A World Without You by Beth Revis Page B

survivor’s guilt, and I guess I feel that way sometimes, like, why did I live when they didn’t? But that’s not how I really feel about it.”
    â€œHow do you really feel?” I watched her closely, waiting to see if she’d go invisible, hoping she wouldn’t.
    â€œEmpty,” Sofía said.
    The waves were getting higher, the air colder. There was an edge to the wind, as if it wanted to cut us.
    â€œLet’s go inside,” Sofía said, rubbing her shoulders.
    I checked the time on my phone. “Kitchens are closed,” I groaned. After dinner, the kitchens were always open with snacks until an hour before lights-out. Usually, they were just stocked with fruit or granola, healthy stuff, but Ryan almost always talked his way into chips. He’s good at getting what he wants.
    â€œCome on,” Sofía said. “I’ll make you something.”
    Even though the kitchens weren’t off-limits, it felt like we were breaking rules being there just before lights-out. I don’t think students were supposed to cook, but no one came to stop us as Sofía pulled out a container of eggs and set a pot of water to boiling, adding a pinch of salt.
    â€œMy sisters and I called these ‘ghost eggs,’” Sofía said.
    â€œHarold would like them then,” I replied, trying too hard to be funny.
    She grinned anyway. “It’s because of how they look when they cook.” The water barely started to bubble, and she moved quickly. She swirled the water with a wooden spoon, making a tiny tornado in the pot, then cracked an egg with one hand. As soon as it hit the hot water, the egg twirled into the center, the clear parts immediately turning white and streaming around. It looked . . . delicate. Beautiful.
    â€œSee?” she said. “Ghost eggs.”
    And she was right. The poached egg did look like a little ghost floating in the water.
    After a minute, she took the egg out of the hot water with a slotted spoon, dropped it on a plate, and handed it to me with salt and pepper.
    â€œMy little sister would poke the yellows and scream, ‘I’m making the ghosts bleed!’” she said. “She was kind of macabre.”
    â€œMmm, ghost blood,” I said, licking my fork.
    And she smiled at me, but it was a sad smile. She missed them. Not in the same way that we all missed our families while we were at Berkshire. She missed them in a deeper way, because she knew she’d never see them again. It wasn’t that she was gone from them; it was that they were gone from her.
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    We talked a lot about family, me and Sofía. Not at first. Sofía kept her family close to her heart, like a secret, but eventually she opened up.
    â€œCarmen was two years older than me,” she told me after we hopped over the gate and were walking on the boardwalk together. A crane watched us from the marsh as we passed. “And Maria was just eleven months younger. People used to tell Mom that Maria and I were Irish twins, but she didn’t understand what that phrase meant, so she’d tell them, ‘No, no, we’re
Latina
, not Irish.’”
    She laughed, and the crane flew off, its long legs dripping water like glittering crystals.
    â€œI miss them,” Sofía said in a small voice. She moved closer to me and touched the back of my hand, as if to remind herself that I wasn’t gone. Not like them.
    â€œCarmen would always try to be my mom, even when Mom was around,” she continued. “She pretended like she knew all there was to know about raising babies. And Maria—” Sofía laughed. “Maria would always try to make it harder on her, you know? Like, Carmen would say that she could get Maria toeat her vegetables, so Maria would load up all her peas in her mouth and then spit them at Carmen one at a time when Mom wasn’t looking.”
    Sofía’s face fell.
    â€œShe