The Total Care Center was vast, a series of flat-roofed white structures, like an industrial park, with ambulances outside. My mother parked and turned to me. She looked embarrassed.

“Maybe you should stay in the car,” she said.

“I didn’t come with you to stay in the car,” I said.

“Why did you?” she asked, looking straight over the steering wheel.

“I want to see her,” I said.

There were a few other families in the waiting room. No one was speaking. My mother and I sat on a white vinyl couch. She sat up very straight, her small hands clamped together, her lips glistening red.

A nurse in scrubs emerged, holding a female Total by the hand. The elfin child blinked in the light, her flaxen hair wavy and fine, as if each strand had been painted with a one-haired brush, like a Renaissance angel. Her large, triangular head seemed to float atop a slender neck. She wore a simple white tunic. My mother rushed up to the child and gave her the outsize lollipop we had brought with us, a flat disk of swirling color.

I knew it wasn’t E. I hadn’t seen my sister in three years, since she was five, but I knew it was the wrong girl. The nurse whispered to my mother, taking the lollipop, still wrapped in cellophane, from the child’s hand. The Total let her hand drop, as though accustomed to having no possessions. The nurse led her away, through another door. I looked at my mother. She had returned to the vinyl couch and was smiling, staring at the place where she had made her mistake. Now another nurse entered, holding E by the hand. She was identical to the other girl, but she was E. She looked at my mother, and her mouth opened slightly, revealing tiny porcelain china-doll teeth. Her high blue eyes widened. My mother walked over more tentatively this time, glancing at the nurse, who smiled. Then she knelt before E and gave her the lollipop. My sister took the sweet and rested its crinkly wrapping against her forehead.

I thought, I am going to get you out of here.

I began to hatch my plan as soon as I got back to boarding school. Holly Talbot and I were walking down the path from our dorm when I told her I wanted to spring E from the Center, run away, go on the lam, start my life.

“I’m sixteen, after all,” I said. “I don’t legally have to go to school anymore.”

“What will you do for money, Roxanne?” Holly asked, squinting at me. Holly loved money and planned to make piles of it.

“I’ll get jobs. I’ll take her out to the West Coast.”

“You could be an exotic dancer.”

“I can’t be a stripper; my middle is too fat.”