We built a blanket fort in her room on a random Tuesday. We attempted to bake banana bread—it came out looking like a hockey puck, but we ate it anyway, laughing until our stomachs hurt. We downloaded eight different multiplayer games, got bored of seven, and became embarrassingly competitive at the eighth.

Before 2020, my cousin sister and I might have only seen each other at loud weddings or annual holiday dinners. But as the world retreated indoors, the physical distance between our homes mattered less than the digital bridge we built. In a year marked by isolation, she became:

: The series became a talking point for its exploration of internal family tensions and performances that widely discussed in social circles.

Then March 2020 happened.

We started a shared journal in June. A cheap spiral notebook we passed back and forth. She’d write a page about how online classes were making her feel dumb. I’d write underneath about how I was scared my parents might get sick. We never talked about those pages out loud. We didn’t have to.