22.

Another crowded plane ride.

Another congested airport terminal filled with other people all just trying to get to where they're going.

Most of them are here because it's Christmas weekend.

The airport is blasting Christmas music through their speakers as if anyone could forget the holiday with all of the wreaths and red ribbons tied on every pole.

All of these people, bumping shoulders and rolling over each other's feet with their rolling luggage all just in a hurry to either fly away or to get out of here and into their families warm homes where they can sit around a fireplace while a Christmas tree sparkles in the corner.

So many happy smiling faces all around me. Even with all of the stress of the holidays and the insanity of busking around this overwhelmingly large airport, people are still finding reasons to smile.

Looking forward to things.

Then there is me.

I pass by the real Christmas tree decorated with multicolored lights, thinking about what a fire hazard those things are.

All it takes is one bad light, or one branch that's a little too dry, and the house goes up in flames all around you.

A terrible way to die.

And arguably the worst season to have it happen.

Everyone else just moves around it, not a thought given accept to maybe appreciate the fact that it is impeccably decorated.

"Merry Christmas." Someone says to me as I pass out of the revolving doors, letting myself out into the night.

Merry Christmas.

What a holiday this is for me.

On my way to a police station to pick up my sister who should without a doubt probably still be in the hospital where I saw her last.

It's exhausting.

This part of my life, the part where I drop everything from around me to pick up her broken pieces instead.

It's draining me.

I can't even let myself think about Ben and Elizabeth right now.

Anytime I start to, I'm filled with an entirely different set of nerves and anxiety.

At least the ones I get from Alice, I've literally grown up with.

It takes an annoying amount of time to finally hail a cab, but I'm finally tucked into the backseat that smells like an old diaper and out of the windy cold night.

So far, me and the Texas weather, not friends.

When the woman driving asks me the destination, I try to hide the embarrassment in my voice as I tell her the police station, and she equally tries to hide her surprise at the request.

She doesn't try to talk anymore after that one.

Not most people around here's holiday plan I guess.

But they just don't know what it's like to have an Alice.

And the ones who do...

My heart is heavy for all of them today.

I know how hard the holidays are on families of the sick or the addicted.

I'm thankful for the quiet ride.

It gives me a little more time to think about what I'm going to do about Alice.

There are so many options but none that are good.

I could take her home with me.

But then I'm living with her again.

Which sounds terrifying.

Or I could try to get her into a facility, but that only works if she's willing.

Or I could get her out and let her go on her way. But I don't think I'd be able to live with myself.

I know if my parents were still here exactly what they'd do.

They'd take her home.

The station looms under harsh parking lot lights in the distance and I feel my stomach begin to sink.

I mentally kiss my life as I know it goodbye, and I unbuckle my seatbelt.

I toss the cabbie an extra few bucks to wait outside for me and she nervously complies.

I'm sure she thinks I'm about to go get some hardened criminal out of jail and break them back into her car.

She's only a little bit wrong.

I tug my sleeves down into my hands and fist them at my sides as I make my way into the police station and over to the desk.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" The scrawny young officer behind the desk asks, looking me over with a careful studying glance.

"I hope so." I try to smile but I can already feel the nervous sweat pooling in my palms and under my arms. "I guess I need to bail out my sister?" I don't know why it comes out as a question.

Or maybe I do.

I'm still not sure exactly what it is I'm doing.

"Name?" He asks politely, sliding his chair closer to his computer monitor. I watch him nervously as I tell him her name and birthday and watch him type the information into the system. "Wait here."

He gets up briskly and walks into the back of the small office behind the desk and I watch nervously as he goes up to another officer who is chugging his coffee like his life depends on it.

I watch them exchange a few words back and forth before the younger officer comes back out to me.

"Gone." He says, and for a second I just blink at him.

"I'm sorry." I say, releasing my fists. "Gone?" I repeat him.

"Yeah." He nods matter of factly. "Released earlier today."

This cannot be happening again.

"Ok, well, I'm confused." I say, bracing my hands on the counter in front of me. "I got a call saying she was here and I should come get her."

The officer nods slowly, then leans back down to look at his monitor again. "I don't know what to tell you on that." He says. "Says here she was released on her own."

I take a deep breath and clench my jaw, trying not to scream.

"Then why did I get called to come and get her?" I say through my teeth. "If you were just going to let her go anyway, why did I need to get on a plane and fly all the way here, on Christmas weekend no less-."

"Look, I understand that you're-."

"-I don't think you do." I cut him back off. "Do you have any idea how expensive last minute plane tickets are right now?"

Noticing the argument, the officer from the back office finally sets aside his coffee mug and lazily walks out to the counter, putting his hand onto the other officer's shoulder and nodding over his head.

"Your the sister, is that correct?" The second officer asks me as the first retreats into the back.

"Yes." I huff. "And I was called and told to come get my sister and now he's saying she isn't here."

"Let me get a look at this." He says, taking the other man's seat in front of the monitor and moving the mouse around, his eyebrows furrowed. "Alice Maxwell?" He asks, looking up to me for confirmation.

"Yes, that's my sister, and she should be here." I lamely slap a hand across the counter top. "She's an addict and strung out and you just let her leave on her own? That makes quite literally no sense. You are supposed to be helping people like her. Protecting them. Not just-."

"I'm gonna cut you off there." He says, calmly schooling his expression into one of false understanding. "You say she is an addict?"

"Yeah."

"I see she has some past infractions on her record, but as for her being here, it wasn't that."

