There is nothing familiar here except what I brought with me. A black dress on the floor, heels I kicked off somewhere between the door and bed.

 

And the boy, I guess; I know him in ways. I know his first name, his preferred Saturday night cocktail. I know he keeps a neat apartment and favors beige furniture. I know what he looks like naked, the shudder of his body before he lets go. He is a heavy sleeper too, apparently.

 

There was a time when an early hour phone call from Margot would be no cause for alarm, when it meant little more than a too late night and a too strong drink. I would drive into the city at dawn to pick her up. When I arrived at the address she sent me, she’d be sitting on the side of the road, tear-streaked and trembling, knees pulled into her chest waiting for my approaching headlights like I was riding a white horse.

 

It has been a while since one of those calls came in though, and my stomach tightens as I answer the phone with her name. “Margot?” 

 

“Where are you?” she asks, because I have whispered. “Are you not at your apartment?” She sounds panicked. It is three in the morning.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Jesus, Lindsay.” A change in her voice then, like of course I’m not at home for this, though how was I supposed to know it would be now? “Where are you?”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” I repeat. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

 

“Lindsay. It’s Tallie.”

 

I swing my legs over the boy’s bed then, sit upright on the edge. I repeat the name in my head but don’t say anything out loud.

 

It has only once before been Tallie. Only once, in seventeen years, has my younger sister been a reason to call when you otherwise wouldn’t have. I was in college still, and Margot had graduated and moved to the city we grew up claiming as our hometown even though we are really from the suburbs just outside. She was the one to call me then too, to tell me she had just gotten off the phone with our parents and they had just come from a doctor’s appointment with Tallie and Tallie, as it turns out, wasn’t just having growing pains. Her joints weren’t swollen and tender simply because of typical, teenage activity. Her weight loss wasn’t a symptom of all the new sports she’d picked up since starting high school, but instead of something much worse. A cancer that would live in her bones alone but grow to threaten us all.

 

I finally say her name into the emptiness of this strange bedroom and also to my sister listening on the other end of the phone. “Tallie.” As if it’s a prayer.

 

Margot sighs, which I’ve heard before—lately it seems that we are always at odds with each other—but there is something new in her voice too. “Look, Linds, wherever you are, just get out of there, ok? Right now. Call me when you’re home.”

 

I slide out of the boy’s bed and sit on the floor, leaning back against his mattress. “Margot, just tell me.” I know what’s coming and I am casting around for any article of clothing I can find. Mine, his, something left behind by a girl who was there before me. At this point all that seems to matter is that I not be naked.

 

It’s not meant to be. My bare feet on the floor, my bare knees hugged into my bare chest with my bare arms wrapped around myself and the phone pressed between my bare shoulder and my hot cheek. I’m wearing nothing but a smile when my older sister tells me that my younger sister is dead, although of course that’s just an expression and in reality I am biting so hard on my lip that I taste blood.  

 

“I’m so sorry,” Margot says as if it is her fault, or as if it’s somehow worse for me than it is for her. She is crying now, I notice, but I am not.

 

“Are you at your apartment?” I ask. “Where are Mom and Dad?” It seems most pressing to secure the rest of the troops, to ensure that we lose no more tonight.

           

“Mom and Dad are at home,” she says. “They called me about ten minutes ago, we didn’t talk long. I told them I’d call you.”

           

“Where are you?” I ask again, because she still has not answered.

           

“I’m at my apartment. I’m going to take the first train out to the house in the morning. Come over here. You can shower, I’ll give you clothes. We can go out together.”

           

“No, that’s ok. I mean, yes, I’ll go to the house with you, but I’ll meet you at the station. I just, I need to be alone for a little bit, and in my own space. I’m going to go back to my apartment, shower there. Maybe try to get a little more sleep. I want my own clothes. I need a little time.”

           

It’s not entirely untrue. I do need time before seeing her. I can’t stand the thought of having her take solid form in front of me, of being able to reach out and touch someone who knows that Tallie is dead and will be forever. Margot will make everything permanent. In this boy’s bedroom, a place I will never return to once I leave it, I am able to feel temporary. 

