Page 29 of The Favorite Sister

I wanted Kelly to laugh, but I also wanted her togo. Mom had just died, and although our relationship had been complicated, she was still my mom, and I still loved her. Our lives were in turmoil, and on some level, I believed that if Kelly could just go back to school, graduate, and became a radiologist like our mother had always planned, things would go back to normal too. Normalish. Never mind that normalish wasn’t in my best interests, because normalish meant Kelly was the successful one, the pretty one,the star. But it was what was comfortable, and we’re always drawn to what’s comfortable, even when it hurts us deeply.

Kelly would need to face the angry men and their posters in order for things to go back to normalish, only she couldn’t get herself through the clinic’s door.This is what I want, she declared in the parking lot on two separate occasions, her voice an unconvincing whisper. Then Layla came along, and it was like she broke Kelly’s legs instead of her vaginal canal. Layla would be wailing for her 2:00A.M.feeding, sounding like she was being waterboarded, and Kelly would just lie in bed with her eyes closed, pretending to sleep through it. My father and I didn’t have much of a choice but to takeon those shifts, and so we did, trading off for the first few months.Kelly needs her rest, my father said to me.She needs to recover.I was never quite sure what he thought she needed to recover from, but it was clear to me that it was the shock of her new life. At first, I was resentful of having to wake up in the middle of my REM cycle every other night. But after a few weeks, I actually started to look forward to having Layla all to myself, our time together unrushed and uninterrupted. Those tiny little fists, flying up over her ears in outrage as I eased the nipple of the bottle into her mouth—this is what I need?!Her fingers unfurling, her eyelids drooping, lifting, drooping, lifting to check that I was still there, drooping again as she realizedthis, this is what I need.

They say that first year is critical to the bonding process, and I think it’s why Layla and I are as close as we are. Kelly missed some special moments, and she can never get them back, all because she was resting,recovering. My sister has always needed someone to hold out her next life for her, like a coat she slips her arms into. Doctor, mother, CEO (in her mind)—these are more titles that have been foisted upon her rather than ones that she has sought out with purpose. My sister’s major malfunction is that she is a doer with no vision. I suppose I have the opposite problem.

Millennial journalists are always asking me where the idea for SPOKE came from, a sort of attrition in their voices. I get it. It’s hard to care about things that don’t impact us personally, and I think that’s what theBustlestaff really wants to ask but feels they can’t—why do I care so much about a group of women I’ve never met, going through something I have never gone through? How can I be so selfless? Is there something wrong with them that they can’t be that selfless?

The truth is that the idea for SPOKE didn’t come from a selfless place at all. After my father and I tracked Kelly to Fad’s apartment in the Hivernage district, our next stop was the hospital. Sheseemedfine, physically that is, but we just wanted to be sure. I was sitting in the waiting room, paging through a French tabloid, when the door swung open and in walked two sisters, one of them not much olderthan Layla is now. They spoke to the nurse at the front desk in soft French, and were given a series of forms to fill out. They came and sat down one seat to my right, the older one with the papers in her lap. Together, they pointed at words on the page and argued in a language that I know now was not French or Arabic. After a few minutes, the older sister spoke to me.

“Hello,” she said, with a little circle of her hand. It sounded likeHalo.

I glanced up and found the older sister waving the pencil at me.

“You can help?” she asked, haltingly.

My father leaned into me. “I don’t think they can read.”

I held out my hands, miming writing, my head cocked at a forty-five-degree angle. The older sister nodded,Yes, you write it down. The younger sister stared at her lap, stonily. I moved over one seat.

The forms were written in Arabic, then French, then English. It took fifteen minutes of stilted translation and signage just to get to the part that asked the reason for the visit that day.

“My daughter,” the older sister said, and it took me a second to realize they were not, in fact, sisters. “She has go to the well. Three men have hurt her. We have seen doctor so she has not pregnant.”

My father mumbled, three seats away, “Dear God.”

I glanced at the daughter, who was still staring at her lap, her jaw clenched furiously.

“Rape?” I asked in a whisper. “Do you mean she was raped?”

“We have seen the doctor.”

“I’m sorry. You have already seen the doctor?”

The woman nodded, both frantic and frustrated, misunderstanding me the way I misunderstood her. Later, I would learn that the English use of the present perfect tense is confusing for Arabic speakers. Many rely on the present perfect to describe things that have either already happened or have not yet happened. In this case, the girl had already walked to the well for water, had already been raped by three men. Seeing the doctor, preventing pregnancy, that was what needed to happen next.

Kelly didn’t have to wait to be seen by the doctor, and all that was wrong with her was gross taste in men. I went up with the mother to deliver the forms to the French nurse, explained the situation in English, as though it would be more harrowing in English, more likely to spur urgent action. But the pair was still sitting there when we left an hour later, Kelly with a clean bill of health (it was too early for her pregnancy test to come back positive). I remember thinking in the taxi ride back to the hotel,The world everywhere cares more about girls like Kelly than they do girls like that.

So really, I’m not selfless at all. I’ve dedicated myself to a cause that feels entirely self-serving: helping girls like me who are not like Kelly. It’s time we come first.

Layla makes a U-turn at the wire shelving on the far side of the warehouse. Facing us, she’s all helmet and uneasy smile. She twists the handlebars back, speeding up for less than a few yards before Kelly starts squawking.

Layla parks the bike and climbs off to overblown cheers and applause from the board, like she’s just qualified for the Olympics. She takes a slow bow and immediately turns the color of Jen’s Power juice (beets + carrots + chia) when the applause thickens. “I didn’t even max out, Mom,” she says, unhooking the helmet and pressing it into Kelly’s arms.

Seth shushes us. “Before we get too excited,” he says, “I need to show you something.”

He mounts the bike and releases the kickstand with his heel, sets his hands on the handlebars, and squeezes. The bike lurches forward violently. “Whoa!” Seth cries like a goober, bearing down on the handlebars, which only propels him faster. He comes to a dramatic stop just a few feet shy of a delivery van, looking back at us with gasping breaths.

“Most e-bikes make a rickety sound when they are at speed,” Seth says, making his way back over to us. “But they all have onething in common. They’re silent when they’re parked, whether they’re on,” Seth flicks the switch, “or off.”

Kelly glances at me. “Is that a problem?”

“Most definitely,” Seth says. “And one that Layla demonstrated perfectly.”

“What did I do?” Layla asks, worriedly, going from feeling good about herself to despondent in a preteen second. She picks at a small pimple on her cheek. On our way out here, I listened to her narrate an Instagram story about the makeup products she used to cover up that very pimple. Instead of posting social media content that makes her peers feel as though their lives don’t measure up, Layla uses her accounts to reassure girls her age that everything they’re going through—the zits, the awkwardness, the malaise—is completely normal. That they are all in this together. She has nearly 30K followers now, and we haven’t even started filming yet.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Seth assures her. “It’s the design that’s the problem. Since the bike sounds like it’s off when it’s been parked, it’s easy for the rider to forget to power it down. The next person who uses it grabs it, intuitively, by the hand grip.” Seth demonstrates the basic way everyone grabs the bike by its handlebars. “But because of the twist grip design, unknowingly, what the rider is doing is accelerating the bike—which is dangerous not only for the rider but for anyone who happens to be passing in front of the bike. A child, for instance. Then, because the rider is startled and off balance, the natural reaction is to do this,” Seth grips the handlebars tighter, “which only accelerates the speed.” Seth widens his stance and folds his arms across his chest. A good glitch makes Seth feel useful.

“Is there a solution to this?” Kelly asks.