MY FEET HAD NEVER moved so fast before. I slung my bedroom door open and darted down the hall toward Emma’s cracked door, pausing once I reached the threshold. I blinked, trying to force the fog of my hangover away and calm my sour stomach, so I could process what I was seeing. Dawson was on his knees at the side of Emma’s bed. She was still in the position I remembered her being in last night. The same tiny smile of relief and peace twisted her lips. She was sleeping still, why was Dawson screaming? Why had his yells for me seemed deafening, but yet they hadn’t woke her? What was I seeing?
I looked closer, and the scene sank in. Emma wasn’t sleeping.
The realization powered through me, causing my body to sway from the force. My sour stomach churned as I continued to stare at her.
“No.” My voice was barely above a whisper, but I felt it ring through me with an incredible amount of force. “No!”
The sounds of Dawson’s sobs bounced off the walls and echoed through my head. I couldn’t breathe. This had to be a nightmare. It couldn’t be reality. My legs jerked forward, as an urge to reach out and touch her built inside me. If I touched her she would wake up. The thought centered in my mind with certainty, and there was nothing anyone could say or do to make me not believe it. I rounded the bed, and then paused on her other side. That was when I saw the envelopes.
Sitting on the nightstand were two white envelopes. One had my name written in Emma’s beautiful and clean handwriting, the other had Dawson’s name on it. Why would she leave letters like that for us to find? This didn’t make any sense. None whatsoever. Part of me realized what this scene was before me, but a larger part of me chose to not believe it. Refused to. My sister would never do something so drastic. She was happy, I reminded myself. When I left the party to head to the lake, she had been laughing with her friends. It was the first normal night I’d seen her have in months. She was too happy to do something like what this scene implied.
I noticed Dawson move away from her in my peripheral vision. I could see him reach up to run his hands through his hair, but I couldn’t bring my eyes to leave the envelopes. There was something mesmerizing about them. Something that reached inside of me and forced my heart to hammer out one word—NO!
“Why?” Dawson’s voice cracked with emotion. It was one simple three-lettered word, but it forced tears to stream from my eyes. It was exactly what I was asking myself now that I’d heard it. Why? Why would Emma do this? Why wouldn’t she tell me things were this bad for her? Why would she pretend last night she was finally okay?
Why?
The sound of pills shaking in a bottle shattered what was left of my already fragile heart. I jerked my gaze from the envelopes to the pill bottle held in Dawson’s hand. My chest constricted. The room tilted. Everything about me hurt. Suddenly, I couldn’t see through my tears; they were coming so fast.
“Sleeping pills.” His words confirmed my fear. The bottle, her sleeping face, the envelopes. Everything shifted, solidifying what my sister had done. There was no erasing the finished puzzle in my mind, there was no going back, and absolutely no denying what had happed here.
“She committed suicide.” The words burned like acid as they poured from my mouth. I hated everything about the sentence. Hated each word with a vengeance I didn’t know I harbored.
“She wouldn’t.” Dawson sounded so confident. I wanted to trade places with him. I wanted to believe that Emma wouldn’t do this, but I couldn’t.
Last night was my sister’s goodbye to me.
The thought hit me like a boulder to the gut. Then came the guilt. I had been at the lake with Dawson. We had shared a meal and drank together. We had laughed and swam together. We had completely forgotten about her for a stretch of time.
There was no one else on this Earth who was a worse person than I was.
“I know Emma, and she would never do this. Not to me. Not to you. She would never do this. Never,” Dawson argued. Everything was sitting there in front of him, but he couldn’t accept it.
I had. For some reason, it was clear. There was nothing I could argue about. All I could do was be angry with her for doing it. All I could do was wonder why.
“She left us both a note.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was too soft, too weak, and too broken. I didn’t even know why the words had pushed their way up my throat.
Dawson lifted himself into a standing position. He started around to my side of the bed, and leaned past me to reach for his letter. I glanced at him, taking in the pissed off expression on his face. He was determined to find out why she had done this. He needed a reason. It was written all over his face.
I didn’t need one. I didn’t care to read her words, her excuses, her goodbye. Emma was gone, and nothing she could say in any letter would make me understand why she had done it.
I left the room. I couldn’t stand being so close to her but yet feeling so far away. I couldn’t console Dawson this time death touched him. I couldn’t even console myself.
As I neared my room, I thought about crawling back into bed and burying myself beneath my blankets and pillows, but my feet never turned in that direction. Instead, they continued forward, drawn to the outside by my lungs incredible need for air. They were starved for it. Tightness had centered there. A swollen feeling had grown in my throat. The hall spun as I continued down it.
My hand gripped the handle to the back door and twisted. The moment it swung open was the moment I felt air pour back into me. My frantic breaths puffed out of me and swirled through the air. I knew it had to be freezing outside, but I couldn’t feel it. My body had gone numb.
I heaved all the way toward the bench. Once I reached it, I curled into a ball. I wrapped my arms around my knees, and pulled them as far into my chest as they would go. It was the only way to hold the broken pieces of myself together.
Nothing I had ever experienced before in my life had hurt as much as this.
I wasn’t sure how long I lay there, crying out the broken pieces of my soul, but after a while, Dawson came to find me. He sat on the bench near my head, and dragged me until I was curled in his lap. Warmth seeped into my body from his touch, but it couldn’t reach my heart. It was frozen solid from the realization of what my sister had done.
Together, Dawson and I mourned my sister—a beautiful person we had both loved, but one who had decided neither of us were worth staying for.
“DO YOU NEED ME to get you anything?” Sadie touched my shoulder. I was glad she was here, but I’d told her there was no need to be. We weren’t giving Emma a funeral. My family didn’t do the morbid funeral thing. We were cremated, and then someone held a Wake in our honor.
“No.” I shook my head, and sighed. “I don’t want anything.”
“Are you sure? I don’t think I’ve seen you eat since I got here yesterday.” Concern for me rang through her words.
“I picked at a muffin this morning.” The neighbors had rallied and brought me every bread item ever created by man it seemed. I assumed this was because when Emma finally returned home from her accident they all made every casserole known, and they needed to come up with something different this time around.
“Sweetheart, that was hours ago.” Sadie smoothed her hand along my shoulder. “You need something more substantial than a few muffin crumbs.”
“I don’t have an appetite.” I didn’t. Nothing sounded good, nothing tasted good. Food had lost its appeal.
“I’m going to make something for you anyway. Maybe when you smell it, your appetite will come back.” She started rummaging through the fridge for something besides baked goods, and I returned my stare to the notebook in front of me.