I say some drunk version of this, wondering at the way the words come out wrong and lopsided and unclear, like I can’t recite my own biography.
“It’s stupid, compared to what you’ve been through,” I say. But Karissa holds my hand across the table. Kisses it. There’s a reason books are written about girls who’ve lost everything.
“Girls without mothers are, like, strong and weak at the same time,” Karissa says. “We’re all powerful, you know? Like, we have a special secret power and secret pain and they’re both more, like, vast than anyone knows.”
If anyone else classified me as a girl without a mother, I’d hate them, but with Karissa it seems like a point of pride. Like something I’m supposed to celebrate with her. Like she’s inviting me into a club that I’m not totally qualified for.
Arizona would hate it. She’s always saying we have each other and Dad and we don’t need anyone else, as if we’re made to need less than most people.
“We’re going to have champagne to close this night out,” Karissa says when I can only manage weepiness and compliments as a reply. She makes the bartender come to us, leaving his post at the bar to bring champagne right to the table, and I know he sees in her what I see. What we all see.
“To everything we don’t have,” she says, her voice hitching and settling in the single sentence.
We clink and drink, but Karissa stops me before my second sip.
There are enormous, dark portraits of former French kings on the walls, powdered wigs and all. They’re in oversize gold frames and decorated with neon graffiti.
“We’ll have everything, someday,” Karissa says, so sure it sounds like fact. I wonder what it’s like to have hope after you’ve lost everyone that you love. What kind of strength it must take for her to utter that sentence.
“I’ve never been this drunk,” I say, which has nothing to do with anything except it’s getting hard to see or think from behind this haze.
“You’re freaking adorable,” Karissa says. “You remind me of my little sister. She died in the crash too.” It aches, hearing her say the words so plainly. Something so large and awful should only be talked about with flowery language and metaphors. Her saying it in such a basic way twists me up inside.
“Oh my God, Karissa, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” I say. I’ve never before been this sad about someone else’s life.
“We so get each other,” she says, her voice all thick and slurry too. “You and me against everything that has sucked in our lives. Two sad girls together. Can we toast to two sad girls?”
I grin. I feel as light and bubbly as the champagne, next to Karissa.
two
I get home all buzzed and beautiful.
Arizona is waiting for me with a finger on her lips.
“Dad just went to bed. You do not want him to see you like this, trust me.” She wipes something off my cheek—maybe rogue mascara or sweat or Karissa’s peachy lipstick.
“You’re here!” I say, and throw myself at her.
“I told you I was coming in tonight.” She hugs back lamely. “What the fuck? Who were you even out with? I called Roxanne. She hadn’t seen you.” I hate the implication that she knows the exact size and shape of my life. That the world paused while she and Roxanne invented new lives in woody college towns.
I hug her again anyway.
Something is different. Everything is different.
I squint at my sister’s body. Maybe I’m wasted, but it looks wrong. College has done something to her, even since I last saw her, over spring break. She’s fuller on top. More like a Mrs. Varren. Alien, compared to our formerly matching shapes. We have always had matching gaits and proportions—straight and narrow on top, wide on the bottom. We have had matching indignations and resentments, too. Matching long toes and back moles. Matching dirty mouths and a shared best friend.
“You’re all wrong” is all I can say, but it’s not what I mean. I think I like being this drunk except for the inability to say what I mean. “You feel wrong,” I try again.
“I wanted a whole night together,” Arizona says. “You and me and catching up and starting the summer together.”
“You already started the summer without me,” I say, thinking of the one single Eiffel Tower postcard she sent me from her trip. She knows I prefer Notre-Dame and that the Eiffel Tower is what you send to your little cousin or the teacher you’re kissing up to or family you used to babysit for. Not your sister. Not your best friend.