The Secret Language of Sisters

by Luanne Rice

  When I woke up again, I was in my hospital room. My head hurt worse than before. My eyes were so swollen I could barely see, but the tube wasn’t in my throat and I was breathing on my own. It felt as if I had swallowed a hot poker, straight from the fire.

  I must have groaned, because within a second, Dr. Howarth was at my side. He read the monitors, shined a light in my eyes. My stomach heaved with nausea; he held the basin by my mouth, the way the nurses usually did.

  “You did wonderfully well,” he said. “You are a trouper, a champion, Roo.”

  Is it normal to have such a terrible headache? I wanted to ask. He didn’t offer the board; I was too exhausted to talk anyway. With him sitting there, stroking my forehead with a cool washcloth, I dropped off again.

  Another dream: on the beach, walking as if I were whole again, as if nothing had ever happened. It was dawn, and the sun was rising. Far ahead, I saw two little girls building a sand castle. It was Tilly and me, decorating the intricate sand structure with kelp, sea glass, and scallop shells. My heart ached, because I loved that little Tilly so much.

  “But if you’re me, who am I?” I asked the little girl who looked like me.

  “You’re dead,” she said.

  “No I’m not, I’m here.”

  “Guess again,” she said.

  And then I disappeared.

  And I woke up. My head was bandaged. The nurses kept the incision clean. Dr. Hill came every day, more than I had ever seen him. Dr. Howarth sat with me for hours. We watched the Nat Geo Channel on television, and he set up a chessboard and said we would play when I was better.

  Every time my mother came, she started off cheerful and smiling, but at some point during the visit, she cried. It got so I expected it, and was even comforted, oddly, by the sound of her soft sobbing. When I was little, the sight of an adult’s tears terrified me. I wanted to believe grown-ups could never get that sad, because they knew how to control the bad things in the world.

  But now I would have told her, It’s okay, I know it means you love me and are sad for the way things are. But, I would have said to her, this is our life now. This is the way it is. Are you going to cry through it?

  A couple of days after my surgery, Tilly and Newton came.

  Tilly hugged and kissed me, and I had my usual big-sister reaction to her, wanting to reassure her that all those fears she’d had about the surgery hadn’t come to pass—Here I am, still alive, getting better. I saw the worry in her eyes and wished I could wipe it away.

  Then Newton. Oh, the way he rested his head on my shoulder. I smelled his shampoo, wanted to reach up and touch his face, feel his skin with my fingers. I’d been worried about him seeing me with my head completely shaved, but he didn’t even mention it.

  “You came through so beautifully, as always,” he whispered. I felt his breath on my ear.

  “You did,” Tilly said.

  Give us a minute alone, I wanted to say to her. And I expected Newton to ignore her, but he didn’t.

  “She’s amazing, isn’t she?” he said to her, not to me.

  “Dude, she’s incredible,” Tilly said. She put up her palm, and he gave her a high five. They both laughed. He drifted away from my bedside. I saw that the high five had turned to a handclasp—their fingers entwined. And they stood there smiling at each other. Not letting go.

  The handclasp and their smiles went on and on. Am I seeing this? I cried out, but no one heard.

  My boyfriend and my sister? My mind tried to push the possibility away. I was still dreaming from before. But I heard them talking, their voices real.

  “Are you feeling better?” Newton asked Tilly.

  Is she feeling better? What about me?

  “Yeah. Seeing her calms me down. That stupid assembly really got me going. But she loves me, she’s not mad at me,” Tilly said.

  What assembly, and think again, Tilly—love? Not right now. I am furious at you. Back off from Newton!

  They were my most important people. But now, paralyzed, I could see something developing between them, and it made me feel seasick. I began thinking back, little moments since I’d had the accident. That day when Tilly had blown up at Dr. Howarth, I’d glimpsed them touching, reassuring each other. It had bothered me a little at the time, but now it was making me insane.

  By the time they left, I wasn’t speaking to them, but they didn’t even know. Big hugs, big kisses, see you soon. I felt crazed and jealous, imagining them in the car on the way home.

