What Happened to Cormac Li? ✔

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"Do you want to go on a walk?"

Tina, my little sister, poked her head out from behind my door.

I shook my head at her, hugging my legs closer to my chest.

"Mom was asking if you want to come downstairs for dinner or if you want us to bring it to you?"

I ignored her question and focused my attention on the t-shirt hung on my closet door. It bared the school colours. Cormac had given it to me one time when I was sleeping over because I didn't have any pyjamas.

Tina tiptoed to me like she was crossing a minefield. Was I the landmine? Was she afraid I would explode? I wish I could. I wish I could show any emotion. I wish I could cry like his blubbering parents.

A tattered, teal camera strap hung behind the t-shirt. It had been in the same position for almost a year. My dad wanted me to join the photography club when I started high school but I had to submit a portfolio in person at the same time as Cory's first football game and I wouldn't have missed that for the world. I stopped using the camera after returning from the clinic. I had been using it for the wrong reasons before.

Tina reached out to pat my shoulder. I remained still, refusing to let her know how much I wanted her to leave. Her presence was interrupting something. I don't know what it was interrupting. It just felt disruptive. She shouldn't have been there.

  "You should eat something."

I wanted to roar and scream and kick my legs and thrash around to the point where no one would be able to tell whether my actions were caused by grief or demonic possession.

My family were being annoying about me skipping meals. I wanted to tell them that I couldn't keep a meal down ever since homecoming two days previously but I had suddenly become mute. It wasn't something I had decided in advance or something I could turn on and off. I just couldn't speak anymore. I couldn't explain why.

Of course they were worried that I would resort back to the old Emily of six months previous. The version of me that had to spend the last month of her junior year of high school in a dormitory-like room with other girls who also had sharp shoulders and hollow cheeks and eyes bugging out of their sockets. I had been admitted after my mother found the mouldy remains of two months worth of dinners in a garbage bag in my closet. I always intended to throw it out but I used to get a sick rush of joy out of seeing all the food I didn't eat. I was proud of my lack of indulgence.

"I don't think it's a good idea to stop eating. Again."

Tina turned fifteen six months previous and I always felt shitty how she had to spend her birthday worrying about her big sister collapsing from malnourishment and skipping meals. She brought a cake to the eating disorder clinic with candles and a balloon because she didn't want me to miss out on her birthday. I refused to eat it. At the time I thought she was being cruel by offering me cake, not realising how much she just wanted to celebrate her birthday with me.

I never really apologised for forcing her to grow up so quickly. Even at that moment, I seventeen and her fifteen, it felt like she was the older sister. Even before I was admitted to the clinic, she was always the one to take care of me because I was always sad and gloomy. I hated it. I hated how I made her into the older sister. But I also knew I needed her. Because we both knew I was a pretty shitty older sister.

I momentarily stopped staring at Cory's t-shirt and met her eyes. I hoped they communicated that I needed her to leave. I knew telepathy wasn't really true but I needed her to understand me by merely looking into my eyes. Couldn't she see my desire to mourn alone?