“Board games,” I answer.
“Board games?” she questions. “I got undressed by board games!? I suppose that was a box full of fun.”
At this I laugh. And again, I surprise her, like she’s never seen this side of me before, and I guess she really hasn’t. It’s a different kind of quiet I don’t let many others see.
“It’s a long story,” I say.
She looks at me with wide eyes. “Well, go on.”
I take a deep breath because I’ve never told anyone this before. Not even Delilah. She never understood mine and Lily’s relationship, so I didn’t give her many details.
“When Lily and I were kids, we didn’t have much. I’d go to thrift stores with the few coins I could find lying on the streets and try to find games for us to play, but every game had missing pieces. Sometimes it was the game board, or the money, or the dice. Once we got a Sorry! box that only had three pawns and a Connect Four grid inside.”
I pause, smiling at the memory.
“So, we started collecting the broken ones. We had Candyland cards, but no board. Monopoly money, but no houses, and it just continued. We wanted to see how many pieces we could accumulate.”
Her smile’s growing, and I can tell she’s picturing it.
“One day, we made up a brand-new game with all the pieces we had. We called the gameGesundheit. You have to sneeze on purpose, a fake sneeze, every time you roll a six, or you lose a turn.”
“This is ridiculous,” she says, laughing.
“I know,” I say. “We use the Trouble Pop-O-Matic dice from one set, move Monopoly pawns around the Clue board, and draw Candyland cards if you roll a two or a five. Uno cards are drawn if you roll a one, and if you get a reverse, you have to play your next turn with your eyes closed.”
“That’s complete chaos!”
“It was perfect chaos. It made us feel like we had something of our own, put together from pieces no one else wanted anymore,” I say.
What I don’t say is,played by kids who also weren’t wanted anymore.
“Anyway, I had collected some board games so Lily and I could recreateGesundheit,” I explain. “We do it every once in a while.”
Rachel is smiling at me, but it’s not her usual wide and bright smile. It’s a softer one that comes with tears.
“Oh, I…” I scramble for what to say.
“I’m sorry,” she says, wiping at her tears. “I cry at real moments. The moments you feel you see the good in someone.”
But what she’s calling the good in me is actually what’s broken.
She sniffs and leans her head back against the wall, blinking fast like she’s trying to hold herself together with sheer willpower.
“The only game I played with my sister was Who Was the Better Perry Sister,” she says. “It felt like the whole town was watching us to see who was going to create the better life. Like we were competition instead of family.”
I swallow. “And?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess Suzanne is winning. I ran away and rarely go back. She stayed, married a hometown boy, and has two kids. She keeps sending me samples of things, like coffee that isn’t really coffee but a way to lose weight, or collagen supplements, or the newest one is some kind of peptides. She’s always trying to sell me something that seems to prey on what she thinks is wrong with me.”
I want to tell her she’s beautiful. That the life she’s creating is brave and not a game of who is doing better. But I don’t.
I nudge her foot with mine. “So, Leo?”
“What about him?” she asks me.
“He’s handsome,” I say.
“He isn’t unenjoyable to look at,” she replies.
