What Remains of You

The Call

He was dead.

Her friend, her home, her childhood. All of it. Gone in seconds. The phone in her hand dropped to the floor in a clatter. Her hand shook and her lip trembled. An echo of the policeman on the receiver could barely be heard from the floor but she understood it. It was asking if she was alright. No, she thought, I am not. A tear that had managed to push through the strict numb rolled down her cheek. She barely felt any of it. Not her mom coming home to see her standing there, not her running to the girl and asking questions, not even her mom bringing her to the couch and trying to soothe out words. Not a single thing.

She sat there beside her daughter, stroking her hair, struggling to ask what was wrong. She spent minutes coaxing and pleading to at least speak to her or look her in the eyes. That's when she called for her brother. She looked at her then. Straight in her eyes and spoke.

"He's gone."

"What? What do you mean he's gone, honey? He should have been home already. Is that why you are crying? Why wouldn't you talk to me?"

Water streamed out of her eyes spilling into the couch below. Her hand brought itself to the fabric and she shouted through the pain.

"I mean he's gone! Never to be seen again!" She stumbled at the last words, "Dead." At this, her mom brought her hand to her mouth and her eyes watered. "What do you mean dead, what happened to him?"

"He...he got hit by a car. On the way over here." Just like dad. Her mom wrapped her arms around Rebecca's shoulders and cried into her neck. The last time they did this, Dennis had been there. It was the same thing repeating, although this time it was Rebecca getting the news.

When the police had called her mom about her dad getting into a car accident, she didn't tell her children right away. She waited until her hand stopped shaking and the tragic sobs that broke her body diminished to a slight tremor. She then called them to her room and struggled to get out the story. Rebecca was only able to remember the titbits of it. He didn't stop in time...he rolled three times down the ditch...he would never come back home. Rosa tried her best to make it light, but the eight-year-old girl knew this would change their family forever.

Dennis, who had been two years older, hugged her first. She joined in after and they had all slept in his bed trying to grasp on the remnants of him that were already slipping away. It's hard for her to remember her dad now. His face started to lose shape and colour in her mind and his once blue eyes turned gray and lifeless, lost in the fractions of time.

One of her favourite memories of him is when he took her to go get ice cream after he spent the day at work and he played music loudly in the car as they sang. She felt so guilty that Dennis wasn't there to come with them and broke down in front of him apologizing. He shook it off and hugged her, saying it was all right. He had always been there beside his sister cheering her on and wishing her the best. Now the glue that held her together was peeling and the foundation of her life was breaking down.

Rosa pulled away from her daughter and they both sat there staring at nothing. Rebecca had stopped crying. He wouldn't have wanted them to cry. He would want them to smile and be glad they had gotten the chance to meet him. To be happy that he existed in their life at all. She was thankful for him, but smiling seemed like doing a back flip. Impossible to her but easy for some.

She stood up. "I'm going to go back to my room." There was little emotion in her voice, and her mom simply nodded. First, she had lost her husband, now her son. She didn't want to lose her daughter next.

"It will get better honey, it always does." Her daughter didn't answer.

Instead of going to her room as she had initially implied, she went straight to her brothers. Opening the door was like finding out your favourite food had gone stale. It broke her inside, but she was glad there were still parts of him that remained. The same could not be said about her dad. Her mom had removed all pictures of him and even tossed his bed sheets. It was too painful to constantly see the reminders of what was, and how it would never come to be.

She walked into the room and sat down on the checkered bed. He refused to get rid of his childish bedspread for reasons not even she could comprehend. They had been best friends, inseparable. They spent every moment they could together. Her mom used to call them two peas in a pod. Now, it had been broken in half and eaten.

She brought her head into her hands and cried. She pounded her fists on the bed, grabbed the pillow on the floor, and screamed into it. She screamed until her lungs dried out, and her breath turned ragged and shallow. She then stopped and stared into the wet pillow.

Her previous sorrow turned into cold-blooded anger. Anger at this unfair, unjust world. Anger at the fact that she could not stop it. Angry at the fact that she knew it was her fault. She had been the one that let him drive to work, that she didn't beg him to stay and play chess, or practice for her upcoming soccer game. He had grown so distant lately so she assumed he got a new girlfriend. I should have asked him. I should have cherished his presence and stopped him. She couldn't stop the degrading thoughts from showing up in her mind. They continued to appear like popcorn in a microwave. Once the first one popped, a continuous stream of negativity flowed through. This is all my fault. All my fault. She pounded her head to stop them but they wouldn't recede. My fault. My fault. My fault.

She brought her hand down. No. I will not do this. She didn't want to forget him by filling her brain up with torturous thoughts, so she only thought of him. His chestnut hair, his green eyes (which he had somehow required from her grandfather), and his perfectly round face. Compared to him she was a mouse. She had a small but knobby nose, lips that didn't quite fit her long face, and straight brown hair that went past her shoulders. He loved her anyway. That's what she appreciated about him most. No matter how many beautiful girls swooned over him or met his eyes, he always told her that she was the prettiest.

He would punch her shoulder playfully whenever a guy walked nearby and would tell his friends about this amazing sister. They always showed interest until they met her. She guessed she wasn't good enough for them anyway.

She stood up from the bed and walked over the hardwood floor to his desk. It was a long brown one with three drawers on each side. She sat down on the spinning chair and relished the moment. She dragged her hand on the top and brushed each drawer with her fingers. Deciding to go through them in case her brother had anything in there that mom wouldn't want to see, she opened the first one. It had a few pencils and other art supplies and was all around useless. She went through the next few finding nothing of importance until she came to the last one. It was much harder to open than the rest and left her questioning what could be inside. That's when she saw it. It was a notebook with a thin lock on it titled with words she thought she would never see.

His diary.