Dead to Me Read Free Page B

code, and then you had to break it. For a while, Annie preferred the Caesar cipher, a simple
letter-substitution code that uses a disk with the alphabet inscribed in a ring. Inside, there’s a smaller, movable disk that you align with the letters on the outside ring to tell you which
letters to substitute.
    So, a code like this:
    dtz xrjqq
    with a wheel like this:
     

     
    would be broken like this:
    dtz xrjqq
    you smell
    The codes were easy to crack once you had the key, but Annie was very good at hiding them. There were things about our house that only she and I knew. We knew which stairs
creaked in which places, where the carpets were loose and could be pulled back, how long you could hide in the laundry chute before your arms gave out and you went tumbling into the basement, and
every cubby, crawl space, alcove, and hidey-hole in the place.
    Annie and I eventually realized the limitations of the Caesar cipher. Keys can be hidden, but they can also be found by the enemy, so we decided to invent a system that used the Caesar cipher
principle without a physical key. Instead of a wheel, the key to the code was located in the greeting or closing of the message, and we must have had a hundred of them. We taught a few of them to
our most trusted friends in the neighborhood and used them when we played spies or war or secret mission, but only Annie and I knew them all.
    It was fun while it lasted, but it didn’t. We grew up. The younger neighborhood kids went back to playing house and school and doctor, and Annie began to spend most of her free time being
carefully groomed for teenage stardom by our mother, and I was left somewhere in between.
    Of course I didn’t like it. You might think I was jealous that Annie was the chosen one, that she’d been whisked away to a glamorous world I wasn’t ever going to be a part of,
but that wasn’t it. We’d both been around movie people our entire lives, enough not to be dazzled by that kind of life. But I missed her. And I didn’t like the way she changed
when she ventured out into that world.
    When we were home on Sunday nights, Annie was full of clever ideas and funny stories, but when she came home from singing at those parties, she looked like all the life had been sucked out of
her. She’d ignore me when she came into the room, peel off her dress, and disappear into the bathroom for at least an hour. When she came out, she would sit at her vanity and brush her hair,
while practicing coquettish facial expressions in the mirror. After slathering a layer of cold cream on her face, she’d sink into bed without saying a word. It was like watching a
mannequin.
    In the morning, she’d be herself again, and I’d act like nothing had happened.
    Once, I asked her why she wouldn’t look at me, why she wouldn’t talk to me. All she said was, “Alice, when I get home from those things, I just wish I was invisible, so I
pretend that I am.”
    So, I let her be invisible. It didn’t seem like much to ask. If I’d known she would develop a taste for it, that one day she’d disappear altogether, maybe I would have done
something else. Maybe I would have tried harder to stop her.

W hen I got home from the hospital, I felt like I’d been gone for a year. My head was a hive of hospital sounds and ugly thoughts. My eyes
were bloodshot; my hair was greasy. I’d been wearing the same clothes for more than a day, and all I could think about were the bruises and bandages on my sister’s face.
    “How was Cassie?” my mother asked.
    “Fine,” I said, too jarred and lost in thought to make up a story about spending the night at my friend’s house.
    Fortunately, my mother wasn’t interested in hearing one.
    “I thought we’d have an early supper. Your father and I are meeting friends later on this evening, or at least we are if he ever gets home. I can’t imagine where he is right
now,” she said, chattering as much to herself as to me. “What’s the matter, Alice?