No one else ever sees Rosemary. Not since that first night, when Tipper told her to stay away. When I’ve been hanging out with her and someone else comes along, Rosemary just leaves. She vanishes so quickly I almost think I imagined her in the first place.
She doesn’t know how she does this trick, just like she can’t really say where she sleeps when she isn’t here, only that it is “soft there,” warm and dark.
“I’m worried,” she repeats, “that you’ll do something terrible.”
“Things with boys aren’t terrible,” I say. “I know they seem weird when you’re little.”
“I don’t know how to say it. I’m just worried.”
“Don’t be.”
“You smell like alcohol.”
I go into the bathroom, brush my teeth and take a Halcion. My lips are swollen from kissing. My body is alive to the cold of the water and the brush of the towel.
“I love you,” she says, through the door.
I open it and come back to my room. “I love you, too, Rosemary.”
“Can we make bracelets?” she asks.
“Oh my god, buttercup, it’s the middle of the night.”
“I really want to,” she says, wiggling in anticipation, stamping her feet lightly.
I absolutely do not want to make bracelets. I want to lie on my back and feel the Halcion slide through my veins and think about Pfeff, and the dark of his room, and everything that happened between us. His lips on my neck.
Rosemary is too young to understand. She doesn’t want me to grow up.
“I can’t be a child with you forever,” I say gently.
“That’s not it.”
“I think it is, buttercup. You know I love you a million loves. I am so lucky you’re here. But ghosts come back to their houses because— You’re a ghost because something’s wrong, yes?”
She nods.
“How can I help you feel better?”
She pouts. “I just want to make bracelets.”
I am trying to be kind. But the challenge of helping my sister come to terms with the end of her life—it’s a lot. I love her so much. I try to be nurturing, consoling—and I will try every time I see her, until what? She finally feels safe? Knows she is beloved? Feels that she has really said goodbye?
“Please, buttercup,” I say. “Go to sleep.”
“Can I lie down next to you?” she says. “Just for a little.”
“M-kay,” I say. I change out of my dress.
Rosemary wants a cup of water.
She asks me to braid her hair before bed.
The Halcion begins to work.
She’s hot and wants to lie on top of the blankets.
She doesn’t like the whir of the fan.
The drug is dragging me down into sleep, and when I set my head on the pillow, finally, I drift off to the sound of my sister singing gently to herself.
“Hey hey hey hey.”
41.
PFEFF PULLS ME into the Clairmont mudroom and presses his mouth to mine. Then he takes a drink from his cold can of Coke and touches his icy lips to the hot skin of my neck.
He tells me I smell good.
He tells me he wants me.
He finds a place to set the Coke down so he can touch me with both his hands, and when it seems like I’ve kissed him so much my knees will buckle, he releases me.
We take the sailboat out, just the two of us, and spend a sunny afternoon completely alone, our bodies intertwined on the warm wood of the deck. As I run my fingers along the skin of Pfeff’s bare back, I am awestruck at the magic in the world. I am allowed to touch him, to thread my fingers in his hair, to skim his earlobe with my thumb. It is like a miracle, that two people can find each other so perfectly imperfect. That we can see the uniqueness in one another, celebrate it, communicating through touch. Blindfold me and I’d recognize the feel of his hands on me, the scent of his neck, the curve of his shoulders under my palms.
At night, when we are all “watching the hell out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks” （as Pfeff puts it） for the second time, I touch his leg. My fingers tingle on the fabric of his jeans. We sit there for ages, like that. Eventually, he slides his arm around my shoulder, in front of everyone. I feel so warm, so accepted. We snuggle, we spoon.
Another day, when everyone is packing to leave the Big Beach, heading to take showers and dress for supper, Pfeff hangs back. “Stay here with me,” he whispers as I’m picking up a tote bag. “Stay here with me a while longer.”
We watch the others disappear and then get back in the water. He takes off my bikini top gently, and presses his chest up against me underwater. We kiss in the gentle rise and fall of the salty waves. It is slippery. Disorienting. I wrap my legs around him.