My head was full of dark thoughts when we left the museum, so Sammy insisted I take her vape pen—as if that would help. I drained it underneath an oak tree on the sidewalk after the cab dropped me off. Now I’m less sad but more scared, and I can’t find the doorbell. It’s hard to breathe here in the suburbs. The humidity is heavier than in the city.

The people inside the house look kaleidoscopic through the stained glass set into the front door, the walls like vivid snakeskin. The door creaks open on its own, and I slide through. Jazz from inside slips out, melts into the insect buzz.

I check my shoes for mud before stepping across the Persian rug. The invitation called this a “post-elopement party” and showed Sarah, another nurse in my unit, with her wife, a surgeon, beneath a waterfall in Iceland. The same photo is framed in the foyer. I’m in a t-shirt and the house is freezing. It’s a weird mix of people. I don’t see anyone I know.

The hallway light flickers; I’m dizzy again. Sammy really fucked me up dropping that stuff on me back there at the museum.

“Sorry,” I mumble, shouldering past strangers’ bodies. “I just need to sit down. Excuse me.” When I stumble, someone supports me. She clutches my ribcage, her fingers through soft cotton against the bone, lowers me onto the hardwood floor with perfect control. Her deodorant smells like snow.

I try to say: I’m not drunk, it’s just this thing that happens. My vision narrows and goes black at the edges. A metal splint glints against her nose, fastened to her freckles with medical tape. I’ve seen her before, somewhere. 

“Are you okay?” she asks, hooking her thumb through a belt loop on her jeans.

No.

“Do you need an ambulance?”

No.

“This party is full of doctors. Let me find someone, okay?”

No, please. Wait. Caroline—I remember her name as she walks away. From the floor, I can see to the end of the hallway and across the living room. The house fills up. Cocktail glasses clink. Outside, the first lightning bugs glow yellow.

* * *

Sammy tracked me down a few months ago on an ancestry website and told me she might be my sister. Turns out, she is, and now she’s here in Chicago. She says it’s the farthest she’s been from Oklahoma. Two of her friends tagged along and made a vacation of it.

It was Sammy’s idea to meet at the Museum of Science and Industry. She’s staying at a hotel on the South Side, a few blocks away. On the phone, before we met up, she said her friends wanted to score some artifacts and trip by the lake. She warned them it was a stupid idea.

Some people call it tarot-tripping for the way the arcane objects, picked at random, spell your fate. For a few hours, at least. Some people call artifacts magic or religion or witchcraft. The last time Sammy tarot-tripped, she got The Heart and The Storm Cloud. Landed her in a year of therapy grieving a husband who never existed.

Sammy was sitting against a stone column at the museum entrance when I saw her for the first time. She didn’t see me. Her eyes squinted against the sun, cigarette smoke wrapping around her buzzed blonde head. I searched for resemblance in our features, wondered if I should feel some kind of primal connection. When I got to the top of the steps, she jumped up and exhaled smoke through her smile. I said hey and reached out my hand. She leaned in and hugged me.

“So here’s the deal,” she said. “I got us tickets for the movie thing.”

“The Imax?”

“Omnimax.”

“Right. Yeah, that’s fine I guess.”

We had to run through exhibits of spaceships and submarines to make it on time to the theater. It was almost empty. We sat in the middle.

“What are we watching, Sammy?”

Her face was tucked into her t-shirt. She put up a finger to say just a second. When she came back up, her skin looked blue in the light of the massive curved screen. She swallowed a cloud of hash oil vapor and passed me a vape pen under the seats. I shook my head.

“Something about bears,” she said.

* * *

I turn the bathroom doorknob to make sure it’s really locked and sit down on the edge of the bathtub. The music is muffled, the jazz morphing into hip hop. Eyes have been on me since I caused that scene in the hallway. Sarah’s new wife said it was a panic attack. Caroline is out there somewhere among the party. I would like to think she wonders where I went.

“You’re Alex, right? My sister’s friend?” That’s what she asked when she helped me to my feet. I didn’t remind her we’ve been Facebook friends at least three years. It’s okay.

