Page 38 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

Sara’s rebuttal is lightning quick. “It’s not your fault.” She takes a bite of cereal.

“I certainly didn’t help.”

“Your sisters … I know this is bleak, but there was nothing you could do, good or bad, that was going to make them happy or well-adjusted. You grew up in that house. You understand what they’re up against. It’s like all that ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ shit they preached to us in prison, remember? It’s bullshit. You can try and try and try, but in the end, you can’t brute-force your way into a normal life.”

“I’m not used to you being that fatalistic.”

“Some of us have longer odds than others,” she says. “You. Me. Your sisters.”

“What about someone like your brother?”

I haven’t forgotten about the bourbon. The taste lingers heavy in the back of my throat like a half-swallowed pill.

“Ah, yes,” she says, “because nothing says well-adjusted like becoming a cop. You know he used to drink too? My aunt and I took out loans to send him to rehab in Rapid City a few years ago.”

Of course it can’t be as straightforward as him simply being a hypocrite chafing against their restrictive tribal laws. “I had no idea.”

“I prefer not to think about it. I didn’t talk to him for almost a year after it happened.” She refocuses on the TV, where the teary girl with freckles has been replaced by a teary girl with a lip ring. This girl is much prettier when she cries, face less red, eyes less swollen. Her tears shine like diamonds as they blaze salty trails through her blush.

“But you still love him,” I say.

“He’s my brother. I could have done worse in the sibling department.”

Our conversation peters out to silence, the perfect opening to tell her about Daniel’s bourbon. But my voice stalls. Were itany other vice, I would keep my nose out of it—but it’s alcohol. It’s the very thing Sara despises most in this world.

I know the toll alcoholism has taken on her family: the bottle stole both her parents and indirectly stole her sister, T-boned by a drunk driver and crushed like tinfoil at nineteen years old. Right now it gnaws away at aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, and it has returned to gnaw away at her brother once again. I don’t know if she can forgive a second betrayal from him. Sara does not bend for people. And if she can’t forgive him, if she lapses into the same acrimonious relationship I have with Harmony, then who does she have?

She has no idea how calamitous it would be to lose the last piece of her family. As much as I like to tell myself family is just a word, the truth is that it is an essential piece of the human experience. There are found families, families you choose, families born out of unimaginable circumstances with bonds stronger than steel, but blood is different. Blood is innate. Blood is animal.

I’ve yet to find something that can replace it.

I choose to see my silence as an act of mercy, not an act of cowardice. I ask Sara to turn the volume back on and lie down on the opposite end of the couch. The trailer has finally cooled enough for a blanket, and she tosses an afghan the size of a parachute over us. We tuck our feet beneath each other’s bodies and watch the pretty girls cry on their white sand beach.

I think of my mother then. How she has probably died without ever seeing the ocean.

CHAPTER

12

August 13th

7:42AM

IHAVE Asixth sense for tragedy, finely honed by palms to my face and the squeak of my bedsprings at unholy hours of the night. I feel it deep in my bones, the way animals sense earthquakes and old women sense rain on the wind. My chest throbs when I wake up that morning. My heartbeat feels like a backhand strike against my ribcage. Something is coming. All I can do is brace for impact.

Focus on what is in front of you.

Sight: the water stains on the ceiling bleeding into one another.

Sound: my own breath, lungs emptying and filling, emptying and filling.

Smell: something inexplicably sour, like roadkill.

Taste: my tongue fuzzy and metallic from sleep.

Touch: numbness tingling between my joints, creeping around my bones like kudzu vines.

Tiny knocks at the door. Sara cracks it open, white sunlight slashing across the room. It should feel warm, but it doesn’t. Itcan’t cut through the numbness. My friend hesitates at the threshold. She chokes on her words. She crosses her arms over her chest, each hand reaching for its opposite shoulder, and looks down at the carpet.

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