The next morning, Audra still had not come home. I sat at the kitchen table, eating a toaster waffle. A glass of milk, one of orange juice, and my three pill bottles were lined above my plate, all waiting for me. Dad was upstairs, and Mom hurried in and out of the kitchen with a piece of toast in one hand, getting ready to go to work.
"You're buying lunch at school?" she said. "You'll eat something?"
"I'll be okay," I said.
I waited, but she didn't say anything about Audra. She kept talking about work, about being late. My mom works for Nordstrom, where she's a personal shopper. That means she chooses clothes for people who can't choose their own clothes—either they don't have time or they don't care or they're color-blind or whatever. It also means that she brought home new clothes for us all the time. I used to think this was great until Audra explained that we only got clothes no one else wanted. That no one bought and that were a year old or more. Audra stopped wearing them. She refused. That's one of the things she and Mom fought about, how Audra wore clothes from Goodwill or the Salvation Army.
"Did you take your pills?" Mom said.
"I will," I said.
"I'll count them later."
"Mom," I said.
"Have a great day, honey." She leaned close to kiss the top of my head, and then she went out the door and in a minute I heard her car start and back down the driveway, gone.
Outside, rain was misting down. I squinted up through the window, at the gray sky, and then I stood up, leaned close. On the glass, on the other side of the window, was a faint round mark, and tiny, tiny feathers, stuck there. Right at the spot where the bird had flown into the window. I held up my hand, but my side of the glass was smooth.
Out in the gray morning I could see the trees across the backyard, the small black shapes of birds in the bare branches.
Audra came in only a minute or two later, like she had been watching the house, waiting for Mom to leave. She was wet, and smiling.
"Hey." She picked up the crust of Mom's toast from the plate on the counter and jammed it into her mouth. I could see the wet footprints of her bare feet shining on the linoleum.
"Did you sleep?" I said.
"Of course I slept." Audra poured herself a cup of coffee and walked over close to me. She reached out to touch my arm.
"You smell like a campfire," I said.
"A bonfire," she said, and snorted. "Some idiots were trying to jump their bikes over it. One of them broke his leg, I think."
"Did he get a cast?" I said.
"I don't know," she said. "I left, to go do some other things, to try to find someone."
"Did you?"
Audra didn't answer; she took off her wet coat and hung it up, over the heat vent. She shivered, hugged herself, her wet hair tight and dark around her head. She looked even skinnier than usual, and there was a silver stud in the side of her nose. I knew she wanted me to say something, to notice it.
"Remember that bird that flew into the window?" I said.
"What?"
"Yesterday," I said. "There's still feathers there."
Audra didn't sit down. She just stood there in the middle of the kitchen.
"There's something I want you to do with me," she said.
She reached into the front pocket of her jeans and took out a wrinkled piece of newspaper. I held out my hand, but she didn't give it to me.
"You took your pills, didn't you?" she said.
"Yes," I said, and she gave me a look.
"What?" I said. "I mean, not yet, I haven't."
"They're poisoning you," she said. "So you'll be like them, a robot like everyone else. This house!" Pacing across the kitchen, Audra jerked open the refrigerator, looked into it for a moment.
"I could go with you," I said. "One of these nights."
"You could." Audra looked across the kitchen like she was measuring me. "And you could get hurt. People do."
"You don't," I said. "I wouldn't."
Audra closed the refrigerator. She took a long knife from a drawer, looked at its shining blade, then put it back.
"What was that?" I said.
"The knife?"
"That newspaper in your pocket."
When Audra came back, close to me, her voice was softer.
"It's about the girl," she said. "She lived for four years in the forest, never in a house. Growing things, hiding, reading books. We'll go see her; she'll tell us things."
"When?" I said.
"Soon." Audra folded the newspaper and put it back in her pocket, then glanced behind her, toward the stairs. "Is Dad still here?"
"I think so."
"I'm taking a shower."
Once she was gone, upstairs, I twisted the tops from my bottles and swallowed my three pills, each a different size and color. Blue, green, yellow. I twisted the lids back on, then drank my milk, then my orange juice.
I took a lot of pills, but no one really understood what was wrong with me. Not the doctors, not my parents, not me. "Becoming agitated" was what they called it, and they wanted me to learn to recognize it, so I could be in control of it and not let it be in control of me.
At school, people gave me space. They flinched sometimes when I came close, or held up an arm like they were going to block me from hitting them. I never hit anyone. The nickname they had for me was "Vivian Ritalin"—but that wasn't even a pill I took anymore. The girls only said things like that when they were in groups and even then they never got too close.
At school I was allowed to carry my backpack with me. In it I kept an old zippered sweatshirt that was too small. If I started feeling like I was becoming agitated, I put it on and zipped it up tight, so it held me and calmed me down.
I was a sophomore, and Audra was a senior. I hardly saw her at school, so she couldn't protect me. The closer she came to graduating, the less often she went to school at all.
It had been easier, we were closer, when we were in different schools. At night, we would sneak across the hallway, sleep in the same bed, whisper all night. She had a black BMX bike with foot pegs, and I'd stand on them, behind her with my hands on her shoulders, and we'd ride through the neighborhood. I could smell her hair. I leaned when she leaned. I saw everything over the top of her head. We would coast along, sisters, and people would see us together, and no one would be moving at the same speed, in the same direction.
