The Sitter's Sister

Chapter 1

tw//: suicide

Leigh-Anne had not slept last night.

"Come on. We don't have time to waste dragging our feet that way. It's either you speed up or get left behind." Her sister marched forward as if they had not been at this for ten hours already.

Leigh-Anne tried to pick up her pace but it was nearly impossible. Her sister was a good distance ahead of her but she could still hear her well. The young lady had a loud voice.

It had been warm in her room that night. Warm because it was that time of year. Summer, not that it made much of a difference.

The day had started like any other. She had woken up to an empty room and had met her sisters in the kitchen. Her eldest sister had been scraping together what she could for their breakfast. The second eldest had been smoking a joint in the side door. Something she did often.

The sisters had had a small argument about food, money, the house, normal things, before her eldest sister had gone off to sell what she could in their small neighbourhood.

Leigh had spent the day alone. Her second sister never really went out to make money but instead stayed inside to smoke alone or went out to get up to mischief.  Sometimes she would bring them all treats though. Leigh did not leave often so she would just stay in her room, reading books about werewolves and vampires and fantasy lands. She only had about five books in total and they were all fantasy. Her father had once told her that she was lucky she could even read let alone have books to do so. That had been his response when she had once asked for the sequel for at least one of the stories. After he had said that he had gotten rough so she had decided to never come to him for anything again.

She had read over the first instalment of Harry Potter that day and it had been incredible as always. She decided to not care about not having the rest of the books in the series and to instead make up her own stories in her head. So she had done that, laying on her sleeping bag imagining what the rest of the story would be like.

At night time her sisters had returned and they had had canned soup. Her middle sister had complained about it but the eldest had not said a word. Leigh-Anne had noted that she was quieter but had left it.

They had all gone to bed in their room and Leigh had fallen asleep last since she always insisted on reading before sleeping.

She had woken up later though. She had decided to get herself a glass of water but in doing so she had noticed that her eldest sister had not been lying next to her and her middle sister.

So she had started looking for her in the small house but had not found her.

Leigh-Anne had left to look for her outside and had seen her in the distance staring at nothing. She had waved her arms and started calling to her but her sister had only looked at her over her shoulder with a little smile before revealing that she held a gun which she used to shoot herself in the head.

"Are you kidding me?" Sairah actually stopped walking to wait for Leigh-Anne.

Leigh finally caught up and was panting with her eyes closing down. "C-can we take . . . a break? M-my feet hurt and I'm hungry. I feel as if I may collapse." The world was actually pretty blurry to her.

Sairah pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. "Your feet hurt and you're hungry?" She asked in a mocking voice. She began to smoke.

Leigh nodded.

Sairah blew smoke in her face.

Leigh coughed. "That's bad for your lungs-"

"Well living like a f*cking refugee is bad for my everything so smoking ain't gonna be the thing that kills me okay?" She continued. "You're not a baby. The moment she died marked the moment that you and I became adults. Well I was already a legal adult but now I'm one for real. And well you're . . . okay you're not like an actual adult but you're a big girl so this shouldn't be hard for you." She shrugged.