Sisters

The rising action of the story takes place along the height of the road trip. While it is a shorter segment of the story, it contains some of Raina’s most important memories that explain the tensions that exist between Raina’s parents, the sources of family stress as Raina was growing up, and the reason for Raina’s fear of snakes and Amara’s decision to get one. The first of these significant memories is of the first few weeks of Will’s life. Since the family lives in an apartment, Will must share a room with the girls and spends many nights keeping them awake with his crying. The girls are each shown with baggy eyes, pasty white in the darkness as they lie in bed. The next day, Amara screams in protest at the idea of going to preschool: “NO! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!!! YOWL!!! WAAAAH!!” (71). Her tantrum is clear evidence of the stress in the family, and Amara is the most honest and open family member when it comes to voicing her opinions and emotions. It is through her that the reader sees how everyone really feels. Additionally, Amara’s strong emotions are often the deciding factor in the mood of the entire household. The size and shape of text is sometimes used to illustrate this dynamic, such as when the word “SCREAM” (87) fills the page, Raina’s mind, and hovers around the family as Amara takes up all the room. Amara’s outburst leads Dad to take the kids for a day off at the zoo, and when Amara sees the snakes, it sparks a long period of conflict as Raina learns to face her fear of the slithery reptiles.

Raina’s memory of her first encounter with a snake follows, and its importance is denoted in the uniqueness of the panel shapes. In a rare occurrence for the graphic novel, Raina narrates the scene from a first-person perspective in the form of captions. She tells the story moment-by-moment, with each step and detail drawn in its own panel. Raina’s quivering hands as she finds the blackberries she was seeking and her four arms as she frantically grabs as many as she can while in “blackberry heaven” (75) are particularly emotive details. The scene is childlike and whimsical, as if Raina is exploring a vast, thick jungle, her small feet going step by step. The happiness of the initial discovery of the berries then contrasts with Raina’s discovery of a dead snake under her foot and the resulting discomfort from the many brambles she runs through to escape it. Her parents laugh at her when it happens, and as she retells it to Amara years later, she relives the humiliation when Amara laughs, too. Raina’s battle with Managing Her Fear of snakes is something that is revisited throughout the road trip, and which ironically becomes the reason for the tension to finally break between Raina and her sister.

Along with these memories is the memory of Dad losing his job and the difficult period that followed. Between her brother, the disconnect with Amara, and the family’s financial stress, Raina starts to wish that she lived in another reality: “Maybe if I wish hard enough, this will all be a dream…” (89). Despite their difficulties, Raina receives a Walkman for Christmas, as her parents were able to sense Raina’s need to tune out from the chaos. It is not long before Raina becomes dependent on her Walkman and throws fits when it runs out of batteries. Raina’s dependence on her Walkman and refusal to engage with her family is indicative of her struggle to Adjust to the Unexpected and Navigate Changes that come with growing up and the passing of time. The thought of dealing with her family becomes unbearable, and Raina feels as though she has finally found her source of solitude. She sits at the kitchen table drawing a comic with a simple smile on her face as her family screams at each other. In one of the more humorous splash illustrations, Mom sings Kumbaya at a campout while Amara and Will stare in wide-eyed horror and Raina sits in peaceful bliss with her headphones on. On that same campout, Mom attempts to help her family reconnect by taking them out to look at the stars, but all the kids can focus on is their father’s absence: “I wish Daddy was here right now” (85).