With her fingers, she would pluck the fine, dark hair from her arms one by one until the skin was red and raw. She would do it absentmindedly, unaware of how odd she looked. Once her arms were hairless, she started in on her eyebrows. Pulling and plucking. To me she seemed to be trying to shed her own skin. Our mother noticed Brynns eyebrows getting thinner and thinner and she tried everything to get her to stop. Whenever Brynns hand moved toward her face, our mothers hand would fly out and slap it away. Do you want to look strange, Brynn? she would ask. Is that what you want? For all the other little girls to laugh at you?
Brynn stopped pulling out her eyebrows, but she found other ways to punish herself. She gnawed her fingernails to the quick, bit the insides of her cheeks, scratched and picked at sores and scabs until they festered.
We are complete opposites. Yin and yang. Where I am tall and solid, Brynn is smaller and delicate. Im a big sturdy sunflower, always turning my face to the sun, and Brynn is prairie smoke, wispy and indistinct, head down, nodding with the breeze. Though I never told her, I loved her more than anything or anyone else in the world. I took her for granted, assumed she would always be at my beck and call, assumed that she would always look up to me. But I dont seem to exist to her anymore. I cant blame her, really.
Letter after letter I wrote to Brynn, but she never wrote back to me. That has been the worst thing about prison. Now that Im free, I can go to Brynn, I can make her see me, make her listen to me. Thats all I want. Ten minutes with her, then everything will be all right again.
As we get in the car and drive away from Cravenville, my stomach flips with excitement and fear. I see Devin hesitate. Maybe we should stop somewhere and get something to eat first, then get you settled in at Gertrude House. After that, you can call your parents, Devin says.
I dont want to go to the halfway house. Ill probably be the one convicted of the most heinous crime thereeven a heroin-addicted prostitute arrested for armed robbery and murder would get more compassion than I ever will. It makes much more sense for me to stay with my parents, in the home where I grew up, where I have some good memories. Even though a terrible thing happened there, its where I should be, at least for now.
But I can see the answer on Devins face. My parents dont want to see me, dont want anything to do with me, dont want me to come home.
Brynn
I get Allisons letters. Sometimes I wish that I could write back to her, go see her, act like a sister to her. But something always stops me. Grandma tells me I should talk to Allison, try to forgive her. But I cant. Its like something broke inside me that night five years ago. There was a time I would have given anything to be a real sister to Allison, to be close with her like we were when we were little. In my eyes, she could do anything. I was so proud of her, not jealous like people thought. I never wanted to be Allison; I just wanted to be myself, which no one, especially my parents, could understand.
Allison was the most amazing person I ever knew. She was smart, athletic, popular and beautiful. Everyone loved her, even though she wasnt all that nice. She was never exactly mean to anyone, but she didnt have to try to get people to like her. They just did. She moved through life so easily and all I could do was stand by and watch.
Before Allison became Linden Falls golden girl, before my parents had set all their hopes on her, before she stopped reaching out for my hand to let me know everything was going to be okay, Allison and I were inseparable. We were practically twins, though we didnt look anything alike. Allison wasisfourteen months older than I am. Tall with long, sleek, white-blond hair. She has silvery-blue eyes that could look right through you or make you feel as if youre the only one who mattered, depending on her mood. I was small and plain, with wild hair the color of a dried-out oak leaf.
But at one time, it was as if we thought with the same mind. When Allison was five and I was four, we begged our parents to let us share a bedroom, even though our house had five bedrooms and we could have taken our pick. But we wanted to be together. When our mother finally said yes, we pushed our matching twin beds together and had our father hang yards of pale pink netting above our beds so we could draw it around us like a tent. Inside, we would spend hours playing cats cradle or looking at books together.
Our mothers friends would gush over our relationship. I dont know how you do it, they would say to her. How did you manage to get your girls to get along so well?
Our mother would smile proudly. Its all about teaching respect, she explained in the snobby way she had. We expect them to treat each other well and they do. And we feel its important that we spend a lot of time together as a family.
