She called me Thursday night. She was glum. She felt everything crumbling around her, and she needed me, yet hates seeming needy. She doesn�t know that it�s okay, and that I need her too.

She is five years my senior, and wanted a brother. Genetics ignored her plea. She sheepishly admits to breathing on me while stricken with a cold shortly after my birth; I retaliated by puking on her a few years later. Even-stevens. She screamed at me in childhood and I yelled back, or even initiated it all, for reasons long forgotten and likely inconsequential -- standard sibling squabbles, nothing more. She selflessly loaned me toys, tapes, cute tops, even when I whined and only wanted out of youngest-child envy. She was completely cool, and I saw that, envied that, even from an early age. She agreed to play tennis with me despite her superior skill, watched Australian soaps with me, and teased me only sporadically about the Wham posters on my wall. I typed her papers and baked cupcakes for her and her friends on weekends; she let me sit in on the Gone With The Wind screening for which a passel of her older pals gathered in our den. She never acted ashamed of the pre-pubescent little sis with a crush on one of her friends and a habit of wanting to hang out with her, and them. I like to think she knew, even then, exactly how strong and irreplaceable the bonds of sisterhood can become once sisters are old enough to appreciate what it means to be innately linked.

She went to college while I stumbled in and out of awkward adolescence, and returned to find a young woman of calmer spirit, someone with whom she could finally connect as a friend and not a baby sister.

The world changed, as did our worlds. She got me into bars long before I hit the legal age, never once balking at the idea of little sis mingling with her peers. She and I endured several moves together, often each other�s only source of comfort and strength and friendship. She rolled her eyes at me in silent camaraderie each time my mother, nerves frayed, snapped under the pressure of organizing these massive moves on her own. We consoled each other, we shielded each other, and we giggled together when the stress became too much, or the goodbyes too hard, or the packing too monotonous. We invented crazy games to pass time in empty houses, waiting for our boxed-up lives to arrive in crammed vans. She and I shared hotel rooms but never really slept in them, because we were too busy choking on our laughter. Those days begat innumerable triggers that, when pulled, will forever make us snicker. She knows exactly how to cheer me up and make me weep with mirth. She�s the only friend I�ve ever had that never once let me down.

She is my best friend.

She awakened in me the desire to tell stories. Huddled over jigsaw puzzles, brow furrowed in concentration, I created images from their cardboard component parts. She made more. Each picture was a scene from a larger tale, and she spun those oral histories deftly, easily, and differently each time. That was in our youth; today, when we indulge in that sacred puzzle bonding, the stories are replaced with more casual and personal conversation, maybe even inside jokes or just quiet companionship while a movie or my father's Queen albums play quietly in the background. But those early days of transporting ourselves inside the puzzle -- well, she made fiction come alive for me.

She encourages the writer buried deep within me, even -- especially -- when I�ve smothered the writer with self-doubt and drowned it with tears of rage, frustration, loneliness and restlessness. She knows me better than anyone else, and she advises me and lets me vent to her, and holds my heart together when it threatens to break. She is the only family member who knows about this diary, and is the only one who would understand it and never judge me on its contents. She believes, and refuses to capitulate to my cracked self-confidence, that I have talent and am worthwhile and funny and deserving of happy endings.

I wish she could believe more deeply in herself.

She does and doesn�t look like me. She is slightly shorter, with blonder and curlier hair and eyes a deeper blue; her hands are leaner, more graceful, yet inexplicably I was the piano player. We share fair skin, shoe-sizes, wide smiles, rich laughs, a propensity for sunburn and a quirky sense of humor. I freckle faster, she can grow longer nails. She hates wearing socks, and I hate wearing sandals.

She is beautiful, funny, brilliant and unique, the sort of person who lights up rooms and livens up parties. She is brave and strong, probably even more so than I imagine. She is the smartest person I know. People meet her and automatically sense she is headed for greatness -- she exudes that kind of subtle intellect, an exciting aura that makes you want to keep her number and pay attention to her progress and whisper goofy-but-heartfelt phrases to yourself, like, �That one is going places.� She could stop writing her thesis, wear a bag over her head for a decade and pledge daily allegiance to a vanilla-scented candle, and she�d still end up living a remarkable life studded with academic distinction and a gaggle of admirers. She is special.

She is utterly unaware of all those things. This is both her blessing and her curse.

She can�t see her beauty, doubts her talents, thinks her intelligence is overestimated. Simply put, she can�t view herself as others do. It gives her a refreshing modesty that is completely organic and without pretension; she will never be burdened with insufferability or arrogance, never founder under the weight of an ego. She will never be blinded by her own light, but may never overcome being blind to it.

I wish I could illuminate her, change what she sees in the mirror to something that matches what the rest of us see when we look fondly upon this loving and lovable being, this person who has no idea how much she brightens our lives, or of the awe she inspires. I am honored to have her as my confidante, and thrilled she is comfortable turning to me. We heal each other's hearts, souls and minds. We are each other's older sister, and each other's youngest sister, proud and protective. Distance doesn't dim the strength of our shared spirit; an ocean and a continent divide us, but we're still side by side. We are each other�s champion.

She�s asleep right now in England, oblivious to my tapping keyboard and to the surprise -- hopefully pleasant -- she�ll get when she logs onto the site. She�ll think I only wrote this because I know she will read it, but that�s not true. I�d have written it anyway, because as much as it might help her to have accessible reminders of our relationship, it helps me to write about it, to relive it, and on some level, to prove to myself that something and someone so amazing really can exist.