Good For You

“Thank you, Dori.” He lays his hands atop the box lid but makes no move to open it. “I always wanted a little sister, did she tel you that?” His eyes are ful of tears. “I don’t have any siblings, so I was jealous when she’d talk about you.” He takes a shuddering breath as tears stream down my face. “Your sister changed my life. She changed how I look at the world, how I practice medicine. She changed who I am. And I know I can’t… can’t begin to compare how I feel, losing her like this, with how you feel—”

I walk around the desk and put my arms around the man who would have been my brother. “Yes, you can. She loved you, and you loved her. That’s no different than how she felt about me, or how I felt about her.”

A tremor goes through his chest. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry we couldn’t bring her back to herself, heal her.” His grief and anger can’t be separated. “This happened in a hospital. We’re doctors. This is why I went into medicine—

to cure and rebuild people, to make them better. And I can’t even fix the woman I…” He stops, unable to speak, and I hold him tighter.

“I don’t blame you, and Deb wouldn’t blame you. If you knew her, then you know she wouldn’t. She’d want you to go be that bril iant doctor she knew you were, to help people and live your life and be happy—”

“How? ”

I swal ow, glad he can’t see my face. “I don’t know.”

***

The tabloid shows and websites have been going insane trying to figure out who Reid’s latest hookup is. Whoever it is, he’s being more undercover about it than he’s ever been. Which is probably the reason for one of the theories that was floating around—that he’s g*y.

I may not know much, but I know enough to know that’s not true.

There’s also a day of speculation that he’s reuniting with the girl from his last movie, Emma Pierce, when a photo surfaces of the two of them at the Vancouver Film Festival.

The photo is dark, but clear enough that they’re both identifiable. She leans towards him with a smile as he speaks into her ear. Media speculation goes crazy, and dozens of photos from a year ago resurface—the two of them holding hands, kissing, stil s from the movie where the two of them look al kinds of beautiful together.

The next day, an opposing tabloid publishes the same film festival photo—except this one isn’t cropped. In the new photo, Graham Douglas, Emma’s boyfriend, is sitting on the opposite side of her, his left arm across the back of her chair, his right hand holding her right hand on his thigh.

He’s listening to whatever Reid is saying as wel , and smiling. So obviously, the Emma theory is out.

The guy who sold the cropped photo is blacklisted, the tabloid site that original y ran the cropped photo is discredited, and I just spent 24 hours hating Emma Pierce for no reason.

Throughout al of this, Aimee and Kayla are cal ing and texting, trying to find out if I have the scoop on Reid: Kayla: Is reid g*y???!?

Me: Not that I know of. Are they back to that again?

Kayla: Photos posted of him with that guy tadd who played charlie in school pride and some other hot guy singing karaoke in vancouver…

Me: Old news i think. Not something i am worried about right now.

Kayla: Aww. ? I know everything is crappy right now with what happened to your sister. Aimee and me are going out saturday, wanna come?

Me: Yes

Kayla: REALLY?!??!?! OMG, stay over in our dorm??

Me: Ok. Sure.

I’m wil ing to do anything to become someone else for a few hours. Someone who isn’t invisible to everyone who used to love her. Someone who isn’t the girl who’s misplaced her faith.

They pick me up Saturday, chattering like they’re one person, per usual.

“Did you bring the ID?” Kayla asks before taking off.

“Yeah,” I say. “I don’t think I look anything like her, though…”

Aimee inspects Deb’s Indiana driver’s license. “Oh, this is doable. We can total y do this. I already have some stuff picked out for you to wear. We wear the same shoe size, right? When we get done with you, you wil look so much like her. Just wait.”

“Okay.” I stuff the ID in my bag and lean my head back, trying to subdue the butterflies that are mosh-pitting in my stomach. I’m so tired of feeling everything. Since we al came back to LA, I’ve been overwhelmed. I’m furious with my parents who continue to act as though my sister wil wake up. Their own sleeping beauty, with the canned fairy tale ending.

I’ve become so good at repressing the desire to scream that I can’t even cry. When I think about Deb, I’m dry-eyed and staring, just like her. I am the opposite of thick-skinned.

I am no-skinned. I am raw, as though there is nothing between me and everything insisting that I feel. I don’t want to feel anymore. I want to be numb.

Deb was so careful, always. When I began high school, she took me aside and made me promise to never drink and drive, and never get in the car with a friend who’d been drinking. She told me about alcohol poisoning and dehydration, already the doctor-to-be. “Mom and Dad aren’t always realistic about this kind of stuff. I know you’re a good kid, but good kids are exactly the ones who end up making the dumbest decisions because they don’t plan. If you’re going to drink—or have sex, you have to plan.

Capiche?”

I promised to come back for a recap if I ever needed it.

Here I was, needing it, but now, Aimee and Kayla are the closest thing I have to advisors, but they’re more like high-strung tour guides.