Free Sybil at Sixteen by Susan Beth Pfeffer

her sisters because she was less attractive. Certainly Nick and Meg never treated her that way.
    But she hadn’t realized before just how great the disparity had been. She wondered if other kids had teased her, and she’d been oblivious to it, or shielded from the insults by Claire.
    Sybil rested against the chest of drawers, and stared into the picture, into her past. She remembered a long-ago incident. She must have been around eight, and she was a round eight, all bulges and blob compared to the rest of her family. She was with Nick at some project he was working on. A building was being renovated, and Nick had put the money people together, and was getting a cut of the deal. That was how he used to operate, where his money used to come from.
    Nick loved to show her his projects. He’d explain to her who the prime movers were, how he’d convinced different people of different things, and Sybil had loved equally hearing about it. Thea used to love watching Meg bake. Sybil loved the business.
    A man had come up to them, one of the partners, Sybil now assumed, and had started talking with Nick. He seemed like a nice man, and Sybil could remember him at their house more than once. In those days, they frequently had company. It was hard to remember that now, the guests and the parties. The man was complimenting Nick. Nick used to get complimented a lot back then.
    â€œAnd your daughters are all so pretty,” the man had said. “I imagine even this one will grow into a beauty someday.”
    â€œShe doesn’t have to,” Nick had replied. “She’s the real beauty of the family already.”
    Sybil stared at the photograph, looked at the image of Nick from that time, a time when everything went smoothly, and people wanted to be with him, to share in his glory, his joys. She stared at the man who had so much faith in her. She thought of the irony. She had become a beauty, not from any natural growth, but because the accident had forced her into almost constant exercise. Pain had killed her appetite as well. She was tall, thin, muscular, and striking in appearance. Canes and crutches were a small price to pay.
    It almost hurt to put the picture back. Sybil couldn’t remember ever having seen a photograph of the six of them together. There were other pictures of course, taken at various stages of development, and a few of Nick and Meg alone, where they looked so bonded it was almost as though they were two sides of the same person. But Sybil couldn’t remember one of the six of them before. Not much after that, Sam came into Evvie’s life, and they were never the same six, anyway.
    Sybil wondered why Evvie had never framed the picture, but it was like her to be careless with the most important things. Sybil was counting on that after all.
    Sybil checked the night table first. There was a pad by the phone, and a pencil by its side, but the pad was empty. She walked over to the desk next and went through the papers. They mostly seemed to be schoolwork Evvie was completing. She only had a month or so to go before getting her bachelor’s degree. Last year had been a good one for graduations, Claire’s and Sam’s. Next year, Sybil would graduate from high school. She wanted to go to Princeton, since that was Nick’s alma mater. Maybe Nick could turn the twenty-five thousand into four years’ tuition with some of his magic.
    There on the bottom of an Abnormal Psych paper were the words Sybil had been looking for. Just a few scribbled letters in Evvie’s handwriting: Amer. 29. 2:20. 4:35. Cont. 142. 6:45. 9:15.
    Sybil looked at the paper and waited for it to explain its mystery to her. The last two numbers of each sequence were times, departures and arrivals, she assumed. That meant the rest of it must be the flight numbers. She couldn’t figure out at first why there were two of them, though. Why hadn’t Sam just flown from New York to wherever he was