  And then Isabel arrived.

  “Hola, preciosa,” Isabel said, approaching my bed, dropping a bunch of packages on the table, holding my two hands in hers. “¿Cómo estás?”

  No tan bien, I wanted to say to her. Not too good. ¿Y tú? And you? How do you say I hate my sister in Spanish? Did you see them in the hallway? I wanted to ask.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting on the edge of my bed. She was sensitive and could always pick up my mood.

  The chip wasn’t online yet, I hadn’t been trained, so we resorted to the good old letter board. She moved the pointer and I spelled out:

  Tilly.

  “I just saw her and Newton leaving the hospital,” Isabel said.

  Together?

  “Sí. They drove up to Boston together.”

  That’s not what I meant. My heart was beating so fast, and I heard the monitor starting to beep. I was in the red zone.

  “You okay?” she asked, frowning with worry. She wore a rose-red angora sweater, her milagros and the pressed violets, and moonstone earrings I’d given her last Christmas.

  No, I spelled on the board. Upset about Tilly and

  But before I finished, she grabbed my hand. “I know about it,” she said. “In a way, I’ve made it worse. I told your mother, and since the assembly, Tilly isn’t speaking to me. But I had to, Roo. It was eating Tilly up, and honestly, me too.”

  Isabel knew about Tilly and Newton flirting? Or was there way more? What assembly? She offered the board again, and I spelled out:

  ???????

  Nina came in to check on my heart monitor and vitals, and Isabel spent the time decorating my room with things she had brought from home. She plugged in the plastic Virgin Mary so she glowed, draped Christmas lights from fixtures hanging from the ceiling. The room felt warmer than before, less fluorescent. She gazed at my photos, especially the ones I had taken for the Serena Kader Barrois Foundation Photography Contest. When Nina left, Isabel returned to my bedside and placed the photo album and newspaper on my lap.

  Dr. Howarth walked in. He nodded to Isabel but came straight to me. Leaning down, he squeezed my hand, looked into my face. I felt shocking relief to see him. He gazed into my eyes for a long time, and he saw that I was an emotional wreck.

  “What is it, Roo?” he asked, handing me the board.

  Everything wrong, I spelled.

  “Can you tell me why? Perhaps introduce me to your friend?”

  “I’m Isabel,” she said. “Roo’s best friend.”

  “I’m Dr. Howarth,” he said, glancing at the album and newspaper. “Are these what’s bothering you, Roo?”

  “I haven’t even shown her yet,” Isabel said.

  “May I look?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. They held the album so I could see. “It’s my portfolio, for the photography contest Roo and I are entering.”

  The portfolios were required to have a unifying theme. Mine had been nature in the coastal environment. Isabel’s had been her family’s immigrant experience, including injustice at her mother’s job. Shots of her mother in her waitress uniform, unsafe conditions in the kitchen, such as towels hanging by an open flame, family shots of Day of the Dead skeletons and flowers at her cousin Melanie’s house, Isabel’s mother’s specialty mole poblano, Melanie and her sister Ana in festive pink dresses at Isabel’s quinceañera, her uncle’s new silver truck. But those photographs were gone, and her project had been redone.

  Every photo was of me. Starting when
we were thirteen, the year we got our first cameras and fell in love with photography together: at the beach, riding Newton’s bike with Tilly balanced on the crossbar, studying at Isabel’s house, accepting the science prize at eighth-grade graduation, and shots of me with my family and Newton all through high school.

  When she turned the next page I gasped, nearly choked.

  Me on a ventilator in my hospital bed back in New London, head bandaged, tubes everywhere. It must have been shortly after the seizure, because I was on the ventilator. My face was swollen and bruised, with stitched-up cuts on my scalp and forehead. And my eyes were open, a monster staring horribly into the void.

  Is this how I look?

  Next was a shot of me in this bed, here in Boston, taken from the doorway. My eyes were still open and staring, my gaze still unfocused and unintelligible.

