Missing Sisters -SA by Gregory Maguire

pretty fancy speech therapy, maybe an operation on her tongue when she’s a little older.
    It’s a burden we can’t accept; we couldn’t honor it. But we’ll clearly have to get to know her.
    She can come visit sometimes, maybe, if we all agree it’s a good idea.”

    “You know,” said Miami, “you people are real hypocrites.”

    “Hypocrites. What a word!” said Mr. Shaw. “Your vocabulary is improving, Miami.”

    “I mean it,” said Miami. “What’s the difference between me and Alice? I thought we were Catholics and had to love everybody. How can you make sandwiches on my plate and not make some for her too?”

    “We didn’t do it on purpose,” said Mrs. Shaw. “I don’t expect you to understand, sweetie.
    I expect you to be furious with us. But it just can’t be helped. And Alice might not want to come into a family where there are three babies and a girl who looks just like her but doesn’t have her ailments. It might make her feel inferior.”

    “I could help her learn to talk better, I know I could!” cried Miami. “You’re just mean!”

    “Me too,” said Garth bravely. “But I ain’t going to anybody else’s family for anything .” Miami ran inside and banged the screen door behind her. Garth ran after her, but she turned in the hall and shouted, “Get lost and stop following me, you creep!” So he changed his mind.

    She stormed upstairs. But not all the way to the tower. She went into the bathroom on the second floor and stood by the window with the light turned out, so they wouldn’t know she was there. The Shaws kept clipping their hedge and trimming their lawn as if there were no terrible crisis at hand. She hated them. It wasn’t fair.

    In her parents’ bedroom she flopped on the chenille bedspread, and absentmindedly pulled out some of the tufts and dropped little clumps of blue cotton on the floor. What an awful week this was! She wished Patty would come back; she wished things would get back to normal.
    She wished lightning would come down and strike all five members of her family at once. Then she could go find Alice and they could live by themselves in Washington Park or someplace.

    Are you thinking about me, Alice? she wondered. You don’t even know me. But there you were all along, growing up someplace not so far away. How come I got to be the one who got hit by the Dillons and then lucked out with the Shaws, and you only got dumb nuns like a thousand live-in baby-sitters? Maybe if we’d been together all along…like we should’ve been!
    We should’ve been!

    Call me up, she thought. Call me. Call me. She rolled on her stomach and stared at the phone on the bedside table. It was a trimline Princess phone. I don’t know your number. I don’t know where you live. You know where I am. Call me up. Call me.

    She was so ready to pick up the phone that when it did ring, she grabbed it before a full loud jangle could be heard out in the backyard. “Hello, Alice,” she whispered furiously.

    “You have to shout,” said Alice. “I can’t hear over these things.” They made a plan. Alice still had five bucks left from the talent show prize money. She would come back and ask Mr. and Mrs. Shaw to adopt her. How could they refuse her? Saturday would be a good time. Mr. Shaw would be home from work, and everybody’d be relaxed and in a good mood. “Have you got that?” said Miami, trying to shout softly. “I think come at ten. Then we can talk a bit at the bottom of the steps and plan it better. I knew you’d call.”

    “Sister John Boss isn’t going to like this very much,” said Alice. “But who cares?”

    “See you then,” said Miami. “Sis.”

    “So long,” said Alice. “Bye.” She didn’t hang up. She wasn’t very good at the phone, Miami realized.

    “Hang up now, someone’s coming,” said Miami, and did so herself.

    “Who’re you shouting at?” asked Garth.

    “None of your beeswax, nosy.”

    “You got grass stains all over