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On the kitchen table is the bag with the hospital logo that gets delivered to lued shut He even opposes the headache elixirs our an taking theain?" I frown It’s been several weeks since he had an episode, and I hoped they were going away for good

"I wish he’d stop being so rock-headed," Alice says in a low voice "I was up with hi to ease the pain" She takes the bread from my hands and breathes deep the warm aroma as she unwraps it

"Where is he?" I say

"His office The door’s open Step lightly and enter if you dare"

She’s already slicing the bread I doubt she’s eaten today; when Lex is having a rough ti else fades away from her unless she’s reminded

I find my brother hunched on the floor in a corner of his dark office, wrapped in a blanket and shivering

"What are you doing here, Little Sister?"

Worrying is what I’

"Can I co"

The transcriber is off; its rolls of paper streained each night as I’ve slept in the room below The smell of ink and the smoke of overheated wires are still in the air

I step over and around his latest novel and kneel in front of hioes forward and then back, and it is always twelve fifteen He just likes the sound it makes; he carries it all around the aparth he’s disappearing

I put my hand over his fist His knuckles are white with strain, his skin dry and cold He drops his forehead to his knees "Where does it hurt?" I say

"Deep within the bones, there’s un to expand, andslowly from the pressure"

I want to wrap ive him my warmth and soften the marrow and make him better

But he would push me away, remind me that I don’t understand I suppose it’s hard for him to believe I’ll ever be more than a child The last time he saw me, I was thirteen years old

All I can do is be still and not ask tooup all his years as a runner when he was so alive, and especially not talk about the medicine on the table He’ll die before he lets another elixir or tonic pass between his lips or get shot into his veins Not that the phar’s policy that jumpers take the requiredto society Alice will eventually pour them down the drain and report back to the pharmacy that she administered them to her husband in the correct order

"Mo sa to think of the right way to describe it--"color shooting out of a cloud Sort of in a zigzag"

He’s got his eyes squeezed shut "A zigzag?"

I draw the shape on the back of his hand with e I wonder if she saw soht it up"

"How do you do that?" I say "How do you know so that doesn’t exist to be known?"

Alice knocks on the doorfraetables per in your stoue if you like, but your sister will hold your arms if I have to force this down your throat ins

"Is a cavern of fire, or whatever other poetic nonsense I know," she says "But this will help Here" She sits besidehih he can’t see it, he knows, and he eats nearly half the slice

"Happy now, dearest?"

"Ecstatic How do you feel?"

"Wretched" But he says it with a bit of a smirk, and she wipes his lips with her sleeve

I wonder if their e was always destined to be this way I wish they could have had a happier go of things, but then, it doesn’t see more

Except a child But nobody talks about that

Alice tries to coerce Lex to get into bed, or at the very least the couch, but he is is hi before he tells us to go away so that he can be with his thoughts

Alice tells him that she’ll be back with un to follow her, Lex says, "Forget who you are" I pause in the doorway "That’s the answer to your question," he says "Forget who you are and what you think is there, and you’ll discover things that don’t exist to be known"

"I don’t understand," I say

"Me either, Little Sister, but there you have it"

In the kitchen, Alice is rinsing plates at the sink, and all the lide as she performs the most menial of tasks Her burden of eyelashes flit up and down as she watches the water go down the drain She is everything I’ve grown up wanting to be, and as the sunset steals through the curtain, it sets her hair ablaze with auburns and golds She’s unbreakable