Allison would just roll her eyes when my mother talked like this and I would hide a smile behind my hand. We did spend a lot of time together as a familymeaning, we were in the same roombut we never really talked to one another.
Allison was twelve when she decided to move out of our room into a bedroom of her own. I was devastated. Why? I asked. Why do you want your own room?
I just do, Allison said, brushing past me with an armload of clothes.
Youre mad. What did I do? I asked as I followed her into her new room, which was right next to the one we shared. The one that would be mine alone.
Nothing, Brynn. You did nothing. I just want some privacy, Allison said as she arranged her clothing in her new closet. Im just next door. Its not like youll never see me again. Jesus, Brynn, youre not going to cry, are you?
Im not crying, I answered, blinking back tears.
Come on, then, help me move my bed, she said, grabbing me by the arm and leading me back to our room. My room. As we pulled and shoved the mattress through the door and into the hallway, I knew that things would never be the same again. I watched as she arranged her school and athletic medals, trophies and ribbons around her new room and realized we were no longer anything alike. Allison was becoming more and more involved with her friends and extracurricular activities. She had been asked to join a very competitive traveling volleyball team. She spent nearly every free minute exercising, studying or reading. And all I wanted to do was be with Allison.
My parents had no sympathy for me. Brynn, my mother said. Grow up. Of course Allison wants her own room. It would be strange if she didnt.
I always knew I was a little different from the other kids, but I never thought I was strange until my mother said this. I started looking at myself in the mirror to see if I could see the oddness that others saw in me. My brown curly hair, if not combed into surrender, would spring wildly around my head. What was left of my eyebrows formed short, thin commas above my brown eyes, giving me a constantly surprised expression. My nose was averagenot too large, not too small. I knew that someday I would have very nice teeth, but when I was eleven they were imprisoned in braces, being forced into perfect alignment like straight-backed little soldiers lined up for duty. Except for my eyebrows, I didnt think I looked very strange. I decided it must be what was inside of me that was so weird. I vowed to keep that part hidden. I stayed in the shadows, watching, never offering an opinion or an idea. Not that anyone ever asked. It was easy to fade into the background with Allison around.
That first night, sleeping by myself in our room, I cried. The room felt much too large for one person. It looked naked with my one small bookshelf and dresser, a few stuffed animals strewn around. I cried because the sister I loved didnt seem to want me around anymore. She left me behind without a backward glance.
Until she was sixteen and finally needed me again.
I wasnt even supposed to be at home that night. I was going to the movies with friendsuntil my mother found out that Nathan Canfield would be there, too. She would have none of that. He had gotten caught drinking or something and he wasnt the kind of friend I should be associating with, she said. So I was forbidden to go out that night.
I often wonder how different my life would have beenall our lives would have beenif I had been sitting in some movie theater that night, eating popcorn with Nathan Canfield, instead of at home.
I dont know what Allison looks like now. I imagine that life in prison isnt helpful to keeping ones good looks. Her once-high cheekbones could be hidden by mounds of fat, her long shiny hair could have turned frizzy and been cut short. I wouldnt know. I havent seen Allison since the police came to take her away.
I miss my sister, the one who held my hand as I cried all the way into the classroom on my first day of kindergarten, the one who would help me study my spelling words until I knew them inside and out, the one who used to try to teach me to kick a soccer ball. I miss that Allison. The other one not at all. I could go the rest of my life not seeing my sister again and I would be just fine with that. I went through hell after she went to jail. Now I finally feel like I have a home at my grandmothers house. I have my friends, my classes, my grandmother, my animals, and thats enough for me.
Im afraid to find out how five years in prison have changed Allison. She has always been so beautiful and sure of herself. What if she isnt that same girl who could stare down Jimmy Warren, the neighborhood bully? What if she isnt the same girl who could run eight miles and then do one hundred sit-ups without breathing hard?
Or worse yet, what if she is the same? What if she hasnt changed at all?
Allison
I dont even think my sister knows that Im being released from prison. Two years into my sentence, after she graduated from high school, she left home and moved two and a half hours north of Linden Falls to New Amery, where our dad grew up. She lives with our grandma. Last I heard, she was attending a community college there, studying something called Companion Animal Science. Brynns always loved animals. Im glad she chose something that suits her. If my parents had their way, shed slide into the vacancy I created and be in law school.
