IN OUR LIVING ROOM we have a whole shelf devoted to the visual history of our family. Everyone’s babypictures are there, and some school head shots, and then various photos from vacations and birthdays andholidays. They make me think of notches on a belt or scratches on a prison wall—proof that time’s passed,that we haven’t all just been swimming in limbo.

There are double frames, singles, 8 x 10s, 4 x 6s. They are made of blond wood and inlaid wood and onevery fancy glass mosaic. I pick up one of Jesse—he’s about two, in a cowboy costume. Looking at it, you’dnever know what was coming down the pike.

There is Kate with hair and Kate all bald; one of Kate as a baby sitting on Jesse’s lap; one of my motherholding each of them on the edge of a pool. There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant toabout ten years old in one fell swoop.

Maybe it’s because I was the third child, and they were sick and tired of keeping a catalog of life. Maybe it’sbecause they forgot.

It’s nobody’s fault, and it’s not a big deal, but it’s a little depressing all the same. A photo says, You werehappy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that I put down everything elseto come watch.

spaceMy father calls at eleven o’clock to ask if I want him to come get me. “Mom’s going to stay at the hospital,”

he explains. “But if you don’t want to be alone in the house, you can sleep at the station.”

“No, it’s okay,” I tell him. “I can always get Jesse if I need something.”

“Right,” my father says. “Jesse.” We both pretend that this is a reliable backup plan.

“How’s Kate?” I ask.

“Still pretty out of it. They’ve got her drugged up.” I hear him drag in a breath. “You know, Anna,” he begins,but then there is a shrill bell in the background. “Honey, I’ve got to go.” He leaves me with an earful of deadair.

For a second I just hold the phone, picturing my dad stepping into his boots and pulling up the puddle ofpants by their suspenders. I imagine the door of the station yawning like Aladdin’s cave, and the enginescreaming out, my father in the front passenger seat. Every time he goes to work, he has to put out fires.

It’s just the encouragement I need. Grabbing a sweater, I leave the house and head for the garage.

There was this kid in my school, Jimmy Stredboe, who used to be a total loser. He got zits on top of his zits;he had a pet rat named Orphan Annie; and once in science class he puked into the fish tank. No one evertalked to him, in case dorkhood was contagious. But then one summer he was diagnosed with MS. After that,no one was mean to Jimmy anymore. If you passed him in the hall, you smiled. If he sat next to you at thelunch table, you nodded hello. It was as if being a walking tragedy canceled out ever having been a geek.

From the moment I was born, I have been the girl with the sick sister. All my life bank tellers have given meextra lollipops; principals have known me by name. No one is ever outright mean to me.

It makes me wonder how I’d be treated if I were like everyone else. Maybe I’m a pretty rotten person, notthat anyone would ever have the guts to tell me this to my face. Maybe everyone thinks I’m rude or ugly orstupid but they have to be nice because it could be the circumstances of my life that make me that way.

It makes me wonder if what I’m doing now is just my true nature.

The headlights of another car bounce off the rearview mirror, lighting up like green goggles around Jesse’seyes. He drives with one wrist on the wheel, lazy. He needs a haircut, in a big way. “Your car smells likesmoke,” I say.

“Yeah. But it covers the aroma of spilled whiskey.” His teeth flash in the dark. “Why? Is it bothering you?”

“Kind of.”

Jesse reaches across my body to the glove compartment. He takes out a pack of Merits and a Zippo, lights up,and blows smoke in my direction. “Sorry,” he says, though he isn’t.

“Can I have one?”

“One what?”

“A cigarette.” They are so white they seem to glow.

“You want a cigarette?” Jesse cracks up.

“I’m not joking,” I say.

Jesse raises one brow, and then turns the wheel so sharply I think he might roll the Jeep. We wind up in a huffof road dust on the shoulder. Jesse turns on the interior lights and shakes the pack so that one cigaretteshimmies out.

It feels too delicate between my fingers, like the fine bone of a bird. I hold it the way I think a drama queenought to, between the vise of my second and middle fingers. I put it up to my lips.

“You have to light it first.” Jesse laughs, and he sparks up the Zippo.

There is no freaking way I’m leaning into a flame; chances are I’ll set my hair on fire instead of the cigarette.

“You do it for me,” I say.

“Nope. If you’re gonna learn, you’re gonna learn it all.” He flicks the lighter again.

I touch the cigarette to the burn, suck in hard the way I have seen Jesse do. It makes my chest explode, and Icough so forcefully that for a minute I actually believe I can taste my lung at the base of my throat, pink andspongy. Jesse goes to pieces and plucks the cigarette out of my hand before I drop it. He takes two long dragsand then tosses it out the window.

“Nice try,” he says.

My voice is a sandpit. “It’s like licking a barbecue.”

While I work on remembering how to breathe, Jesse pulls into the road again. “What made you want to?”

I shrug. “I figured I might as well.”

“If you’d like a checklist of depravity, I can make one up for you.” When I don’t reply, he glances over at me.

“Anna,” he says, “you’re not doing the wrong thing.”

By now he’s pulled into the hospital’s parking lot. “I’m not doing the right thing, either,” I point out.

He turns off the ignition but doesn’t make an attempt to leave the car. “Have you thought about the dragonguarding the cave?”

I narrow my eyes. “Speak English.”

“Well, I’m guessing Mom’s asleep about five feet away from Kate.”

Oh, shit. It is not that I think my mother would throw me out, but she certainly won’t leave me alone withKate, and right now that’s what I want more than anything. Jesse looks at me. “Seeing Kate isn’t going tomake you feel better.”

There’s really no way to explain why I need to know that she’s okay, at least now, even though I have takensteps that will put an end to that.

For once, though, someone seems to understand. Jesse stares out the window of the car. “Leave it to me,” hesays.

We were eleven and fourteen, and we were training for the Guinness Book of World Records. Surely therehad never been two sisters who did simultaneous headstands for so long that their cheeks went hard as plumsand their eyes saw nothing but red. Kate had the shape of a pixie, all noodle arms and legs; and when shebent to the ground and kicked up her feet, it looked as delicate as a spider walking a wall. Me, I sort of defiedgravity with a thud.

We balanced in silence for a few seconds. “I wish my head was flatter,” I said, as I felt my eyebrows scrunchdown. “Do you think there’s a man who’ll come to the house to time us? Or do we just mail a videotape?”

“I guess they’ll let us know.” Kate folded her arms along the carpet.

“Do you think we’ll be famous?”

“We might get on the Today show. They had that eleven-year-old kid who could play the piano with his feet.”

She thought for a second. “Mom knew someone who got killed by a piano falling out a window.”

“That’s not true. Why would anyone push a piano out a window?”

“It is true. You ask her. And they weren’t taking it out, they were putting it in.” She crossed her legs againstthe wall, so that it looked like she was just sitting upside down. “What do you think is the best way to die?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said.

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