(If anybody would like to see the original 3000 word version, let me know and I'll be happy to post it. It feels more full to me.)

JOEY

We hadn't seen our mother in three years. It was a four-hour drive. I was nervous and shaky, but my little sister Joey was elated.

The memories haunted my ride. Drugs, abandonment, sexual abuse, cocaine-addled ghosts in the bedrooms of our various apartments ' memories, not yet dusty. I felt like a worn piece of fabric, but when I saw my mother's smile as we pulled up to her apartment building, I opened the car door and remembered singing before bed, dancing in the living room, earaches and hugs.

My mother smelled like make-up. She wore lipstick, foundation, eyeliner, blush and cheap CVS perfume. I loved it. My mother was the ratty green couch in our living room; the Smurfs and the Gummi Bears and the Mighty Mouse I watched on television; the warm soup and hard bread I ate at the soup kitchen on Saturdays; the hot tea I sipped while trying to write in cursive on a yellow pad of paper. She was the unattainable, and she was right there.

I showed off my long hair and the muscles in my legs. I showed her my report card, a picture of my boyfriend, cartwheels and how fast I could run. While Joey and I vied for attention, each of us wanting it all, I imagined I was doing the better job. Before I could consider my future, I forgave my mother for everything.

I don't know what Joey did; I wasn't paying attention to her.

#

Our mother said, 'I'm HIV positive.'� I looked at her lamp, at Joey, at the lamp. I looked at its yellowed lampshade with yellowed tassels and yellowed cord coming from a glass vase. It looked heavy and old, like something you might pick up at goodwill. It could have used a new shade.

Joey cried. Her chin quivered, her lips sagged and drool came in thick pools, fast like water. She was beautiful. My mother's lips were pressed, her eyes looked wounded. I looked from lamp to Joey to mother to lamp again. I wished my grandfather had cancer instead. I wondered if I should cry. I wondered if I would describe this moment in a story some day. Joey's crying made my throat shrink and my ribs sharp, covered in spikes. My stomach was gone, a detachable part that bounced. I wanted Joey to scream; to shout 'It's not fair!'� We just got to see her again and now she was going to die?

'Were you tested more than once?'� I asked.

#

Trees ran swiftly, white mile-markers sprinted backward too fast for me to count. We sat in the backseat of the Jeep and looked out the windows at things that would never stand still. I was hot, but kept the window up. I wanted to be hotter. Joey said, 'I can't wait till I turn eighteen.'�

Chills ran over my skin, like a cold gel suddenly slathered on, the blood replaced with ice cubes, my heart replaced with grass, my eyes ' coals.

Joey didn't talk much. I talked for her. When Joey was sad or angry or confused, I would say, 'Joey is sad, angry, confused.'� I wanted to insist that she didn't know what she wanted and had to think about it more '

'I can't wait till I turn eighteen so I can move in with mom.'�

' but she did think about it. She said it and I felt it on the toenail of my left foot that was a little too long and always scratched the inside of my sneaker.

As our foster father's eyes bored into mine from the rearview mirror, I turned to the blurred, sprinting world outside, wanting to grab hold of a mile marker and whoosh. My armpits were wet. 'Well?'�

Well. Well.

Phil's questions were challenges or dares. When he asked how hungry I was, I ate three times more than I could swallow.

Our foster mother Ellen faced me.

I don't know how they did it. I suppose it's what made them great foster parents. With a look, you knew that the cover you were building around your emotions was nothing more than a layer of suffocating cling wrap. While you thought you were hiding your feelings, what they saw was a wracked body struggling for breath.

'I love my mother,'� I said. I looked out the window, wishing for that one reachable mile marker. Be quick. I tried to speak casually and confidently despite the rock, the crags, the deep pit, the hollow scream. Be quick. 'But I can never live with her.'�

Anger, the only explanation I had.

The air outside enveloped my head while my body quivered behind it.

#

I had always thought this moment in the backseat of the Jeep was a crystallized moment; the point in the novel that is always referred to; the point from which the title came, because for the first time, I was alone and Joey didn't need me. I needed her. I had always envisioned me as being the stronger of us. She leaned on me; I cared for her. But Joey, my Jojo, was never afraid enough to rely completely on me. She is the one who taught me that ammonia and newspapers clean glass and mirrors better than Windex and paper towels. When a putrid smell huddled around the dish-filled sink and dissolved food moved like amoebae in the water, she was the one to reach in and unclog the drain. She dives in the snow with short-sleeve shirts and shorts; she swims in the fifty-five degree ocean, headlong into the waves; she gets tattoos and goes snowboarding. I find adventure in books.

I hold my sister's beautiful hand in mine. Her skin is always cool. I bend her fingers. We used to play dead, lifting each other's limbs from the floor and dropping them down again. The only problem was that we both wanted to be the dead person.

I touch the back of her neck. She has such a little neck, her black hair breathing on it just so. I love how soft and delicate she is. I want her comforting skin in the palm of my hand.

#

She took care of our mother, and it drained her. Every kindness was spit back. My guilt didn't subside. It pooled under my chin as I continued to not help, afraid I'd lose myself. But I see in my sister's dark brown eyes a big sister I couldn't be. She finally left our mother on her own, and now she has a daughter whose eyes have only a wonder to adore.

Home wasn't in the dusty memory of songs and dancing, or even drugs and pain; it was my sister. As sure as a familiar floorboard with a creak, I can poke her with one finger in a certain spot and she'll break down in tears of laughter. I can say 'umm'� a certain way and she knows something is wrong, or funny. She is the nest I crawl into. She is the one I call to say, 'I'm sad,'� 'I'm angry,'� or 'I'm confused.'� She doesn't have answers, but she takes good care of me.

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