“She’s dead.”
A woman in black stands at the foot of my bed. Her hair is long and dark and covers her face. I don’t know who she is or why she’s here, but she keeps saying the same thing.
“She’s dead. She’s dead.”
My body is stuck to my bed. I can’t move my arms or legs. I turn my head and look out the window. A crow sits on the sill and looks in at me through the glass.
“She’s dead,” the crow says. Its eyes are huge and dark green. And when it speaks, it sounds afraid. I can sense its fear—it washes over my body like a cold shower.
“She’s dead,” the woman cries again. Only, each time she says it, her voice cracks more and more, and I hear tears, and something else, hiding in her throat.
It’s so dark I almost can’t see the woman. But I can feel her. Feel her presence.
Who is she? Who has died?
I look back at the crow, and a tear falls out of its big green eye.
“Wake up, wake up!” the crow cries. Loud and familiar in my ear.
I try to move my body, but can’t.
“Charlotte, she’s dead, wake up. Wake up.”
The woman in black comes close to me, and then reaches down and shakes my shoulders. I’m paralyzed. Unable to move away. I see that she’s covered in blood. She reaches out to me again, and I close my eyes tight.
“She’s dead,” she whispers right into my ear.
That’s when I wake up. But the voice doesn’t stop. My eyes focus, and I look up and see my older sister, Maddi, standing above me. She cries when she speaks.
“What?” I say, my voice hoarse with sleep and nightmares.
Maddi sits down at my feet and puts her face in her hands and sobs. Big loud sobs. It reminds me of a dog howling.
That dream.
That dream felt so real. So vivid.
“What’s going on?” I shout.
“She’s dead, Charlotte. Mom is dead. An ambulance is on the way to come and get her,” Maddi says. I don’t recognize the look in her eyes.
What?
What?
I sit up fast and grab Maddi’s arm and shake her. My head spins for a moment, but then stills when I look at my sister. She sits there, like she’s lost all ability to move. Her arms limp and thin.
“What are you talking about? How? What happened?”
This must be a joke. I just saw Mom before I went to sleep. I hugged her before bed. She was fine. She was breathing. She was alive.
“Out by the beach. Dad found her…” Maddi can hardly finish the sentence. I’ve never heard her like this before. Frightened. Scared. Heartbroken.
No.
No.
After the baby died, Mom started having fears. Weird fears. Fears that made her believe that something was eating her from the inside out, that something was killing her, but that’s all they were, fears.
Sometimes I would worry about her. But after months of dealing with it, I decided to let it go. Pretended I didn’t care that she was afraid.
How could I have been so stupid?
How could her fears have come true?
“That’s a lie. You’re lying. She’s asleep,” I shout, and get out of bed. Then I run out of my room and down the dark hallway, to Mom and Dad’s room. I’m dizzy with sleep and the feeling of sick hits my stomach, but I ignore it.
“Where is she? Where’s Mom?” I scream when I open the bedroom door. But no one’s there except Mom’s assistant, Amber. She’s making the bed and crying.
There’s a lamp on by Mom’s side of the bed.
Dad isn’t here.
Is he out there with her? With Mom?
The light from the lamp washes the room in yellow. There’s a shadow on the wall from where Amber stands. She drops the pale blue comforter in her hands when she sees me.
“Where is she? Take me to my mom.” I try to hold back the scream that’s building deep inside my chest.
“Charlotte,” Amber says. She opens her arms for me and I go to her and hug her. She smells like flour and sweat. She holds me tight.
“What happened?” I say into her shoulder. My head feels like it’s going to explode, and my heart has shattered. To bits and pieces.
This isn’t true.
This is just another bad dream.
Another bad dream that I need to wake myself up from.
You don’t just die.
Wake up, Charlotte. Wake up, you’re asleep.
How can someone just suddenly die?
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Amber says. She holds me tight in a hug for a long time.
I blink as many times as I can, but I know this isn’t a dream. That I’m living this moment, right now.
My mother isn’t here.
