Sisters

by Daisy Johnson

I look at her face and she looks back, unblinking. I can see the beginning of an argument coming, the line of stubbornness that says she won’t back down, that I will have to. I’ve never been good at lying, but that is not something you could say about September. When we were children she would make me promise not to tell but I would always give it away. Did you take the coins from the side? Mum would say. Did you set fire to this toilet roll? Did you bury the end of the washing line? No, I’d say, but my neck would go hot-blotchy and I’d start stuttering. One of the teachers took me aside once and said, Does September make you do things you don’t want to do? And I said no no no no but underneath the no there was a maybe that I think about only at times like this.