Mom answered on the first ring. “Hey, Mom. I’m checking in like you asked,” I said, my voice as wobbly as a three-legged chair.

“Oh,” she said, not noticing. “Thank you, honey. I’ll let your father know. I’ve got to go already, but call again in two more hours.”

“Of course,” Aidy said over my shoulder.

“All right, love you girls. Talk soon.”

“Love you too.” I rolled my eyes as I hung up. “Of course,” I said, mocking not Aidy, but our mom, trying to regain my strength through the power of my sarcasm. “Of course she forgot.”

“Oh well. We did it. Makes us look better that we remembered. We only have two more hours before we have to do it again, so go shower. You’re going to flip out over what we found.”

In a matter of hours, our roles had reversed. She was excited, ready to keep going. I was exhausted, overwhelmed by the gravity of what I was piecing together.

Once in the bathroom, my own face surprised me. The bruises already starting to form under my eyes looked like two faint Cheshire cat grins, smiling at my every miscalculation. The bridge of my nose was a little flatter and wider than usual. Seeing it made the pain multiply, no longer a vague headache, but a concentrated nose ache.

“Aidy!” I called out. A swelling, starting in the base of my stomach, pushed upward. My voice cracked as I shouted my sister’s name again.

She burst into the room, yelling, “What?”

“Is it broken?” I asked her, hearing myself from outside my own mind, finding my hysteria to be an exact match for Harrison’s earlier fit.

She tried putting her hands on the sides of my arms. Her wheels spun with ways to placate me. “I don’t think so,” she told me. “It’s not bleeding anymore, and it’s not crooked or anything, so why don’t you shower and taken an ibuprofen, and we’ll put ice on it once you’re done. Okay? It really doesn’t look as bad as it probably feels. I promise.” She started to walk out, trying to trick me with her lack of urgency. She closed the bathroom door, then opened it again seconds later. “Are you having any trouble breathing?”

I inhaled. The air inside my nose moved like it was sneaking in the Marley way, compressing itself between narrow corridors. It was uncomfortable, but it moved. “Not really.”

“Okay.” She closed the door. She opened it again. “Keep breathing, then.” She closed the door a third, final time.

I took two ibuprofens and watched myself swallow them, taking in my fractured image until it became something worth appreciating. I turned away from the mirror to remove my filthy clothes, convincing myself that every unexpected hiccup had to be a necessary piece of the bigger picture.

Good thing Marley thrived on theatrics.