Once I had friends and not just Ally I realized that wasn’t how most grown-ups were at all. Most people’s parents were around and wanted to know where you were and what you were doing. Not just bring you to the harbor every month or so to stand on the dock and hand them tools, or bring you to some gala where you had to dress in a complete miniature replica of the dress your mother was wearing, right down to the pearl drop earrings and pearl necklace. Ally could do that stuff and still adore our parents. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

I don’t want to think about how it turned out in the end. I don’t want to be angry. I know now why she rejected me after I came home talking about Richards and how we should come together. I know now why it scared her. Even though Ally was a force she somehow knew I was the stronger of the two of us. I wish I had understood what was going on then.

I just want to remember her that day sitting in the little fort singing me to sleep, our breath sugary and sweet from the Cherry Garcia ice cream. Our Lego castle radiant in the sunshine that shone down from the beautiful skylight. Her hand in mine beneath the table. I want to remember her from a time when I loved how good she was instead of resented it.

I want to remember that I owe it to her to take care of her. I mean I think I learned that from her. I was trying to do the right thing. The thing she would have done.

She took care of both of us back when we needed it the most.

19:24–45:00—Her talking

Dear Lined Piece of Paper,

I can hardly believe how lucky I am sometimes. This town—this neighborhood—really is full of pretty girls, but the prettiest one of all was in my car yesterday. Smiling and riding along with her hair in the breeze. It is amazing to be out driving again, especially with her, and I know I’ll soon be able to get out and do what I want. Drive fast. Drive all night, break out of this feeling like there’s something hanging over my head.

I was telling her everything. I was telling her all about living in Virginia and my dad’s work in surveillance and all about Eric. How we were going to be stars. She’s so quiet and patient and sweet and she laughs at all my jokes and it’s so good to have someone listen to me. Not listen like Dr. Adams but really listen. She told me all about her life too.

It’s hard to keep straight what she said. I think it was mostly about sailing and some school she wants to go to but I can’t remember the name of it or what she wants to study. I’ll just watch the tape of it later though, so I don’t need to remember. She told me she’s going to bake me some more blueberry muffins. That part I do remember. She’s the friendliest person I’ve ever met.

I think she is the exact right person for me to be with. Last night, the first time I rewatched the footage of her, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I do need to reposition the little camera a little when I’m wearing it on the side because some of the time her face was out of the frame and I missed some of her expressions, which are so cute I never want to miss them ever again.

I want her to come up to my room and sit and talk. I want to make plans with her about what we’re going to do.

Just knowing her makes me feel like I can go back to school. At least there would be a reason to be there. To pass her in the halls or maybe have a class with her.

She’s the most interesting person I think I have ever met. I loved talking to her in the car and I loved talking to her after when I brought her home. I love all her different expressions and the way she talks.

I’ve never known anyone with such a direct yet hidden way of being.

I want to uncover all of it. If she has any secrets. I want her to tell them to me.

Like I tell her mine.

I want to know how she became the girl she is.

I think the thing I loved about her most, the thing I miss most now, is how funny she was. How daring. How she would make me do things I didn’t think I could do. She was the one who wanted to go on the roller coaster. She was the one who insisted Daddy take us out on the boat that first time when we were still so small and she was not afraid to be out there.

When we were little she had such a funny way of getting me to do things. If I worried that she was climbing too high in the pine trees she would tell me to come up with her.

“C’mon, you be the prince and climb up my long hair,” she’d say, hanging by her knees from a branch and letting her hair hang down. And once she got me to get into the low branches she always looked so happy and would make up stories about how we were explorers. Soon I’d be so drawn into what she was saying I wouldn’t notice how high we were.

I remember one time we were so high—up in the narrow branches near the thin trunk at the top of a pine—and I could feel the treetop swaying beneath our weight. I started to get scared but Syd laughed. She couldn’t have been happier that we were all the way up there. She couldn’t have been more relaxed. If something was frightening, if it was hard, it was like she actually got more relaxed.

“It’s not going to break!” she shouted to me. “It’s going to bend with our weight. It’s going to hold us.” And she began swaying back and forth—we were up so high we could look down on other trees and on the top of our house and she had not a moment of fear that our feet would slip.

“Calm down,” she said, and I did. I let myself sway in the treetop and look out at the blue sky and the rooftops and I didn’t care about the sticky pine tar on my hands.

Those are the moments when I realize how much she gave me. If only I hadn’t thought she was trying to push me away.

I watched from the window as Ally stepped out of the Austin in Graham’s driveway. There she was like a princess being brought home by literally “the boy next door.” After the talk with Richards, this made me more sad than mad. But I was beginning to get mad anyway. I bet the main reason Ally decided she liked Graham is because he actually is the boy next door and that fits so well with her tiny-town-blueberry-picking-goody-goody way she decided she had to add him to the list of clichés that she lives by.

I would also be more angry at her if not for the fact that I had to protect her. It was weird the way Graham talked about Eric; he seemed to want Ally to be his new best friend, his new Eric, and he wanted me to take his drugs. She just wouldn’t see that there was anything shady about Graham. Even if it was becoming plainer to other people. That this is one more way her trust in all people being good will get her into trouble. How on earth could she have had me for a sister for all these years and still think all people are good?

I slipped down the back stairs as Ally entered the house, and ran across the driveway into the bushes outside Graham’s garage and watched him. He was standing by the car, looking kind of dazed with this grin on his face. His hair looked windblown and I could tell they had been making out. I was sure he had driven her out to the beach and she had told him stories about how our parents used to take us there when we were little or how our dad built all the beautiful old ships you see at the yacht club. I was sure she gave him our whole life story—her version of it.

The idea of her being so trusting to this weirdo, who moved from the south and who for some reason has been out of school under some questionable circumstances, circumstances that he’d maybe even been arrested for or his parents had been sued for, shocked even me. Ally had always been very selective about the boys she dated. The only thing I could think is that: A) this guy’s looks had gone to her head, B) she had found some way to irritate me beyond telling on me when I smoked and complaining about my music, or C) Graham was a master at manipulating trusting girls. I decided it was probably all three and then walked around the hedge and into the garage. He was startled to see me.