My Aunt Tica asked me to break into the church hall to steal a glass ornament from the lobby tree, so I texted my sister and told her to meet me at the Waffle House, that we had a felony to commit. I told her to wear black and she didn't disappoint. She even had a black ski mask, as if she'd been waiting her whole life to aid and abet, as if being family meant showing up, no matter what.

Kelly's twelve-year-old brother Max spoke. He listed things he loved about Kelly. Here are the ones I remember: the way she always smelled like cinnamon, how she let him drive, but only around empty parking lots, how she loved jigsaw puzzles, always had one on the floor of her room, how she talked to the dog as if he could understand her.

Aunt Tica bailed us out of jail. She showed up at the police station at 2:30 in the morning and she hugged us both to her like we were baby otters and she said she was so sorry, so sorry, so sorry, until we didn't know what she was sorry for or who she was apologizing to, and we just stood there on the curb outside the station and let her repeat it over and over and over.

There was an empty seat in the front row where my Uncle Joe, Kelly's dad, should have been but he didn't show up until after the service was over and he was drunk and everyone was in the lobby and my father punched him in the face in front of the minister.

We all ate dinner together, for the first time in years, and we had take-out, which my grandmother said the Orientals made, and then my sister said you can't say that, Grandma, you should say Asians instead, and my Uncle Joe called her a fucking snowflake and my Dad told him to shut the fuck up, and Uncle Joe laughed and said, what are you going to do, hit me? and my sister called him a fat, transphobic fuck, and Aunt Tica stood up and walked out.

There was a tree in the lobby, a giant fir tree, and the minister said that every soul who passed this year had an ornament, and I walked with Aunt Tica to the tree and watched her cup Kelly's ornament in her hand. On one side was a name etched in the glass in cursive, and on the other, a cross. The minister put his hand on Aunt Tica's back, but she shrugged it off as if it burned.

I found my father on the back steps. He told me Kelly had asked to come live with us last year. I pretended I didn't know that already, that she hadn't called me first and practiced asking.

I broke the window of the front door and the alarms went off immediately, not like in the movies where there's a lag, where there's time to steal the jewels and get out, and I ran for the tree and my sister stood at the door like she would take a bullet for me and there it was, the glass ball with Kelly's birth name, not her real name, not the name she whispered to me back when we were ten as if it were a gift, and I grabbed the ball and heard the sirens, but I didn't care, I just wished she were here, Kelly, and that she could see us and the lights and the alarms, and then my sister was beside me at the tree, and the sirens got louder, blue lights circling the ceiling as if we were at a rave, and we started pulling ornaments off the tree and throwing them at the walls, one by one, until the entire lobby was full of glass shards sharp enough to slice through the thickest of skin.

.