Jodie Picoult - My Sister's Keeper

"What?"

"What do you want me to say, Julia? I wasn't good enough for you. You deserved better than some freak who might fall down frothing at the mouth any old minute."

Julia goes perfectly still. "You might have let me make up my own mind."

"What difference would it have made? Like you really would have gotten great satisfaction guarding me like Judge does when it happens; wiping up after me, living at the end of my life." I shake my head. "You were so incredibly independent. A free spirit. I didn't want to be the one who took that away from you."

"Well, if I'd had the choice, maybe I wouldn't have spent the past fifteen years thinking there was something the matter with me."

"You?" I start to laugh. "Look at you. You're a knockout. You're smarter than I am. You're on a career track and you're family-centered and you probably even can balance your checkbook."

"And I'm lonely, Campbell," Julia adds. "Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has its own zip code. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PMS. You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact that they're not."

I don't know how to respond to that; it's like being told after thirty-five years that the sky, which I've seen as a brilliant blue, is in fact rather green.

"And another thing—this time, you don't get to leave me. I'm going to leave you."

If possible, that only makes me feel worse. I try to pretend it doesn't hurt, but I don't have the energy. "So go."

Julia settles next to me. "I will," she says. "In another fifty or sixty years."

I KNOCK ON THE DOOR of the men's room, and then walk inside. On one wall is a really long, gross urinal. On the other, washing his hands in a sink, is Campbell. He's wearing a pair of my dad's uniform pants. He looks different now, as if all the straight lines that had been used to draw his face have been smudged. "Julia said you wanted me to come in here," I say.

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you alone, and all the conference rooms are upstairs. Your dad doesn't think I ought to tackle that just yet." He wipes his hands on a towel. "I'm sorry about what happened."

Well, I don't even know if there's a decent answer to that. I chew on my lower lip. "Is that why I couldn't pat the dog?"

"Yeah."

"How does Judge know what to do?"

Campbell shrugs. "It's supposed to have something to do with scent or electrical impulses that an animal can sense before a human can. But I think it's because we know each other so well." He pats Judge on the neck. "He gets me somewhere safe before it happens. I usually have about twenty minutes' lead time."

"Huh." I am suddenly shy. I've been with Kate when she's really, really sick, but this is different. I hadn't been expecting this from Campbell. "Is this why you took my case?"

"So that I could have a seizure in public? Believe me, no."

"Not that." I look away from him. "Because you know what it's like to not have any control over your body."

"Maybe," Campbell says thoughtfully. "But my doorknobs did sorely need polishing."

If he's trying to make me feel better, he's failing miserably. "I told you having me testify wasn't the greatest idea."

He puts his hands on my shoulders. "Anna, come on. If I can go back in there after that performance, you sure as hell can climb into the hot seat for a few more questions."

How am I supposed to fight that logic? So I follow Campbell back into the courtroom, where nothing is the way it was just an hour ago. With everyone watching him like he's a ticking bomb, Campbell walks up to the bench and turns to the court in general. "I'm very sorry about that, Judge," he says. "Anything for a ten-minute break, right?"

How can he make jokes about something like this? And then I realize: it's what Kate does, too. Maybe if God gives you a handicap, he makes sure you've got a few extra doses of humor to take the edge off.

"Why don't you take the rest of the day, Counselor," Judge DeSalvo offers.

"No, I'm all right now. And I think it's important that we get to the bottom of this." He turns to the court reporter. "Could you, uh, refresh my memory?"

She reads back the transcript, and Campbell nods, but he acts like he's hearing my words, regurgitated, for the very first time. "All right, Anna, you were saying Kate asked you to file this lawsuit for medical emancipation?"

Again, I squirm. "Not quite."

"Can you explain?"

"She didn't ask me to file the lawsuit."

"Then what did she ask you?"

I steal a glance at my mother. She knows; she has to know. Don't make me say it out loud.

"Anna," Campbell presses, "what did she ask you?"

I shake my head, tight-lipped, and Judge DeSalvo leans over. "Anna, you're going to have to give us an answer to this question."

"Fine." The truth bursts out of me; a raging river, now that the dam's washed away. "She asked me to kill her."

The first thing that was wrong was that Kate had locked the door to our bedroom, when there wasn't really a lock, which meant she'd either pushed up furniture or pennied it shut. "Kate," I yelled, banging, because I was sweaty and gross from hockey practice and I wanted to take a shower and change. "Kate, this isn't fair."

I guess I made enough noise, because she opened up. And that was the second thing: there was something just wrong about the room. I glanced around, but everything seemed to be in place—most importantly, none of my stuff had been messed with—and yet Kate still looked like she'd swilled a mystery.

"What's your problem?" I asked, and then I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and smelled it—sweet and almost angry, the same boozy scent I associated with Jesse's apartment. I started opening up cabinets and rummaging through towels and trying to find the proof, no pun intended, and sure enough there was a half-empty bottle of whiskey hidden behind the boxes of tampons.

"Looky here…" I said, brandishing it and walking back into the bedroom, thinking I had a great little wedge of blackmail to use to my advantage for a while, and then I saw Kate holding the pills.

"What are you doing?"

Kate rolled over. "Leave me alone, Anna."

"Are you crazy?"

"No," Kate said. "I'm just sick of waiting for something that's going to happen anyway. I think I've fucked up everyone's life long enough, don't you?"

"But everyone's worked so hard just to keep you alive. You can't kill yourself."

All of a sudden Kate started to cry. "I know. I can't." It took me a few moments to realize this meant she'd already tried before.

My mother gets up slowly. "It's not true," she says, her voice stretched thin as glass. "Anna, I don't know why you'd say that."

My eyes fill up. "Why would I make it up?"

She walks closer. "Maybe you misunderstood. Maybe she was just having a bad day, or being dramatic." She smiles in the pained way of people who really want to cry. "Because if she was that upset, she would have told me."

"She couldn't tell you," I reply. "She was too afraid if she killed herself she'd be killing you, too." I cannot catch my breath. I am sinking in a tar pit; I am running and the ground's gone beneath my feet. Campbell asks the judge for a few minutes so that I can pull myself together, but even if Judge DeSalvo answers, I am crying so hard I don't hear it. "I don't want her to die, but I know she doesn't want to live like this, and I'm the one who can give her what she wants." I keep my eyes on my mother, even as she swims away from me. "I've always been the one who can give her what she wants."

The next time it came up was after my mother came into our room to talk about donating a kidney. "Don't do it," Kate said, when they were gone.