June’s missing and no one seems to care. No police report, no missing persons search, nothing. It’s been three months and her school should have sent a letter: a call, even. Mama and Baba haven’t noticed either. No one seems even curious why June hasn’t called, emailed, or even sent a letter.
No one seems to know she’s missing except me.
Lily Zhao runs out of her bedroom to the living room and takes a sudden stop, her socks digging into the carpet. Mama sits on the couch, scrolling through her phone, chuckling to herself about some silly thing on Weibo. Baba places a plate of fried eggs on the center of the table, adding a plate of bacon.
She sits down at her place, the bowl of rice porridge steaming in front of her. She turns to look at the empty seat next to her.
Lily opens her mouth, expecting words to fall out. Like hoping puzzle pieces dumped on the floor will arrange themselves into the picture. Instead, she says, “June won’t answer my texts.”
“Why not call your sister?” Baba asks.
“No one ‘calls.’ Only weird people trying to sell you something.”
“Tch. June is a college girl now,” her mother says. “You should get ready for high school.”
“I’m ready.” She’s in basic jeans, t-shirt, jacket with a hoodie lining because it’s a winter day. Backpack already set with all her things, but her parents of course haven’t noticed.
When June left for college, Lily expected things to change. To be seen for being herself. Not the second place out of two. Mama and Baba had a constant set of expectations for their eldest: their expectation for Lily was to be more like June. Her sister did well under the pressure: straight As, extracurriculars, sports (tennis), even volunteer work at church.
Lily does those things too. Well, maybe not straight As, more like straight A-minuses, and volleyball’s a team sport so maybe not as easy to shine, and her volunteer work always seems to be shadowing June’s. She wants to know what college’s like. Will it change things?
Well, nothing to do about it. If June won’t return her texts, what can she do?
When Daniel asks Lily how June is doing, she gets that usual tinge of irritation: Daniel always asks how June is doing. He’s had a crush on her ever since he was a first year, following after her sister at Saturday school. June would help out the seven-year-olds with their handwriting and Daniel would hang by her side, holding pencils, calligraphy brushes, and workbooks.
“Isn’t it weird you don’t know how she’s doing?” he asks. “June said you two were close. You talk all the time.”
“We lived together.”
Daniel rolls his eyes. “C’mon, really. Just tell me how she’s doing, Lily Zhao.”
“She’s not going to date you, Daniel.” Ok, maybe that is a bit mean, but his constant questioning hits upon a bruise.
He frowns. “I know that…”
Isn’t it weird… Isn’t it weird… Isn’t it weird…
“I tell her you said ‘hi,’ ok? Whenever I talk to her.”
Lily gets quite annoyed with how happy that makes Daniel feel (even through his mask, she can see his eyes light up) and this annoyance carries her through the rest of the school day.
What the heck happened?! I walk into my room, and the flood of memories makes me dizzy. I have to sit down on the bed. One moment I’m still pissed off at Daniel, the next I realize: He’s right! Something is weird.
I check my phone. All text messages to June, none from her. I check my email. Same, all messages to her, none from her. I look up June’s dorm and find a general front desk phone number and when I enter it into my phone, I re-remember that I have already called several times in the past few days.
Is this happening to anyone else?
No. No one else. Only I remember, and only some of the time.
The next morning, she says, “No, Daniel, I haven’t talked to June.”
He shakes his head, lying. “I wasn’t going to ask…”
Lily rolls her eyes. (She really has to stop doing that.) “It’s pretty obvious you were going to.”
Daniel turns red. “Well, why wouldn’t I? You’re wearing her coat. I’m not supposed to think of June when I look at that coat?”
“What?”
Lily looks down and a weird click happens in her head. June always looked sophisticated in her deep red peacoat. Like something out of a French movie. Lily knew she had asked June if she could have it, because California has such mild weather.
“It still gets cold in the Bay Area, Lily.”
She remembers trying it on the day June was packing, and June letting her wear it all day. The coat was a little long for her, and the shoulders a little too wide; June was tall and willowy and perfect, womanly and just beautiful with Lily a little shorter but ganglier. But that day Lily felt more adult in that red coat, letting the feeling linger even after she gave it back.
