The Six Rules of Maybe

person, my sister. Her giving and giving and giving to Juliet, who took and took and took. The words were out and the anger, too—the truth of how angry I felt was right there for her to see. It filled me up, beyond what my body could hold. It could have picked me up, overcome me, like a big swell of the sea, taken me far, far out from what I knew. That’s how big it seemed.
    “Here you go, defending her again. No matter what she does, you’re there to show your endless support.” I sounded like a small and jealous child. I felt like one.
    Her face turned red. I’m sure she was wishing she were anywhere else, now. Whenever there was a talk radio show that got too heated, even, she’d snap it off. “I would do the same for you. You know that.”
    My face was red too. I could feel its heat rise up my neck and flame in my cheeks. “Maybe I don’t know that,” I said. “Juliet uses up both our rations of love and understanding. That seems pretty clear.”
    Mom threw her napkin down as if she’d had enough. “Scarlet, that’s ridiculous.” She shook her head back and forth. “Do you think I need this at this moment? This whole little sudden outburst?”
    It didn’t feel sudden; it felt years and years old too, an outburst that had grown layers like the crust of the earth, now forced to move. It was so old that I knew all the lines from hearing them so long in my head. The words came swiftly and easily. “What would happen if I were Juliet right now? You’d argue and you’d spend hours together crying and talking alone on her bed. While I sat and did my homework or something. Juliet has always gotten everything. From you and from everyone else.”
    “That’s unfair, Scarlet. You never seemed to need the same things Juliet did. You didn’t want them. You were always …” She searched around for a word. Her face looked lost.
    “Forgettable?” I said.
    I might have thrown a dagger, that’s how wounded she looked, a surprise attack with an arrow from an assailant hidden behind a tree. Her eyes filled with tears. “Why would you think this about yourself? Or me? Why?”
    I remembered shut doors, laughter, voices, raised or quiet, on the other side. “Like anything else. You just come to conclusions. You just see things and you come to conclusions and then it’s fact in your mind.”
    “I think you’ve come to some very wrong conclusions. About yourself and me and even Juliet.”
    “It’s always the two of you.”
    “Oh honey,” she said. She reached out to me, took me in her arms even though I didn’t want her arms. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry you feel that way.”
    I didn’t want to fold into her right then, I felt too angry, butanger sits right there next to grief, so, so close that you lean just so slightly and you’re there, in this other place that feels like another country, but is the same country, with different customs and a different language but with the same shared ground. I started to cry. Your own sense of being shut out was huge and powerful. It meant it was just you, by yourself, in this big space of loss, with its depth and endlessness and lack of boundaries. You stand in front of a deep, dark sky and feel your own smallness, and you stand in front of loss or the possibility of it and feel even smaller than that. Loss is what you’d do anything to avoid.
    “Oh, if you had any idea how much I love you and treasure you. You.” She kissed the side of my head. I could feel her chest heave against mine and mine against hers. “If you don’t already know that—I blame myself.”
    “Just, Juliet … You two are always …” I crossed my fingers where they lay on her shoulder.
    She broke away from me, took my shoulders. “Oh honey. I got this so wrong. Since …” She put her hands up to her eyes. “Since …” It was funny—I didn’t know what she was going to say before she said it. That’s how far I kept it from my own self. “Since your father left …” The word father sounded funny coming from her. “Juliet had a hard time. More than you—you were younger. You were resilient . She remembered. There’s this thing Juliet has, about going and staying. Keeping people away, she keeps people away, maybe even me, the way you keep people close. You keep people close by looking after them. It’s what I do too. I hold tight. Even what I’ve done with Juliet. See. Scarlet? You and I have always been the similar ones. You and I are.”
    I took this in. I had to