As soon as the first entry ended and Alison’s voice faded to silence, I stopped the tape. With trembling hands I took the cassette out of the player and put it back in its case. For weeks, I had been waiting to listen to these tapes, to be held and soothed by my older sister’s voice. But the voice on the tape was not what I had imagined at all. Alison sounded so much younger than I had expected, so shockingly girlish, and I was filled with shame. I was an adult listening to the private confessions of a child. Why on earth had I expected anything different? Then and there, I vowed I wouldn’t listen to any more.

For a while, I managed it. I kept myself busy. I’d fallen terribly behind at work, and I endeavored to catch up—reading manuscripts, combing through the mixed reviews of the new Mann for phrases that, with a few strategically placed ellipses, might suggest positive endorsement. At night, I walked with Clive. Flowers outside of a bodega. Boys on playing fields. Special! Persimmons!

One night I had a work function to attend—one of our books was a number one New York Times best seller, and the whole office was going to happy hour at a bar in midtown to celebrate. I calculated that I could easily put in an appearance and make it to the Little Sweet in time to join Clive on his nightly sojourn. But the Q stalled on the Manhattan Bridge for over twenty minutes. It was announced that a rider on another train was in medical distress, and as I sat there, waiting with increasing impatience for us to move again, I decided this rider was a man who’d gotten stumbling drunk at his own happy hour, and I hated him as the minutes slipped away. When at last I arrived at Church Avenue, I dashed up the stairs and down the block. I arrived at the Little Sweet breathless, but I was too late. He was already gone. I would have to wait an entire day to see him again, an amount of time that felt no different than an eternity.

When I arrived back at my apartment, the man in the NASCAR hat was just coming in from walking Jefe, and he held the door open for me. Jefe, who had never paid me any attention, began to growl, a deeper and more menacing sound than I’d thought the poor animal capable of producing “Cállate,” the man said. The dog lunged at me. His little claws scraped at my tights. He bared his tiny yellow teeth. The man jerked the leash and scolded him, plainly shocked at his dog’s behavior, but Jefe would not stop. He glared up at me with his milk-white eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, though what I was apologizing for I couldn’t explain—it seemed to me that I had been seen by this pitiful creature, naked right down to my soul. I fled down the stairs to my apartment. Quickly, before reason or willpower could creep back in, I plunged my hands under my bed, yanked out the package from my mother, and threw the first cassette back in the player.

I just had this memory I haven’t thought about in forever. When I was really young we had this tape of Irish folk songs I was totally obsessed with. I used to jig around the living room in my nightie. I remember singing along, trying to do this Irish accent which I thought was so romantic, and in my head I was one hundred percent prancing across the highlands in a tartan dress, which I guess is actually Scottish, but you get the idea difference. I was, what? Five years old? And I already sensed that there was this thing missing from my world. Like, depth. Or maybe, rootedness. I already got that I was from a totally superficial place. People do not exactly write books or make movies about their potent childhoods in Westchester, you know? My family doesn’t really have a heritage, or a religion, or any of that. Alison. What even is that name? I’m not named after anyone. It doesn’t have some meaning. My parents just thought it sounded nice, as, apparently, did a million other parents, dooming me to a life as Alison T. At least they had the decency to spell it the good way. But it’s like my entire identity from that first moment when they named me—it’s not about anything. It’s like our only culture is this very nice life we have.

Tonight for homework I have to fill out this career quiz for health class for whatever freaking reason, and the last question is, “What are you afraid of?” I’m honestly stumped. I mean, I can tell you the stupid things. I’m afraid of being home alone at night because every time I hear a sound I think there’s a murderer. I’m afraid of mayonnaise because it’s disgusting and I hate how it gets on people’s fingers. Loose teeth totally skeeve me out.

But real stuff? I guess the thing I’m most afraid of is that my life won’t be what it can be. I have everything, everything going for me. I have no excuses. And what if I still blow it?

When I broke my promise not to listen to Alison’s diaries, I broke it fully. There were so many hours of tape it seemed I would never get through it. Much of it was rambling and not particularly illuminating. For twenty minutes she leafed through her high school yearbook and developed a ranked list of the ten cutest senior boys. She sang along to the entirety of a Counting Crows album. I didn’t fast-forward. I listened to every word. She talked about Drew a lot, about the romantic things he did for her, like taking her out on real dates to restaurants and the movies while other boys just took girls to the pond and parked. She talked about her friends. Lisa was her “soul sister,” Amanda was driving her “just bananas”; a week later, Lisa had been demoted to “okay, I guess.” She complained about her teachers. Mr. Conti kept sticking her with the “chalk eaters” for group projects, which she had decided was a deliberate attempt to teach her some lesson, and let him try. The more I listened, the less I considered whether it was right to listen. What did it matter? I couldn’t stop. I gorged on Alison until I could hear her voice even when I was away from it—her breath hidden in the hum of a ceiling fan, her laughter tinkling within the piano track of a song I was listening to on the subway home. She was with me as she hadn’t been in years.

HEY THERE. Me again. Hahaha. You’re so diverting, Alison. Jocular. Convivial. Uproarious. Titillating. Winsome. It’s March and as you may have guessed, you took the SATs this morning, and let me just say, the SATs are to actually being smart as having a pretty voice is to being a talented musician. Analogies are to meaning as a puddle is to the ocean. I’m pretty sure I did awesome, though. But that’s not what I want to talk about. This afternoon, Claire went to this birthday party for some girl in her class. Stacy? Anyway, the party was at that Chuck E. Cheese–type place, and my parents asked me to pick her up when it was over. When I get there, all these kids are racing around together playing tag and some girls are pretending to be horses or whatever. I’m looking everywhere and I don’t see Clairey. Finally I find her. She’s in the ball pit by herself. She’s holding a green ball and just turning it in her hands and looking at it like she’s figuring something out about it. Then she started doing her writing thing, where she moves her finger around in the air like that? I wanted to run up and shake her and say, Just stop doing it, kiddo. Just stop, easy peasy. But she can’t. She can’t change or she would change, right? Nobody wants to be the weird kid.

But also? I feel terrible saying this because she’s my sister and I love her, but sometimes I don’t actually like being with her, because it’s like her life—she’s only six years old and I can already see every single way it’s going to be hard. Meanwhile, for whatever nonreason, the same stuff that’s impossible for her comes easily to me. I’m not trying to brag. It is what it is. When I’m with her, sometimes I feel so freaking relieved I’m not her, and then I feel horrible for feeling relieved. I don’t deserve anything I have, really. Then I took her out for ice cream even though she already had birthday cake, and the end.

I remembered that day. Alison was close with “Stacy”—the party was Tracy Donofrio’s. Our whole class must have been invited, otherwise I never would have been included. I remembered picking pepperoni off of greasy arcade pizza. I remembered that there was a My Little Pony cake with a buttercream flower border, and I wanted to get a flower on my slice, but other girls begged for them while I just silently hoped for one with all my might, so I didn’t get one. What I remembered most vividly, though, was how excited I was as I sat in that ball pit, because soon, any minute now, my big sister would arrive and all of my classmates would see that she had come to pick me up, that she was mine. Could anything be better? But she had already been there, she had been watching me, and she had pitied me.