And June had a bunch of designer masks with all sorts of designs that matched the coat. Yet another thing June is perfect at: her glasses never fogging up in those masks.
I guess that is one thing I have over June. My eyes are ok.
Anyways, June had mentioned the matching masks and that logic convinced Lily to take off the coat and give it back.
She gave it back.
Didn’t she?
Then why is she wearing it?
Ok. Whenever I leave my room, I forget that everyone’s forgotten about June. No, not forgotten exactly. More like they take her ghosting as normal. She still exists, but as a memory. And it happens to me too each time I walk out the door.
It only happens when I leave my bedroom. I even hopped out of my window and Mama found me outside, confused and in my socks. She and Baba don’t seem to remember at all.
What if… June is fine and only I think something’s wrong? If I think one way only in my room and the whole world thinks the other way outside, which one is right?
Ok, an idea. Write a note telling myself what’s going on, mention my favorite snack (those black sesame candies) as proof, and slide it under my door.
I should see a big, folded note with my name on it, when I leave my room.
Let’s see if this works.
Lily’s foot kicks a folded piece of paper and it slides on the hardwood floor, bouncing against the walls until it stops at Jennifer’s feet. Her younger sister picks it up in one hand and pulls her other hand back, ready to throw her own note.
“Catch!”
Jennifer throws it way wrong, tossing it too high, hitting the ceiling, coming right back down onto Lily’s face. Specifically her eye.
“Ow! Jen that hurt!”
“Noooooo… I’m sorry!”
She feels Jennifer’s hands on her face, as if she is a saint blessing her with her touch. Lily bats those invasive hands away. “Stop touching my face. You’ll give me zits.”
Lily then feels Jennifer press a folded piece of paper into her hand. One eye is tearing up, but with her other eye, she sees a note with her name on it in Jennifer’s handwriting. They have been doing that What am I? game for a while now. Tbh, Jennifer’s clues make no sense.
You are my big sister.
I am your little sister.
Forever and always.
❤
This isn’t even a clue.
“Lily! Jennifer!” Mama yells. “You’re going to be late to school.”
She tucks Jennifer’s note into the pocket of her red coat and grabs her backpack.
“Hey, Lily. Um, here.”
Daniel hands her a single red rose wrapped in florist’s plastic. The crinkling sound is so loud and public. Especially in the middle of the quad and her in her red coat.
“Daniel, you didn’t have to do this.”
“No, I wanted to. For Winter Formal.”
“I told you that I don’t really date. And I’m not going to the dance.”
“You don’t have to listen to your parents—”
Daniel has always had a crush on her, ever since they were first years together. At Saturday school, he follows her around, joins the same activities she joins. The time they partnered up in planning the Halloween haunted house, complete with hungry ghosts and hopping vampires, and he complimented her new glasses…
I don’t wear glasses.
She reaches into her backpack for her purse. She sees, buried with her other things, a burgundy glasses case. She’s always had good vision; it’s the one thing she has that her sister doesn’t.
Jennifer doesn’t wear glasses either.
“Daniel… I’ll think about it, ok. But no promises.”
Maybe in a way she is flattered, but like puzzle pieces for the wrong kind of puzzle, Lily feels something is breaking the rules somehow.
When Lily comes home, she sees Mama and Baba rearranging the living room with Jennifer’s help. Clearing away the dining table for Mama’s laptop. Moving some chairs out of the tv room to put in a table for Baba’s laptop. A lot of moving standing lamps around to find the best lighting.
“What’s going on?”
“Our work closed their offices because of the COVID surge,” Mama says. “We’re working from home now.”
Baba shakes his head. “I like working at the office.”
“Tch. I don’t.”
“You can stay at home, then.”
“What are you going to do? Drive to work and sit in your car?”
“Maybe. Or if no one is at work, I can go there by myself. I can’t give COVID to myself.”
Jennifer lifts up one of the exiled chairs. “Do you want to take the other one, Lily? Put it in your room?”
“Uh, sure. I guess I have the space.”
