Sarah kept her sunglasses on at the mall, but I wasn’t sure she really needed to—the place was mobbed, and I felt like no one took any notice of two blond teens and their mom eating subs at the food court or popping into boutiques. When anyone did do a double take at us, I reminded myself that there hadn’t been any photos of Sarah since she returned, and Mom looked so different from the old press photos they were using, no one would recognize her.
After Sarah went missing, for a few months at least, we couldn’t go anywhere without people coming up to us. They just wanted to say how sorry they were, or that they had seen us on the news. Once, at the grocery store, a teenage boy bagging Mom’s groceries asked, “Aren’t you that family where the girl ran away? Whatever happened to her?” Mom completely dissolved into tears, sobbing so loudly the manager had to come and walk us out to the car. After that, every time someone recognized us as “the family of that girl,” I felt my anxiety meter creep up. I didn’t want anyone to say something stupid or in haste that would hurt Mom or Dad, but usually they were just sympathetic and kind. Still, it was one benefit of the passage of years—people forget, someone else’s story replaces yours on the front page, and you just go on with your life.
We went into a couple of stores, but Sarah didn’t find much that she liked. “Too preppy,” she’d say, passing up racks of outfits that she would have pounced on a few years ago. She finally picked out a couple of pairs of jeans and a few casual tops to try on. Some of the stuff looked more like nightclub wear than clothes for everyday, but Mom wasn’t saying no to anything.
When we went to the dressing rooms, Sarah linked arms with me and almost pulled me in with her. “I’ll wait out here,” I said, uncomfortable with her new physical displays of affection.
“’Kay,” she said, closing the door behind her. “I’ll only show you the stuff I think looks decent.”
She opened the door a minute later, coming out in a bright printed top and skinny jeans that revealed how thin her legs had become. The top had a T-back and showed off her slender shoulders, the bones knobby under the skin.
“What do you think?” She was facing me but I could see in the mirror behind her the circle of a pink burn on her shoulder blade. I knew she had lots of small burns on her back from the report that Mom was given, but I hadn’t seen one before. Now that I did—the spot where someone had pressed a burning cigarette into her fragile skin—I caught my breath.
“What?” Sarah said, whirling around to look in the mirror.
“You have—you can see—”
Sarah turned around and looked at the reflection of her shoulder. “Oh.” She scowled. “Too bad, it’s a cute top from the front.”
Before thinking, I reached out and put my fingers gently on the scar. It felt soft and smooth, almost plastic. “Does it hurt?” I asked.
Sarah shook her head. “It was a long time ago,” she said, stripping off the top and dropping it on the floor.
I registered what she had said before she did: A long time ago. How long? I thought she couldn’t remember.
When she saw my face in the mirror she caught herself. “I mean, it has to be, right?” She smiled, slipping another top over her head.
It was a long time ago. The words kept ringing in my head. Did Sarah remember more than she was telling us?
“Nico, is this one too tight, you think?” she asked me now. Our eyes met in the mirror. “Come on, be honest.” Suddenly the smile left her face and she added, in a low tone, “You know you can be totally honest with me.” We stood like that for a moment, neither of us saying anything, an electricity between us that I didn’t fully understand.
Then Sarah smiled her earnest smile, something that I still wasn’t used to. The Sarah of my memory had a downturned mouth, unless she was with her friends or with Max. “You could pull this off. Why don’t you try it?” she added, unbuttoning the top. And that was perhaps the most jarring thing of all: her niceness. Her sweet way with me. How she reached for my hand at the salon. Her open heart, her love. Gone were the sarcasm, the biting insults. I had almost stopped bracing for acid comments every time she opened her mouth. Almost.
I looked at her in the mirror, thin and washed out, even with her expensive new color and cut. The fitted pink top making her skin look even paler, her body smaller. This girl was broken and scarred. Something horrible had happened to her, that was certain. Somehow, she had come out of it, survived, and become the person she was now—someone wonderful. But she wasn’t my sister.
SARAH
HE BURNED ME THE next day. In the morning, he opened the door and came in while I was asleep. I felt his weight on the bed next to me and I rolled over. He smelled like old beer and cigarettes and sweat. He was smoking and didn’t look at me. Just said, “You fucked up real good this time, kid.”