“Yeah,” I said. “We’re going to have an art show at the end of the week.” That I’m bummed you guys are missing. If it was your show, Mom would have made it work.

Frankie has it harder than you, Mean Me snapped. Stop being so selfish.

“I’m really nervous about it,” I admitted, trying to connect with her. “It makes me feel like barfing to imagine everyone looking at my art.”

“Everyone in the world will be at your art show?” Frankie asked, so literal.

“No,” I said. “You know what I mean.”

“Just don’t worry about it.”

I smelled bacon wafting up from downstairs. “That’s easy for you to say. I worry about everything.”

“I know the cure.” It seriously sounded like she had the phone in her mouth.

“Can you move back from the phone?” I asked. “I can’t understand you.”

“No,” Frankie said. “Do you want the cure for worrying?”

“Sure,” I said, annoyed again, wanting to get off the phone. Wanting to have a normal conversation with my sister, for once. Wanting her to be normal!

Wow. Just wow.

You’ve hit a new level of repulsive. It’s a good thing that the stuff you think isn’t posted on social media for everyone to see, or you’d never have any friends, ever.

You’re the worst.

The voice in my head was right: I was the worst. Hand over my mouth like I’d shouted it out loud, I couldn’t believe I’d wished my sister to be anyone other than herself. At least I’d managed not to say it out loud.

“You have to schedule your worrying,” Frankie said.

“Sorry, what?”

“You should schedule one minute every day to let yourself go wild with worrying. Other times during the day, you’re not allowed to worry. You just say to yourself, ‘Not until three p.m.’ or whatever.”

“Oh,” I said, distracted by my horribleness. “That’s a good idea.”

“I schedule my worrying minute for one in the morning.”

“When you’re asleep?” I felt awful. Guilty. Like the worst sister ever.

“Exactly. I trick the system.”

I smiled through tears. “Hey, Franks?”

“What.”

“I love you,” I said, guilt weighing on me.

“Uh-huh,” Frankie replied in her close-up voice. “Cool.”

I checked the clock on my phone, emotions twisted. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Kai and I had Tots at the diner yesterday,” Frankie said randomly. “They weren’t as good as normal.”

I got it, warmth spreading through me, making me homesick and guiltier at the same time. The diner was the place Frankie and I had gone when we were trying to figure out what had happened to Colette when she’d gone missing, and since then, it’d become our thing. We went every few weeks and shared Tater Tots.

I heard what Frankie was saying without saying: she missed me.

She loved me, too.