  I had to admit I admired the way Isabel had caught the daylight glinting through the clear IV tubes running from clear bottles of saline and glucose solutions hanging above my head; I cringed at the sight of my catheter flowing into the bag of brownish-yellow pee, affixed to the bed rail.

  “My portfolio is dedicated to you, mi amiga,” she said, her voice thick. “Without you, my best friend, I wouldn’t even be a photographer.”

  “How do you feel about it, Roo?” Dr. Howarth asked.

  Kind of shocked, I answered.

  “Is it an intrusion, too much?” Isabel said. “I love you no matter where you are or how you look, and I want to tell the story of you. But if you say you prefer I leave these out, that is what I do.”

  I couldn’t reply yet. I turned to the very last photo, a shot of the school auditorium. I felt a pang of nostalgia to see that old place, and tried to spot my friends, especially Newton. There he was, sitting by himself near the far-left aisle. I stared at him for a long time. Mr. Gordon and Mrs. Lansing stood onstage; behind them, on the projection screen, was a photo of me in the hospital.

  What is this? I spelled.

  “School assembly,” Isabel said. “The day the news article came out.”

  “Which article?” Dr. Howarth asked.

  She handed him the paper. “About texting and driving.”

  He read it, frowning.

  What does it say? I asked.

  “That you were texting with a family member,” he said in a low, quiet voice.

  My body felt cold, as if my blood had turned to ice. I knew what had happened, and so did Tilly, but did the whole world have to hear about it?

  “I texted you, too, that day,” Isabel said. “I swear I stopped once I knew you were on the way to Tilly. I would never put you in danger.”

  “But Tilly did?” Dr. Howarth asked.

  “Yes, she did,” Isabel said, head up high and sounding ferocious. “It was the last text before Roo went off the road.”

  Her words hung in the air, and I heard Dr. Howarth exhale a long breath.

  My ice-cold blood had turned to poison. I could taste it in my mouth. My schoolmates had gathered in the auditorium to talk about me, to blame me for my own mistakes. For the first time in weeks, I pictured the old lady and her dog; I had come so close to killing them. If I hadn’t texted Tilly back, that wouldn’t have happened; and if Tilly hadn’t barraged me with a thousand impatient texts, I never would have reached for my phone.

  “Well,” Dr. Howarth said after a few seconds of quiet.

  “I found the phone,” Isabel said.

  “Right now I’m thinking of the article. It’s brilliant, really,” Dr. Howarth said in his British accent. “As much as it hurts, Roo, this story will help others, keep them from texting behind the wheel. You have to know that. People’s lives will be saved because of you.”

  “It’s true,” Isabel said. “Everyone at school has promised to turn off their phones as soon as they get into their cars.”

  “Roo, you are healing from the surgery,” he said. “We’ll begin working on the computer in just a day or two. Everything will look brighter, dear girl. I promise it will.”

  “Roo?” Isabel asked, holding up the board of letters. “Please talk to me?”

  I couldn’t think about the article anymore, or her photo essay. My thoughts turned to something even more painful.

  Tilly and Newton? I asked.

  “What about them?” she asked.

  Together? I asked.

  “What are you talking about?” she said, sounding shocked.

  Nothing.

  And she relaxed and smiled. But I knew what I’d seen. Not even the school assembly or Isabel’s pictures of me looking horrible bothered me as much the memory of Tilly and Newton, right here in my hospital room, clasping hands, not letting go, as if I weren’t even here.

  Tilly had nearly killed me, and now she was stealing my boyfriend.

  For the first time since my accident, I really thought about giving up. I thought it would be easier to just die.

  The minute I got off the school bus, I felt I’d stepped into one of those scenes you see on the news, usually at the site of a school tragedy. There were rows of TV trucks with gigantic satellite dishes and hordes of reporters with microphones.

  I tried to skirt around where they were all clustered. Nona and Em got off the bus behind me. We’d kept our distance from one another since the article. But then we started texting, then seeing each other on the bus, and now we were back together. That was the TEN way.

  “What happened?” I asked them.

