The Story Sisters

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Meg said.

Elv knew what she meant. It’s you. Always you.

THE WEATHER WAS changing. It was September and school had begun. In the evenings, Elv began to smoke a white powder. She used a glass pipe that looked as if it would catch on fire when she inhaled. Claire sat out in the hall on the third floor, guarding the bedroom door. “Thanks, Gigi,” Elv would say when Claire came back into the room. “Now I can breathe.”

When Claire asked what was in the pipe, Elv said, “The antidote to humanity” and laughed. “Seriously, it’s nothing. It’s chalk dust.”

Even though school was in session, Elv often didn’t come home until dawn. She didn’t mind getting wet as she ran across the damp lawn; she was burning up under her skin despite the change in the weather. At the hour when her sisters got ready for school, she would creep into bed, naked and wet. If you shook her, she didn’t budge. If you talked to her, she didn’t answer. She was exhausted most of the time, but agitated. When she managed to go grab some sleep, she talked through her dreams, always in Arnish.

Claire would perch at the foot of her sister’s bed on these school-day mornings, worried. She had begun to dread the future. Elv was being swallowed up. Claire wondered if the door to Arnelle could close when a person least expected it to, shutting her into that underground world. She whispered Elv’s name, but there wasn’t an answer. She traced a finger over the scars Elv had left on her own skin. Would she know how to rescue Elv if the time ever came? Would she stand there mutely and watch her sister be carried away or would she dare to be brave?

MEG BEGAN TO hide everything she cared about. She kept it all in the guest room closet, which she secured with a lock she bought at the hardware store, keeping the small key in her backpack. Things had been disappearing: headbands, jewelry, clothes. Elv had burned her own belongings, and now she was taking whatever she wanted. Elise phoned Annie to say that Mary had come home to find Elv going through her closet. Elv had pried open a window and managed to climb into Mary’s bedroom. When Mary walked in to find her cousin loaded down with her belongings, Elv threatened to burn down the house if she told. Mary had had such a bad asthma attack afterward that Elise had rushed her to the hospital.