The Replacement Sister

Part 6

Lucy is grinning in her high chair, happy that her doting parents have come home; not understanding that my world has been destroyed for the second time. Maya. I need my sister. I'm mad. I'm furious. I scream. Lucy stops smiling and my parents have to hold each other's hand.

I stop and wish I hadn't screamed in the first place, because it didn't change anything. All it did was make Lucy unhappy too. She starts wailing.

I lock myself in my bedroom and blast music so loud I can't think.

At dusk I go downstairs. My parents are in the living room, but Lucy is here and she eyes me cautiously. I pick her up and cradle her in my arms. Her body is warm and soft, and she grabs my finger with her little hand, and suddenly all I feel is awe, at how warm and alive and real she is. We go outside and watch the sun set together, and eventually fall asleep, the both of us, in the wicker porch rocking chair.

I wake up in the still midnight hours, the time always enlaced with a dark thrill of power. Lucy's breathing is in rhythm with the cricket's song. I gently move the sleeping girl from my lap so I can walk to the grass and feel the hard, unforgiving Earth.

I tilt my head up to the sky, and search the constellations.