I searched for her among the sea of faces in the room.
I went through them all. Once, twice. Three times.
She wasn’t there.
There was only an empty desk.
Oh.
There had been no mistake. It was true, true after all.
Anna, my sister, my twin, was dead.
Oh.
I’ve been thinking about how to tell you what I’ve done. I’ve been rehearsing it.
This time I’m going to pretend you can hear me.
Maybe this time it will work.
THE STRANGE THING ABOUT THE worst day of your life, the day that changes everything, is you have to live through all of it moment by moment. You have to keep breathing and walking and acting like you’re still a whole person.
And that was what I’d done. Gone with my dad through the doors of the school, out to the car. Sat upright in the passenger seat as he’d driven us to the hospital. Hospital. I’d felt a brief flicker of hope when he’d said that word, but he’d seen it in my face and responded with a shake of his head. “No,” he’d said gently. “She’s not— She wasn’t…They just had to move her. I told Mom we’d meet her there.”
And now I found myself on a hospital bench with a policewoman leaning toward me, her eyebrows drawn together, her face serious. It seemed like she might have something important to tell me, so I concentrated hard in order not to miss it.
“Would you like some hot chocolate?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“Hot chocolate. I could get you some. It’s a bit chilly in here.”
Did I want hot chocolate? Was hot chocolate something I should want right now? I looked at my dad, who sat beside me on the bench, his back upright against the wall, his gaze unfocused.
I looked back at her, still unsure of how to respond.
She patted the arm of the bench. “You know what, I’ll get you a cup. That way you’ll have it if you want it.”
By the time I managed to nod, she’d already left.
I took a breath, inhaling the faint scent of hand sanitizer.
The policewoman returned several minutes later, cradling a large paper cup. The heat of the cup against my hands made me realize that I was cold, that I was still wearing gym shorts.
Back when we’d first arrived, we’d been met not by doctors, but by the policewoman and another police officer, a man. She’d remained quiet as he expressed his condolences and then explained that Mom had found Anna lying outside, underneath her window: eyes closed, not moving. Officers were at our house now, looking through her room, examining the backyard. The police chief was at a conference in Boise, but they’d contacted him and he was on his way back. The officer mentioned that twice, as though it should provide reassurance that this matter was being taken seriously—their fearless leader abandoning the delights of Boise.
I’d stared at him, trying to remain calm, collected. It felt important to be seen as taking the news well somehow, as if this might in some way affect the outcome. As if the outcome were still a work in progress.
He asked us some questions and we answered them mechanically, with short, clean sentences. It was hard not to feel that our responses disappointed him.
No, Anna did not have a boyfriend.
No, she had not seemed upset recently.
No, nothing noteworthy had happened last night.
After the officer stopped speaking, he’d stood, feet apart, arms folded. He bowed his head for a moment and then abruptly turned and left. The policewoman had followed close behind.
—
HOLDING THE CUP, I THOUGHT about what he hadn’t asked—perhaps because he was being kind or because he simply hadn’t thought to—which was why we hadn’t noticed she was missing that morning. Because we hadn’t. At breakfast, I hadn’t even been worried that she wasn’t there. None of us had. She was on cross-country, and even in the cold, dark mornings of late autumn, she’d often get up early to run with some of the other girls on the team, catching a ride to school with them afterward.
So she’d been gone and none of us had thought twice about it. Mom had talked about how she was going to assist with three root canals later that day, and what she wouldn’t give for people to stop lying already about how much they flossed. Dad had read the paper and made cryptic comments about the news. I’d eaten toast and ignored both of them as best I could as I read my book.
I tried again to think back to the night before, to see if there was anything strange about it that hadn’t occurred to me. Had Anna seemed upset? I didn’t think so. If anything, she’d seemed calmer than she’d been in a while, more peaceful. Happy, almost shining with it, like she had a secret. A good one.
—
MY HOT CHOCOLATE WAS COLD by the time Mom joined us in the waiting room, her eyes red and wild. She didn’t sit. Instead, she paced in front of us, and soon she was crying so hard that she began to hyperventilate. The policewoman reappeared and led Mom away again, murmuring to her about taking deep breaths.
Dad had also cried—briefly, silently—but my own eyes remained dry. It was like a nerve had been severed, the wound too deep to process how badly it was going to hurt.
Dad walked to the window, which overlooked the hospital’s parking lot. He leaned his forehead against the glass.
A few minutes later, a man in a long white coat came and stood by his elbow.
“Your wife’s ID is all we officially need,” he told my dad, his voice deep and rough. “But if you’d like to view the body, I can show it to you.”
“Show my daughter to me, you mean.” Dad didn’t look