Jennifer follows Lily down the hallway. “I heard schools are closing too. All of them. We have to learn over Zoom now.”
“I… haven’t heard that.”
“Didn’t you get an announcement?” Jennifer points to Lily’s pocket.
With an exaggerated sigh, Lily sets the chair down, slips off her backpack, and sets it on the chair. She reaches into her pocket and removes a folded note. “Jen, this is one of your games.”
“No, open it.”
More eye rolling. Lily unfolds the note:
She said I should leave you all alone.
So now her wish can come true.
One big happy family.
“Huh, ok, I guess I’m going to school in my pajamas now. Oh, Winter Formal must be cancelled too,” Lily says. The words on the note blur a little and she realizes that she isn’t wearing her glasses again, but the relief she feels in not giving Daniel an answer overshadows all that.
What the heck is happening?! Who is Jennifer?!
I’ve been in my room for two days straight; well, not counting trips to the bathroom. I’m staring at the dining chair now in the middle of my room. I’m trying my best not to drink water, holding it in as long as I can before going to the bathroom. I thought of peeing in a big jar but, ugh, I just can’t do it. I can wait until my bladder’s bursting, which is pointless, if I think about it.
But there’s always a moment where I wonder if I might not return to my room. That I’ll stay out there in the rest of the house, the rest of the world, completely forgetting that one of my sisters is missing and the other one is a fake.
Am I me anymore when I’m out there? The memories feel real. Everything feels normal, with me taking June’s place. Her coat, her glasses, Daniel’s crush, my parents proud of me/her when I do well, but so disappointed when I don’t. For so long, I wondered what it was like to be June, and now it feels like being crushed in a fist.
And Jennifer… who is Jennifer? Is she even real? She seems real outside. And it feels natural that she’s my younger sister, but right now in my room I know it’s wrong. She doesn’t exist.
“Lily, are you ok?”
A stranger’s voice drifts through my closed door. A stranger’s voice that sounds perfectly normal outside, a voice I remember both loving and driving me crazy. I want to say something to this stranger but instead it gets caught in my throat, and I just want to hide under the covers and pretend I’m six again.
“I’m not feeling well. Don’t come in. I don’t want you to get sick.”
While the first two sentences are true, in a way, I can feel the lie of the third sentence infecting the rest. I’m sure this Jennifer-not-Jennifer can smell the lie. She’ll then go to my parents, who will drag me out of bed to find out I’m faking. And then I’ll forget and end up like an actor pretending to be me.
I slide deeper in bed and pull the comforter over my head. My heart’s beating so loud I can see the comforter shake. I hear the creak of my door, slowly opening. A part of me wants to shout, “Get out of my room!” It’s what a normal sister would do. But is Jennifer a normal sister herself?
“Lily?”
The voice is definitely not muffled by the door.
“Here’s some soup. Hope you feel better.”
The door softly closes.
Is… is she in my room?!
Heck it, I throw the covers off, ready to shout, “Jennifer!” and instead a bowl of canned chicken soup, the color almost glowing yellow, and a porcelain spoon next to it sits on a plate on the floor.
I can’t help myself. So hungry. I gulp it down, warm, thick like stew, and salty. Jennifer must have accidentally opened a can of concentrate. Yet it’s warming, settles in my stomach, and ends that hunger ache.
Except, oh no, it’s mostly water, right?
“Lilyyyyyyyy!”
Jennifer clamps onto Lily’s arm, pressing against her like a cat demanding food, pets, or attention.
“I need help with my homewoooooooork. Can I borrow your laptop?”
Homework help again? Has a week already passed? Where did the time go? Lily lets out an obvious, loud sigh.
“Pssssss,” Mama hisses. “Don’t make noise like a balloon. Help your sister.”
Lily controls that impulse to roll her eyes and lets Jennifer drag her away from the dining table and toward Jen’s room, laptop in hand. Jennifer lets go and skips inside, but Lily finds herself hesitating at the doorway. She steps across the threshold. She doesn’t feel different. Why would she?
Jennifer pats the dining chair next to hers at her desk. “Are you ok, Lily?”
“…I’m still feeling icky.”
