The Truth Commission by Susan Juby Page B

people forget I’m there. As an added bonus, I don’t disturb my sister by rattling around in my own room.
    Almost as soon as my sister came home from college, I began a series of images I’m excited about. I often stayed late at school to stitch while Dusk worked on elements of her Spring Special Project. She was calling the piece
Taxiderming the Shrew
. I gave her plenty of space. My guess is that bad things can happen to beginning taxidermists. Dusk had posted a notice seeking shrews that died of natural causes on Craigslist Nanaimo and gotten an excellent response. She was always taking delivery of dead shrews people had found while they were out walking.
    While I stitched and Dusk tried to mount shrews (so to speak), Neil made paintings of elusive beautiful women. Sometimes we all worked together in the same room in happy silence.
    Still, stitching at home took the edge off, and it pleased my parents to see me busy doing things that wouldn’t aggravate my sister.
    The night after the Slut Riot, after I’d gone to bed, Keira came out of the closet and into my room again. Like a ghost or a bad dream.
    â€œNorm?” she whispered. “Do you want to talk?”
    My eyes snapped open.
    Keira stretched and yawned, rising up on her tiptoes and reaching her thin white arms over her head.
    â€œI get stiff from staying in one position so long. You too?”
    She’d been working hard for the past several days. She even let my parents bring her some lunch in the closet. I knew because they had told me about it at least three times.
    I nodded, my head half hidden by blankets.
    â€œThe needlepoint stuff you do is probably even worse for your back and neck than drawing. We should do yoga together. Go to a class.”
    â€œYeah,” I croaked, trying to imagine doing yoga with Keira. It would be such a normal thing to do. So unlike us. She’d done less and less socializing since the days when we’d gone to summer camp together. Now she rarely went out in public. That was part of her mystique. A couple of years ago, a few of the older comic artists and a couple of important critics had criticized her for how she used our family in the Chronicles. In response, she pulled a semi-Salinger and stopped going to Comic Cons or interacting with her fans, who accused the people who’d given her a hard time of driving her “underground.” Apparently, if you don’t “get” my sister, you’re an uptight censor. At least, that’s what I read on the Diana Chronicles blogs and message boards before I stopped reading them.
    â€œLet me get my sleeping bag,” said Keira. She retreated into the closet and I steeled myself for the next storytelling session. I had no idea what to do with the fact that Keira and one of her teachers had crossed the line. My Facebook exchange with Roberta Heller II hadn’t cleared anything up. Also, I felt guilty about my motives. I listened to my sister because I wanted her respect. I listened because I hoped she’d realize that talking helped and that she should talk to someone better qualified than me. Those were not exactly noble reasons.
    I lay frozen on my bed as the story wafted out like mustard gas.
    â€œSo we went hiking a couple of times. He had an acute eye for landscape,” she said.
    I wasn’t sure what that meant but I didn’t interrupt to ask.
    â€œHe was worried people would think it was strange, his spending so much time alone with a student. Me.”
    Long, poisonous pause.
    â€œSo he picked me up about a block away from the school. No one saw us together.”
    An alarm bell was going off in my head. I didn’t mention it.
    â€œThe hikes were great. It was just nice to get off campus and move, you know? School could be such a hothouse—worse than the Art Farm, even. The third time we went out, he took me on this super-steep path with cliffs and these deep canyons. And at the top, a few