Panic is an unpinned grenade where your heart was, ghosts where your eyes were. It wasn’t really over when I pretended it was. My body felt so numb I barely registered the first beer spilling down my throat. I got another from the cooler, and that one felt better. Maybe I had a few more. I smiled at people and walked through the house without stopping, like I had a destination. In the living room, a guy with gray hair and neck tattoos mixed drinks behind a makeshift bar, a black raven stretching up from his shirt collar. Pine trees swayed at the border of the huge backyard through the windows behind him, still visible in the waning daylight. The bartender winked at me. As I turned away, I could have sworn the raven cawed. Sarah came up behind me and gave me a hug, put a cocktail in my hand.

“For you,” she said. “Thank you so much for coming.” Over her shoulder, I saw Caroline out on the porch looking bored and beautiful.

The drink Sarah handed me is impressive—gin and tonic—undoubtedly a work of art from The Raven. There’s an entire forest in the glass. Rosemary sprigs and mint leaves. Juniper berries resting in the canopy.

Perched on the side of the tub, I sip the drink and scroll through my phone.

Last weekend, Caroline broke her nose in a kickboxing tournament. She looks tough in the pictures she posted. She took second place. There’s a picture of her with her roommate’s new puppy from last month. Pictures of Sarah and her at their parents’ anniversary dinner last year. Pictures with her ex-boyfriend in Colorado two years ago.

Half the drink is left. It’s enough. I take a velvet pouch out of my pocket and weigh the contents in my hand. The artifacts feel like repelling magnets when I reach into the bag and pull two out at random. They’re even more intricate and strange than I had imagined. I drop them into the glass. They start to dissolve and whirl in the carbonation.

There is a cabin, no bigger than a snowflake, its roof disintegrating. The cabin door bangs as if in a storm. And, caught between the ice cubes, a tiny bear, its hind legs severed.

I finish the drink.

* * *

Ancient trees bathed in fog towered over me and Sammy. We soared through deep fjords, glued to the cinema seats.

Sammy told me she didn’t know I existed until last year when she started working through trauma. It got her asking questions about her mom. Our mom, I guess. That’s when her dad told her that her mom had another kid, too. Sammy said all this directly into my ear, competing with the rushing water and screeching eagles. She was talking so loud, my eardrum twinged. Even so, I could barely hear her.

“Mom died when I was six,” she said. “She was sick at the end.” A family of sea otters crawled over each other on a mossy rock. “I guess she was in her thirties then.” I wondered if I should feel something for this person I never met, who gave me away.

“How’d it happen?” I asked. Sammy didn’t hear. She was bending over to hit the vape pen and digging in her pocket for Swedish Fish. She didn’t show any answers on her face. She chewed the candy and smiled, then leaned over and spoke into my ear again.

“You’re probably lucky you got a different family,” she said.

* * *

A Prince song pounds in the living room. People dance with tremendous movements of their bodies. The small explosion that started in my chest trembles in my knuckles. I try to remember it’s the artifacts swimming upstream through my veins.

In the fissures of frozen moments, I catch my breath. There’s no point pretending now: Caroline is glowing with soft white light. I walk to her with slow, sticky steps. My skin feels wet.

“I want to thank you,” I say, “for before. And to tell you . . .”

“Yeah?” she asks. Her pupils pin me against the bookshelf. I want to tell her about the artifacts. But, instead, I look at her broken nose.

“I just want you to know that I’d swallow your pain if I could.” The last word stretches and folds like a slinky.

“Dude,” she says in a whisper. “What the hell did you take?”

“Caroline?” I ask. When I breathe in, I inhale infinitely. There’s no limit. “The Bear and The Cabin. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. It’s not what I’m like.”

She takes me by the arm, her palm electric on my skin.

“I should go home, right?” I ask.

“You should not go home, Alex. When did you take the artifacts?”

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday? You’re sure?”

“Yes, in the bathroom.” I point to the bathroom.

“So, would you say about fifteen minutes ago?”

