The Gallery of Lost Species Read Online Free

said.
    â€œWhat’s vespers?”
    â€œIt means when things get dark.”
    The next year, Paul and Andy went on to high school. Within months, Viv was dating Andy. She didn’t bring him home, but I’d see them together holding hands and smoking in the park, or making out on a picnic table at the Dairy Queen. It didn’t last. And any time I saw Andy after Viv moved on, he’d rush past me looking crushed.
    I never found out what happened between them. My sister didn’t share her emotions, secrets, or aspirations with me. I wished I could get her attention more often. It saddened me that we weren’t all that connected.
    I set aside Proust and Rilke to read the A. A. Milne my father had given me. Children’s poems were one thing I could relate to. Milne wrote about the closeness of siblings and understood a lot about feelings of uncertainty: Where am I going? I don’t quite know. / Down to the stream where the king-cups grow — / Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow — / Anywhere, anywhere, I don’t know.

FOUR
    O N STAGE AND AT school, my sister had more rivals than friends. The girls in Viv’s class went green-eyed over her, especially those with boyfriends. When couples walked past, Viv never failed to siren the boys’ attention away as they rubbernecked to get just one look at her, like passersby at a crime scene or a crash.
    Her lack of female companions worked out well for me. Sometimes I got to be Viv’s art assistant by default. She had no one else and I was always there.
    One afternoon while Con and Henry were out, Viv led me to the painting shed, where she’d set up buckets of supplies and warm water. She told me we’d be making a plaster positive for one of her studio assignments.
    She had me lie down on the small wooden table that took up half the shed while she mixed casting goop in one of the buckets of water, squishing the clay substance with her bare hands.
    â€œConsider this, like, your unrepressed face,” she told me. “I’m just going to slap it on you for a bit, then we’re done. Easy peasy.”
    She put cotton balls in my ears and straws up my nose, for breathing. She told me to shut my eyes and mouth and she rubbed petroleum jelly on my skin. Then she started masking me with the same stuff dentists use to mould teeth. Since it dried rubbery, the next step was to coat my face with actual plaster, for support.
    Viv was about to tackle my mouth when I chickened out at the thought of airlessness. Before she could say anything, I shot off the tabletop and wiped the goop from my face with my sleeve.
    â€œI can’t do this, Vee!” I cried. Vee was my nickname for her, stemming from when I couldn’t yet pronounce Vivienne as a toddler.
    She sighed and put a hand on her hip and tapped her foot. I’d let her down. “Fine, do me instead,” she said, hopping onto the table.
    I was ill at ease with the role reversal, but Viv gave me a pep talk before she stretched out. I put new straws in her nose and adjusted her headband over her ears. I bordered her clean, makeup-free face with wet paper towels and wrapped a bigger towel around her hairline, even though she’d skipped these steps with me.
    I applied the petroleum jelly then covered her immaculate skin with the dental goop, including her eyes, nose, and mouth. Although she was blind now, and couldn’t really hear or speak, her body language indicated she was fine. If anything, she was relaxed and floppy, like when Con brought her home from a pricey massage session.
    With Viv’s face gone, I got more nervous and rushed the process, sloppily pressing some cheesecloth down and caking on the premixed plaster, like she’d told me to do.
    Then she was doubly lost to me beneath two layers of solidifying, thick grey icing like someone caught under a mudslide. Despite my objections—if her breathing holes got plugged up, she would