You were mad as I’d ever seen you, and you stayed mad when you went to bed in a huff, and you were still angry when you took Wally out of our bedroom closet. Ryan was ten, so he hadn’t fully abandoned all his stuffed animals back then, and you knew poor Wally was his favorite, even though he stayed mostly in that closet.
I woke up because I heard a rustling sound and saw you in the moonlight, your eyes aglow like those of a panther. You put your finger to your lips—“Quiet,” you mouthed to me—and then with considerable effort, you stabbed one of Wally’s fins with those scissors （sharp ones Mom would never have let you use）。
You began to cut. Snip. Snip. You cut and tore at that fabric until one of Wally’s fins dangled from his fuzzy body as if a motorboat had struck him. Next, you jabbed the scissors through Wally’s eye socket, twisting them around until a glass bead of an eye popped out of his stuffed head and bounced on the carpeted floor.
I was so shocked at what I’d seen that I lost my voice, but eventually I whispered, “What are you doing, Penny?”
You whispered back to me, in a voice that sounded different from the one I knew, harsher, colder, “Don’t call me Penny. I’m Eve.”
You looked different, too. There was a strange tilt to your mouth that was almost like a sneer, and a new way you carried your shoulders—thrown back, with more confidence. You had swagger, no other way to describe it. You collected Wally’s eye and took him with you when you left the room.
The next morning you were Penny, the old Penny—head down in your Apple Jacks; your sad, sweet smile—back to the sister I knew.
As for Wally, he vanished, simple as that. I’m not sure Ryan even noticed he was gone. I never said anything because, well, I was your protector and didn’t know what to make of that night. Eve stayed away, so I sort of let it go.
Then you turned twelve, and Eve returned. One day, you and I heard a horrific sound coming from a patch of tall grass as we were walking home from Eisman’s Beach. Mom let me take you there because Eisman’s had a lifeguard on duty, so it was safe—not that we did much swimming in those frigid waters. Even so, on a hot summer day, ocean water up to your ankles could cool you down just like an ice bath. We were heading home on Puritan Road, carrying two chairs and a beach bag, when we heard the noise.
We didn’t know what to make of it. It was a hissing, anguished, high-pitched whine. When we finally located the source, we found a gray-and-black tabby cat lying in the tall grass, its back broken. That much was obvious from the unnatural bend of its body, a U-shaped curve that had almost folded the poor animal in half. Two of its legs were shattered, their bones sticking out from the fur, and it had a long gash in its abdomen that showed what was happening on the inside. The cat saw us standing over it, and I swear those green eyes were pleading with us to end its misery.
We were both in total shock.
“A car must have hit it,” I said softly. “What else could have done that?”
“She’s hurting,” you said, your voice quivering with fright. You had tears in your eyes, as did I. “She can’t be saved. Look at her.”
I looked away instead.
“I should call Mom … or the vet. I have a phone,” I said breathlessly. “We’ll call the animal hospital.”
“It’s going to take too long,” you said with evident despair. “A minute of this is too long. Look at her. She’s suffering.”
You pointed. This time you made me look. And you were right—never in my life had I seen such torment. The cat was writhing on the ground, moving as much as it could with a broken back and broken legs, making a gravelly, groaning sound like a door creaking open. Sometimes the noises were higher pitched, sharper, as if the animal were calling out to say, Help … please help me.
“What should we do?” I shouted my question out of sheer panic.
You searched the ground until your gaze settled on a big rock lying in a tangle of weeds. When I realized what it was you were looking at, what had to be on your mind, I started shaking my head vigorously.
“No. No. We can’t,” I said.
And you said, “It’s hurting. It’s going to take too long to put her out of her misery. She can’t be saved. You know it’s true.”
And it was true. We didn’t need to be veterinarians to figure that one out. So I guess that’s why I didn’t stop you, didn’t say no, didn’t ask you to drop it, didn’t do anything at all when you bent down and stuck your fingers beneath the rock, tugging and tugging until you pried it free from the soft earth into which it had sunk. I didn’t call Mom or the vet. There were no passing cars to flag down. It was just the two of us when you lifted up the rock and cradled it against your belly.