“That’s the gene pool I love,” said Marie. “It’s because you’re too tall and you already have one,” she said, turning to me, as if I had been wondering why Ellen got the uniform instead of me. I had already done my freshman and sophomore years.

Ellen hung the clothes on her side of the closet, using a wooden skirt hanger. She had just one more year in middle school before she came into high school and changed from the pinafore to the kilt.

Earlier, Marie had taken down her Siouxsie poster and rolled it up with rubber bands. Our room looked bare and somehow bigger, as though our voices would echo in it. She had swept all her jewelry into the metal Popeye lunch box she had kept since first grade. Her albums were alphabetically arranged in neat rows in a box, everything facing the same direction. From the shelves she had started selecting her books. The Jane Austen set my mother had given her went into the second box, along with her copies of A Clockwork Orange, Rabbit Redux, and Slaughterhouse-Five. I had tried to read all those books after her but had given up. I wasn’t smart like she was. From the top shelf she took down The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock n’ Roll that Dad had given her.

“You can’t take that,” I said.

“It’s mine.”

“But it belongs here.”

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you? It’s mine, and I’m taking it. I’m not coming back.”

“You will. At Thanksgiving and Christmas and next summer and all the times you come back. And the book will be here. At home.”

Marie ignored me and kept sifting through the books and stacking hers into a box. The Nancy Drew complete set was pushed against the back of the bottom shelf, my quartz collection arranged in front. “You can have my half of the Nancy Drews. I bequeath them to you,” Marie said. Neither of us had read them in years.

“Fuck you,” I said, and stood to walk out of the room. “And Nancy Drew,” I added, and slammed the door. The rhyme was an accident and ruined the impact of my exit. I could hear them laughing. I sat outside on the front doorstep. Three trash bags, two boxes, and a little blue suitcase with red trim were lined up on the driveway. I wanted to take that suitcase back, too, and hide it where Marie couldn’t find it. I looked across at the Walkers’ newly shorn grass and perfect flower beds, mulched and layered with dark wood chips. Their grass was still glistening from the automatic sprinklers that came on each morning, quenching their deep-green lawn. Ours looked desperate, bald patches, uneven spurts of yellowed growth and any possibility of green hidden at the root.