She’s been proclaimed dead for twenty eight hours.
And Remi couldn’t move. She couldn’t think, or eat, or drink, or use the bathroom. She just sat there beside the hospital bed watching her. Her sister is so pale…and so…cold. Remi couldn’t even think of getting up and leaving. The nurses had already come in twice to tell her that they’re going to take her sister to the morgue—they need the room.
When they finally come, her parents have returned from waiting outside. They’d left Remi in the room. Her mother approached her as they lifted the body. “Come on sweetie—”
Remi shot up from her seat, looking to her mother with wild eyes. “Don’t.” She warned in a harsh tone. “Don’t touch me.” Her mother’s face filled with hurt, and for the first time in her life, Remi didn’t care. She didn’t care about what her mother thought or what she had to say. “This is your fault.” Remi snatched up her purse and marched out of the room.
Remi’s father chased after her. “Remi, we’re all grieving—!”
“Grieving?!” She shouted, whirling to face him. “What do you know about anything?” She said in a lower tone. All of the nurses and patients and visitors stare at them. “Do you know what this feels like?” She touched a hand to her chest. “To know that you’re the reason that your sister killed herself? Because your incompetent parents made all of their focus on you and not her?” Remi blinked and the tears fell. “And for what? So that I can go on to be a world class ballerina?” Just saying the word ballet left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“Remi we didn’t mean to—” Her mother said, jumping into the conversation.
“You didn’t mean to?” Remi smiled crudely at her. “You fully meant to and you know it. You were too selfish to even think about what that must feel like for her—oh wait, felt like.” Then she turned, and she stalked away, seething with anger.
“She’ll be all right.” Remi’s father said to her mother. “She’ll be back to normal, she’s Remi. Just give her some time.”
Remi didn’t speak to anyone at the funeral. Every time a long lost relative or family friend or neighbor approached her, she just stared at them. She never said a word. She kept her head on Tadashi’s shoulder and waited for it to be over. Not just the funeral, but the feelings. They were just terrible. And she knows that this is probably how Ashley felt every single day of her life, but she would smile at Remi and tell her she was fine.
Remi told Tadashi to go home even if he didn’t really want to. She locked the door to her room, and just as she anticipated her mother tried to open it three minutes later. “Remi, open the door, I know you’re upset sweetie, but—” Remi ignored her as she undressed from her mourning colored clothes. “—well, I thought a lot about what you said at the hospital the other day, and I just want you to understand that we love you both equally, just in different ways—”
Remi paused taking off her heeled shoe off as she spotted a sweater at her desk. Ashley borrowed the sweater last week. She said she’d return it. Remi can’t help but think that she did that before she…
“We didn’t neglect her the way that you said, and it’s wrong of you to say that to other people—”
Wrong of her? How dare she.
Upon hearing this, Remi can’t hold it in anymore, and she chucks the shoe across the room. The loud shatter of her window startles everyone in the house.
“Remi? Remi!” Her mother then calls for her father who’s already heard the noise and began full sprint to his only daughter’s room.
Remi yanks her lamp from the desk, and throws it after the shoe, shattering any remaining glass in the window frame. She turns, and sinks to her knees in front of her dresser, sobbing as if it were the first day again.
Her father broke the door open with his shoulder, pausing as he sees the window and sighing in relief once he sees Remi a crumpled mess against the furniture. Remi’s mother kneels beside her daughter, wrapping her arms around her. And for a few moments, can’t push her mother away. But she does, she stands up and walks to her sister’s room and locks herself in there. Looking around with swollen eyes.
“Did you get it, at least?” Her father is murmuring in the hallway.
“I couldn’t find it! Ashley must’ve burned it or something.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“I know! The last thing we need is…” Remi’s mother lowered her voice. “…Remi finding it.”
Remi’s father forcefully opened Ashley’s door as well about fifteen minutes later to discover Remi sleeping in her bed. He picked her up and returned her to her own room, not thinking twice about the sweater.
When Remi woke up, her face felt dehydrated and tight from all of the tears she’d cried. She’d slept for nearly thirteen hours. It’s the middle of the day? Remi washed her face and when she returned to her room, she glanced at the sweater, wondering if it still smelled like Ashley.
So she picked it up. And a small card fell out.
Remi bent down to pick it up. She recognizes the handwriting immediately. And what’s written is utterly horrific. She starts to cry again, covering her mouth as she reads the letter.
You were an accident…it’s just that Remi has been more successful than you so far…your grades have been slacking…I try to keep form criticizing you, Ashley but…you’re just, a bit of a disappointment.
Remi ran from her room, the car still in her hand. She flew down the hall, and the stairs, racing past the kitchen where her father is cooking. “Hey Remi, I made—” He stopped, realizing that something was wrong. This wasn’t Remi. Her aura was so…
Remi’s mother comes back from a run at this time every day. And Remi knows she should be home by now. She throws the front door open and leaps down the steps of the porch, her bare feet slapping the cement.
Remi’s mother is just finishing a conversation with a neighbor and is about to walk through the lawn to the house. “Remi?” She squinted at her in confusion. Until she sees what’s balled up in her hand.
“Remi!” Her father shouts from behind her, chasing after her.
But Remi’s fast…and furious. Remi doesn’t say a single word, she doesn’t swear at her or damn her to hell. She just drew her fist back, her mother not even registering what she’s about to do; what Remi would never do.
A muscular arm snaked around Remi’s waist, her whole body jerking to a stop so abruptly she thought she might have backlash. Her knuckles skim her mother’s cheek just before she stumbles away from her.
“I can’t believe you! You’re a monster! To your own daughter!” Remi roared, fighting against her father’s powerful grip. “I wish it had’ve been you! I don’t ever want to see your face again!” She screamed as her father pulled her back into the house and put her to her feet, blocking the doorway. “You knew,” She accused as her father gave her a hurt expression. “You two did this on purpose…” Remi is absolutely horrified. What kind of people—?
Remi whirled, making a break for the backdoor. She could still reach her mother if she— Remi found herself restrained again. “Monsters!” She screamed at the top of her lungs. Remi’s father locked her in the hallway bathroom, the only room in the house that locked from the outside.
What was she going to do? What could she do? She’d dropped the card during the struggle. Remi pulled everything out of the drawers in the bathroom, took everything off of the counter, and began throwing it all at the door.