“Yes.” 

We sit on the floor against the fridge. Lots of knees at eye level. Big knees, small knees. Some extend the wrong way: backwards or too much of an angle.

“Alex! Breathe. Do you have more artifacts?”

“Yes.”

Caroline tilts her head up and rubs her cheeks. The white glow from her skin leaves trails when she moves. She stays looking at the ceiling a while.

“Okay. I’m going to do this with you. Would you like that?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

In the bathroom, I point to the pocket where the bag is. Caroline pulls out the velvet pouch and puts it on the counter. She picks The Prism and The Mirror. She sticks out her tongue and rests the artifacts on it. They start to dissolve with a hiss.

“We should get out of here,” she says. “This is gonna get weird.”  

* * *

We careened over a waterfall and burst out of the rapids. A pack of wolves stalked along the riverbank with blood on their teeth while Sammy told me how my biological mother died.

“It’s just really a lot,” I said.

“That’s why I tracked you down. I mean, partly.”

Up ahead at a hook in the river, a white-furred black bear tried to cross the rough water on a fallen tree trunk.

“Okay, so, what does it mean, then?”

“Aren’t you a nurse?”

“What does it mean, Sammy?”

“Huntington’s is basically fifty-fifty for each kid. Since Mom had it, there’s a good chance you have it, too. I mean, I don’t know. I’m really sorry, Alex.”

A grizzly bear squared off with a wolf over a carcass. A familiar phrase echoed off the walls inside my skull: You’re a ghost now, buddy.

“What about you, Sammy?” I asked. Her eyes were red and gentle in the rainbow light. She shook her head.

“I got a genetic test. I don’t have it.”

* * *

“How did we get here?” asks Caroline. We’re in a forest. But it might be a garden, or maybe a park. “Is this the zoo?”

“No,” I say. “No, not the zoo. Someone’s backyard, maybe.”

“Maybe it’s our backyard, Alex,” she says, falling into me on the wooden bench. Loose strands of her hair brush the back of my neck. In front of us, there’s a pond ringed in by prairie grass and cattails. Embers of sunset crinkle behind the pine trees.

“I’m nervous,” I say.

She puts her hand on mine. “It’s okay. We’re getting close, but we’re not there yet. We can rest here before the change comes.”

“It’s amazing what people remember,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Caroline. “Wait, which people?”

“My patients.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“Nurse.”

“Oh yeah,” says Caroline. “I forgot.”

“Yeah. I never told you, did I?”

Caroline nods.

“They have dementia, most of them. But sometimes they remember, like, the most specific details. And then they’re gone again.”

Caroline gazes deep into space. “My toddlers don’t remember anything,” she says.

“Toddlers,” I say. The word is so funny. With my eyes, I trace the paths of snowflakes.

“Not my toddlers. I work in a preschool.”

“I know.”

“Did I tell you that?”

“No. We’re Facebook friends. We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“I like that,” she says. “We’ve been friends for a really long time.” The moon comes into view against the purple sky. Caroline nestles into my chest.

“I met my little sister today,” I say.

“Are you guys close?”

“I mean, I met her for the first time.”

“Oh,” says Caroline. She rubs her eyes and holds her hand there. “Wow.”

“She’s in from Oklahoma for a few days.”

“Wow.”

“I know.”

“Wow, Alex.”

“Caroline?”

“Get ready.”

“You said we could rest here, Caroline.”

“I know. We can’t rest here.”

“I got some bad news today.”

“Tell me the bad news.”

“I’m slipping, Caroline.”

“Tell me everything, Alex. Tell me the bad things.”

“I can’t.”

“Focus on my eyes, Alex. Tell me something. Tell me about your sister.”

I link my fingers through hers and they meld together. Snowflakes drift down, geometric and bright. One clings to Caroline’s eyelashes.

* * *

We pushed through the museum doors into late afternoon heat.

“I guess your friends are waiting for you, huh?” I asked.

“Not if they were dumb enough to take artifacts,” Sammy said.

“Follow me, then.”

