Her voice had a pitch I’d never heard before. Pride. Genuine, undiluted pride directed at me. At dinner, I glanced across the table at Monica. She was smiling, but it was the kind of smile that stops at the mouth. Her eyes were doing something else entirely—calculating, measuring, recalibrating. I know that now. At the time, I just thought she was tired from the drive. That week, Monica started calling me more, two, three times a week.
“How’s packing going? Who’s your roommate? What’s Portland like?”
She asked about my schedule, my classmates, my professors. She remembered every name I mentioned. I thought my sister was finally seeing me. I thought maybe my getting into med school had unlocked something between us—respect, connection, whatever it is that normal sisters have. I was feeding her ammunition. Every detail, every name, every vulnerability, and I handed it all over with a grateful smile. Third year of medical school. That’s when everything cracked open. My roommate, my best friend, was a woman named Sarah Mitchell. She’d grown up in foster care, no family to speak of, and she was the single reason I survived first year. When I called home once during a brutal anatomy exam week and Mom said,
“Can’t talk, Reineie. Monica’s having a rough day at work,”
it was Sarah who sat on our apartment floor with me and said,