           

“Sure. Of course. I understand.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m glad you’re getting out of there,” she says, as if I’m in prison. “The metro starts running at six. I’ll meet you at the top of the escalator at ten of. Yeah?”

           

“Yeah,” I say. “Perfect.” It’s an insane word to use at any point during this, but what can I do?

           

“Linds, do me a favor? Let me know when you get back to your place?”

           

I swallow hard. “Of course,” I say. “Of course I will.” She’s never once asked that of me, but I let it slide. I know where it’s coming from. I asked where she was, where our parents were, showed an interest on keeping tabs on my family when I never usually would.

           

I peel myself off the floor, climb back into the boy’s bed, and fifteen minutes later from the exact spot where I was when she called me in the first place, I send her a message and tell her I’ve arrived safely home. The boy’s heat is everywhere around me and I press my chest into his back and arrange my legs into the space he has left. I stay there for another hour, trying to will myself back into the girl I was when he first saw me. Red hair spilling over my shoulders, down my back and my little sister still very much alive. It was early enough in the night, my lipstick had barely faded. Maybe I was laughing. He must have charmed me somehow. I do this often enough, but not without reason. There must have been something about him, although I can no longer remember what it was.

 

           

 

I get to the station before Margot. I did finally make it back to my apartment, and showered and changed. I got no more sleep.

           

Two weeks ago Tallie decided to leave the hospital and go home, and everyone we told—the relatives, the family friends, the grade school teachers—misunderstood us at first. They thought it meant she was improving and if we were a kinder family of better people we would have let them hold onto that. “It means it’s over,” we told them. “It won’t be long now.” For the first few days, Margot and I slept at the house but we did more harm than good. It was crowded and we hovered and Tallie couldn’t take it anymore. She told us to go back to the city and our own apartments and the lives we would have to keep living regardless of what happened to her. We last visited the day before yesterday.

 

My parents have not called and I notice I’m annoyed at them about it, which is a horrible thing to feel on top of everything. I try to remind myself that Margot could have told them not to bother, assuring them she would handle it. That she would take care of me. That’s been her way for a while now, though I still remember when she could barely take care of herself.

We used to be so alike. Closing down bars and going home with strangers and constantly buying cheap sunglasses from convenience stores for the morning walk back to our own apartments. It was like that even before Tallie was diagnosed, and I’ve resisted ever connecting the two things in my mind, though I doubt Margot was able to do the same. Our parents called us wild as a catchall for all the things they didn’t have words for, and I thought it was quaint. I never minded the comparison between us—we could use each other as a mirror—but at some point she came to. I have tried not take it personally; the only reason she got her act together was to distance herself from me.

 

           

“I’m sorry you beat me here,” she says, when she finally joins me. We hug tight, dig into one another’s flesh. It hurts, slightly, but I’m glad for it. “It’s like all of a sudden I can’t force myself to move with any sense of purpose.”

           

We let go of each other, but wordlessly clasp hands as we make our way down the escalator. I’m glad we never outgrew this.

           

“How did Mom and Dad sound when you spoke to them?”

           

She thinks for a moment. “War torn,” she finally says. “As if the tanks had rolled through and the machine guns had leveled the place.”

           

There is no one on the platform except us, and as we wait for our train, I drop my head into the hollow of her shoulder. Nothing seems quite real, though we are surrounded on all sides by metal and concrete and infinite solidness.

           

“Who was the boy?” she suddenly asks, and it takes me a moment to place the question. He already seems so far away from me, but I wonder if he’s woken up yet to notice I’m gone.

           

“Just some boy,” I tell her, which if it wasn’t true before is certainly true now. Sometimes I wonder if these boys who catch my eye and live near the bar and seem so insignificant in the boozy haze of evening could ever turn out to be more in the hurt of our morning hangovers. They usually disappoint me—as I’m sure I do them—but last night’s boy with his too dark hair and hardwood floors won’t have the chance.  

           

“Just some boy,” Margot repeats. “Aren’t they all?”

           

She seems to be talking mostly to herself and so I decide that the question is rhetorical, and not a comment on me. It is possible; she knows as well as I do that the boys who buy you drinks and pay you hallmark compliments are not likely to transform overnight.

