You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” I blink at my sister a few times, certain I’ve misunderstood her.

Adina pulls her lower lip into her mouth with her teeth, as though regretting her words. She must realize she can’t take them back. Can only go forward. When she speaks again, her words are measured. Tentative. “Have you heard of death with dignity?”

My whole frozen world stops spinning. Silvery puffs of breath hang suspended in the air. And my sister, this person I’ll always be inexorably linked to, turns herself inside out.

I expected several things when I stormed into this party. I expected I’d yell at Adina. Tell her she’s been acting fucking terrible. Push her, shove her—not enough to hurt her, but enough to get my anger out. We haven’t physically fought since we were little kids. She bit my arm once. Stamped a teeth-fossil onto it that lasted for weeks. I can’t remember why; surely it was over something insignificant. Until Ima’s diagnosis, we only fought about insignificant things. Mayb

e it makes sense that when we touched each other again after our test results, it wasn’t to hug, but to hit.

I was not expecting a confession like this.

“I’ve heard of it.” I bury my head in my frozen hands. “Tell me you’re not serious. Tell me you’re being melodramatic as usual.” But I can tell, already, that she is and she isn’t.

“It’s the best choice I have,” she says quietly. “The only choice I have.”

I claw at her shoulder. This time she can’t push me away. She may be taller and prettier, but I’m stronger. “You think Ima and Aba would let you do this?”

“I don’t need their permission.”

“We all have bad shit, Adina. All of us. This isn’t—you can’t—”

“Yeah?” She stares at me hard. I smell alcohol, the citrus shampoo we share, the ashes the smokers left behind. “What’s your bad shit? Not getting into your dream school? Boyfriend problems? Friend drama? Is it really as bad as this? I’m doing this so that I can have more time to do the things I like. I have to condense my life into a smaller timeframe, so why can’t I spend the rest of my good years doing exactly what I want?” She tries to shrug my hand off her shoulder. Fails. “Don’t I deserve that?”

“No,” I say simply. “You can tough it out like the rest of us. You can have good things and bad things like the rest of us. You can talk to someone. You can go to therapy. What you’re doing is selfish. You’ve always been so fucking selfish, Adina.”

“This is the least selfish thing I could possibly do!” she yells. “I won’t be a burden to you, or to Aba, and I won’t break Ima’s heart.” She’s crying now, sloppy tears she tries to mop up with her sleeve. “I want to die before this fucking disease can take away every good thing in my life.”

“You’ve already done a pretty great job of that yourself.”

Her eyes turn predatory, and she glares at me with tears streaming down her face. “I hate you. You’ve been an awful sister to me these past couple years, and I hate you. Ani sonet otach.”

Her words take the air from my lungs. She’s stung me in both languages as poisonously as she can.

There’s a pause between us. Ima’s reprimand from long ago comes back to me: You don’t hate Adina. Do you know what that word means?

She’s waiting for a response. Expecting me to copy her. Instead I release my grip on her shoulder and say: “I don’t.”

Thirty-three

Adina

I DON’T KNOW WHERE I am at first. The pillow is lumpy and unfamiliar beneath my face, and something heavy is crushing my stomach: a guy’s bare arm.

Rubbing my eyes, I throw the arm off me. The boy attached to it is Dennis Kim, second-chair violin. He stirs but doesn’t wake. After the fight with Tovah, I was distraught. He was sitting alone, and I was sitting alone, and we decided to be not alone together.

I stare at his sleeping face. The night clarifies itself in my mind. Dennis lives down the block from the party and we sneaked into his bedroom. He was too drunk to stay excited, so nothing happened besides some sloppy making out. He begged me not to tell anyone at school about the not-getting-it-up part and then promptly fell asleep.

I grab my tights from the floor, and before I put them on, I glance at my legs. The scar on my right thigh still hasn’t healed—maybe it never will—and a new one slices down my left. I added it last week. To match.

I am a mess.

Supposedly, I came to terms with everything months ago, didn’t I, when I first devised with this plan? The entire point of it was to make my result easier to bear, pursue my passions with manic vigor, knowing I would end my life before I became my mother. But my supposed choice has only sunk me deeper, back into my old habits. I am the same Adina I’ve always been. Doomed and pretty and utterly lost. The center of attention for all the wrong reasons.

I am more than this. I am not just a pair of legs or breasts or hips. I am a mind and a soul and I know with certainty that Dennis Kim didn’t care about any of that.

“No more,” I whisper to myself as I finish getting dressed and slip out the window, my traitorous feet once again failing to keep me from stumbling.

With eight percent phone battery, I google the early symptoms of Huntington’s disease.