Ana’s sister, Sam, had thick-knuckled hands. Ana watched as Sam made quick and deft work of the peel of a clementine, spiraling it off in one piece. She held the peeled fruit out to Ana, who sat at the kitchen table with her hands beneath her thighs. Ana freed a hand to reach for the offered fruit and paused, hand out, palm up. She had never really looked at her fingers before, or compared them to Sam’s thin fingers that swooped around round knuckles. She examined them now. They were short and wide and boring.

Sam dropped the clementine into Ana’s open palm. Ana split it in two before picking off one slice. The winter treat always reminded her of her birthday. That was two days ago. The morning after was when her dad left. She held the slice in front of her mouth like a smile before biting into it.

“Where will Dad live now?” Ana asked.

Sam shrugged. Ana could tell that she was doing her best to look like she didn’t care.

“A condo,” Sam said.

“Will we visit him?”

“Sure. We’ll probably stay with him on weekends or something.”

Ana peeled white vines off the side of the fruit, dropping them in a pile on the table. Sam was boiling a pot of water for pasta, which was the only dinner she could really make without spoiling.

“We won’t live with him?” Ana asked.

“Probably not. Ana, do you understand all this?”

Ana slid another slice into her mouth. Clementines were so sweet. She considered her sister’s question and then nodded.

“They never kiss each other goodbye,” she said.

Ana did not look at her sister. Sam stared down at her. Ana seemed fascinated by a slice of clementine, by the network of white climbing up the outside like ivy, by the softness of the inside skin, by air bubbles underneath it. She traced it all with a finger. Sam thought that her sister really needed to stop chewing her fingernails.

“You know this isn’t going to be like in movies, right?” Sam said. “They’re not going to get back together in the end. This is going to change everything. Forever. They’re not going to suddenly realize that this was all a mistake.”

“Sure,” Ana said. She knew all that already. She knew her dad didn’t love her mom, and she knew because: “They never kiss each other goodbye.”

---

Ana’s mom, Joy, was folding in on herself. Like origami, Ana thought, only she couldn’t make her mother into a crane. She could see the corners, though; the sharp creases in the paper would be her mother’s elbows, knees, and shoulder blades. Joy was sitting at the edge of her bed, her torso collapsed onto her thighs and her hands on her face. Her fingers crossed her eyes like bars. They were short and wide, just like Ana’s.

“Mommy?” Ana said. “Sam made dinner.”

“I’m not hungry tonight, Sweetie,” Joy said. She looked up. Her face was red, especially her nose, and her eyelashes clung together in wet spikes.

“There’s still some birthday cake left over.”

“You and Sam can finish it.”

“We can save you a piece, if you want.”

“No. Ana, you and Sam just finish the cake, alright?”

Ana nodded dutifully and moved towards the door.

“Mom?” she said before she left. “Will you and Dad go to court?”

“Go eat dinner, Ana,” Joy said. Then she let her face fall back into her hands.

Sam had set two plates on the table and heaped pasta onto each one. The sauce was cold and sat in a jar on the edge of the table.

“Mom’s not coming,” Ana said, placing her hands on the back of her chair.

“I figured,” Sam said. “Sit down. Do you want milk or cranberry juice?”

“Soda,” Ana said. Her dad had kept a stock of Diet Cokes in the fridge. It was the only grocery he’d made sure they always had.

Sam rolled her eyes but took a soda out of the fridge for Ana, and then, as an afterthought, one for herself.

“Are Mom and Dad going to go to court?” Ana asked. She tipped the cold tomato sauce onto her pasta and more came out than she wanted.

“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “Maggie Oyer’s parents got a divorce and they never went to real court.”

“I guess that’s good,” Ana said. The pasta was too mushy. It wasn’t Sam’s fault, really, because making dinner wasn’t supposed to be Sam’s job.

“Do you care about any of this?” Sam asked. “I mean, are you upset by it at all?”

Ana shrugged. “Not really,” she said. “I was tired of all the fighting. Are you upset?”

“Yes I’m upset,” Sam said. “This is going to change everything. We’re going to have to live with Mom most of the time, and she’ll give us a ton of stupid rules, and then we’ll go live with Dad on weekends and have to eat cereal all the time because he can’t cook.”

“You could make us dinner. I would help.”

“I can’t even cook pasta. I messed it up.”

“It tastes fine, Sam. It’s good.”

“Oh shut up, Ana. It’s mushy. Mom should have cooked but she’s too busy pretending like she’s not crying to worry about something silly like feeding her children.”

“She’s allowed to be sad.”

“Yeah well she should have seen this coming.”

“That’s not fair.”

“You and I knew it was coming. He obviously did. She’s the only one.”

“Just because it’s not a surprise doesn’t mean it can’t be sad,” Ana said. This conversation made her feel like there was an itch on her back that she couldn’t reach.

“So you are upset about it,” Sam said. Ana thought she sounded calmer now.

“I’m fine,” Ana said. “Things will be better now.”

Sam shook her head. “No,” she said. “Things will just be a different sort of bad.” She sighed. “Forget the pasta. Let’s just have cake.”

---

On Monday morning Joy went to work with extra concealer under her eyes. Ana gave her a kiss on the cheek before she left. Even with the makeup, Ana knew that anyone would be able to tell her mother had been crying.

