| photo by Joshua Rawson Harris from Unsplash |

Mom calls up the stairs. My name first, then Lindsay's. "Come down for dinner!"

I cross my legs and sit up straight. My neck and shoulders are stiff—with tension, I'm sure. And my head is starting to hurt. I hate these freaking IM conversations.

There's a quick high-pitched metallic squeal—unmistakably a door hinge—and then Lindsay appears in my open doorway. Her thick hair is still damp and her eyes are noticeably red. Like way beyond what they were when we parted ways outside. "Are you coming?" she asks.

I'm tempted to ask her to cover for me—the way I did for her. She could tell Mom I'm still asleep.

"Mom made your favorite," Lindsay says. "North Carolina style barbecue. She started the ribs in the crockpot early this morning."

Yes, that's exactly what I've been smelling all day. Under normal circumstances, I'd be thrilled with this information but right now, I just want to stay here and keep reading. I untangle my legs so I can scoot off the bed, because there's no way I can get away with that. Especially not after I spent all that time with Noah this morning.

Lindsay turns away from me with what seems like an excessive amount of energy. She waits at the top of the stairs, scrutinizing me the way she did this morning when I walked into the purple room for the first time. "I didn't say anything about you to Mom and Dad," I tell her.

"I wouldn't be standing here if you had."

She gallops down the stairs, leaving me alone to deal with my phobia. And with all these warring emotions.

I sort of wish I hadn't spent time with Noah today, because it makes it hard not to resent Lindsay for working so hard to keep us apart. But like she said, she was only twelve when she told Noah about that kiss. She didn't understand what it was like to feel that way about a boy.

What I don't understand is why she won't just talk to me about all of it so we can apologize to each other and move on. Is she being overly dramatic or is there more to the story?

When I finally get to the bottom step, I hear Mom say something about Lindsay's red eyes. I hang back in the dark foyer, just shy of the doorway, while my sister grinds her fists—very convincingly—into her eyes sockets. "I can't help it, Mom," she whines, soft and pitiful. "They itch like crazy."

"It's hey fever."

Mom delivers the diagnosis with a casual confidence that comes from experience. She opens the small narrow cabinet next to the fridge and pulls out a white medicine bottle. Lindsay presents her open palm, ready to accept the offering—speaking of experience. She's obviously practiced at hiding her drug habit. Which means she's been doing it for a while.

I shake my head, because it doesn't make sense. She just turned fourteen a few days before my accident. Where the heck does a thirteen-year-old go to get weed? And how many times have I witnessed this routine and said nothing?

"Can you set the table for me?" Mom asks.

Lindsay pops the tiny pink pill into her mouth and chases it with a gulp of water. Then she goes right to work, doing the job that always used to be mine. But it's not like I could be useful in this kitchen. I have no idea where anything is.

Mom scoops a platter off the counter and rushes out the back door, onto a raised wooden deck I didn't notice earlier. She lifts the bulky grill lid, releasing a waft of smoke. Since when does Dad let anyone touch his grill? My favorite ribs are his specialty.

I backtrack a few steps to peek into the dining room and he's still there, staring at his computer. I get a sinking feeling, like I'm tied to an anchor. I have to sit on the bottom step and wipe the stupid tears off my cheeks.

Pull it together, Allyson. This is your life now. Your house. Your broken family—if Lindsay is telling the truth. And right now, anything seems possible.

"Dinner!" Mom calls. The door to the deck closes, hard. Dad's chair scrapes the wood floor. Lindsay is jangling silverware. And I'm rooted to this step, feeling stuck and hopeless. More tired than I've ever felt in my entire life—like it shouldn't be possible that I'm even conscious.

"Where's Allyson?" Mom says—and the worry in her tone shakes me loose, allows me to engage my leg muscles. To stand. This pitiful show of energy is born out of embarrassment, I know, and if Dr. Greene were here, she would tell me I have nothing to be embarrassed about. But I can't shake the feeling. The more I find out about the person I was—the substitute who's been living my life for the last three years—the more I want to crawl back into that coma.

I blow out a breath, plaster a smile on my face and say, "Something smells amazing," as I walk into the kitchen. But I'm not fooling anyone. Both of my parents look at me, their faces wrinkled with so much concern. But they force smiles of their own and hold their tongues. And Lindsay keeps her eyes far away from mine.

