Alamort

1. Priya

Tired - das

U nbearable pain. My head’s going to explode from the pressure. I could hear him yelling at me, but the ringing muffles it in my ears. It reminds me of the cartoons. When the character gets hit, stars pop up around their head, and their body sways because they’re dizzy. I think the stars represented the flash of light in the darkness when someone was hit and the loss of balance that accompanies it.

“Daddy! Stop! Please! She didn’t know!”

I’m unable to pinpoint the sound of the muted yell from around me. My hands fly to my face to soothe the stinging from the backhand I received from our father. Tears gather in my eyes, knowing I disappointed him again.

It’ll only anger him more if he sees my tears, so I keep my eyes fixed to a point on the marble floor, tracing the vein as it expands and branches off, reminding me of the creek beside our house. My sister’s perfect blonde head of tamed curly hair pops in front of me as she crouches down to check on me. I avoid eye contact. That’s all it’ll take from me to crumble.

Dad has never struck her.

I wish I could be as perfect as she is…

Blinking, I pull myself out of a memory of my best friend, forever my savior.

Growing up with a sibling who was a year and a half older than me meant we were inseparable. It was always her and I against the world. I tell her everything. We do everything together. I personified the harmful carbon dioxide, while she embodied the life-giving oxygen. Feeding off each other to survive. When our parents first started using food as a punishment, she would be the one to sneak me some of her dinner so I wouldn’t go hungry. Our mother didn’t have a “favorite” child. She just hated me more than my sister. I could use that to distract her from giving Addison a verbal lashing by doing something worse to earn her wrath.

Addi would help me avoid our father by letting me know where he was and what level of anger he seemed to be at for the day. On the off chance I found myself in his presence, she would be there to diffuse the situation, giving me a chance to escape fairly unscathed.

Around the time I turned 12, I fully grasped the significance she held in my life. My parents were incapable of loving anyone other than themselves. So how my sister was able to love and give her undying loyalty to me without ever receiving it is beyond me.

I throw my head backagainstthe headrestandgrab the book of matches out of my pocket to rub each of the edges clockwise, then counterclockwise. The sides of the white cardboardarealready beginning to fray. I don’t think I’ve had it for more than a week.

I pick up my phone to no missedcalls.Not even a text.I would have thought one of my parents would care about the well-being of their remaining child.

I’m grasping for crumbs at this point. Unable to face that they couldn’t care less about what happens to me. I’m na?ve to sit here and miss the parents I never had. Yearning for some sort of connection to fill the one I’ve lost. What type of trauma is that? The excuse, “they’re still my parents” rings a bell. And when will it no longer be good enough?

Flipping open thebook of matches, I count them individually, touching each white tip, finding comfort in the routine. There’s tension building up inside me. Inflating like a balloon that would need an outlet soon before it popped and I, characteristically, self-destructed. Another flaw, add it to my ever-growing list of why I’m a fuckup.

That and the fact my parents blamed me for my sister’s death.

Silently drowning in anger and heartache from the hole in my heart, add in a dash of the abandonment from my parents shipping me off to a new school during my last year of high school like I’m a burden they could give away when life got too hard.

Theyhadturned their noses up and threw money at me, treating me like a dirty secret that needed to be hidden. I did nothing. This time, anyway. Pulling me out to make an appearance as the “perfect” family for their own benefit. Only to be tossed to the side when I’ve done my part. But now? My parents think I had something to do with the deaths at the school.Not just anyonedied, though. My entire world and a boy she was with.That I would be as careless and selfish to put not one but two people in danger. My mother’s Botox-injected faceheldpure revulsion. She refused to look at me. If she hadn’t liked me before, the look on her face made it a concrete fact now—but that could be the Botox.

Trying to distract myself from needing a release so soon, I slip my matches back into my front pocket and attempt to make conversation with my designated driver, or prison guard for the day. He looks like a poster child for the mafia. Tan, a bald head that has black tribal tattoos starting at the base of his beefy neck and disappearing beneath the collar of his suit, but his head… it’s so shiny it looks like it was spit-shined. He has massive arms the size of my thighs and his legs have to be tree trunks. I wonder if he’s ever squeezed the life out of anyone.

“Hey, Baldilocks, have you ever killed a person? You’re abnormally huge, like how I’d imagine Goliath would be.” I say, staring at the back of his bald ass head with a smirk. Goliath died from David, hitting him with a stone on his forehead before decapitating him. Deflect your pain with a bit of humor, right?

His lips press into a firm line, “Today could be the day.” The leather steering wheel creaks under his scarred hands.

My eyes widen and I sink back into the black leather interior while trying to make myself as small as possible. That wasn’t quite the answer I was looking for. I’ve never met this guy, and he’s already had enough of me?

Well, he should get in line to join the club. Rolling my eyes, I sit up straighter, clearing my throat, “Can we stop somewhere? I have to use the bathroom.”

“No. Your parents said straight to school from the flight.”

“Baldie, if you think I won’t piss in this seat to prove a point, you’re sadly mistaken. Plus, I want some snacks …. I’m starving.” I say as nonchalantly as I can muster, hoping he doesn’t see straight through my lies.

“You literally just ate on the plane. I was two rows behind you.” He scoffs.

Hmm. Okay? I didn’t know I had my own personal stalker to accompany me to a fucking school, not death row. That should raise a red flag, but regardless, I need to make this stop.

Leaning forward and resting my elbows on my knees, to glare at his fat head until his shit brown eyes meet mine in the rear- view mirror. Usually, I’m timid but, things change and I refuse to back down from my last stock-up before I’m locked away in a school where I have no idea when I’ll be allowed to leave campus. He relents, breaking eye contact first.

“Fine, but make it quick. I don’t want to turn this into an all-day trip.”

