She always acted like a grown-up. When we were four and over our Oma's house in the fancy parlor room with our hands behind our backs so we wouldn't break any of the priceless Hummel figures or crystal swans, she lectured me on sitting like a lady. The phone rang. I plunked down onto the expensive oriental rug.

"Yes?" Oma answered the phone with a stern voice. We watched her cross and uncross her slender legs as she listened, her dark penciled eyebrows furrow, and the droopy creases in her eyelids become wet with tears and the sweat from her hairline. She said only, "Yes", "No", "Mmmhmm" , and "Goodbye", but her sighs told us something was wrong. Oma gave us Dove Bars and I cried. Carlye didn't. As we sat on the front step, squinting in the hot July sun, Mom drove up, crying too. Seeing her made me eat my ice cream faster, filling my mouth until vanilla oozed out the corners, dropping big slabs of chocolate on the pavement. Carlye licked her Dove Bar calmly as I chewed on the sweet wooden stick. Hard. She wiped her mouth with one hand and held out the ice cream with the other so the drips would fall on the concrete steps and not her favorite yellow skirt.

Even when Mom told us the news, that Carlye had leukemia, cancer of the blood, my sister continued to lick her icecream methodically, careful not to make a mess. I held onto Mr. Monkey tight, not knowing what was going on but fearing everything. Carlye just walked inside, saying plainly, "I have to go pee."

When we went to Paris for the weekend with Aunt Tricia in eighth grade, Carlye had been in remission for seven years. We had to share a narrow bed in a tiny hotel room uptown. "It's all about location, girls," Aunt Tricia said, pulling her cot into a cramped corner. The faded melon-colored blankets were thin and starchy; the shag carpet had brown stains that I fantasized were dried blood from murderous escapades that happened years before. Every day was gray and dirty, and we felt like bohemians walking amidst the street artists and their colorful displays. A pastel nude for only thirty francs. Carlye still hangs it on her bedroom wall. The three day trip went by so quickly that my jet-lag hadn't yet worn off, and when we packed up our suitcases I forgot to go over my check-list to make sure I didn't leave anything behind. Four hours into the plane ride, I stood up, panicked breathlessly and hot, and shook Carlye awake.

"I forgot Mr. Monkey! He's under the bed."

Looking at old photographs, I imagine new ones. Mr. Monkey being squeezed by some Parisian tot in a red coat under the Arc de Triomphe. His pinpricked face alongside a teenaged couple; four silly poses in a Parisian photobooth. Each photo would contain a million stories of painful pasts and hopeful futures, laughing, ice-cream filled times and cold, rainy days. I hope Mr. Monkey gets passed on forever, living in frozen frames of glossy four-by-sixes.