The Moment Before

Chapter Two

TWO

Irish twins are siblings born within a year of each other. Sabine was born in September; I came along the following August. We started kindergarten the same year.  Me: sucking my thumb, wetting my pants, not knowing the alphabet. Her: already reading, bossing the boys around, teacher’s pet. Free day care, my mom joked, delighted that I made the cut-off, by days, so she could get her realtor’s license and start selling high-end homes.

Nobody would have mistaken us for real twins.

Sabine’s big blue eyes and reddish-blond hair, she took after Dad’s side. The Scottish Wilsons, robust in every way. Storytellers, sports-minded, excellent at business. Sabine was a chip-off-the-old-jock—a true daughter of John Wilson, the ex-minor-league pitcher with a major-league heart. Prone to tantrums and public displays of affection.

In third grade, for Halloween, Sabine dressed up as Marge Simpson, and she made the boy she referred to as her boyfriend dress up as Homer. She practiced the voice, and had a different skit worked out with every stop on their trick-or-treat tour. The poor little Homer boyfriend couldn’t keep up. He handed his pillowcase and the few fun-sized candies to Sabine after the fifth house. A trick-or-treater tendering his resignation, just like that, in the face of such pressure. She wore you out, if you were her friend. There was always some next thing bubbling up in her head.

Mom called her my manic-panic girl. Me? Brady-brooder.

I take after the Italian Panapentos. Dark, Sicilian, Catholic. Mom’s side of the family, they keep their cards close to the chest. Olive-skinned, raven-eyed, surly and superstitious. My Nona paints in heavy oils. Still lifes. A bowl of peaches in the foreground, and if you look real close, there’s a skull behind the table, looming on a shelf. A Where’s Waldo sort of hidden death object. My grandparents are the type of Catholics who still eat fish every Friday. There’s a dead Jesus and last year’s palm frond nailed above their pushed together twin beds.

In case you’re wondering, I was left back that kindergarten year, after my eye started twitching.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved my sister. I never, not once, wished her dead.

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After I leave Leonard Field’s office, heading to art, crunching scraps of crepe paper ribbon left over from a locker that was recently “birthdayed,” it hits me. The entire building, the whole culture of this enormous suburban public high school, deflated when Sabine died. I’m not making this up. Her energy was so strong, the lunch ladies named a dish for her. Sa-beans. It was after the cheering squad won state last year, my sister as Captain. The lunch ladies dyed the refried beans Greenmeadow green in her honor. They strung a banner across the hot food line—a poster-sized photo of Sabine doing her winning high-splits pyramid stunt. It sounds almost pornographic; the idea of students lining up under her crotch for their burritos, but, my sister transcended that sort of typecasting. You got the feeling, looking at the stretched out cheerleader grin on her face, that she could lift the entire football team over the goalpost with that smile.

Her boyfriend, Nick Avery, he all but dropped out after the accident. Class president, captain of the lacrosse team, the only guy in the whole school who could have possibly had a chance with my sister. They were beyond King and Queen of Prom. So beyond Class Couple. They had a Facebook page called Beenick with, like, over 1200 followers. High school paparazzi tagging Brangelina-esque pictures to their wall. Now, a sort of boyfriend widower, he wears black clothes Johnny Cash style, his squinty eyes covered by Versaces. His locker, which I pass now, is still decorated with the plastic flowers of a gypsy grave. As if she died here while in the middle of a kiss, there’s a snapshot of them making out, toddler alphabet magnets spelling RIP holding the photo in place.