"I do not understand." I cross my arms angrily across my chest.

"So," he says, leaning back a little in his chair. "According to this she was picked up due to multiple calls of a disturbance in the area." He says quickly. "Looks like a few reports of someone loitering in yards and basically being a nuisance. Officers responded to the scene and picked up Miss Maxwell because she was behaving erratically."

"Because she's an addict." I point out the obvious again.

"They brought her in but her tox screens came back clean except for a little too much to drink so we had her on an overnight hold." He explains further. "Everyone is entitled to a call, but according to the notes left by one of the deputies on duty that night, she seemed to be in an unstable mental state and was incompetent to make her call but did render a number, I'm assuming that to be you." He says, looking up at me. "Typically that call is just to inform someone of where the individual is and when they need to be picked up if they were brought in without a vehicle."

My head is spinning around the room and the florescent overhead lights give everything a ghostly glow.

My fingers twitch at my sides and I try my best to steady my breathing.

"You checked her for drugs." I say and he nods back once. "That doesn't make any sense." I say. "She's unwell. She has been for years. She's a heroine user. And she's schizophrenic. There is no way you didn't-."

"She did not disclose the medical condition to us at the time of her arrest, but that would explain the circumstances of her being brought in." He says. "She was drunk, but just barely over the legal limit."

"How could you just let her go?"

"Ma'am." He says. "I know it sounds blunt, but this was a typical night for us. She was picked up on disorderly conduct. It's the way things go. Drug test, finger prints, a night in the drunk tank, and on their way once they've had time to sober up. We didn't have any rights to hold her here at the time."

I pinch the bridge if my nose and take a deep breath again. Trying and failing ti process the information.

"So she just left?" I ask, not even able to look at him anymore.

"Yes, ma'am." He replies. "She spent the night here, and was allowed to leave after she calmed down a bit. That's the law."

"Well it's a shitty law." I snap under my breath.

"Look." The officer says gently. "I get it, ok? My dad, he had some problems too. I'd be lying if I said I haven't been on the other side of this counter myself, alright?" He rubs at the stubble on his chin. "But we couldn't hold her. She would have been offered the opportunity to get some help if she was showing signs of any disorders but she was able to go on her own and we had to let her. If she'd flagged on any of the screenings we could have kept her but she didn't. She served her time here and we had to let her go."

My heart sinks from my chest and lands somewhere in the pit of my stomach.

I'm angry and upset and confused and heartbroken, but none of that is this man's fault. Odds are, he wasn't even here or even had any interaction with Alice at all.

"I'm sorry." I say quietly. More than a little ashamed of myself for going half Karen on these two officers.

"No need." The man says, offering an understanding smile. "If there was a way I could help I would."

"I understand." I nod. "Have a merry Christmas." I say more than half heartedly as I make my way away from the counter.

I walk outside only to find my bags sitting on the curb out front and the cab nowhere to be found.

I guess she decided a few dollars wasn't enough to wait on me and whenever I was planning on leaving here with.

I kick at the sidewalk for a second before just sitting down on the curb beside my stuff.

I just missed her again.

She is literally a ghost who haunts my past and my present.

I don't understand how someone can live this way at all.

It takes a few minutes, but my head snaps up as a thought occurs to me.

She wasn't using.

Alice wasn't high.

Sure, she was drunk, but she wasn't high.

The thought of it sends my brain through an entirely new loop.

My brain can't seem to put two and two together.

Alice and Alice not on drugs.

The breeze blows through my hair and I close my eyes, picturing my sister. Out here in the cold just like me. Alone just like me. I wonder if she ever actually thinks about me too.

I wonder if she's like me at all.

If she ever misses her sister.

If she dreams about the good days too.

I wonder if when she was here just earlier today, if she thought of me as she walked out of the front doors the same way I just had.

It's hard not to want it.

It's hard not the wish that my twin sits by herself at times and thinks of me and the way we'd sing in the car. How we'd planned to marry twin brothers so that we would have one big house and never have to be away from each other.

I'd like to think she misses me and wonders what my life has become. I wonder if she wants to know where I work, what I do all day, if I've still got the same friends, if I still know where the friendships bracelets we made in church camp that one summer are.

I'd like to think so many good things about Alice and how she feels.

But it can't sink in.

The wishful thinking never breaks the ice around my heart that knows the whole truth. The part of me that knows the only time I pass my sister's mind is when she needs something.

I'm the one who will bail her out when she's gotten into trouble too big for her to climb herself out of.

When the fall to the bottom knocks the breath out of her, that's when her mind remembers me.

But not all of the good times.

None of the inside jokes.

None of the nights spent under the stars.

Alice thinks of me when trouble comes.

Because she knows I'll come.

Because we always do.

Just like my parents did.

I bet they had the same realizations as me once upon a time. And it guts me to the core to know the feelings that they felt.

To know they knew just like me that all we will ever be to Alice anymore is a way out.

I am my sister's rescuer.

But I can't even do that right.

I can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. I know that. But I can't seem ti even show up to try on time.

Every time I just miss her.

She slips through my fingers like the sand on a beach. Swept up in the wind and carried off to a place where I may never get the chance to see it again.

"Let me give you a ride somewhere."

I jump and turn to see the officer I'd just been talking to standing in the doorway behind me.

"I can't let you do that." I say, just no realizing the streaks of wetness on my cheeks.

He just shakes his head as he watches me swipe at my tears. "Come on." He says, waving me forward. "I can't fail you twice in one day."