“My poor jiejie.”
No, this isn’t right. Lily stands up. “Uh… I don’t…” She runs out of the room and into the bathroom, both for privacy and as an excuse.
We don’t use jiejie or meimei with each other. It just sounds weird. But it’s more than just weird. It’s wrong.
They started Saturday school a little later than most, both her and Jennifer. No, that’s not right, Jen’s four years younger so she wouldn’t be old enough to start Saturday school. She remembers being a little confused, struggling with the idea of learning other words for words she already knew. That’s why her Mandarin’s worse than her younger sister…
No, that’s not right. She took to it like a fish to water.
But because they originally grew up not calling each other jiejie or meimei, they never took it as their own. It was their parents’ language, despite them speaking English too. But she had always called Ju… Jennifer that or Jen, and she always called her Lily. They have never even said jiejie or meimei to each other as a joke.
It’s definitely “Jennifer.” She’s doing this.
Every time I walk out of my room, my brain resets, but Jennifer happens to be there to steal the notes from my hand or pluck the warning from my purse or backpack. Now she’s managed to get my laptop.
A light scrapping of fingernails on wood clues me in that Jennifer is standing on the other side of my bedroom door. I step closer, but definitely not right next to the door.
“Where’s June? Is she ok?” I whisper.
“June’s with me.” Somehow, Jennifer whispering is worse than her normal voice, as if it isn’t quite there, isn’t quite human.
“Why are you doing this?”
“June said she’d stay with me if I left your family alone.”
“But you’re not leaving us alone. You’re torturing us.”
“Your mother is happy. Your father is happy. You’re happy when you leave your room. And now you are all finally alone.”
Because of the self-quarantine.
“How are you doing this?”
“It’s an old curse. We didn’t have houses. But you people came and built houses where we lived. So we make you forget when you walk through a door, give us spaces for us to exist in between.”
“Then why can I remember when I’m in my room?”
“That is where you are safe, a child’s kind of safety. Children always know who we are.”
“Do my parents remember when they are in their bedroom?”
“No. They’re grown. You’re not yet grown.”
“And June?”
“She is almost grown.”
Is. Present tense. She’s alive!
“Let her go. Please. Let us go.”
“No.” Definitive. No bargaining with that. “June promised.”
“I want to talk to her. See her.”
“I’m your meimei.” A hiss that sends chills down my spine.
“I don’t even know you.”
“You know. You will know. You have always known.”
It’s not going well, to put it lightly. It has been a couple of weeks, and except for a brief moment opening the front door, no one has left the house. Mama and Baba sign up for an expensive organic food delivery service, and Lily keeps pestering them about it. The spending of money seems so out of character for them; Lily even volunteers to do the grocery shopping.
“Cabin fever?” Baba mutters, not even looking up from his laptop.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Look out a window.”
“You know, it’s not like COVID is a robber, hiding in the bushes waiting to jump out and grab us. We can go outside. We have masks.”
This time Baba turns toward her, glasses low on his nose, eyes peering over the top of the frames. “Aren’t you still sick? Now you want to go run around outside?”
“No, I’m fine. It’s already been a couple of weeks.”
She turns and a sudden flush of heat and Lily feels like someone spun her around in the dryer a little too long. Too much heat, too much spinning, and something like static electricity that’s making her head light and buzzy.
Mama walks up to her and places a freezing cold hand to Lily’s forehead. “You’re warm. Go lie down. Why are you walking around if you’re sick?”
“But I’m not…”
“Yeah, Lily, go to your room,” Jennifer says. “Quit hogging the table.”
Lily has an urge to cough over her sister’s head, but instead, as the good older sister, she does not, and goes to her room to…
Where’s my phone?! Does Jennifer have my phone?!
I’m back in my room again. Is this what being claustrophobic is like?! I swear the walls move, closing in on me. I can’t seem to focus on the same off-white color of the walls everywhere, even though I have posters and prints taped up for some art and color. It isn’t just being stuck in the house for almost a month; it’s knowing that I don’t have a choice, not even to stand outside.
She’s keeping us in the house now. Every time we want to leave, she does something with our memory to keep us from doing so.
