Sisters of Heart and Snow by Margaret Dilloway Page B

watch
Jeopardy!
with me?” We used to watch that together as we did our homework, each of us shouting out answers, usually a few seconds too late.
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    This was not what I wanted. It would most likely be my sister who’d find me. I couldn’t do that to her. I sank to the floor, shaking uncontrollably. I took several breaths. I made my hands into fists until the nails cut my palms, the pain giving me something else to concentrate on.
    â€œRach?” Drew knocked again, rattled the doorknob.
    â€œI’m busy,” I said, my voice sounding more brusque than I’d intended. “I have homework.” I couldn’t talk to Drew about any of this. She was still an innocent little kid. I needed to protect her.
    I heard her shut the door to her room. The strains of Stravinsky’s “Elegy” floated through the walls. Drew bought the sheet music for it almost two years earlier, when she was just ten. It’d been too difficult for her at the time, but now here she was, performing it perfectly.
Holy shit. When did my sister get so good?
I wondered, listening to the low, sad melody.
    Then Killian pounded on Drew’s door. “No playing after nine,” he shouted. I touched my shirt. It was soaking wet from the tears I hadn’t realized I was shedding.
    I wouldn’t admit what I was thinking about that night to anyone, ever, I promised myself. Drew had saved me, jarred me out of my lowest point, and she would never know. It was too shameful and too burdensome to confide. So I just kept managing my pain as badly as I knew how. At least I knew for certain I’d never leave my sister. Not like that.
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    A couple of months after the drug incident, on a summer night, my father caught me parked in a car, late, with another boy. The boy was dropping me off and I hadn’t wanted to be dropped off yet, so I’d whispered,
Why don’t you park down the street?
and there we were, steaming up the windows a few houses down, where the streetlight was out. I don’t remember the guy’s name or what he looked like, particularly. He was just another boy who paid attention to me, and that’s what I needed. Suddenly there was a violent rapping at the window. “Unlock this car right now.” My father pounded the glass with his palm. He was, though then sixty-six years old, still a big, burly man.
    I screamed and fixed my clothes. “Don’t unlock it.”
    But the boy, scared, unlocked the car, and my father opened the passenger door and yanked me out by my sleeve. A glass bong fell out of my pocket, shattering on the asphalt. He put his arm around me tight and ushered me back up the street, my arms pinned to my sides, and into the house, slamming the front door as hard as he could. He turned to me. “So it’s boys
and
drugs. What are you, a prostitute?”
    I looked around for Mom. Nowhere. “No,” I whispered, edging toward the stairs. My heart thumped and I suddenly became drenched in sweat. I needed to get to my room, where I could lock my door and cry.
    â€œI will not have you bringing shame into our family,” Dad said, his voice low. He leaned into my face, his breath smelling of old garlic and sulfurous red wine. Broken capillaries lined his red cheeks, a map with roads leading nowhere.
    I gripped the banister and took one step up. “I’m sorry.” I wanted to hide my face, to crawl under my bed like a little kid, holding on to my stuffed Easter bunny for dear life. “I won’t do it again. I promise. I’ll be good.”
    â€œYou already promised that!” Dad shouted. “How many chances do you think you get, Rachel? I’m not taking care of any baby. I’m not bailing you out of jail. I’m done.”
    Drew appeared at the top of the stairs, her face white. “Rachel? Dad? What’s going on?”
    â€œGo