(Here's Chapter 11! I hope everyone's having a great Wednesday!)

My mom's bad mood had not dissipated by the time we got home. I had been plopped on the couch with my antibiotics and the bag of McDonalds we had picked up on the way home without a word. Mark leaned against the doorframe and observed us with his arms crossed.

"So what'd the doc say?"

"She has a urinary tract infection," she huffed from the kitchen.

"What? Are they sure? But isn't that from…" He trailed off and neither one of us finished his sentence. "Oh." He paused for a moment. "But you're gonna be okay? They were able to prescribe you medicine?"

I picked up the white paper pharmacy bag so he could see it, not saying anything as I began flipping through the TV channels, eventually settling on a random horror film.

"Obviously this means that we will not be taking our trip to Niagara Falls," she told him as she came back in to the living room. "It's too late to send her over to Ron's, I already told him not to expect her because she didn't feel good."

I sighed. "Mom, I'm fine. Don't skip out on your anniversary trip just because my stomach hurts. I'm not a baby, I can handle being by myself, you don't have to stay."

"JJ, I'm not leaving a sixteen year old alone for a weekend with no adult supervision."

"If you stay here you're just going to be mad at me all weekend."

"Well that would be because I'm pretty damn upset with you right now!"

"Sandy, Sandy…" Mark began to rub her shoulders. "What if she just stays here tonight, and goes to Ron's in the morning?"

"No! I don't feel like I can trust her right now. And anyways, when I called Ron he said something about a golf trip he had been invited to, he might not even be there."

"I'll be fine." I said through clenched teeth.

"Like hell you will." She walked back into the kitchen, and Mark gave me a sympathetic smile before following her.

I could hear him speaking in a gentle, soothing voice. "Sandy, I know you're upset, but this is not the way to handle it. We went through this with Travis, remember?"

"But that was different! He was a senior, and he had a girlfriend, and it's different!"

"I still think you might be overreacting a bit-"

"Mark!"

"-just a little, yes. And I think you need a little bit of space in order to get some perspective and calm down. And you know where would be a great place to do that? Niagara falls, where we already have a nonrefundable suite for the weekend! Come on, if we leave now, we can be there in two hours… Order some room service… We've had this booked for months."

I heard her sigh deeply. "I know and I just… Well how would you feel if this were Lindsey?"

"Sandy, Shawna and I definitely had to go through this with Lindsey, and Isaac too. They're teenagers. It's natural. And I really think you're making a bigger deal out of this than you should." He dropped his voice again, and I lowered the volume on the television so I could try to catch the rest of the conversation. "And I think if you're really being honest with yourself, you're not mad she might be having sex. You're upset that she didn't tell you." The weight of the world seemed to settle behind my belly button, unaffected by the painkillers the doctor had given me before I was discharged. I turned the volume slowly back up, no longer wanting to listen in.

Mark came back in. "Hey kiddo. So I called Lindsey and she's going to come stay with you while we're away." I gave him a pointed look and he raised his hands in mock surrender. "I know, you're not a child, you don't need a babysitter, but you are feeling under the weather and I think this will make everyone a little more comfortable." I nodded and went back to the TV, not really taking in what was happening on the screen.

He came and sat beside me on the couch. "It's going to be okay, JJ. She's going to be okay, once she wraps her head around it."

"But I'm not even having sex!" I blurted out before I could stop myself.

"Okay! Okay. And that's fine too. Either way, it's alright." We fell into silence as we watched the boy in the movie be murdered, blood spraying all over his room. "What is this shit?"

"Nightmare on Elm Street."

"Oh yeah. I haven't seen this in forever, I forgot how gory it is." He helped himself to a few of my fries. "You're a lot alike, y'know."

"Me and Freddy Krueger?"

"You and your mom."

"So, same thing."

He swatted my lightly on the knee with a grin. "I'm serious. You're both stubborn, passionate, with a deep need to protect those around you. It's probably why you bump heads most of the time."

We watched more of the movie in silence until my mom came back downstairs. "Alright, I'm ready. Lindsey's on her way?"

"Yeah. She just had to pack up her books and then she was going to head over. She should be here in a little under an hour." Lindsey was a second year law student in Cleveland. From what I could tell, she spent every spare moment locked away in her apartment, nose in her books.

