My Sister Knows

My sister knows the password to every secret I've owned since 1996, when I kissed Danny Marsh behind the science block and she watched from the window and said nothing— then, at dinner, asked me how my day was with such elaborate innocence that I understood, at twelve, the full power of someone who knows everything and chooses silence. She can diagnose my mood from a single text message. Three words is fine. Two words: she calls. One word: she drives. We fought once for a year over something neither of us can remember now, and when we finally spoke it was as if the silence had been a held breath and the exhale was the only thing that mattered. She is the one who knows which version of me is real— not the polished one I show to dinner parties, but the one who cries at commercials for banks and can't parallel park and still sleeps with a light on when the house is empty. She knows all of this and hasn't left yet. That's the whole definition, I think. That's what a sister is.