I tried calling out to Mama and Baba while I’m in my room. When they get into the hallway, though, Jennifer distracts them enough that they forget why they were coming to me in the first place.
I open the door to see her standing in the hallway, arms crossed and foot tapping. Jennifer looks like what a younger sister should look like. I resist the urge to reach out and pinch my sis… this thing’s cheeks. What if it felt real? Then what? What if it felt unreal? Then what?
“If you were really my sister,” I say instead, “you wouldn’t keep us trapped here.”
“That’s not what you told June: you said you’d get Mama and Baba all to yourself when she left.”
“N… no. It was a joke.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Jennifer’s voice turns hard and sharp, like a cleaver, and then melts, softens and sweetens. “It was true.”
“Yes, it was true. Not anymore. Please.”
“And now you are the good sister. I can be the bad one.”
“We can both be good. We can all be good.” The words just keep spilling out of my mouth. “June can be good. Just let us go.”
“It’s your turn.”
I have this thought bouncing in my head. My heart races. If only I can grab it. “Fine. You want me to be the good, older sister?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to be the bad, younger sister?”
“Yes!”
“As bad as I was?”
“Yes!”
“Ok.” I take a step back, as if pulling on a string. “Then… If I’m older, I’m in charge. You have to listen to me.”
Jennifer smiles. Her teeth don’t look that sharp. “No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. I listened to June.” Jennifer opens her mouth to object, but I cut her off. “I did. You know I did. It took a while. I complained each time. I did the wrong thing, usually, but then I realized that June was right afterward.”
“No!”
“June told me that Daniel was just playing with me. He just wanted me to invite him over so he could see her. I thought she was being jealous, but really Daniel was being a pest.”
“No!”
“June told me to try and make friends. Told me that the girls in the class were as insecure as I was. I got mad at her, told her I wasn’t insecure. She said everyone gets insecure and not to be afraid of it.”
“No!”
“June told me I didn’t have to get straight-As. To just take the classes I want. To give myself time to be myself.”
“No!”
“Jennifer. Take me to June. Right now.”
“No!”
I can hear Jennifer throwing a temper tantrum, one so loud that Mama and Baba intervene. One so bad that they threaten to ground her in her room until she apologizes and listens to me, her older sister. Because I’m the good sister, the one my parents listen to. Jennifer is the bad sister who has to listen to me.
“Fine!”
I expect, hope that Jennifer would lead me outside, take me away from the house and break the spell. Instead, she brings me to her… no, June’s room.
June’s here! She’s been here the whole time!
And she’s so thin. I can see the shape of her skull under her skin. Her eyes have dark circles underneath. Her teeth seem to be popping out of her mouth. She’s naked, her ribs showing, reminding me of pictures of starving dogs. She’s so thin I can see the inflation and contraction of each breath, deep yet fragile.
I turn to Jennifer and my jaw clamps shut, forcing me to speak through clenched teeth. “Fix her!”
“I give her soup. Like I gave you.”
“Not enough!” I slip an arm underneath my sister. “June. You’ll be ok.”
June opens her eyes, but I see no light in them. And though our eyes lock, it doesn’t seem like June sees me. I lift her up and I’m surprised I can; June has lost so much weight.
“She can’t leave. She stays with me.”
“I don’t care if you stay in this room or if you come with us, but I’m taking her out of here.”
Jennifer stands in my way out the bedroom door. “No.”
“Go ahead and zap me. Make me forget. Maybe you can keep me here in this room and starve me too. I don’t care. If you were really a Zhao, you wouldn’t do this. You wouldn’t do this to family. At least I listen. I pay attention. I know what my family says about me, thinks about me. I might not like it sometimes. I might not agree. They might be wrong. But they don’t hate me like you do.”
“I don’t hate you…” Jennifer’s pout is almost convincing.
“You act like it. You keep us trapped in here!”
“You live in houses,” Jennifer hisses. “Our lands were warm with sun and the free running of meat and blood until you stripped them away. You came and tore everything out by their roots and forgot that you did so. A little forgetfulness now is nothing.”
