Regret

I stared at the casket in front of me. Mother was crying into her tissue and holding my hand tighter every second. My fingers were starting to ache but I didn't dare move it away. The body inside the casket was my little sister, Rose. It was my fault she died. So I had to take better care of Mother.

"D-Danny, let-t's go say o-our good, good, goodbyes." Mother stuttered and pulled me along up closer to the casket. I glanced behind me at the people all milling about muttering softly to each other and pointing at the pictures of Rose that were all over the room. A funeral director hovered in the very back, watching the proceedings and keeping an eye on refreshments. Just the night before Mother fought with a mortician about the funeral being a open-casket one. However, when he brought up that her small son didn't need to see such a... corpse, she agreed. I had been too close to the accident. So I already could assume what she looked like. Maybe a few days of decomposing made it worse though. I bet she could hear the sobs of Mother and mournful muttering of family and friends. I told her she'd regret it.

We had been walking home from school when she was in 3rd grade and I in 5th when she first brought it up.

"I wonder what it's like being dead. No one to bully you, no one to hide from. It must be nice to be dead."

"Don't talk like that, Rose. Dying is a bad thing."

"No it's not, Daniel, it must be peaceful." A truck roared by and she looked at the monstrous thing as it past. "I could just jump in front of a huge semi-truck like that. In seconds I'd be gone."

"You can't say things like that, Rose. Dad, already left us, think of what you'd do to Mom." She had merely shrugged and we had arrived on the porch of our house a few minutes of awkward silence later.

She constantly mentioned it since then.

I bet the man who was driving that semi-truck last week is constantly regretting getting up that morning. He was an older man. At least 50 and he had the saddest eyes ever. In court, he had been crying and his eyes were so swollen it was obvious he was being tortured by the events of that day. Yet he was being charged with vehicular manslaughter, which was probably making his life a living. I was the only one who knew the truth. The truth was the man wasn't a liar.

"I swear, s-she jumped in front of the truck! I did t-try to stop... I tried."

"You expect us to believe a 9 year-old little girl just jumped in front of a semi?"

Rose had just started 4th grade. I was now on my last year of elementary school and was very excited at the prospect of Middle School next year. We were walking home when out of the blue she interrupted my rant on the Middle school to tell me that she had forgotten her math text book at the school. I told her to leave it but she started to cry so I gave in.

"Give me your book bag and I'll wait here for you, okay? Just hurry up."

She smiled, tearfully and ran off back to the school.

I guess you could say that was the last time I saw her, but it really wasn't. After a half hour I went looking for her and found her, running back towards me with her desk book when she suddenly stopped. Behind me was another semi-truck, and it roared past me and in the few seconds before it... I already knew.

"ROSE!" She threw herself into the street.

The sound of crunching bones and truck brakes.

I put my head close to the casket as Mother was lead away by the pastor who would be speaking last rights at the cemetery.

I could hear her crying softly, her nails digging into the wood.

"You stupid girl, Rose, I told you, you'd regret it."