As soon as Joy left, Ana made and buttered two pieces of toast and carried them into the room she shared with her sister. Sam was sitting on her bed with her long legs in front of her and a book in her hands. When Ana nudged, she scooted over to make room. It was still winter vacation for four more days, so they had all day to lie around snacking and watching kids’ movies.

Ana let herself curl into Sam. It wasn’t just her sister’s fingers that were bony, it was her whole body. Ana’s forehead pressed against Sam’s jutting clavicle. It was uncomfortable, but not enough to make her move. Sam reached an arm around Ana’s neck and pressed two fingers to Ana’s pulse. Then she began to hum and trail her fingers lightly over Ana’s neck and face. She took one of the toast slices and continued to hum as she chewed on it. It reminded Ana of when she was little and her dad used to tease her because she hummed without realizing it when she ate something she liked.

Ana heard the front door open and thought that maybe her mom had forgotten something, or had decided to take the day off and lie in bed. But then her dad, Stan, showed up in the doorway of the bedroom.

“Hey girls,” he said. Sam stopped humming.

“Dad,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m just going to grab some things.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

Stan lingered, as if he expected something more out of his daughters. Sam didn’t move or say anything else, so Ana didn’t either. Stan moved in the direction of his bedroom. Ana waited for Sam to start humming again, but she didn’t.

“You’re angry,” Ana said.

“Didn’t we talk about this yesterday?”

“It’s not his fault, you know.”

“God, Ana. It’s not Mom’s fault, now it’s not Dad’s either. Whose fault is it? Yours? Mine?”

“Why can’t it be nobody’s fault?”

“Things don’t really work that way.”

“How do you know? You’re fifteen.”

“Trust me Ana, I just know.”

“Maybe these sorts of things just happen sometimes and you can’t explain them. Maybe sometimes people just don’t love each other anymore.”

“It’s both of their faults,” Sam said, as if she hadn’t heard Ana at all. She probably hadn’t.

“I’m going to go talk to him,” Ana said. She almost looked to Sam for approval, but she knew she wouldn’t get it. She slid off the bed and padded into her parents’ bedroom. Stan had a duffel bag open on the floor and was standing in the closet dropping shirts and ties in it.

“Dad?”

He turned. “Ana,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Good,” Ana said.

“Are you sure? This is going to be a big change and I just want you to know—“

“I’m fine, Daddy. Me and Sam already talked about it.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.” He turned back to the closet and pulled a pale green shirt off a hanger, folding it sloppily. Then he tried again: “I want you to understand why this is happening.”

“I know. You and Mom aren’t in love anymore and so you’re breaking up. Are you going to get married again?”

“What? No. Maybe. It’s too early to think about anything like that, Ana.”

“Well if you want to, it’s okay with me,” Ana said.

“Oh Ana.”

“Sam says we’ll visit you on weekends.”

He smiled, but it was the kind of smile he gave Joy when she touched his hand. “You can come visit me whenever you want once I have an apartment,” he said.

“Do you think things will be better now?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Okay.” Ana slipped her small fist into his shirt pocket and kissed his cheek. Then she went back to her room and crawled onto Sam’s bed.

“Dad thinks we’ll be happier now,” she said.

“He thinks he’ll be happier now. Mom won’t. We won’t,” Sam said.

“We might.”

“Don’t be so naïve.”

“Don’t be so angry.”

Sam didn’t say anything, but she reached her arm around Ana’s shoulders and drew her sister into her collarbone. She walked her fingers down Ana’s spine. She kissed Ana’s hair.

---

It was about to be a whole new year. Joy had gone to bed a few hours before, leaving Ana and Sam stretched out on the couch together watching the ball drop in New York. Neither of them spoke. They watched this every year, only normally their parents flanked them on the sofa, carrying the conversation. Neither wanted to mention how anticlimactic it felt this year.

“Drinks,” Sam said, sitting up. “I almost forgot.” She disentangled herself from Ana and stood.

“But you’ll miss it. There’s only a couple minutes left,” Ana said.

“I know how it ends.”

When she came back into the living room there were still 58 seconds until the new year. Ana looked up at her briefly. In one hand Sam held two champagne flutes, and in the other she held a bottle. She put them all down on the coffee table and burrowed back into the couch with Ana.

“That’s the real champagne,” Ana said.

“I know. It’s New Year’s Eve. You’re supposed to drink champagne.”

“We’re supposed to drink sparkling cider.”

“Not this year. This year I’m in charge and I say we can drink the champagne. If Mom notices we’ll just tell her we opened the wrong bottle by accident. Now shut up or we’ll miss midnight.”

Ana stopped protesting and turned back to the TV. They watched, enraptured, as the ball finished its descent. With ten seconds left the people in Times Square started counting down. Ana and Sam didn’t. As the clock on TV hit twelve exactly, the people started to cheer and Sam popped the champagne cork. She filled the two flutes. On TV there was shouting and confetti and kissing. In Ana and Sam’s living room, the sisters tapped their glasses together quietly and gulped down their champagne.

---

AN: What I'd most like to hear about is what people thought of the ending. I'm not quite sure about it. Also, any ideas for the title would be really appreciated.