Sometimes I felt left out, when Kiki, Mom and Dad would talk about what color our new car should be, or which movie we could go see. They were all used to talking about things together for five years before I was born, and sometimes it was hard for me to push my way into their conversations. Most of the time, I could do it with a joke. Sometimes they laughed, and sometimes they didn’t (even though I was always funny), but at least they heard me.

I always thought of myself as the clown in the family, but now that I’m gone, and I see what they’re like without me, I know I wasn’t just the clown, but the glue. I was the one who held them all together, whether they were laughing at something I did or annoyed with me getting in the way. They always had to worry about where I was, who would stay with me and who would drive me to T-ball practice. Without me to fuss over, everything fell apart.

Dad is back to spending all his time At Work, like Before. I never knew it, but now I can see he gets really excited when he’s there. He feels the way I did when I played T-ball with my team on the weekends.

Mom is always in my room, which doesn’t really feel like my room anymore. I like that she spends all day in there with me, even if all the fun things are gone, boxed up and moved into the garage. Mom said she couldn’t look at them anymore, but she touched and kissed every single book and toy (even every T-shirt!) before she packed them up. No one was there to see her but me, so I know she really meant it.

And Kiki, poor Kiki, she’s all alone now. It used to be the two of us, together always, and even though Kiki got annoyed with me, I know she loved our super-awesome power duo too. Now she has no one—no one who’s like her, no one who understands her. She spends time with her friends, but she doesn’t tell them anything important. They don’t know the little secrets I know, like how she wishes she had straight hair like Izzy, and how she actually likes those dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets dipped in ketchup, just like me.

Kiki spends too much time in the bathroom, but not just trying on makeup like before. Now she does things she thinks no one else will see. And she’s kind of right, because Mom and Dad don’t see her anymore, not really. They don’t see inside her to all the pain and hurt she feels, the swarm of snakes coiling around in her belly when she’s awake, and in her mind when she sleeps. She hurts herself just to drown it out, but it never works for very long. I want to bang on our bathroom door, like I used to when I really had to pee in the morning and she was still doing her hair. I want to bang and say, Stop, Kiki, stop!