It had started before there was anything physical to it, which she offered as though it were a defense.

He had told her that living with me was all rules and money and control, and that she was the only one who really knew how to enjoy life.

He had found the oldest, rawest nerve in my sister — the belief, carried since childhood, that I was the favored one, the chosen one, the one everything got handed to — and he had pressed on it, patiently, for two years, until a lifetime of ordinary sibling jealousy had been worked into something that could crush pills into a mug of milk.

“I just wanted him to choose me,” she whispered, “over you.