Page 22

I know it sounds terrible, but Mom and Dad splitting up, I kind of get. Married couples divorce—50 percent of them, Casey used to tell me when she alternately wished and dreaded that her parents were going to join that statistic.

But sisters? Sisters like Mom and Pauline who were a mix of siblings and mother-daughter and best friends? How can they stand to be apart? They once communicated every day, even when Pauline was on the other side of the planet, emailing or chatting in the comments on the travel blog Pauline had set up so she could easily share pics of her trips with Mom and Mom could load pics of me and Missy.

When Pauline was in town, she was almost always at our house. Even after Gammy left Pauline her house—“So you don’t end up homeless,”

she wrote in the will—she barely lived there, spending days with us and only going home to water the plants and sleep.

“How?”

I ask Melissa.

“I don’t know,”

Melissa replies. “I haven’t seen her in years. She didn’t come to your funeral.”

I think back to the last time I saw Pauline. She was on her way to Mexico, but for a short trip because she was coming back for Missy’s spy party. Why wouldn’t she come back for the funeral?

“It makes no sense.”

“I know,”

Melissa says. “I tried asking her what was wrong, but she just stopped communicating with me. Every time I talked to Mom about it, she got so upset. So out of some loyalty to Mom, I didn’t push it.”

“You don’t see her when she comes home?”

“That’s the thing. I stalked her online for a while, but I don’t think she has come home since you died.”

“What about her house?”

“Other people live in it now, so I guess she sold it or rents it,”

Melissa says. “But for a long time, it just sat there, empty.”

I’ve been struggling to understand how Mom is now, but as soon as Melissa says this, I realize that like Pauline’s house, she’s there, and empty.

That night after everyone falls asleep, I sneak into Melissa’s room and fire up her computer. I search for Pauline’s blog, Glopal, a take on global and a mash-up of her and Mom’s names.

It’s still there but it’s completely out of date. The last photos are seven years old, from that trip she took to Mexico. There’s Pauline twirling in a street with brightly colored buildings—sunflower yellow, apple red. It’s like the girls colored the streets with their Crayolas, she had written. I scroll back. The trip before that was to Turkey. There’s a picture of her on a beach with a little pigtailed girl. On beach at Black Sea when I joined this little girl making sandcastles. Her name is Glorinha, Romanian for Gloria, she wrote in the caption. What do you think about that, sis?

Mom had responded in the comments. That you’re too old to make sandcastles.

Auntie Pauline had responded: No one is too old to make sandcastles, Glo.

This is how they were. Arguing, disagreeing, bantering, but always, always loving.

A message pops up on Melissa’s screen. Thought you were turning in early but you’re still up! You still haven’t said what you want to do for your birthday. I am up for anything. xxLen

Len?

I remember my sister’s pink cheeks when I asked her if she had birthday plans.

Len! So she does have a boyfriend! “You go, girl,”

I whisper at her sleeping figure. She snores softly, and in that moment I love her so much, it hollows out my belly. This was how Mom and Pauline loved each other.

It has to be because of me. Whatever went wrong between them. It’s because of me.

Suddenly, coming back from the dead doesn’t seem like a miracle so much as a curse. Because dead people don’t have to see how much destruction they left in their wake. And me, I’ve got quite a body count going.

I ruined Mom and Dad’s marriage. I ruined Mom and Pauline. I ruined Calvin. I even ruined Missy’s tenth birthday.

Dad called my coming back a miracle, but how can it be? Mom was right. I’m not special. I never was. I didn’t save orphans. I didn’t march for causes. I didn’t even pick up litter. And I was horrible to my amazing sister.

I was selfish. In life, and in after life. All I’ve been able to think about is me, what I’ve missed, getting my life back to how it was. But lives can end, even without the benefit of death. Just look at them. Look at all of them.

“I have to fix this,”

I whisper into the quiet room.

Melissa rolls over in her bed, making unintelligible sleep noises.

“I have to fix this,”

I repeat, an idea forming.

I can’t go back in time and undo my death, but maybe I can undo the damage it wrought, starting with Melissa’s birthday party. I go back to Aunt Pauline’s blog.

“Auntie P,”

I write in the comments. “It’s Missy here, now Melissa. I know it’s been way too long but I’m having a party on my seventeenth birthday—think of it as a do-over for the spy party I never had. It would mean the world to me and Mom if you could come.”

The original guest list was supposed to be Missy, Mom, Dad, Pauline, Calvin, and me. This time, it’s going to be the same. Plus this boy Len.

I haven’t heard from Dina, so if I want to reach Calvin, I have to take matters into my own hands.

I switch over to the social media program that Melissa uses and pull up Casey’s page and send her a message, once again as Melissa.

This is Melissa, ’s sister.

Can you tell me how to get in touch with Calvin? I write.

And then, finally, I click on the message from Len. Birthday party in the works at my place. Stay tuned for details.

“Turning seventeen is a big deal,”

I whisper to Melissa, and then I tiptoe back into my room.