Catching Up to You

Chapter 33 - The Accident

"I can't believe you gave them money! How many times have I told you that this ends up backfiring on them in the end? I'm telling you now that that donation you just made to them is going to end up in the casinos."

"So what do you want me to do? Refuse to help them when I'm the only person they feel that they can turn to? Turn my back on them when loan sharks come and threaten their lives for not being able to pay back their debt?"

"You giving them a huge chunk of cash to pay off their loans...,'" Trang put her fingers in air quotes. " ...is already putting their lives in greater danger."

"Trang, you need to calm down. Our parents are still human. Can't you try to look at it from their side?"

"I did. Too many times, to be honest. And you know what they end up doing every time I give them a benefit of the doubt? They end up fucking up again and again."

"People make mistakes," Linny said softly.

"Exactly, and you shouldn't be the one enabling them!"

"Look, maybe they wouldn't have ended up in this situation if it wasn't for you."

"What do you mean? How did I become the reason for this mess?

"What I mean is..." Linny took a brief pause, swallowing the building saliva in her throat, trying to be as careful as she could with the next few sentences coming out of her mouth, "... is that maybe if you had spent a little more time at home and contact them more often while you're away, then our parents would not be as prone to depression and loneliness as they were. Maybe if you had-"

"Oh, great. So it's all my fault now? Just because I finally realized that I have the right to pursue happiness, because I finally got to do the things I want, because I finally feel free for the first time in my life, it's my fault now that they ended up feeling depressed and good for nothing."

"No, that's not what I meant. You're twisting my words!" Trang's words were the oil that set Linny's lungs on fire. As much as Linny tried fanning to control the burning flames, they kept growing in size.

"I don't know why you keep defending them! What have they done for us! Don't you remember all those times when I had to walk you home and cook dinner and pay the bills and attend all of your school events because our parents couldn't? How about those times when they would leave our house late at night with no reason and we'd have to ask our friends' parents for a ride to school in the mornings sometimes?"

"I know what you mean... but at the end of the day, they're our parents."

"And they could've done a damn better job at it."

"Secondly, they never meant to hurt us."

"But they did, Linny! And though you might've gotten over it, I haven't. Especially after what they did to lose our trust." Trang meant the time when their parents withdrew thousands of dollars from Linny's account. "I don't think I could ever trust them again." Her words would've pierced through their parents had they heard her.

"So, that's it? Is that all you have to say?"

"Yes. Just stop treating Mom and Dad as your charity case! You're not Bill Gates!"

"I'll stop helping them as long as you stop being a fuckin' mess and start growing like the fuckin' adult you're supposed to be."

"You take that back!" Trang had collided her body against Linny's in a rage. Neither of them could knock the other even if they had put all of their strength in, but that didn't make any of the pushing and shoving any less achingly painful in a few hours.

"No! I'm tired of dealing with your shit. Mom and Dad might not have been perfect but you weren't the model sibling ever and you know it." Linny threw herself against Trang, imagining that her weight had suddenly doubled on the first contact of forced impact.

"Maybe... I just got tired of raising you that I didn't have any energy left to be the sister you wanted me to be."

Linny remembered the one time her twelve-year-old self went home on the bus by herself because Trang had been too late to hop on being busy doing who knows what. When she arrived home, she had assumed that Trang would've called her to tell her that her older sister was on the way. Linny wouldn't have worried too much if it had not been for the fact that between the two sisters, they had one copy of their house key and it was usually Trang who held onto it for them.

Ten minutes later, still no signs of her older sister.

By the time thirty minutes passed, Linny began walking in circles around the stop sign close to the school bus drop-off spot. Luckily, the late autumn air had not set in yet or else she would've started walking ten miles to their parents' restaurant for shelter. Her parents had told them earlier that day that they would be working a late shift (they had just lost another load of cash from the night before).

Trang finally came home a minute before a new hour turned. When she got to the front of their house, she found Linny sitting with her arms hiding her head. A kid who looked about the same age was sitting beside her. After being dropped off by another school bus after hers, he felt bad leaving at the sight of Linny looking lost and stayed to offer his phone. When there was no perpetual ringing on the other line, Linny could feel her heart racing, almost as fast as when she didn't know an answer to a test. The call had simply gone straight to voicemail and there was nothing she could do about it.

It turned out Trang had been walking home this entire time with her cell phone out of battery, so none of Linny's calls were picked up. For the hour it took for Trang to walk home, she had gotten caught up with the changing colors in the sky, forgetting that she wasn't like the disappearing clouds above or birds flying towards the horizon. For that hour, it was as if she lost her memories temporarily.

"Well, that makes the two of us." Before Linny could take the time to relish over her jab and what she imagined would be her sister's hurt expression, she felt a surge of pain everywhere in her body. It was as if she got caught in the middle of a crazy Spanish bull stampede with her body projecting into thin air and all of her four limbs forgetting to move. There was no time to signal for help. When Linny realized that her older sister would be making the biggest mistake in her life having pushed her younger sister off the stairs, it was too late for Linny to do anything about it.

Did she mean to do that? Or was it an accident?

It didn't matter if Linny learned that it was one way or the other.

The deed was done.