The Geometry of Sisters by Luanne Rice Page B

the year before that last vacation. After all our summers on Mackinac Island, years of looking out at the tiny islands, suddenly one had a lighthouse on it. It had grown just like a tree in a fairy tale—tall, powerful, graceful—sprung from the island soil during the spring, after the dark winter months. I remember driving down the dirt road, hearing Carrie gasp with joy.
    “A lighthouse!” she said. “Where did it come from?”
    “The state must have built it,” my father said. “Or the Coast Guard.”
    “It's so beautiful,” my mother said, sounding stunned.
    “Maybe it's magic,” Carrie said. “And only we can see it. It's a lighthouse just for us.”
    Our last two summers there, we watched the lighthouse at night. The beam would sweep twice, then go dark, then flash twice again. The light traced the bare wood ceiling in the room Carrie and I shared, bisecting all the angles. I'd look over at her, see her waiting for the beam to come again, a soft smile on her face as if someone was looking over us. We always wanted to paddle out to it, but our parents said it was too far for us to go alone, and we only had the one canoe.
    So Travis and I hugged the banks, paddling west. I kept looking at the magic lighthouse, wondering how far away it was, imagining that
this
year Carrie and I would go out there. She was sixteen, old enough to take me on our own. My brother and I could smell the bacon frying on shore, Mom cooking breakfast for everyone. But paddling along, Travis and I got distracted by this cool thing: a stream heading into the woods just around the bend, a beaver dam across the stream, and a big fallen tree that made a bridge we could walk on.
    We missed breakfast.
    We beached the canoe around that bend, crossed the tree bridge, watched the beavers nibble logs into pencil points. It was so cool, we just couldn't stop watching. Finally, when we got home, we ran to tell everyone what we'd seen.
    But something was wrong. Carrie was quiet, and our parents weren't speaking. The bacon and eggs were just sitting there on the picnic table, flies landing, as gross as you can imagine. Mom and Dad fighting had gotten to be kind of common, and each time it felt like a knife in my heart.
    What bothered me most this time was Carrie. She looked pale.
    She was clutching her stomach, as if she'd eaten something that was making her sick. And tears were rolling down her cheeks—not in a sobbing, gulping way, but in a scary, silent way. I almost cried just to see her face.
    “What's wrong?” I asked, scared.
    “They fight because of me,” she said. “I just figured it out.”
    “No way,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said, gesturing toward the cabin. “Dad looks as if he can't stand me.”
    “He loves you. And they
don't
fight because of you,” I insisted, positive. Kids always think it's their fault when parents argue. And maybe it sometimes is—if you fail a test, or punch your brother, or stuff your face with the last piece of chocolate cake. But Carrie was perfect. That was the truth, and we all knew it and loved her for it. “It's not because of you. You're the most wonderful girl in the world, and they know it. We all do.”
    “What if I'm not?” she asked.
    The question sort of shocked me. It was like being asked “What if two wasn't a prime number?” She looked so disturbed, for a minute I thought she was going to throw up.
    I stood beside her, waited to see if she was okay. I wanted to put my hand on the back of her head, the way our mother always did when we got sick, and I wanted her to reassure me, tell me she was exaggerating everything. She gave me a look, letting me know she was all right.
    “Come on, Beck. Let's go out on the lake,” she said.
    “In the canoe? Do you feel well enough?”
    “Yes. Let's go to the lighthouse!”
    We ran down to the lake's bank, grabbed the canoe from under the bushes, and started to push it out. Overhead the sky was gauzy blue, covering us like a summer-weight