We crossed Lake Shore Drive to where Lake Michigan opened its arms. The cool breeze off the water felt good.

“Damn,” she said. “That’s a lake? Looks like a freaking ocean.”

Down the beach, we saw a wedding reception. Smoke rising from the grills. A mariachi band around the newlyweds.

“So, what am I supposed to do now, Sammy?”

She closed her eyes. “I feel like I just came in and fucked up your life.”

“No. I’m glad you’re here.” We kicked away some trash and sat down in the sand.

“You should get the test,” she said. “Call a doctor.”

Overhead, a hot air balloon rose so fast I worried it might burn up in the atmosphere. You’re a ghost now, buddy. I felt Sammy wait for me to agree. She reached into one of her big cargo pockets.

“Oh shit,” she said. She pulled out a green velvet bag and put it down on the sand. Something radiated from it, an energy or invisible light.

“Sammy, are those artifacts?”

“Those are artifacts.”

“How?”

“My friends bought enough for the three of us. They were sure they could convince me. Probably snuck them into my pocket before I left.” It was hard to tell how many artifacts were in the bag. Objects the size of dice formed small lumps.

“Are those things moving around?” I asked.

“Probably. If they’re not fakes or duds.” She returned the bag to her pocket. “Can you believe those were on me the whole time?”

I tried to see if the artifacts were still moving in Sammy’s pocket. She pulled out her vape again and popped in a new cartridge.

“You wanna help me with this?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t smoke anymore. Not really.” I tried to shake off the thought of the artifacts.

“No pressure. I don’t know, maybe it would help.”

“Maybe,” I said. The maybe hung in my chest. I thought about it. I worried getting high would only make me paranoid. The hot air balloon was still rising, and I imagined the view from its basket: Sammy and me tiny and getting smaller. Heard the roar of its flames, felt the swell of its hollow. I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me. I decided paranoia might be an improvement.  

She handed me the vape. I took a long, slow hit. The high overwhelmed me at first, a real head rush. We watched the small waves roll in, watched a seagull hop around by our feet. We passed the vape back and forth.

“You’re from the same planet as me,” I said.

“You mean Earth?”

“No, another one. Look.” I pointed to three freckles arranged in a triangle on my left forearm, then at the triangle of freckles on Sammy’s right forearm. “It’s how they marked us on our home planet before we came here.”

Sammy stared at the freckles, looking from her arm to mine. She breathed in some vapor and coughed it out, laughing until we both laughed so hard we cried.

Before she went back to her hotel, we made plans to meet for lunch tomorrow. I stood there in the trees between the lake and the road and thought about what to do next. I could sit alone at home and be scared. I could get drunk and be sad. I guess it was desperation that made me call a cab all the way to the suburbs. And I guess it was grief—for a possible future that could end too soon—that made me run after Sammy first.

She was a block away when I caught her.

“What’s up, brother?” she asked. “Did you miss me?”

“So, those artifacts,” I said. “Do you think I could, like, hold onto them?”

* * *

Snow piles soft above my knees in cold sunlight. The pond is hard with ice. I have dreamed this place before, this silent wild with unending trees and a sky that chokes on its own frozen clouds. Or I haven’t dreamed it. Just—I’ve been here so long, I have memories with the fluidity of dreams. There’s good pain in the changes of my cells, good pain in not knowing the time, the whipping wind, anthracite horizons. Blizzard now, and how many days have passed?

Walking from the pond is slow and heavy. There’s a cabin in the glade. Dark wood, smoke puffing from the chimney.

Movement in the trees, and voices. I hear everything clear. Inhale, trigger squeeze, blast, exhale. Inhale, bolt click, trigger squeeze, blast, flesh ripping. Mine. My flank burns.

Inside the cabin, the door whips shut behind me. The wind is strangled.

“Get back from the door, Alex,” Caroline yells from another room. “I’m going back out there.”

I call her name, but a shapeless rumble comes from my mouth. There’s a smell of gunpowder and blood that excites me. But it’s my blood, I realize, plodding to the bed. It soaks the rug and mats my dark fur. I lick the injury clean. It’s a surface wound.