Hurrying to cover my smug smile, I grab my phone and slip in my wireless headphones to lose myself in my “Pity Party” playlist. Feeling lost and definitely in the mood to feel sorry for myself, I click “Summertime Sadness” by Lana to have some background music and lay on the seat, propping my feet on the door panel and drown myself in my gloomy thoughts.

At this point, I might as well dye my hair black, get some face piercings and all-black clothes with how life’s been going. I snort at the imaginary breakdown my mother, Anna, would have if she were ever around.

This morning when I left, my parents didn’t even say goodbye or see their only remaining child off. I woke up to the familiar stillness of the lifeless, cold estate. When I asked Miranda, my mom’s assistant, she condescendingly looked down at me and informed me that both my parents had very important, unmovable meetings and had left the night before. They never made time for me, so I wasn’t sure why I thought my leave of absence would be any different.

I spent the rest of the morning emptying my stomach in the toilet until only acidic yellow bile remained. I couldn’t bear the idea of leaving my sister behind. Or maybe I was throwing up the last remnants of trying so hard to fit in with this family. That’s when it hit me. I am truly alone.

It wasn’t always like this though. The first time our bond solidified was when Addison saw the bruises on my body and my split lip from our father. Something that day had broken in her. She held me and rocked me back and forth in her arms while crying for hours, as if the pain I couldn’t voice aloud was her own. She forced me to sleep with her for a week until I convinced her I would be okay in my own bedroom. I could tell she felt accountable for not being able to fend off the monsters that haunted me.

Shortly after high school started, it got worse whenever I was alone with our father, as if my presence itself enraged him. Simple backhands became full-on beatings. Addison would try to make sure I was never left alone with our father, always putting herself in his path and diffusing the situation before it escalated. As time passed, a sense of responsibility fell on me to protect her, just as she had protected me. Robert got more careful to not damage my face, and I became more cautious and withdrawn to keep her away from the guilt she felt each time she saw me knowing she wasn’t able to prevent his bad temper.

By internalizing the pain, I could gather enough strength for both of us. All the times she rushed home from school, skipping practices, staying at home instead of going out with friends to make sure I was safe, sacrificing a piece of myself for her happiness was the least I could do. So, for her, I pretended.

I found a different way to cope. Cutting to bring myself a sense of a different kind of relief. Sometimes to deal with the pain, other times the guilt I had from hiding it from Addi.

My parents have been looking for any excuse to get rid of me, even before Addi. She was the final push they needed to pull the trigger. I tried to be the perfect child. I really did. Not for them, but to shoulder the worry my sister constantly faced on my behalf.

But the more I tried, the more resentment poured from them. I got good grades, but Addison had a 4.0 GPA, so I enrolled for extra credit, which involved tutoring. My sister was a cheerleader, so I joined extracurricular activities. It was never enough.

I wasn’t enough.

After hearing the news of my sister’s sudden and tragic death… I couldn’t believe it. I went straight into denial and currently live there.

One cheerleader had gotten ahold of me that day, asking if I was okay because there was a fire at the school. I knew she was reaching out only for gossip, but she was asking the wrong sister.

I texted and called Addi repeatedly. My messages went undelivered, and my calls, straight to voicemail. My heart beating out of my chest with every unanswered attempt I made. Begging a God I didn’t believe in to tell me it wasn’t true, only to be met with silence.

When I got to the school, the library was in flames. The sight mesmerized me, in awe of the destruction, the flames licking the sky before putting two and two together. Realizing the severity of the situation when I saw the fire pouring out of the library windows and eating up the sides of the building, with police and firefighters failing to contain it.

I spent the rest of that night screaming and destroying whatever I could get my hands on. Trying to piece everything together to make it make sense.

The thing about grief is it’s never beautiful. It’s a melancholy that became a permanent fixture, haunting my every step and never letting go. An ache soul deep that never ends.

There are moments when it feels like a sudden, unexpected blow to my chest, leaving a gaping, exposed wound.

Grief is brutal and ugly. Addison’s absence left a void in songs. They now lack the magic of her voice. The sun lost its luminance, and the flowers wilt a little more without her presence. At times, her smell taunts me like a whisper. It’s by far the most painful thing I’ve lived through. A black smoke slowly seeping its way into all aspects of my life. The memory of losing everything replays in my mind, as vivid as if it were happening all over again.

I’m in a personal time loop, stuck in my version of hell.

My parents blame me for the fire that I didn’t start. Their first assumption was the only person they knew that lived for the havoc and destruction fire causes. They blamed me. My fingers tighten around my phone, my veins fill with bitterness, eating me from the inside out.

The heat wells up in my chest, a rage that starts softly and pulses like its own entity.

I’m angry Addison left me here to fend for myself. She left me alone. She allowed me to love her the way I did, that she became the center of my world and fucking left me here in a world without her. One where I’ve never had to live a day without her by my side. Her laugh and smile echo around every corner, taunting me with what I’ll never have again.

I want to die with her. I want to be buried right next to her in the same soil that will cover both of our graves because we are so intertwined in life that we are in death. So why couldn’t she just take me with her one last time? Why —

“Motherfucker! Did no one teach you how to drive? Jesus Christ!” I yell, rubbing a spot on my forehead that bounced off the doorjamb and smacked the back of his leather seat.

Shrugging like he probably didn’t just give me a minor concussion, “I told you three times to put your seatbelt on.” Does this guy only have two emotions? Asshole or nothing at all? Roughly grabbing at the seatbelt and pull on it until I hear the click indicating I won’t go flying out of the windshield the next time he decides to break check me. If I die, it’ll be on my terms not some asshole who can’t drive.

I snatch my headphone off of the middle seat to place it back in my ear and stare off at the highway through the illegally tinted windows that block out the light, making it look just as dark as I do inside.