“How?” I pull away from Amber and fall to the floor. I touch the soft white carpet, to make sure I can still move my arms. Move my hands. To make sure I’m still here.
How.
Why.
Over and over and over I think this. Over and over I ask myself.
“Is she outside? Can’t I go check on her? Just to make sure it’s her? It’s actually my mom?” I look up at Amber. I hadn’t realized how much taller she was than me. Not until now. Not until this moment.
“An ambulance is on the way, Charlotte. You can’t go outside right now,” Amber says.
I try not to picture Mom out there. But I can’t get the image out of my head. Her body, out by the water. Bloated and cold. I’m going to puke. I know I’m going to.
Where is she?
It’s not her. She can’t be dead.
It’s not my mom. It’s someone else.
She can’t be dead.
“She’s gone. Your mother is gone.”
“Charlotte, get up. We’re gonna be late for school.”
I lie in bed and stare up at the ceiling.
It’s been four months.
Four months since I’ve gone to school, yet every morning Maddi pops her head into my room and tells me to get up. I try not to let it get under my skin, but it does. Because she knows I’m not interested. Knows I don’t ever want to go back there. To show my face there. And to be honest, I’m sure no one wants to see me there, either.
Maybe she wants things to be normal again, but I know that can’t happen. She must know that can’t happen.
Nothing will ever be the same.
She needs to leave me alone.
She needs to go away.
“Charlotte?”
My door squeaks as Maddi opens it and walks in. She’s wearing a sundress. It’s pink with white flowers. It reminds me of raspberry sorbet. Mom bought the dress for her a few years back. I remember because Mom bought my favorite white dress for me then, too. The one I wore to the funeral. It was the only thing she ever did that was remotely religious, buying us Easter dresses.
Maddi brings spring and life into my room even though I know it’s cold and dark outside. I can hear waves crashing against rocks in the distance.
The perks of living in a beach house.
That sound used to give me comfort. Used to soothe me to sleep.
Now it makes my skin crawl. A constant reminder of Mom. Of where she was found.
It’s cold in my room today. Winter is just around the corner, but Maddi hasn’t packed her summer clothes away yet.
I wonder if she will.
They remind me of Mom. I wonder if they remind her of Mom, too.
Maybe that’s why she wears them.
“You look nice.” I sit up. My room’s a wreck. I haven’t folded my laundry in weeks. There are empty soda cans, glasses of water, and candy wrappers scattered about. Sometimes Maddi will come in and clean up for me, but mostly my room just stays the way it is.
Messy.
Disorganized.
I’ve been wearing the same sweater and leggings for the last couple of days. I can smell myself, but it’s easier than doing laundry.
I’m such a slob.
I don’t even care that I’m a slob.
“Let’s go to school together today. Please?” Maddi is just eleven months older than me. I’m sixteen and she’s seventeen. We’ve always been really close, but the last few months we haven’t spent as much time together.
It’s my fault. I know it. She does too.
“I can’t,” I say.
Can’t.
Can’t go back there.
Everyone knows what happened.
Everyone thinks they know what happened.
Mom.
According to the police, her heart stopped and she died.
How can your heart beat one minute and then stop the next?
Her heart was broken.
Can you die of a broken heart?
I’ll never forget that day. Trying to get out to where she was. Maddi and Amber kept me away from her body. An ambulance came, but it didn’t have its lights or siren on. I begged and pleaded with Maddi and Amber to let me go to her. But they wouldn’t.
I looked out the window as the paramedics brought Mom up from the beach and left. They had her zipped up in a black bag.
Don’t think about that.
Maddi walks into my room and sits at the foot of my bed. She has a sad look in her eyes.
Maddi used to glow with happiness. All bright and sunny mornings. But lately I can see in her eyes that she’s losing it. That she’s driving full speed down the tunnel of sadness. The same one I’ve already crashed and burned in.
I glance around my bedroom and try to look at it from Maddi’s point of view.
What does she see when she looks at the state of my room? Even my appearance?
Same thing you see when you look in the mirror. Trash.
Don’t think like that.
