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The height, at least, wasn’t lost on Hallie and e-Hallie one inch over, and I, one under In high school they used to call us forty percent of a basketball teaht isn’t so you can have and just let be, like nice teeth or naturally curly hair People have this idea you have to put it to use, playing basketball, for exairl, they feel a particular need to point your height out to you, as if you ht not have noticed

In fact, Hallie and I weren’t forty percent of anything-ere all there was The ie in the mirror that proves you are still here We had exactly one sister apiece We grew up knowing the simple arithmetic of scarcity: A sister is more precious than an eye

"You tell that daddy of yours I need a pill to get rid of my wrinkles," Lydia said loudly

I made an effort to collect myself "Okay"

I should have said, "You don’t need any such thing," or soh I wasn’tthis first day all that well I had a lue and draw the blinds Grace was ainto the Baptist Grocery with Eed me with emotions and a hopelessness I couldn’t na in a few minutes, and while I waited for E helplessly at the cans of vegetables and soup that all carried sorocery shelves seemed to have been stocked for the people of Grace with the care of a fa When the cashier asked, "Do you need anything else?" I al you have"

It was past ht but a cold moon blazed in theand I couldn’t sleep I lay on e I hated sleeping alone As little as there was between Carlo andAll my life I’d shared a bed with soe I discovered an arrees of temporary insanity and short-term salvation Then Carlo, who’d turned out to bealone see done in hospitals or when you’re contagious

I’d finally reached that point of electric sleeplessness where I had to get up I tucked own into my jeans and found my shoes out in the kitchen I closed the door quietly and took a path that led away froht out to the north, through E apples Every so often, peacocks called to each other across the valley They had different cries: the shrill laugh, a guttural clucking-a whole aniht they would never settle down completely

I wanted to find the road that led up the canyon to Doc Hoo there yet, but I had to make sure I knew the way I couldn’t ask Emelina for directions to my own childhood home; I didn’t want her to kno badly dislocated I was I’d always had trouble recalling certain specifics of childhood, but didn’t realize until now that I couldn’t even recognize thes I’d done with Hallie were clear, because we remembered so much for each other, I suppose, but why did I not know Mrs Carocery? Or Lydia Galvez, who rode our school bus and claimed to have loaned me her handkerchief after Simon Bolivar Jones chucked me on the head with his Etch-a-Sketch, on a dare In fact, I felt like the victim of a head injury I hoped that if I struck out now on faith I would feel my way to Doc Homer’s, the way a water witcher closes her eyes and follows her dowsing rod to find a spring But I didn’t know I could have lost the ho instinct co, anyway I could hear the river (Why does sound travel farther at night?) I had my mother’s death on my mind One of my few plain childhood memories was of that day I was not quite three, Hallie was newborn, and I’m told I couldn’t possibly remember it because I wasn’t there The picture I have inthe stretcher like a fragile, i out currents of air across the alfalfa field behind the hospital This was up above the canyon, in the days when they grew crops up there The flattened-down alfalfa plants showed their silvery undersides in patterns that looked like waves The field became the ocean I’d seen in storybooks, here in the middle of the desert, like some miracle