Sitting on the porch swing on a beautiful summer day in Manhattan, I think about my future, my sister's future and everything dad would want us to be if he were here.
"Paigne, how do you see yourself years from now, once we've finished high school and college?" I ask my fraternal twin.
She looked deep in thought as her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.
"I really want to be a doctor. I just see myself helping others. I just...I just want to take everyone's pain away."
She never got to do what she wanted. She didn't get to see herself fulfill her dream.
The world decided that her purity and genuineness weren't needed.
I get up and do my regular morning routine and I prepare myself for school.
School.
It's never going to be the same without Paigne.
She was the golden student, the smart one.
She was everything I couldn't be.
Even dead.
I take one last look at my once shared mirror and I let out a shaky sigh.
Why her?
That's the question that's been bugging me right from the day we discovered she had cancer.
The exact same ailment that took dad from us.
"Hahahaha. You can never catch me." My sixteen-year-old sister shouted at the top of her voice.
She was always a fast runner.
Suddenly she fell and I laughed at her, thinking she tripped on her foot like she usually does.
I stopped running and waited for her to get up.
But she never did.
I ran over to her, only to find her almost unconscious as blood seeped out from the side of her mouth.
My eyes widened in horror as I ran about the deserted park shouting for help before deciding to call 911.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"It's my sister, she slumped a-a-and there's blood coming from her mouth."
That day at the hospital, mom never showed up. Apparently, she was in an important meeting.
A meeting she couldn't sacrifice for her dying daughter.
Days went by and her condition worsened.
Days went by and I cried like a baby, hoping to see my sister walk the surface of the earth again.
But it never happened.
Instead, she was buried deep in the ground.
I briskly walk down the stairs and my feet find the kitchen.
The same kitchen I had food fights with Paigne.
The same kitchen I nearly burnt down with her.
It's hard to go anywhere and not see her.
It's hard to see anything and not relate it to her.
She was simply a coat of many colours.
A silver lining in a thick white cloud.
I see a note posted on the refrigerator.
Dayton, we need to talk.
I scoff annoyed and I grab a granola bar and my car keys then head outside to my car.
I drive myself to school, all the while holding threatening tears back.