"Alright. Well, JJ we're going to head out then. We left cash on the counter if you want to get a pizza but please eat something with some semblance of nutritional value while we're gone. Something other than Cheetos," my mom implored. Mark patted my leg and got up to load their bags in the car. She moved to stand behind the couch and smoothed my hair down, pressed a hard kiss on the top of my head. "I love you. You know that right? And we're going to have to have a talk when I get back, but I love you a lot." She straightened up and adjusted her purse on her shoulder.

"Car's ready."

"Alright. Be good, Jayje. Call if you need anything, and make sure you follow the instructions on your medicine. Bye!"

"Bye, JJ!"

"Bye, drive safe!" I responded as Mark corralled my mom out the door. I was left with an empty house, silent except for the over the top, agonized screaming coming from the movie.

Why did it bother me so much that my mom thought I was having sex? It's not as if we were particularly religious, I hadn't made any abstinence pledge. Travis had definitely had sex in high school. Ros… Well, I didn't know if Ros had. And I never would.

But practically everyone I went to school with was. Kate had lost her virginity at the end of our freshman year of high school, and we had both decided that it really wasn't a big deal. And maybe if I had a boyfriend, it would be different. Everything was just so mixed up. Because even though technically, no I wasn't a virgin, I didn't feel as if I had had sex. To me, it was something special. Maybe that was dumb and little girlish. But even if it was just some dumb jock at a house party, wasn't it at the very least an expression of desire, attraction, worthiness?

That didn't sound like my experience at all.

By the time Lindsey arrived, Nightmare on Elm Street had ended and I had settled into a Grey's Anatomy marathon.

"Hey JJ," she called as she dumped her backpack next to the stairs along with a duffle bag I assumed held clothes and a couple plastic bags. "How're you feeling?"

I shrugged. "They gave me a painkiller at the hospital so I'm feeling better. A little nauseous."

She gave me an empathetic grimace. "Yeah, UTIs are never fun. The good news is now you know what to watch for so you'll be able to catch it before it gets this bad next time." She grabbed her groceries and took them into the kitchen.

"Do you get them a lot?"

She came back into the living room, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Yeah, my freshman year of college especially; it seemed like I got one once a month."

I cocked an eyebrow at her. "Sounds like you must have been having all kinds of sex."

She laughed as she joined me on the couch. "Yeah, not so much. Sorry about your mom, Dad filled me in a bit. There are lots of different causes for UTIs, but there's still this old school idea that it's one step below Chlamydia. Honestly, you're probably just dehydrated."

"I'll be sure to pass that along."

"Wait, did the doctor give you that medicine that makes your pee turn blue?"

"Yeah, isn't that so weird?"

"Just wait, you'll be prepared the first time but in a few days you'll wake up and completely forget. You'll go to pee first thing and it'll scare the crap out of you."

"Well at least I have that to look forward to." She went into the kitchen and came back with a glass of dark red liquid. "What's that?"

"Your new best friend. Cranberry juice. One of the best home remedies to get rid of UTIs without having to go to the doctor and pay for the blue-pee medicine. When you feel one coming on just drink a bottle and it should go away on its own. Be sure to buy cranberry juice though, and not cocktail."

"Thanks." I took a drink of the tart juice.

"Wait a second, is this the 'What if' episode?" She pulled her curly brown hair into a messy knot on top of her head.

I nodded. "Yeah, do you want me to rewind? I'm not far in."

"No it's okay. I've seen it like a million times, I know- oh my god, Karev's glasses. He's like medical Clark Kent."

We fell into a comfortable silence. Lindsey and I weren't very close; when my mom married Mark I had been a freshman and she had been a senior at SUNY Buffalo. We really didn't have anything in common, and it was honestly a little weird to be gaining a sister when I still felt the loss of Rosalind every day. But she had grown on me. She seemed funny and smart and had never treated me like a small child who wasn't worth her time. We still weren't quite sisters, but sometimes it felt like we could be something like friends. We watched Grey's for a couple more hours before she reluctantly pulled herself away to study.

I went upstairs and washed my face. I put on my pajamas and got into bed curling around my pillow as I tried to make my mind turn off. The only bad thing about being around Lindsey was that it served as a reminder to what I didn't have. I was able to get up every day and have a mostly normal life, sometimes not remembering I had lost my big sister for days, even weeks at a time. But then we would do something seemingly small, like going in together to buy Mark a birthday gift, or take each other's side when trying to pick a movie to watch at Christmas, and I became aware of how much I missed Ros. The spans of time without pain did nothing to temper the grief when it came; if anything, it just made the jagged loss hurt more.