Sisters: Butterflies at Graduation [book two]

Chapter Sixteen (NaNoWriMo)

Dedicated to @amcoffeeshop because of her comments on chapter fourteen. They made me laugh. Thank you.

Chapter Sixteen

"Haley! Esmee's here!"

I sit on the side of my bed with my back leaning forward and my arms outstretched, a sock halfway on my foot. I curse under my breath. It's one of those mornings.

"I'm coming!"

I grab my bag from my desk chair and run to the bathroom. It's the first day back at school since the New Year and everything's going wrong. I burnt my toast and spilt jam down the front of my shirt; I couldn't find any clean underwear and I started my period.

I kneel down and open the cabinet underneath the sink. I groan and run a hand down my face. "Mom, there are no sanitary towels left!"

"Try Michele's bathroom!" Mom says. "And hurry up!"

I clamber to my feet and burst through Michele's bedroom door, expecting her to still be in bed. But her blind has been pulled up and her bed has been made. I cross the carpet to the linoleum-tiled flooring in her bathroom and open the cupboard next to the bath tub. I find what I'm looking for but something precariously held in place by the door of the cabinet falls to the floor. A notebook.

I bend down and pick it up. My eyes involuntarily wander to Michele's scrawled handwriting on the landed page. I lower myself onto the toilet seat and clutch the notebook in my hands, the thought of Mom downstairs and Esmee waiting and Michele nowhere to be seen escaping from my thoughts.

At first I think it's fictional but then I see Chad's name, and Stephanie's, and Sam's. I realise that it's from Michele's point of view, and then it clicks: it's a journal of Michele's old memories.

I continue to read and my grip tightens around the notebook and my heart beats faster in my chest. My mouth opens. I get lost in Michele's tornado of thoughts, her sea of flashbacks and midnight dreams of her past life that used to be displayed on a timeline but are now privately stored in a journal that I've never read.

It's only when Mom screams, "Haley!" that I shove the journal back into the cabinet, grab a box of sanitary towels and hurry downstairs.

I mumble a series of apologies to Mom on the way out and to Esmee when I reach the car. The entire journey to school, I'm in a daze.

She lied.

Michele had lied. The four years that my sister had been in high school had been a total lie. The persona that she had built up for herself had been stripped down before my eyes into something that I know longer recognise. She wasn't the bubbly, happy-go-lucky girl I had known her to be. Instead, she was entirely different.

When Michele fist woke up from the coma, I had been distraught that my sister didn't remember who I was. Since the accident, we've re-laid the foundations of our friendship together that no longer, I realise, stems from my younger sister idolisation.

There's something wrong when a person you once knew suddenly becomes a stranger. I'm not mad - how can I be mad? - when the Michele described in the dream journal no longer exists. She had kept a side of her life away from me and this is the first glimpse I've seen of it. Ever. Her extent to cover it up had gone so far as to change the expression on her face when she walked through the front door. I wish I could ask her why she didn't want me to see this part of her life and I wish I could ask her whether it was with me she could truly feel herself or whether events described in the journal was who she was all along.

Maybe I didn't know my sister at all.

Esmee and I stand at our lockers, unnecessarily early, waiting for Chelsea and Bridgit to arrive. Esmee sips her coffee and scrolls through her phone. She thinks our lack of conversation is due to the early hour - I don't think she noticed when it was just her singing to the radio this morning - but instead, I've been struck with nothing to say because no topic of conversation could become the forefront of my mind when the dream journal lurks so vividly in my brain.