I think I was about two years old when it started. I was an innocent, unknowing little kid who loved his birthday and his sister more than anything else in the world. I had the exact same birthday as my sister, except she was thirteen years older than me. She was everything to me. People would ask me who I liked better, my mother or my father, and I'd smirk and say my sister's name. I can't say it now. I haven't in twelve years.
When I was two and my sister was fifteen, my beautiful, perfect sister started dating her classmate Elliot. She called him Eli, and he was like part of the family. I was only two, but I understood that my sister loved Eli, so I loved him, too. He was like a brother to me. My mother once told me Eli's parents were mean to him, so he thought our house was more fun. I didn't understand then that Elliot was a victim of child abuse. I didn't understand why Elliot got so mean.
One day my sister came home from a date sobbing. She told my parents she and Elliot had broken up, so they went to talk to her... without me. I firmly believed my sister needed me. It wasn't for another week that my parents told me my sister was pregnant. She was going to homeschool now. My parents wanted to protect my beautiful sister. And so did I. Overnight, I hated Elliot. I hated his guitar, which he had let me borrow. It was still at my house, a solid reminder of the boy who broke my family.
I wish I could say my sister gave birth smoothly and my family found a way to cope, but I'd be lying. I was three and my sister was sixteen when it happened. It was our birthday. Our day. She had conjoined twins. Attached at the head. It scared me half to death. I probably shouldn't have been in the room, but my sister needed me. And my sister was everything.
It was a boy and a girl. The boy looked just like Elliot, and the girl looked just like my sister, except... she had my eyes. I didn't know about dominant and recessive genes. I assumed it was magic.
Lillian and Elliot were their names. Naming the boy Elliot: that made me realize, though I don't think my parents understood, that my sister still loved Eli. It made me so angry. I wished Eli was dead, but it was the other Elliot who died. Didn't last even ten minutes after the surgery to get him off his sister, and my sister wasn't looking too good, either.
It stayed with me, even after all these years: my sister didn't say goodbye to our parents. She didn't say goodbye to her daughter, either, though she told her she loved her. She was too busy saying goodbye to me. That's the biggest thing I remember about the day my perfect sister died.
Surprisingly, Eli actually wanted to claim his daughter, and his parents were on his side. But my parents, and even me, we knew that would end badly. We kept Lillian as our own. I think that was what broke Eli's messed-up heart. When I was four, Lillian was one, and my sister should've been seventeen, Eli burned our house down. I survived. Lillian survived. My parents didn't.
The four years in foster care were probably the worst. Me and Lillian's fosters never understood that I needed Eli's guitar, which I hated so much. Lillian needed the terrible stories I told her of all we had been through. And we needed each other more than any foster parent. Lillian was all I had left. So after those four painful years, when I finally ran away, I took my five- year-old niece with me. We've been homeless, street-dwelling thieves for eight years.
My name is Sky, by the way. I still won't tell you my sister's name. I don't think I can.
YOU ARE READING
What Is Your Name?
Novela Juvenil"The one thing Sky has never told me, though it's the one thing I've always wanted to know, is my mother's name." Sky and Lillian, ages 17 and 13, are all the other's got. They are held by the bond of Lillian's mother, Sky's older sister, the first...
