'sometimes i think about my life as a book.'
• • • •
aspen's world is thrown into chaos when her twin sister atlas passes away, leaving her to face the upcoming fall holiday alone. little does she know that that one mysterious earphone girl...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
A/N: after that super long first chapter, we're now going back to normal length (around 2K words) just wanted to tell you x
"Hey!" I shout as I kick the black Doc's off my feet.
No answer. I pick the shoes up and place them on the shoe rack, beside dad's mocha brown loafers and mom's high, glossy heels. Atlas's white Converse aren't here. We donated them to a charity shop in town. I guess it's good. I don't know if I could have coped with seeing them every day when I got home. But at the same time, it feels like for every bit of Atlas we throw away, donate or burn, we have less left. Less memories, less pieces of my beloved sister. I don't want her to leave the house, especially not since she's never coming home again.
My throat ties up and I swallow. But sometimes, I kind of want to forget.
No, I can't think of it like that. Atlas wouldn't want me to forget her.
"Is someone home?" I shout again, trying to steady my voice.
The house is completely quiet. Like a grave.
I hang my black leather coat on the jacket hanger, advancing further into the house. The kitchen is empty, grains of dust swirling in the air where the pale sunlight hits. Quietly, I walk up to the fridge. There's not much in there. Just a package of butter, a cucumber, a milk carton and a wrapped bowl of salad. I wonder if I should go down to the store and buy some groceries, but at last I decide that I'm too tired. I take out the milk and a glass from the cupboard and fill it to the limit. Then, I walk out of the kitchen and up the stairs to my room.
The house is still eerily quiet. When Atlas... I can hardly bear to finish the thought; when Atlas was alive, the house was never quiet. It feels so... wrong. Atlas is alive. She's just late. In a couple of minutes, she'll knock on the door and stomp in without waiting for an answer, yell "is anyone home?" and thunder up the stairs. Surely Megan – her best girl friend – would be with her as well. They would laugh and talk within the half-closed door of her room, and later, she'd call out my name and I'd join them, playing silly Roblox games or whatever they felt like doing. And in the evening, Atlas would come over to my room, curling up in my bed.
I don't realize I'm crying until a tear land in the glass of milk with a gentle plash.
How can I even still cry? How are there even more tears to exit my body? Shouldn't I, like... have run out of tears at this point?
I close the door behind me and put the glass on my bedside table, exhaling as I lay down on my soft bed.
So many things have happened today, my head starts spinning just thinking about it. But the one thought that exits the chaos, forming a clear sentence in my head is: what the fuck will I tell mom and dad?
They'll get an absence notification from my teachers. I ran away during the penultimate class, so everyone else should have finished by now. Three hours absence.
