These are the things you think when you ditch school and tear down the streets of your town, when you run so hard you can’t get any air into your shrunken throat and you keep running anyway: The voice in your head is your own, and you are telling your sister to stop. You are telling her you love her and that this is killing her and that she has to please stop stop stop. You are showing her the journal, you are shoving it in her face, you are burning it together. Every step brings you closer till you are at your doorstep, till your key is in the door, till you are shoving it open, till you see her lying in the front hall, till you drop to your knees to revive her.
How did she even get that sweater on? It’s a little kid’s fisherman’s knit sweater, and it’s so tight against her chest that I can see what isn’t there: Her chest has been deflated, her boobs lie so flat against her that I could be looking at her back and I’d see the same thing. When I scream my sister’s name into her face, I can hear my father’s voice. I can hear my mother’s voice. We are all calling for Karen.
I slap her face. I grab on to the bony rounds of her shoulders and shake. I press my ear against the sweater, trying to hear a thump in her chest. There’s nothing. I scream when I can’t remember where to press on her chest to make her heart start again. I’m going to press in the wrong place, and I’m going to kill her.
The phone is on the table behind me. I am putting my hands on Karen’s chest, and I am kicking backward with my leg, knocking the phone off the table so it lands next to me. With one hand I dial 911, with the other I start to push on Karen. I drop the phone before anyone answers, lay my hands on top of each other, and push down and down and down and down. An ant is chirping inside the phone. I yell in the direction of the phone: “My sister is hurt, this is my address, please come and save her.” I yell it three times and then listen. The ant titters. I lean in closer to the phone as I breathe into Karen’s mouth, careful not to knock her loose teeth down her throat. The ant in the phone says the ambulance is coming.