Something shifts in my chest. For the longest time, I hated, well, no, resented June, but now seeing her wasting on the bed, I realize she is just… my sister. A person. She can’t help being the eldest. And until now, I’ve been alternatively scared and furious at Jennifer.
But instead, I pity her, maybe feel sad. Whatever Jennifer may be, she has no home, no family. “If this keeps going, we’ll all starve to death, and then you’ll be alone again.”
“Yes and this house will be mine.”
“You could have scared us away. You could have chased us off. But you wanted to be a little sister. You wanted to be a Zhao. You wanted to have a home. And if you want to be part of this family, you will act like it.”
Jennifer pauses, and then she smiles. “Fine. Have it your way.”
I don’t believe (or I don’t want to believe) the “official story.” That June starved herself. But the proof is how withered and weak she is. Maybe I didn’t really know June, that she felt all that pressure. But the June I know appears when she grabs the chopsticks from Mama’s hands to feed herself.
“I’m not a baby,” June rasps.
“Tch. You’re still a baby to have this happen to you.” But Mama gets up to get more food, as if stuffing June now with rice and bao and pork and bai cai and dofu and peanuts and fish and gai lan will instantly return her to health.
There’s something unsaid though. That the stress of college caused June to develop an eating disorder. Baba’s on the phone yelling at anyone at the school, administrators, dorm resident assistants, even a poor janitor. I know he won’t actually sue. He just wants to blame someone.
Maybe I didn’t appreciate how hard it was to be June.
June herself can’t or won’t say what happened, and I don’t want to pry. All I can do is help out around the house, be there if June needs me, and make sure she gets better. She doesn’t need judgement right now, and that includes making sure Mama or Baba doesn’t get too overbearing.
Jennifer runs up and grabs June by the shoulders, knocking the pork from her chopsticks and onto the table. “I’m glad you’re home, June.”
“Jen! Hey! She’s trying to eat,” I say.
“It’s ok. I’m glad I’m home too.”
“See? June’s glad I’m glad.”
I roll my eyes as obvious as I can, maybe too obvious, since Mama says, “Don’t do that weird thing with your eyes. Encourage your sisters to behave.”
I suppress a sigh. June lightly laughs. “I did miss this.”
“Aha! That means I’m June’s favorite!” Jennifer says.
“Let her go, Jen. Let her eat.” Ever since June left for college, Jennifer has been nothing but a brat. Well, she has always been a brat.
But maybe Mom’s right. Maybe I need to step up.
“We should go out to eat this time,” I say. Jennifer gives me a look I can’t figure out.
Baba nods his head. “Yes, we need a treat. Let’s go to Hearth for pizza.”
“Baba, you only like going there because the owner is Chinese,” I say.
“And what’s wrong with that? He gives us extra food for free.”
“I think Baba just likes the idea of getting free food, no matter how much Mr. Chen gets him to spend,” June says, softly but with a smile.
“See?” Mama says. “Even your daughters know how sneaky Mr. Chen is.”
At least this is a plan instead of fussing over June. “Fine. Jen, is pizza ok?”
Jen gives me another look I can’t interpret.
“Aren’t we worried about the pandemic?” Jen asks.
“She has a point,” June says. “And I don’t know if… I want to sit out in public right now…”
Duh. Of course. June needs her rest. “Ok, how about… Jen, Baba, and I go mask up and pick up the pizza, get whatever other snacks we need, some bottled soda, and bring it back?”
Baba chuckles. “Good idea. You’re in charge. Are you paying too?”
I give him a glare. “Baba, be serious. C’mon, Jen, back me up.”
Jen has a weird pause. Probably thinking who to kiss up to. “Yeah, Lily’s in charge. Let’s go out and get the pizza. Celebrate us being a family again.”
While being rained on in Oregon, Monte Lin edits, writes, and plays tabletop roleplaying games. He has stories in Cossmass Infinities, Cast of Wonders, Flame Tree Press, and others, and Ignyte-nominated nonfiction at Strange Horizons. He is Managing Editor of Uncanny Magazine and can be found on Bluesky @montelin.bsky.social
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