"Well, aren't you just Miss Perfect?"
"Ha-ha."
Callie retreated back to her room and started to pull clothes from her bureau. Tracey followed quickly after her.
"Hey, Cal, let me ask you something."
"Shoot."
"Why'd you stop?"
"Stop what?" But Callie knew well what her sister wanted to know. She wanted to know what made Callie quit being the fanatical student she once was.
"Why did you stop caring? It was like it no longer mattered to you anymore, like what Mom and Dad wanted for you didn't even blip on your radar. What happened?"
"Nothing happened, kid."
"Don't give me that. I know-"
"No, I mean nothing. Nothing happened. The absolute lack of anything. After all those years, all that learning, nothing changed in me, nothing at all. I still felt as dumb and clueless as when I started. It was as if nothing sunk in for longer than I needed it to sink to ace a test or write a paper. It was nothing, kid. Nothing."
"How is that possible?"
"I'm still trying to figure that one out."
Callie still stood there, half-shielded from her sister by the bureau door. She held a t-shirt with faded blue lettering. She turned, away from Tracey, to toss it onto the bed. She fiddled with her necklace.
"I think it built up, the nothingness." Callie finally broke the silence. Tracey stood in the doorway, dragging her barefoot over the threshold. "Not like a slipping away, but more of an overwhelming, engulfment. It swallowed me."
She looked at Tracey, who was watching her foot make figure eights on the wood floor, and smiled slightly, involuntarily. Callie loved her sister better than she loved anyone else on Earth. She didn't want to burden her with her lunacy, as she saw it, but she didn't have anyone else to tell and it felt good to talk about it. Tracey flicked her ring finger the same way their mother had when she was deep in thought. Callie noticed often how like their mother Tracey was. "Innate," she thought. Their mother hadn't lived with them for years, since Tracey was only eight or nine. The divorce happened quickly, and it was not hard to get on without her, not for Callie. She didn't even consider her own feelings until her sophomore year in college, when her boyfriend got her drunk (also for the first time).

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