  “Uh, it’s about you,” Nona said, pressing even closer to me as a whole bunch of reporters came running toward me all at once. I wasn’t totally sure whether Nona wanted to protect me or get into the picture. But I appreciated her being my human shield, and let her block me from them. It seemed there was an invisible line just outside the school driveway, and the reporters all stopped there.

  “Mathilda!” one of them called.

  “Look over here, Mathilda!” a man with a camera crew behind him shouted at me.

  “Just a few questions!” called the blond reporter I remembered from the hospital.

  “Have you talked to your sister about what happened? How does she feel about it?” said a woman I recognized from TV, one of the tabloid shows that Roo and I used to watch and laugh about.

  “Did you mean to text her?” asked the blond reporter.

  “NO!” I screamed to all of them.

  Em put her arm around me. So did Nona. It felt so good to be embraced by TEN again. Then Newton walked around the news trucks from the school parking lot.

  “Good thing they don’t know he’s Roo’s boyfriend,” Nona whispered. “Or they’d be all over him, too.”

  “Look, there’s Isabel,” Em said.

  Isabel and her cousin Melanie were on their way into school from the parking lot, but Isabel veered toward the TV trucks. My stomach clenched as I saw her talking to the blond reporter. The woman gestured for her cameraman, and he stood behind her, a handheld camera balanced on her shoulder, shooting Isabel being interviewed.

  “What’s she doing?” Nona asked.

  “Typical Isabel. I’m sure she thinks she’s doing a public service,” I said. I knew I sounded bitter, but her talking to reporters about our private pain kind of made me sick.

  “Well,” Em said gently, taking my hand as if to soften her words, “it is an important story, and we do want others to know the dangers of what can happen.”

  Even if that was true, I really couldn’t take hearing it just then. A big semicircle of students had formed just outside the double doors, and I put my head down and walked right past Marlene and Andy. I expected some snarky nastiness, but no one said anything. Somehow the silence hurt even more than mean words, and I felt myself choke up.

  But I had to get through this day. My first class was computer arts. I stopped at my locker without talking to anyone, went straight to the computer lab, and took a seat as far from the windows as I could. I didn’t want to hear or see anything that might remind me of the TV trucks outside.
>
  I was the first one there, early for once. I logged on, and even though we weren’t supposed to check social media, I figured I’d kill a little time on Facebook. One glance at my home page made me gasp.

  5 mins away

  Roo’s last text to me! It was all over my newsfeed, posted by lots of my friends, and as I scrolled through the site, I realized EVERYONE was sharing it. I couldn’t believe it. I just stared at the screen.

  We had gone viral.

  * * *

  The signs were all over school. I noticed them walking between classes, while I was still numb thinking about the Facebook post.

  FULL MOON DANCE

  Come celebrate and raise money for our friend Roo McCabe

  Sponsored by the Black Hall High Science Club

  SATURDAY NIGHT,

  BLACK HALL TOWN BEACH, 8 PM

  Dress: Beach formal

  The signs all featured photos by Roo, provided by my mother, who had given them permission to promote the fund-raiser. The photos showed the moon at Hubbard’s Point, in all its phases, throughout the seasons: a silver crescent glowing in rose-and-lavender twilight as the sun set over Little Beach; a half-moon caught in the bare branches of trees where owls roosted near our father’s grave; the full moon shining a golden path on the snow-covered beach.

  At lunchtime, I saw that a bunch of kids had set up a stand in the cafeteria, for people to make donations, buy tickets, and sign a card for Roo. Isabel was front and center; that didn’t surprise me. I looked around for Newton, copresident of the science club, but he wasn’t there. For some weird reason, Marlene was hanging around, selling tickets as if she cared.

  “Why are you here?” I asked her.

  “Because I feel really sorry for Roo,” Marlene said.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Everyone who saw that picture in assembly cares about her, Tilly.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t want the pity of someone who would smash birds’ eggs.”

  “That’s like a hundred years ago,” Marlene said. “At least I didn’t text my sister off the road. Did you see all the news vans outside? You’re like the poster child for teen texting. And Mr. Gordon wants them there. He said it was fine as long as they don’t come on school property. It’s a story everyone should hear!”