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Kamilah’s face is splashed over every magazine she sees, which is par for the course. The difference is that, for once, Tahani is there too. It’s a photograph from three years ago of Kamilah and Tahani at some charity event, side by side. Their shoulders are touching, but their arms are crossed, and, what with the tense smiles plastered on their faces, they look a bit more like buddy cops in a silly film Kamilah would never watch than sisters.
Like a team, even though that was the first they’d seen each other in months. Kamilah doesn’t remember what the charity event was for now. She doesn’t particularly care either.
Kamilah prides herself on being brutally honest, even at the expense of the feelings of others, so she doesn’t think she’ll speak at the funeral. She’ll let the press think she’s just too devastated, even though they’re aware that she and Tahani were estranged. It wasn’t hard to tell.
Kamilah’s PR person managed to spin her last comments to Tahani—which leaked immediately, of course—as something tragic rather than cruel, a badly-timed argument that Kamilah regrets. Kamilah will never be able to take it back, the magazines proclaim, and Kamilah wants to buy every single one and set them on fire.
(Just because it’s a spin doesn’t mean it’s not true.)
The press goes far enough that they make it seem like she’s ashamed, which Kamilah dislikes, but it’s better than being painted as heartless.
Maybe Kamilah will write a song about the whole sorry thing.
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Kamilah’s never planned a funeral. Not by herself. The one for her parents was mostly planned by Tahani, though she was sulking the whole time.
Eventually Princess Kate offers the help of one of her party planners, and Kamilah gives up the reins with relief.
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The funeral takes place on an appropriately overcast day. It’s huge. It’s far more packed than Kamilah expected. It’s not that she didn’t expect anyone to go to Tahani’s funeral, it’s just that Tahani didn’t have many fans to mourn her, and Kamilah always assumed that those famous friends Tahani was pictured with, the ones she always name-dropped, weren’t so much friends as people with whom Tahani made shallow connections just for the story. Just so she could point and say she was friends with someone far more famous than her.
(She suspects that Tahani may have thought the same sometimes. She was always embarrassingly self-conscious.)
Then more and more people line up to speak at the funeral, and Kamilah starts to wonder. Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars and Leonardo DiCaprio and Moby and every other philanthropist often in the news—all of them seem to have something to say about Tahani. About who she was. A social butterfly. A lovely person. Very giving.
Kamilah knows what she’d say if she got up to speak. She’d set the record straight.
Tahani was stuck up. She only gave for the attention. She was jealous. She didn’t care about them. They’re not supposed to care about her.
Kamilah doesn’t think any of her friends would have anything of substance to say at her funeral.
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At the reception, Tahani’s friends smile politely at Kamilah as they give their condolences. Many of them say they’re a big fan.
Kamilah feels lonelier every time she hears it.
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Kamilah is relieved to go home, and glad she’s wearing sunglasses. They protect well against the paparazzi’s cameras, and hide that she isn’t crying.
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Kamilah lies down on her bed still dressed in her funeral clothes. She dressed down so as not to be too distracting, but no one seemed very distracted by her anyway. The funeral was all about Tahani.
Tahani’s friends spoke about the person she was, or at least the person they knew, who seemed a kinder person than the one Kamilah had known. She’s got the glow of death around her now, of course, so that must be part of it. Kamilah can read between the lines, and the Tahani they spoke of—the mediator, the giver, the one with the fun stories...she was clearly full of herself still, always trying to get the upper hand. The Tahani that Kamilah knew.
Only Kamilah's come to realize that she didn't know Tahani very well.
She wasn’t lying when she told her sister she didn’t think of her much, because she didn’t, because she didn't want to.
It was so much easier to shun Tahani than to feel bad about her, because the truth is that Kamilah felt bad about Tahani ever since she was a child. Since the moment she realized she was more special than her, she felt bad, and then she felt embarrassed. She felt embarrassed because Tahani was always trying to get attention when Kamilah got it so effortlessly.
She told herself she felt embarrassed of Tahani, but now, in the cold light of day when no one will ever know, she can admit that she felt embarrassed that her parents loved her more.
Kamilah knows she was more talented than Tahani. She’s always known that. But she remembers thinking that Tahani’s work wasn’t bad or anything.
That was a time when she was too young to understand how much her parents had staked on her, when Tahani wasn't competition, but her sister.
Kamilah doesn’t like thinking about the time before her relationship with Tahani soured. She doesn’t even like thinking about the fact that there was a time before her relationship with Tahani soured, has always preferred to assume that they were distant since her birth, that it was a matter of personality, that Tahani’s jealousy was all her own fault. Otherwise she’d have to blame it on her parents, and even place part of the blame on herself for letting their parents tear them apart, instead of all on Tahani.
Kamilah doesn’t want to insult her parents, doesn’t want to make it seem as though they weren’t good and supportive, she’s always talked about how good and supportive of her they were in interviews.
(She’s never gotten into the sharp criticisms—not constant, but always devastating, because they expected so much more of her—or the way the pressure made her hands shake, the way she’s steadied herself since childhood but only on the outside.)
It’s just that when Kamilah thinks back on it, she can access the old, old days.
Back when Tahani hugged her and braided her hair, before their mother made her stop because Kamilah’s hair didn’t look good in braids, or at least not how Tahani did them.
Back when she and Tahani would watch the telly together and talk about growing up.
(“When I’m older, I’ll have a grand mansion,” Tahani says, “and there’ll be a special room for you!”
Kamilah giggles. “I’ll have one too!” she tells Tahani. “Just like yours!”)
Back when things were good between them because they were too stupid to know that they wouldn’t be that way forever.
Back when.
A part of Kamilah wishes she’d spoken at the funeral after all, but in the end it would've been too little, too late.
“I’ve come to understand something, Tahani,” Kamilah whispers to the ceiling, or to a ghost of her sister she doesn’t believe is there, because she feels entirely alone.
That’s all she says.
She pushes her sunglasses down over her forehead so she can properly cover her eyes to hide that she’s crying, though it’s not like anyone’s watching.