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I blame my poor appetite on a headache, blame the mattress in the guest room for my pre-dinner nap fail. "It's extra-firm, the way Grandma Clark likes it," Mom says, as she tilts my plate to let the neglected baby backs slide into a plastic storage container. "Why don't you give the bed in your room a try?"

She follows me up to the purple room. Closes the windows—which seem to have sucked out some of the perfume stench—and then she lowers the blinds. I get a feather light kiss on my forehead after she tucks me in. "Do you need one of your migraine pills?" she asks.

"I hope not. I hate the way they make me feel."

"Maybe a good night's sleep will do the trick," she says, giving my hand a squeeze. "I'll come check on you after I clean the kitchen."

When she's gone, I try—for the first time—an exercise Dr. Greene says is supposed to help relieve tension. I tighten my arms and fists as hard as I can and then let them go limp. I do the same thing with my legs, flex my feet, clench my toes. Then relax.

This mattress feels like a fluffy cloud. I close my eyes and try, so hard, to erase the image of all the undoubtedly significant stuff in this room, hanging on the walls and cluttering the lopsided bookcase—artifacts from a life I don't want to remember.

But if I want to help my sister, I have to keep digging.

I kick out of the ugly comforter and tiptoe to the yellow room to retrieve my phone. I really do have a headache. And I feel...bombarded? I've read a year and a half's worth of information, but I still have so many questions.

Maybe it's time for a new list. I grab my journal and head back to the purple room.

There's a string of white Christmas lights stretched across the flattened-out top edge of the lavender-painted headboard. I follow the cord down the side of the bed until my fingers bump into a switch that turns them on. The purple walls are significantly less hideous in the soft warm glow. It kind of reminds me of a twilight sky.

I stack the extra pillows behind me and bend my knees to make a desk. Then open the messaging app and scroll back to the first significant event. I write the date on a clean page in my journal, followed by the words: Raisinets cupcake / fifteenth birthday.

There are too many instances of me complaining about Lindsay's "bad" behavior to list individually, so on the next line I write: April-May: Lindsay sabotages The First Move.

And then there's that notorious summer before tenth grade.

June 21: The wrong first kiss

June 30: Lindsay tells Noah

But it seems like—based on everything I read before dinner—that Noah and I got over that pretty quickly. So there must be some other reason we stopped being friends for awhile.

Christmas Break: Did something happen while Noah was in Georgia?

My eyes already hurt. I close them and ease my head back against the pillows. The rest of the information is right there, waiting for me. But wouldn't it be so much smarter for me to shut down my brain and get freaking some sleep?

The phone vibrates under my hand—like it's answering my question. There's a little red circle on the instant messaging app. I have a new message, and it can only be from one person.

Samantha: Hi, Ally. I've been staring at your message for the last twenty minutes and I've decided that you didn't mean to send me the letter H. (Haha) But even though it was an accident, I'm so happy to see that you've been on the thread. Have you read all of it?

What is she talking about? I didn't send her anything. I was just reading and—crap! There it is. At 7:38, I accidentally sent Samantha the letter H.

Samantha: Don't worry. I don't expect an answer. But I hope you did (or will) read these conversations. I just went back (for the first time ever) and read from the beginning, and it's so amazing that we have this record of our friendship. It's only the first two years or so, but still, I'm grateful to have it. Especially now.

Samantha: It kills me to think that our last text convo was your first introduction to our friendship. We were having a bad day, but the last message I sent wasn't the end of it. We talked on the phone for over an hour and we got some things worked out.

Samantha: I don't know if any of this matters to you, but it helps me to say it. I miss you, Al. (AKA Owl) Please know that I will love you forever and I'm here if you need me. <3 <3 <3

I scroll back to the accidental H. The message above it is dated April 12 of our tenth grade year. Samantha wrote: Please tell me you wrote down the calc homework assignment! But there was no reply—until now, more than a year later. I keep scrolling back to where I left off when Mom called me to dinner. There's only three more months of information left to read—and it's all tenth grade year. There are no conversations from eleventh grade. No chance of me finding out any more details of our "bad day."

I can't decide if I'm relieved or disappointed.

But I do know I'm going to keep reading. And if my headache gets worse—when it gets worse, I'll take one of the migraine pills Mom put in that brown purse.

Which is an absolute guarantee that I'll finally get some sleep.