Brynn still wont answer my letters or talk to me on the phone when I call her at Grandmas house. I mean, I get it. I understand why she wants nothing to do with me. If I were in her shoes, I probably would have done the same thing. But I dont think I could have stayed away from her this long. For five whole years, she has ignored me. I know I took her for granted, but I was just a kid. For how smart I was, I knew absolutely nothing. I understand the mistakes I made; I just dont know how to bring my sister back to me, how to make her forgive me.
During the drive to Linden Falls, Devin and I dont talk much but thats okay. Devin wasnt all that much older than I was when my parents hired her to represent me. Fresh out of law school, she came to Linden Falls because her college sweetheart grew up there and they were going to get married and open a law practice together. They never ended up getting married. He left, she stayed. If it wasnt for Devin, I could have been in jail for much, much longer. I owe her a lot.
You have a start at a whole new life, Allison, Devin tells me as she merges onto the highway that crosses the Druid River and leads into Linden Falls. I nod but dont say anything. I want to be excited, but mostly I feel scared. Driving into the town where I was born and grew up makes me feel dizzy, and I clasp my hands together to keep them from shaking. Waves of memories wash over me as we drive past the church we attended every Sunday, past my elementary school and past the high school that I never graduated from. You okay? Devin asks me again.
I dont know, I tell her honestly, and I lean my head against the cool glass of the window. We continue on in silence, past St. Annes College where I met Christopher for the first time, past the street where we would turn if we were going to the house I grew up in, past the soccer complex where my team won the city championship three years in a row. Stop, I say suddenly. Please, pull in here. Devin steers her car into the soccer complex and parks next to a field where a group of young teenage girls are booting a soccer ball around. I climb from the car and watch on the sidelines for a few minutes. The girls are completely engrossed in the game. Their faces are red from the heat and their ponytails are drenched with sweat.
Can I play? I say. It comes out softly, shyly. It doesnt sound like me at all. The girls dont even notice me and continue on with their game. Can I play? I say again, this time more forcefully, and a short, solid girl with her brown hair pulled back in a headband stops and looks me up and down skeptically. Just for a minute, I say.
Sure, she answers, and trots after the ball.
I step cautiously onto the field. The grass is a deep emerald-green and I bend down to touch it. It is soft and wet from the earlier rainstorm. I begin to run, slowly at first, then I pick up the pace. Ive tried to stay in shape while in jail, running laps inside the fenced courtyard, doing push-ups and sit-ups in my cell. But the soccer field is at least one hundred yards long and very quickly I become winded and have to stop. I bend over, hands on my knees, my muscles already aching.
The girls head back my way, their skin tan and healthy in comparison to my own white skin that has seen so little of the sun. Someone passes me the ball and everything comes back, the familiar feel of the ball between my feet, the instinct of knowing which way to move. I dart between the girls, dribbling and passing the ball down the field. For a minute I can forget that Im a twenty-one-year-old ex-con whose life has already passed her by. A girl chips the ball to me and I weave in and out of the crowd of players and break away. With no cleats, I slip slightly in my cheap tennis shoes but quickly regain my balance. The midfield defender is approaching and I feint left, leaving her behind, and send a square pass to the girl with the headband. She launches the ball over the shoulder of the goalie and into the goal, and the girls erupt in celebration. For a minute I can imagine that Im a thirteen-year-old, playing a pickup game with my friends, and Im smiling and laughing, wiping the sweat from my forehead.
Then I look over and see Devin waiting patiently for me on the sidelines, an amused expression on her face. I must look silly, a grown woman dressed in khaki pants and polo shirt, playing soccer with a bunch of kids.
Youre a natural, Devin says as we walk back to her car.
Yeah, a lot of good that does me now, I answer with embarrassment, glad that my face is already red from my workout.
You never know, Devin responds. Come on, we have a little bit of time left before theyre expecting us at Gertrude House. Lets get something to eat.