and boxes. Now, I see that Michaela even got new bookshelves — beautiful creamy-white ones that run floor to ceiling. She’s obviously in the middle of arranging them; a carton of books seems to have exploded on the floor.
Michaela has tons of books. In the city, our bedroom shelves were heavy with mostly her novels, though I did fit a few of mine in there as well. When you grow up with a professor mom and a writer dad, it’s kind of hard not to accumulate a lot of books. But Michaela and I have very different tastes; Michaela likes serious stuff by James Joyce and Joyce Carol Oates and other writers possibly named Joyce. I prefer old-fashioned romances like Wuthering Heights, or ghost stories about tragically beautiful women.
I wouldn’t mind being tragically beautiful someday. I think that might be fun.
“Hey, I have something for you,” Michaela is saying, still looking somewhat pink in the face as she crosses the room toward her window. Her view is striking — our back garden is wild with bushes and flowers and plants I can’t identify. Everything looks a little unkempt, and I remember that greenery needstending to; like the house, the garden is a fixer-upper. I just hope our parents don’t expect me and Michaela to take care of it. I’m so bad with plants that I killed a cactus Mom got me for my twelfth birthday. (Though, really, who gets their daughter a cactus ? All I wanted was a satin envelope clutch, but that never came through.)
While Michaela begins rifling through a stack of rolled-up posters, I wander over to the jumble of books and bend down. Most of the names on the spines I’m glad not to share a room with anymore — Kafka, Camus, Carver. In other words: Yawn, yawn, and yawn. Then I see a book that sticks out from the rest — a picture book. How did that get mixed up in there? I take hold of the tattered spine, reading the title on the faded jacket: City Mouse, Country Mouse: An Aesop Fable.
Memory rushes at me, smelling of bed linens and Mom’s Chanel perfume. Some nights when Michaela and I were growing up, while Dad wrote in the kitchen, we would snuggle into bed with our mom. The three of us would read the story of two mice who switch lives — the city dweller goes to the country, and vice versa. The moral was that, in the end, each mouse was happier with his old life. I remember studying the illustrations in the book and wondering why the city mouse would ever want to leave in the first place.
I get a shiver down my spine.
“I didn’t know you had this,” I say, turning to face Michaela with the book in hand, just as she’s turning to me, saying, “Here you go!”
The poster she’s holding out to me is the one of Ethan Stiefel that used to hang over her bed. I get the usual heart-skip from seeing Ethan’s gorgeousness, but I’m also confused. “You’re giving it to me ?” I ask. Ethan was always hers — the guy she was going to meet when she was accepted into the American Ballet Theater, marry, and have lots of ballet-dancing babies with. I would live in the apartment next door with my not-quite-as-famous-dancer husband.
“Happy move-in day,” Michaela says, handing me the poster as she takes City Mouse, Country Mouse from me. “I’ve been selfish. I think it’s time you had Ethan all to yourself.”
I roll up the poster and feel a prickle of delight, knowing I’ll now get to stare up at His Hotness every night. Then I notice that Michaela is eyeing City Mouse, Country Mouse with a frown.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to pack this ,” she says, turning the dusty pages. “It was in the throwaway pile back home.” She snaps the book shut, then looks up at me with a nostalgic smile. “Remember how much we loved this book? It’s so cute. Anyway, I’ll donate it the local library.”
“Michaela!” It’s weird, but there’s this part of me that feels like the book in her hands is our entire childhood. Or maybe I’m being overdramatic again.
Michaela reaches out