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can’t imagine that’s news to you.” Keith pulled out a pair of chairs—puffy brown brass ones, like from the “Wait to be Seated” area of a diner—and motioned that we should sit. We did. I balanced forward on the balls of my feet.
    We were close sisters. It also just so happened that she hated me. “I’ve got her phone,” I said, brandishing it. The move felt lame, like I was trying to prove a connection to her.
    “She hates phones. I’ve heard the rants. I’m sure she’s not suffering without it.”
    “Look, she’s in trouble. She needs help. You said she was here—so where is she?”
    Keith laughed. “She’s not in trouble. She’s doing fine.”
    “When did you last see her?”
    “She spent last night here.”
    “Really?” Cheyenne asked.
    “Did she seem okay?” I asked.
    He smirked. “Why, Little Miss Goodwin, wouldn’t she seem okay?”
    I could tell he knew something I didn’t. But how to make him reveal it?
    “I need you to tell me,” I said. “Please.”
    “Maya’s a good friend of mine. And I know she goes to great pains to make sure that her family doesn’t know where she is. So unless you cough up a better reason, I’d say it’s time for you to go.”
    All I wanted to do was talk to her. Why was that so hard? With any other sister, it would have been simple. But I couldn’t go telling everyone it looked like my little sis had killed her drug dealer sex-boy.
    “I know,” I said, clearing my throat, “that Maya and I aren’t too close anymore. I know she avoids me and my parents, that she might tell you she hates us. She’s probably involved in all sorts of things she’d be furious if any of us found out about. But she’s my sister, and something’s come up that makes it so important that I find her. I can’t explain it to you, but you have to know that I really need to do this. I’m not trying to get her in trouble. I’m trying to save her.”
    Keith lit a cigarette and stared at the tip. Never taking his eyes from the glowing point, he held the pack out to me and Cheyenne, placing it in his shirt pocket when we both declined. A shirt cuff fell back on his arm, and I saw beneath it a second cuff tattooed directly onto his flesh, complete with cuff link.
    “Maya,” he called, “your sister is here.”

6.
    S he was thirteen the first time she ran away. That evening I’d been doing dishes while listening to my parents scold her for skipping school. As I soaped a plate, it struck me: She’d said nothing to any of us for a week. She’d accepted my parents’ waves of frustration, but it was like we were a radio station and the technology didn’t work both directions. She’d stopped broadcasting anything back.
    I followed their lecture as it inevitably turned toward her failing schoolwork and lousy friends. I’ll stay flexible, I told myself. I’ll try not to judge. I’ll be the one she’s still willing to talk to. I knew she was barely sleeping anymore, that she spent her evenings reading magazines in the basement or watching TV on her computer. I set my alarm for one A . M ., when I knew our parents would be long asleep. I went to the kitchen and made peppermint hot chocolate, her childhood favorite. I poured two cartoon-kitten mugs full and headed downstairs.
    Back during the divorce year, Maya and I had fixated on those kitten mugs. We’d used them constantly, filling them with orange juice at breakfast, water at lunch, and milk at dinner. They always went to their special spot in the dishwasher, mine in the back and hers nestled right next to it. We’d take them to the roof and sip and talk, or on weekendmornings we’d walk around the neighborhood with steaming tea. On those walks she’d ask question after question about why our parents were splitting, even though I never had any answers. One morning, I made a plan with Dad to meet at the local fields to go over some soccer moves. I waited for him for an hour, until who came huffing down the street