I kick my shoes off at the door and walk to the kitchen to refill my water. It’s Saturday night and I would normally be heading out with Daniel, but I already texted him to let him know I was staying in tonight. Les made me promise I would stay in with her because she didn’t want to go out and chance running into Grayson yet. She’s lucky she’s cool, because I don’t know many seventeen-year-old guys who would give up a Saturday night to watch chick flicks with his heartbroken sister. But then again, most siblings don’t have what Les and I have. I don’t know if our close relationship has anything to do with the fact that we’re twins. She’s my only sibling, so I don’t have anything to compare us to. She might argue that I’m too protective of her, and there may be some truth to that argument, but I don’t plan on changing anytime soon. Or ever.
I run up the stairs, pull my shirt off, and push open the bathroom door. I turn the water on, then walk across the hall and knock on her bedroom door. “I’m taking a quick shower, will you order the pizza?”
I brace my hand against her door and reach down to pull my socks off. I turn around and toss them into the bathroom, then beat on her door again. “Les!”
When she doesn’t respond, I sigh and look up at the ceiling. If she’s on the phone with him, I’ll be pissed. But if she’s on the phone with him, it probably means he’s telling her the break-up was all my fault and she’ll be the one who’s pissed. I wipe my palms on my shorts and open the door to her bedroom, preparing for another heated lecture on how I need to mind my own business.
• • •
I see Les on her bed after I walk into her room, and I’m immediately taken back to when I was a little boy. Back to the moment that changed me. Everything about me. Everything about the world around me. My whole world turned from a place full of vibrant colors to a dull, lifeless gray. The sky, the grass, the trees . . . all the things that were once beautiful were stripped of their magnificence the moment I realized I was responsible for our best friend Hope’s disappearance.
I never looked at people the same way. I never looked at nature the same way. I never looked at my future the same way. Everything went from having a meaning, a purpose, and a reason, to simply being a second-rate version of what life was supposed to be like. My once effervescent world was suddenly a blurred, gray, colorless photocopy.
Just like Les’s eyes.
They aren’t hers. They’re open. They’re looking right at me from her position on the bed.
But they aren’t hers.
The color in her eyes is gone. This girl is a gray, colorless photocopy of my sister.
My Les.
I can’t move. I wait for her to blink, to laugh, to revel in the twisted aftermath of the sick, fucking joke she’s playing right now. I wait for my heart to start beating again, for my lungs to start working again. I wait for control of my body to return to me because I don’t know who has control of it right now. I sure as hell don’t. I wait and I wait and I wonder how long she can keep this up. How long can people keep their eyes open like that? How long can people not breathe before their body jerks for that desperately needed gasp of air?
How fucking long before I do something to help her?
My hands are touching her face, grabbing her arm, shaking her whole body until she’s in my arms and I’m pulling her onto my lap. The empty pill bottle falls out of her hand and lands on the floor but I refuse to look at it. Her eyes are still lifeless and she’s no longer looking at me as the head between my hands falls backward every time I try to lift it up.
She doesn’t flinch when I scream her name, and she doesn’t wince when I slap her, and she doesn’t react when I start to cry.
She doesn’t do a goddamned thing.