they feel more swollen now than they did when I ate that stupid banana bread.
As I peel off my sexy vixen costume and don my training clothes, I tell myself this whole attached-at-the-mouth thing is temporary. We’re just going through a period of renewed excitement for each other. A second honeymoon period, if you will. Every day in our relationship is not going to be like this. I remember the days after our very first kiss. Those long summer nights when there was nothing else to do but make out, and nowhere else to be but with each other. I couldn’t get enough of him. It was like I was gravely ill and Tristan was the cure. I was dying of thirst and Tristan was water. I was surrounded by silence and Tristan was music.
So much music.
All the time.
Streaming in my eardrums 24-7. Serenading me when I was awake. Lulling me to sleep.
Tristan was the soundtrack of my summer. The beat I walked to. The melody I breathed in and out. The lyrics I lived by.
And now suddenly, this day, this version of this day, it’s like someone has turned him back on. Full volume. Full blast.
Like I’ve synchronized to his beat again, after falling out of step for too long.
4:09 p.m.
After crushing it in softball tryouts again, I race to the locker room and quickly change back into my miniskirt and boots. I want to try to find my sister before she leaves the middle school. I figure if I can catch her earlier, I might be able to figure out what happened to her. I stuff my training clothes into my gym locker and make a dash for my car.
The middle school is next door to the high school, so fortunately I don’t have to go far.
I pull up in the parent drop-off lane and watch the front doors. I did the math. If I saw her at the intersection of Providence Boulevard and Avenue de Liberation at around 4:30 yesterday, that means that she must have left the school right about now.
A moment later, I hear a slam and a group of five giggling girls come running out a side door, around the corner from the front of the school. My sister is not one of them. I watch as they blather on and run to a waiting car, which I assume belongs to one of their mothers.
I can’t hear what they’re saying with the windows rolled up, but they look just like the girls did when I was in a middle school a few years ago. Thirteen-year-olds trying to be thirty-year-olds. Tanned legs, barely-there shorts, too much eye makeup. I watch both the front and the side doors, waiting for my sister to come out, but there’s still no sign of her.
That’s strange.
I drive in a loop around the parking lot, my eyes glued to the exits. Finally, as I’m about to give up and head home, I see movement out of the corner of my eye. It’s coming from the empty soccer field.
I turn in my seat to get a better view and there’s my sister. Sopping wet again, running across the field in the direction of the parking lot. I get out of the car and walk toward her. She sees me and halts in her steps, wiping at her face.
“Ellie? What are you doing here?”
My mind is screaming with questions. I want to lob them at her all at once.
Why are you drenched?
Why were you on the soccer field?
Why are you at school this late?
But I know she’ll only shut down again, so I hold my tongue and pretend to not even notice her shambled state. “I dunno. I had a hunch that you’d be here and I came to see if you wanted to go knock off a candy store with me.”
She cracks the faintest of smiles.
It makes me feel like I just won the lottery.
“What if we get caught?” she asks, right on cue.
I shrug. “I’m not afraid of juvie. Are you?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Good.” I point to my car in the lot. “Let’s go then.”
Hadley adjusts her backpack straps and walks to the car. I notice a slight bounce in her step.
Candy Stripers is a game we used to play when we were little, mostly around Halloween. We would write our initials on pieces of our candy stash with Sharpies and then hide them around the house. The sister with the most pieces of the other person’s candy would