           

“What are we going to do without her?” I ask to change the subject.

           

“I don’t know. She always made such a difference.”

           

“She wasn’t much like us. That’s why. She never tortured herself.” Margot and I did. There was a wall around us our whole lives protecting us from the dangers of the outside world, and we made a game of finding weapons inside ourselves and threatening our lives so as to better justify the celebration of our survival. “She never seemed to feel like she deserved a reward for just making it through.” That’s what it all came down to really; last night and last night’s boy and all the nights before that and all the boys before him. I had carried on being a person despite the thousands of things that could have stopped me and I felt I was due compensation.

           

“I don’t feel that way anymore.”

           

“I still do.”

           

“I know.” 

           

“Do you think I’ll grow out of it like you did?”

           

“Do you think you’ll grow out of it like I did?”

           

“Sometimes. Although this won’t help.”

           

Margot sighs and squeezes my hand. “It’s a setback for sure,” she agrees. And then she laughs, a short staccato like a cough that soon takes on a life of its own and comes out loud and steady. It overwhelms the deserted platform. I can’t do anything but stare. I’m angry and jealous. How dare she laugh? But at the same time I wish I could.

           

“I’m sorry,” she finally says, calming down. “I’m sorry, it’s not funny at all. A setback? As if that’s all this were. It’s just so ridiculous.” She drops her head into her hands and murmurs something that’s not meant for me.

 

I am about to say something—to pull her back—when my cell phone vibrates in my pocket. I assume it must be our parents because who else would be up and trying to get in touch with me at this hour, but when I look the message is from the boy I left behind. I don’t remember that we exchanged information, but the number couldn’t belong to anyone but him. You’re gone, he has written.

 

And suddenly, that’s all I want—for it to be true. For the girl who climbed into bed with him so easily and so quickly to have disappeared forever. I want that girl to have died when Tallie did, perhaps to accompany her to wherever it is she’s going. The version of me that she knew in life by her side in death. That’s what I want losing Tallie to do to me, to alter and fix in me. I want to believe that the point of death is to change the living.

 

I show Margot the message. “It’s from the boy,” I tell her. “From last night.”

 

“You didn’t wake him up before you left?”

 

“God, no. Why would I?”

 

“I don’t know. To explain why you were leaving.”

 

“Explain! What would I have said? Sorry to leave like this, but my little sister died and I have to go home. Thanks for last night, the sex was fine, have a great life.” I shake my head. “He is a stranger, Margot. He is no one.”

 

She drops her head into the palm of her hands. “He’s enough of someone that you went home with him. You knew him well enough for that.” The sound is muffled by her fingertips, but not so much that I can’t make out every word. I’m not surprised she’s said it, but I can’t respond to it. I won’t be able to say anything to her until she’s apologized, but I don’t suspect it will take long.

 

We sit in silence for only a few moments. “I’m sorry,” she says, sitting up straight again. “I’m sorry I said that.” She turns and meets my eyes, afraid suddenly as if she’s just now realizing how helpless she is. “I hate absolutely everything about what’s happening right now. Do you hate it? I hate it.”

 

I take up her hands again in mine. “Of course I hate it. What’s to like?”

 

This seems to calm her down. “Nothing. There’s nothing to like.” She squeezes my hands and we let go of each other again. “Are you going to at least reply to him?”

 

I want to. Because there’s no way to prove otherwise, in the few hours since leaving his apartment I’ve managed to convince myself that there was something different about him. That if I’d been able to sleep through the night he would have woken me up in the morning by tossing an arm over my rib cage, splaying his fingers out on my stomach, pulling me a little closer into his space. He would have made coffee and served it to me black without asking if I preferred it any other way. We would have kissed goodbye in his doorframe, met for a drink in the middle of the next week. Because there’s no way for him to ever be anything but the last boy I slept with before my sister died, I want to let myself believe that he could have been everything if she’d only managed to stay alive one more night.

 

“Yes,” I tell Margot. “I’ll tell him something.” Instead, I pretend to type and then tuck the phone back into my pocket.

 

 

A few minutes later the train finally comes and it is as empty as we are.