No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind whathe intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.

—CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, Vom KriegeIn my first memory, I am three years old and I am trying to kill my sister. Sometimes the recollection is soclear I can remember the itch of the pillowcase under my hand, the sharp point of her nose pressing into mypalm. She didn’t stand a chance against me, of course, but it still didn’t work. My father walked by, tuckingin the house for the night, and saved her. He led me back to my own bed. “That,” he told me, “neverhappened.”

As we got older, I didn’t seem to exist, except in relation to her. I would watch her sleep across the roomfrom me, one long shadow linking our beds, and I would count the ways. Poison, sprinkled on her cereal. Awicked undertow off the beach. Lightning striking.

In the end, though, I did not kill my sister. She did it all on her own.

Or at least this is what I tell myself.