“Tell me something new! Tell me a new story.” She tugged on my shirt, pulling the fabric down to eye-level and nestling her face in it.

“Mel, it’s way past your bedtime, and I’ve already told you three.”

“But you said you would.” Her eyes were starting to scrunch up like they did when she was about to cry. Imagining the fit that was to ensue— wailing and sobbing and ear-splitting screeches, quieted only by a Tylenol PM— I pulled her onto my lap.

“What kinda story do you wanna hear, darlin’?” I rocked her left to right, soothing the storm that still ran through her limbs. She was small, so small, even for a five year-old— bird-boned, her mom would have said. The kind of fragile that made you want to pad her in bubble wrap and shelter her in the recesses of the kitchen cabinet where she’ll never get broken.

But children have a way of mending themselves, and whether from a lack of short-term memory or a tendency to heal quickly from scraped knees, Mel, hopefully, was no different. Still too early to tell for sure, but the hope, as it had yet to be disproved, remained.

“This is a story of Mama Sheep and Baby Sheep. One day, Mama Sheep was trotting along, Baby Sheep by her side, when she saw a biiiiig patch of grass on the other side of the bridge. They began to walk over…” There was a template: animals, they love each other, they want something, they struggle to find the item, they conquer the barrier separating themselves from said item, find it, find themselves very, very sleepy, settle down for the night. Doesn’t that sound so, so, nice, Mel? Wouldn’t you just love to sleep like they are?” No need for real thought, creativity, a Mad Lib for bedtime really, so I zoned out while speaking and studied Melanie instead. Small. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, lips shaped like a bow and arrow. My niece, although I was her official guardian as of two years prior. Her mom, my little sister, had died of cancer and dad was out of the picture. I was ecstatic to receive her, as I myself am unable to conceive, but it’s nights like these, when I feel like the babysitter instead of the parent, that remind me of the difficulty.

My sister Olivia and I grew up one year apart. We wore matching sweaters in winter and had the same smile. Unlike the kids we knew whose parents stuffed them into identical dresses every day, causing a slow but persistent buildup of sibling rivalry and competition, we were friends of our own volition. It was fun, and although Liv was younger, she never gave off the sisterly stink of imitation. We liked being similar, liked the “Are you twins?” questions from people on the street. Because of it, we stayed best friends from childhood onward. Of course, we didn’t wear matching clothes as teenagers, but we didn’t need to by then. People knew we were sisters, and more importantly, we knew we were friends.

When she died, I drove to my parent’s house. I spent hours digging through the attic for the boxes of our childhood clothes. I pulled them out of the bins handfuls at a time and they piled frantically on my lap, years and years standing firmly between me and my childhood, to where I wanted to run, but centimeters between me and the memories, the clothes, years, held. I pulled them to my nose. The dresses and sweaters and corduroy play clothes were, albeit slightly affected by mildew, unharmed, but what they contained couldn’t be returned: afternoons in the mud, leaving aching grins and parental shrieks about stained knees; mornings cross-legged on the carpet in our rainbow-striped pajamas, hair still tousled from bed, playing Connect-4 or watching cartoons; the one time we were jumping rope on the wet cement and Liv fell and broke her arm; me, jump rope in hand, watching almost enviously as she was swaddled in blankets and rushed to the ER; her cast for the next six weeks; crying because I wanted one too. I signed it three times. All contained within these bins, kept in the dust-swirled attic, the preserved ruins of a lost but unforgotten time.

It’s evening, and Melanie’s soft body stretches in my arms. Small, but not unimportant, she remains. The sheep story, the giraffe story, the sloth lion blue whale cricket kitten story finishes, they are happy, they are so, so, tired and Mel is too. She’s in the rainbow-striped pajamas tonight, tomorrow the corduroy play clothes, or maybe the new dress from the neighbor to our left. I don’t remember whether the PJs were mine or Olivia’s, but it doesn’t matter much, does it?