, wedged between
the sink and refrigerator, I saw Alex swaying to the beat,
stuck in a conversation she was no longer listening to.
She looked over and saw me watching her,
but instead of feeling embarrassed, I bounced my shoulders
to the beat, and she nodded her head along with me.
Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t understand
what she was trying to say,
because all I could hear was the music
seeping into my skin, beating against my chest,
reminding me of what it feels like
to be alive.
Row
The battery life falls from 10 percent
to 9 while I hold open the phone
and scroll through pages of photos.
I reach one of Ariana’s earliest posts.
Six years ago.
A photo of a photo
of Ariana and me
and our mother,
which she printed out
on computer paper
in black and white.
An image missing
the smell of sunscreen,
the sound of our mother laughing,
the taste of salt spray,
the feeling of sand between my toes.
Kennedy leans closer to look at the screen.
“Is that your mom?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” Kennedy says.
“For what?”
“It’s just shitty that you lost your mom.”
“There’s nothing to apologize about.”
“I know. But it sucks.”
“It’s life,” I say.
“It’s not fair,” Kennedy says.
It wasn’t.
It never will be.
Kennedy hands me a cord.
“Here. Use my phone charger.”
Ariana
Alex began showing up to my shift at the Wyndover Lodge
even when her cousin wasn’t working.
“So, what do you know about boats?” Alex asked.
“Uh, not much,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her
that boats reminded me of islands and islands