Free The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North

that kept her up all night chewing on her hair until she refused to take it anymore. From each visit she came home mad and exhausted, complaining about questions like “How do you feel around other people?”—which to her had no answer.
    “I don’t think it’s that kind of doctor,” I told her, but she didn’t care.
    “I’m not going,” she said, waving me away.
    That night I tried to bring her dinner, but she was curled in the fetal position with her cheek on the floor. Her skin was a bad color like cooked fish, and her forehead burned.
    “I’m getting better,” she said, but I knew she wasn’t.
    “We’ll tell the doctor you can’t talk,” I said, “because it hurts too much. And if he asks any questions, I’ll answer them for you.”
    She looked up at me and her eyes were dull with hurting.
    “Okay,” she said, and let me lead her out.
    I only had to answer a couple questions. Soon they took her away into a part of the hospital where I wasn’t allowed to go. It turned out that her appendix had burst and filled her belly with infected fluid—another day and the infection would have spread throughout her body.
    She didn’t thank me—I’d never seen Sophie thank anyone before or since—but after she came home with her stomach all bandaged up, she did look at me over her bowl of Jell-O and say, “Without you I could’ve died.”
    It wouldn’t be so bad, I thought, to be the one who took care of Sophie, who made it so the world would know her.
    I was feeling warm toward Andrea now. I was grateful to her for making me feel useful, and I wanted to do something to help her.
    “You’re going to be okay,” I said. I tried to think of something smarter to tell her, but she seemed satisfied. She scooted up next to me and laid her head on my chest—her hair smelled clean and sweet. I put my arm around her. I felt peaceful and hopeful, and as I fell asleep with her there against the tree, I didn’t wonder where my sister was or whether she’d gotten home safe.
    We woke up sometime in the early morning when it was too cold to be outside anymore. It was still dark out, and I walked Andrea most of the way to her house. We were sleepy and still kind of drunk, and we didn’t talk much, but it felt easy and right to be walking close to her, brushing up against each other sometimes and not apologizing or moving away. I didn’t kiss her because I was afraid of looking like an opportunist, but after we hugged good-bye at the edge of the little creek, she squeezed my upper arm and said she’d see me soon. After that I ate a Snickers I had in my desk drawer, and then I went back to bed to redo the night’s sleep, which had been full of half dreams, half hallucinations in which gray figures crossed the yard to tug lightly on my hair and clothes. It was afternoon and I was just waking up when someone knocked on my door.
    My sister’s left ear was higher than her right. Her mouth sloped down a little to the right side, and her cheekbones flared out of herthin face like wings. I had never noticed any of this before, and I might’ve gone my whole life without knowing it, if she hadn’t come to my door that day with her head completely shaved.
    “You cut your hair off,” I said without thinking. Then she lowered her head, and I saw it was covered in cuts and pink, raw patches and tufts of leftover hair—she hadn’t done it herself.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    Sophie never cried—I’d seen her do so exactly once, at nine, when a Frisbee we were playing with hit her square in the face. Even that seemed more like a physical reflex than sadness. When we were kids, she would sometimes scream with rage, her eyes crazy, but by the time she was fifteen or so, the only indication she was upset was her breathing, which would go sharp and shallow, her nostrils flaring. She was breathing like that now. She didn’t answer my question.
    “Here,” I said, “come in.”
    She sat on my bed. She wasn’t wearing