My Sister's Keeper

All the hair stands up on the back of my neck. "Is this… a eulogy?"

By now, Brian is crying, too. "If I don't do it now, I won't be able to when it's really time."

I shake my head. "It's not time."

I call my sister at three-thirty in the morning. "I woke you," I say, realizing the minute Za

"Is it Kate?"

I nod, even though she ca

"Yeah?"

I close my eyes, feel the tears squeeze out.

"Sara, what's the matter? Do you want me to come down there?"

It is hard to speak around the enormous pressure in my throat; truth expands until it can choke you. As kids, Za

"Yes," I say, sobbing freely now. "Please."

Against all odds, Kate survives for ten days on intense transfusions and arsenic therapy. On the eleventh day of her hospitalization, she slips into a coma. I decide I will keep a bedside vigil until she wakes up. And I do this for exactly forty-five minutes, until I receive a phone call from the principal of Jesse's school.

Apparently, the metal sodium is stored in the high school science laboratory in small containers of oil, because of its volatile reaction with air. Apparently, it is water-reactive, too, creating hydrogen and heat. Apparently, my ninth-grader was bright enough to realize this, which is why he stole the sample, flushed it down the toilet, and exploded the school's septic tank.

After he is expelled for three weeks by the principal, a man who has the decency to ask after Kate while basically telling me that my eldest is destined for the State Penitentiary, Jesse and I drive back to the hospital. "Needless to say, you're grounded."

"Whatever."

"Until you're forty."

Jesse slouches, and if it is possible, his brows knit even more closely together. I wonder when, exactly, I gave up on him. I wonder why, when Jesse's history is not by any stretch as disappointing as his sister's.

"The principal's a dick."

"You know what, Jess? The world's full of them. You will always be up against someone. Something."

He glares at me. "You could take a conversation about the frigging Red Sox and somehow turn it back to Kate."

We pull into the hospital parking lot, but I make no move to shut off the car. Rain pelts the windshield. "We're all pretty gifted at that. Or were you blowing up the septic tank for some other reason?"

"You don't know what it's like being the kid whose sister is dying of cancer."

"I have a fairly good idea. Since I'm the mother of the kid who is dying of cancer. You're absolutely right, it does suck. And sometimes I feel like blowing something up, too, just to get rid of that feeling that I'm going to explode any minute." I glance down and notice a bruise the size of a half-dollar, right in the crook of his arm. There's a matching one on the other side. It is telling, I suppose, that my mind immediately races to heroin, instead of leukemia, as it would with his sisters. "What's that?"

He folds his arms. "Nothing."

"What is it?"

"None of your business."

"It is my business." I pull down his forearm. "Is that from a needle?"

He lifts his head, eyes blazing. "Yeah, Ma. I shoot up every three days. Except I'm not doing smack, I'm getting blood taken out of me on the third floor here." He stares at me. "Didn't you wonder who else was keeping Kate in platelets?"

He gets out the car before I can stop him, leaving me staring out a windshield where nothing is clear anymore.

Two weeks after Kate is admitted to the hospital, the nurses convince me to take a day off. I come home and shower in my own bathroom, instead of the one used by the medical staff. I pay overdue bills. Za

"If by anyone you mean the hospital, then no." She flips the page of the cookbook she's reading. "This is such bullshit," Za

The front door opens and slams shut. A

"I live here," I say.

Za

But A

Dear A