Trash.
“Why do you make me go alone? Do you know what it’s like walking around those halls? I hate it. I’m sick of it.”
This is the first I’ve heard of her hating school. Usually when Maddi comes home in the afternoon she fills me in on the latest gossip. When she comes in and chats with me, I make a real effort to pretend to care about what she has to say. And sometimes I really do.
It’s too early, so I haven’t had time to put on my “I give a fuck” face. The thought of going to school makes my skin crawl.
“I didn’t know that you hated it there.” I look down at my hands. My nails are bitten so short it makes me sick to look at them. The skin on my fingers all chewed up and bloody.
I used to grow my nails long and paint them pink.
I used to do a lot of things.
“It’s uncomfortable being the only one, that’s all,” Maddi says. She softens her voice, and I wonder if she feels bad for snapping at me.
Do they look at her the way I know they’d look at me?
They must.
My therapist, Nancy, tells me it’s not healthy to mind read, to assume I know what someone is thinking, but sometimes I can’t help it.
Sometimes I just know.
I grab my blankets and throw them over my head. I’m safe in my bed. I’m safe in my room. Away from them.
Maddi crawls up next to me and gets under the covers.
Does she notice the smell of unwashed sheets? Does she feel the crumbs buried in the bed?
“I can’t go by myself again. Please,” she whispers.
I think about before. How her and I did everything together. Best friends. Inseparable. And now we’re worlds apart.
I reside on my moon of sadness, and she’s stuck on the sun, trying to fill the rest of the family with light and joy. But I know that deep down she just wants to be back on the moon with me.
Mind reading again…
“Just skip today. Stay here,” I say. I used to ask her all the time to stay home with me, but eventually I gave up. I think that she only goes to school because it makes her feel like things haven’t changed as much as we both know they have.
“I’ll stay tomorrow if you come with me today. Please,” Maddi says. I hear the desperation in her voice. A stab of guilt hits me.
You’re not allowed to feel guilty.
Have I abandoned my sister?
Have I left her out in the darkness to fend for herself?
I’ve been best friends with my sister ever since she was born. I don’t remember that moment, but Mom told me when Charlotte came (on the exact day she was due) that I crawled up into Mom’s lap and kissed Charlotte right on the face. I was almost one. After that moment, we were inseparable. There isn’t anyone I love as much as I love Charlotte, except Mom.
Sometimes it’s weird to think about our lives before.
Before death. Before sadness.
Was that a life I actually lived?
When I think about before, it’s like I was in some sort of dream state. It was real, but looking back on it, it doesn’t feel like it was real.
I would go to school with my sister, we’d eat lunch together, or skip third period to get coffee, or meet up at one of our friends’ houses. We’d film stupid videos of ourselves dancing in the mirror.
Was that my life? Was that real?
Before Charlotte stopped being Charlotte, and before Mom died, before all of that, there was some normalcy in my family.
Mom and Dad weren’t “in love,” but they got along. I wasn’t great in school, but I was getting by with the grades I had.
When I look at photos from that time in my life, I don’t even recognize the girl I see. She was happy. She was confident, or at least as confident as a sixteen-year-old can be. We were whole. Our family. Whole. Together.
Cheer squad captain.
Basketball star.
Thriving businessman.
Property owner and happy mom.
Money.
Money.
More money.
All things that make a perfect family, right? All things that keep you loving one another.
This is what I used to think. This is what I used to believe. As long as we kept up our routine, as long as we did what made us appear normal, then things would stay perfect.
Ignorant.
Blind.
Stupid.
I was stupid. I was stupid to think that that’s all I needed to stay happy.
“You’re gonna do great. Cat has been asking about you and, of course, so has Stephen,” Maddi says.
We’re on our way to school.
Four months, and I’ve finally let Maddi win.
I caved. I fucking caved.
Getting out of bed was a blur. Putting on fresh clothes was a blur. This whole ride is a blur. Maddi told me I should wear my favorite white dress, for luck. But I left it hidden in the back of my closet. ...
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