She remembers when she was little, her sister gave her a flower. It was yellow, yellow and green, two colors the little girl had mastered by now. The petals, though she didn’t know that’s what they were called at the time, were bright like she had never seen before. She was so focused on those bright shapes like butterfly wings that she didn’t realize what her sister was doing until she heard a laugh. She looked up and saw the older girl giggling and making a squinty face as she bit down on the flower’s stalk. The little one did the same and shrieked happily at the sour taste. It was sharp and acidic and as bright as those petals and she loved it.

The little girl is older now, and she knows her colors well. She now knows the colors blue and white, like the rooms her sister is often in. She used to like that light sky color but now it reminds her of chemical smells and IVs and being told for the millionth time that her best friend has to stay in the white rooms for the night. She doesn’t understand what could possibly be wrong because her sister is the best in every way and nothing has ever been wrong with her before.

The girl is no longer little and doesn’t like being referred to as such. She’s grown up now, she’s sure of it, because she old enough to climb up to the top bunk bed by herself now, and only grown ups could do that before. Only grown-ups were allowed to go up by themselves and check on her sister, but that was years ago. Now the girl sneaks into her sister’s room and climbs up (by herself) and watches with wide eyes as her sister does the impossible. She adventures through caves, she saves her friends, she beats the bad guys, and it doesn’t matter that it’s all only a screen and they’re just pixelated Pokemon because her sister is a hero.

She’s older now, and she’s afraid. She doesn’t like this, this new house, this new place where her mother isn’t. It’s just her dad and his old books and his seashells and the coffee rings on the table. She likes all those things but she misses her dog and her books and mama’s shampoo and all of those things are waiting for her tomorrow but tomorrow seems an awfully long time away and she doesn’t like this new place. But when she’s tucked in bed, holding tightly onto her stuffed dog (which she doesn’t do much anymore because she’s grown up now, remember?), her sister is talking and smiling and suddenly they explode in giggles and what they don’t know will grow into inside jokes. Cause that’s what sisters do.

The girl is in eighth grade. She wears her nerdy shirts, like her sister, and she listens to Fall Out Boy, like her sister, and she wants to grow up and go to college. Like her sister. Just like her sister, who’s smiling at the instructors and meeting her roommates and stacking books on the shelf next the a bunk bed that’s not at all like the one where they used to spend Saturday mornings being heroes and waiting for pancakes to be ready. And the girl wonders what she’ll do without the mirror that showed her what she wanted to grow up and be just like. The one that held her hand while they walked up to Zoo Camp, and helped her with math homework (even though she wrote her twos a little funny), and quoted Lion King and Ghostbusters with her.

But when she’s walking away from the campus and her sister gives her a flower, a green and yellow flower, she remembers that mirrors still reflect light, even over long distances. And flowers still grow. Even when the sun’s not out.