Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

“So we stuck the stars to the ceiling, and I spent the rest of my childhood looking up, listening to KATHY tell SALLY about all the other things she knew: The sky isn’t actually blue.”

This quote introduces the core dynamic of the sisters’ relationship within the novel’s second-person narrative structure, which frames the story as a direct address to Kathy. The capitalization of their names on the ceiling visually represents how their identities were intertwined in their shared childhood space. By positioning Kathy as the dispenser of knowledge and Sally as the listener, the passage establishes The Formative Power of Sibling Bonds as a central theme in the novel.

“It wasn’t the first time in my life that I had suspected we were different, that we were opposite children, but it was the first time I had heard Mom concerned about it. I tucked Mom’s comments away in my brain. I started watching you even more closely, to see how you did it.”

This passage marks a shift in Sally’s self-perception, as external validation from her mother confirms her insecurities about being different from Kathy. The quote introduces the motif of watching and being watched, positioning Sally as an observer who studies her sister to understand social performance. This act of intense observation foreshadows Sally’s role as the narrator of life after Kathy’s death, meticulously reconstructing her life from memory.

“I felt like I needed to do something drastic. Something a Red Person would never do. I walked over to the high dive. […] I looked around to see who was watching me, until I realized that nobody was watching me.”

Here, Espach illustrates Sally’s internal conflict between her cautious nature (a “Red Person”) and her desire to emulate Kathy’s perceived freedom (a “Green Person”). Her decision to act drastically is not for herself but for an imagined audience, highlighting her adolescent self-consciousness. The realization that “nobody was watching” underscores her feelings of invisibility and precipitates the fall that brings Billy into the family’s orbit,