Curled up on the bed, I can see through the window into the blizzard. Caroline trudges through snow with a shotgun pointed out straight like a spear. The stock is firm against her shoulder. She doesn’t stumble from the recoil or stop shooting when the men’s blood sprays red on the white. She reloads and kneels beside three bodies. Drags them into the clearing like a warning.

When Caroline gets back inside, she throws her coat off.

“Hunters,” she says. “It’s getting worse.”

I huff, confused and angry. I rise up on my hind legs.

“You know they’ll kill you, Alex. They’ll kill me, too, for trying to protect you.”

There’s a loud cry in another room, wild and frantic.

“It’s okay, Baby” Caroline says. “I’m coming.”

We go to Baby’s room. Her tiny body hides beneath the blanket.

“Go ahead,” Caroline says.

I pick up Baby, lift her into my arms. Baby is like me.

“Caroline, what am I?”

“You’re safe,” she says. But I’m not safe. I hear the trigger squeeze before I can run from the window. Broken glass, a bullet digs through my back, Baby slips from my arms.

You’re a ghost now, buddy.

* * *

Hard ground feels good against my spine. The darkness looks like deep night, like morning is hours away. My eyes adjust slowly. There is a chill at the edges and a weight that pulls me down into the dark of the artifacts. A blanket is draped over my body. At the end of the yard sits a big house.

Caroline is curled up close to me under the blanket. My hand is still in hers, squeezed so tight my bones are sore. There’s grass pasted to her face; she looks euphoric. I remember the objects on her tongue at the party. Different artifacts.

Why is she smiling?

Different artifacts.

Okay. But still it feels like a stab, because how long were we out there in the snow?

It wasn’t Caroline. That wasn’t our life. 

In the house, upstairs, a light turns on. A silhouette appears through red curtains. Someone peeks through the window. Sarah, or maybe her wife. The light turns off and I roll back to Caroline.

When I was seven, on a summer night like this one, Mom and Dad had drinks with the next-door neighbors while I slept. They were so nearby, they figured no need for a babysitter. The flames started in the attic—faulty wiring—and ripped fast through the house. When I woke up from the heat and crackling, dreams still clouded my eyes. Snowflakes fell from holes in the ceiling. But they weren’t snowflakes. Ashes, everywhere. My bedroom roof collapsed. Starting with the legs, my teddy bear burned.

I remember ashes on Mom’s coat in the ambulance. Ashes on her eyelids. Dad talked the whole time, his voice so far away, as if from another world. It didn’t make sense, what he said. “You’re a ghost now, buddy.” My awareness wavered. “You’re a ghost now, buddy.” I tried to argue, No, Dad, not a ghost, I’m still here, right? In your world?

It took me decades to ask what he meant.

“Alex,” he said, setting down his coffee, looking hurt. “You’re close now, buddy. Close to the hospital, that’s what I said. I wish I could forget that ambulance ride, but I remember every detail.”

Caroline still has that impossibly satisfied smile on her face and her hand still grips mine. The glow around her is brighter, softer. My shoulders relax a little. I’m happy she’s someplace good, even if I can’t shake my darkness. There, in the grass under the stars, my thoughts swim and surface.

I call Sammy. When she answers, loud music and shouting spill through from her side. It sounds like a bar, or a party.

“It’s my brother!” she yells, and everyone cheers.

“Sammy,” I say, quiet. “I don’t have a lot of time.” My chest swells up and I’m certain this is not over yet. Like the artifacts just gave me a break and will pull me back in.

“You’re scaring me, dude. Are you okay?”

“Sammy,” I say, “I thought about what you said. I don’t want the test.”

“We’ll talk about this— ” The phone battery dies.

Caroline’s eyelids crack open, just barely. Her pupils bounce around like quivering atoms. Her grip vibrates against my hand. I take in her smile. I take in as much of that radiance as I can, hold it inside my lungs to keep me warm, because snowflakes are falling again. 

*