Marie left home the morning of the summer solstice, the first day of summer and the longest day of the year. Ellen, Beatrice, and I sat on the top trundle while she packed. She had kept me and Ellen up most of the night after we got home from the restaurant, sorting through her stuff, her clothes and makeup, her books, photo albums, everything. The turntable and speakers were going because they belonged to her, and so all the albums we had inherited would now be useless. Even when we were all in bed and the light had gone out, I wasn’t able to sleep. Sage and I had fought on the phone, Marie was leaving, and I had that feeling again of everything pitching.

Now Marie pattered around the room while we waited for her to toss us a shirt or a skirt or an old pencil case, stuff she wasn’t keeping.

“When will be the next time we see you?” Beatrice asked. She had stacked all her new things in a pile next to her but was worrying her fingers through loops of hair.

“When you come to the city on the train to visit me for a sleepover.”

“Really, Marie? Can we?” Beatrice looked at me. “Will you take us?”

“You can come,” Marie said, “but you’ll have to bring your own sleeping bags and be ready to sleep on the floor.”

“When?” asked Ellen.

“When I get settled. On a day I don’t have work.”

Marie was going through her school things, throwing stuff into a trash bag and setting aside a pile of textbooks and notes for me. Her blazer, sweater, and kilt were still crammed into her canvas school bag with her books and papers. She pulled them out and folded them, presenting them to Ellen on the trundle: the gray, maroon, and black plaid kilt, maroon sweater, and gray blazer with the maroon-and-yellow insignia, the school motto wrapped like a banner around the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Marie made a mock ceremony out of it.

“Cor ad cor loquitur—heart speaks to heart.” She dropped her head in mock reverence. “I give these garments to you, Ellen Gallagher, so that you, too, may walk the path of Jesus when in the wilderness that is Catholic girls’ high school.” She passed the uniform to Ellen like an offering.

Ellen solemnly received the bundle of hand-me-downs as if it were a great gift that had cost Marie something. “I will try to follow in your footsteps.”

“Yeah,” I added. “Make as few friends as possible and at all times show general contempt for everyone around you, just like your big sister.”

“I pledge allegiance.” Ellen chanted it, her hand on her heart.