Page 44 of How to Walk Away

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t feel like singing.”

“You always feel like singing.”

“Not anymore.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “When was the last time you sang?”

“I don’t know.”

“I read an article that if you have a talent and you don’t find a way to use it, your life can collapse in on itself like a black hole.”

I gave her a look. “Too late.”

“That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Only because it’s true.” She was pushing, and all I could do was push back.

“No, it’s not.”

I felt my hackles lift just a little bit. If I said my life was a black hole, then it was an effing black hole. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

I could read her face so clearly. She thought I was being stubborn.

The longer she stared, the more I felt my body tightening in defensiveness.Really?She was going to stand there with her working legs and resent my less-than-sunny attitude?

“Looks like we’ve got kind of a role reversal going here,” Kit said at last.

I waited, and lifted my eyebrow a bit, like,Oh, really?

“This may be,” she went on, in a conversational tone, like we were just chatting about the weather, “the first time ever that I am the one trying to make things better—and you are the one trying to make things worse.”

And just like that, I was mad. “I don’t have totryto make things worse,” I said, my throat tight and strangely sandpapery. “Things are already worse.”

“Things can always get worse,” Kit declared.

My reply was like a reflex—a shouting reflex. “Not for me!”

I’m always amazed at how fast siblings can warp-speed into a state of rage. It’s like they keep everything they were ever angry about growing up shoved into an overstuffed emotional closet, and at moments like these, it takes about two seconds to swing open the door and start an avalanche.

“You have to try!” Kit insisted, in a tone like she’d said it a hundred times.

“Iamtrying!”

“You’re not!”

This was the trouble with sisters. This was the trouble with family. I had barely cracked open the door to my life, and she’d just barged in and made herself at home—taking photos of me and judging my coping skills. We hadn’t even officially made up yet, and she was ordering me around.

Just as I had that thought, she went on. “You,” she said, pointing right at me, “need to sing.”

With that, the anger lit inside me like a flame—so physical, I felt myself light up. “I don’t want to sing!” I shouted.

It was like all the anger I’d been unwilling to feel—at Chip, at my mother, at the folks in this hospital who kept making me do impossible things—had been quietly gathering like some flammable gas. And Kit had just lit a match.

I slammed both my fists down against the bed. “I’m not going to sing!” My voice both too loud in that moment and not loud enough. “You can’t make me sing! Do you really think it’s that easy? You can’t just come in here with Boggle and show tunes and make everything all right! Stop trying to fix things! Give me a fucking break.”

Kit blinked. Then blinked some more. I wondered if she might cry, or run out of the room—but she just nodded.

---