I play the lottery. I buy scratchers and scrape mounds of silver shavings onto the floor of my car. I buy SuperLotto, Mega Millions, and Powerball tickets. I play her birthday, the day she died, the day our father died. I hope I don’t win. That would mean she is truly dead, and the universe has turned my grief to gold. I hope I do win. I am owed a cosmic debt, after all; I loaned Sarah so much money when she was alive.
One night, as Sharon sat in the dark of her living room, resting in her bitter grief, she had a sudden, urgent feeling that Sarah was there. She tells me this over the phone, the edge of heartache in her voice lifting as she speaks. At Sharon’s, I cry and watch for signs that Sarah is present in some small way. I sit outside under a cedar tree and try to convince myself that the moth flying around my head is sending me messages from the other side, a Morse code of fragile, fluttering wings.
I stand in a store that sells Christmas ornaments, buying one for my mother, the only present we’ve agreed to exchange this year. I stare at a glass icicle hanging on a tree and will it to move. If you are okay, I tell her, move the ornament. If you are okay, make the icicle tremble. The cashier rings me up. The ornament is stubbornly still.
My mom finds shiny dimes in weird places: the middle of a freshly mopped floor, in a coffee cup that is used daily, on top of a high bookshelf. She thinks it is Sarah, for the dimes are often from the year she was born and always bright, like they are newly made. We joke that Sarah needs to step it up, send us a million dollars. The following week, my mom sends me a photo of a fake million-dollar bill sticking out of her mailbox. She is convinced I put it there.
My magical thinking is nightmares. I don’t feel the hovering ghost or find shimmering dimes. I sit on Sharon’s back porch in my crying chair and weep into the dense, quiet forest. Sarah has nothing for me. The moth flies away.
I only see Sarah when I sleep. I dream I spot her walking down the street. I suspect she is in witness protection, and I must break into her home to catch her changing, so I can see if she has the same tattoos. I confront her and slam her small body into a giant mirror that shatters as I wake up. In another dream, one that repeats, Sarah is alive and I am the only person who knows she is about to die. I plead with her, tell her I have foreseen her death. I tell our parents. I hide her drugs, and I tie up her dealer in the trunk of my car. Nothing works. The last thing I see before the dream ends is her body.
