Free Spiral by Jacqueline Levine Page B

whine a little, her sounds growing softer and distant as Claudia carries her toward the stairs.
    “WAKE UP!” Chloe shouts in my ear. I’m startled but expected it. She squeals with laughter and races toward the staircase after her sister, who cackles maniacally with her.
    I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, my brain so on fire that I’m numb.

    “Cherie?” Mom calls, poking her head around the living room wall into the kitchen and looks right at me, blessedly interrupting an all-too-long conversation I’ve been having with Jim’s second cousin about choosing the right college.
    “Jack, honey, do you think you could find Cherie? Rabbi wants to do the Kaddish.” I nod, knowing exactly what she means even though the words she’s saying still sound so foreign to me. I shrug and smile half-heartedly at my captor as he relinquishes his hold on me so I can fulfill my duty.
    “After Kaddish, I’ll tell you about my time at BU,” he says with a wink, like I should be impressed. I shake my head and withhold the groan I want to release as I walk away. If one more person tries to talk me out of going south for college, I’m going to hit something.
    I search the basement first, since Cherie has been notoriously retreating downstairs this week when she wants to escape others. The basement is empty except for a few shopping bags of new clothes and the remnants of wrappers for some toiletries my mom picked up at Target a few days ago. In the corner sits an open, oversized suitcase with clothes splaying out over its sides haphazardly. By the looks of her suitcase, I’m not sure why she needs all the new clothes, but then again she may not have packed the amount of black dresses and shoes and tights and sweaters and scarves she has been actually wearing this week.
    I climb the stairs, taking them two at a time, and search the crowded first floor for her again. It’s then that I realize Britney is also gone. I take a chance and head up to the bedrooms, stalking through the hallway straight for Britney’s room, which is tidy but empty. My chest tightens a little.
    “Brat?” I call out, checking my mom’s room, then Brenton’s. Heat rises, and my nerve endings spike. What if she went outside? What if those paparazzi vultures got to her?
    Suddenly, I hear Britney giggling. The sound comes from my room, and I sigh with relief, throwing open the door with force.
    Cherie and Britney are in the midst of a complicated form of patty cake, sitting cross-legged across from each other on my bed like they’re in their pajamas at a sleepover and not in fancy black mourning dresses at a Shiva.
    “Hey!” Cherie gasps in surprise, clutching at her chest as if her heart stopped.
    Befuddled, I stare at them and say, “My mom’s looking for you; time for the knish or something.”
    They exchange glances at each other and explode with laughter. Apparently there is a joke I’m not in on.
    “Silly, it’s Kaddish, not knish,” my little sister corrects me, and Cherie giggles some more. I guess Britney converted to Judaism overnight or something.
    I shrug and my cheeks burn a little. “Yeah, whatever, it’s time for it.”
    Cherie purses her lips and slides off of the bed with that look that says she’s exhausted being on call all of the time. I guess this must be what it feels like for her to be in movies and on TV, constantly trying to be a kid in between getting called to stand in a certain spot or say some line with the right expression on her face or the perfect emotion in her voice.
    Right now the only emotion I see in her is sadness, which is punctuated by my sister’s pout.
    “Can we play when you’re done?” Britney asks. I know she can be a pest, so I try to step in.
    “Cherie has to be downstairs with everyone else, Brat,” I say softly.
    But instead, Cherie shakes her head at me and smiles at Britney. “No, I can come back, if you promise to wait right here for me.”
    Britney beams, and I do a little, but only