Whispered Shadows

Prologue

Prologue

Noa

Three years ago...

My eyes dance across the small room. Taking in the space my sister will be living in for the next four years. It's smaller than our rooms at home.

Gia is a terrible sleeper so I feel bad for whoever is going to sleep in that other twin bed across the room. I can hear her snores through my walls.

Mom is helping Gia decorate her side of the room with posters and pictures while Dad keeps running back and forth from the car to the dorm. Each time he complains about how many bags Gia brought with her.

I should be helping unpack those bags, but I can't. It's like my feet are cemented to the floor. My entire life Gia has always been in the bedroom next door. We have shared our bathroom.

We fight, but she's my best friend. I only made it through my first year of high school because she was there with me. What am I supposed to do now?

I knew this day was coming of course. Everyone has to leave the house at some point. We spent all Summer talking about how she was going to decorate her dorm and last year we spent it doing college tours. However, standing here right now has made it all real.

I kept thinking it wasn't going to be soon. I convinced myself that she would stay. That she'd always be in the room beside me.

Didn't want to think about how I wouldn't have to fight over the shower in the morning. I didn't want to think I wouldn't be sitting in the car honking for her to hurry up. I didn't want to think how she wouldn't be at practice when school started back up.

I only joined the cheerleading team to be close to her. I have never loved it the way that she has, but I love my big sister.

She's always the person I go to talk to. I knew she was in the room right next door. She helped me talk to my first crush. She picked out my outfit for my first date. She would help me do my hair for practice.

We both knew I could do it, but that didn't stop me from walking into her room holding a brush and a hair tie. It also didn't stop her from telling me to sit on the floor so she could do it.

Mom excuses herself from the room saying she's going to go get food for us because Dad will get cranky soon. Gia got that trait from our dad. From the bickering coming from the two of them, I know she's using Dad as an excuse when she wants to get food inside of Gia.

"Noa, come here," Gia says patting the yellow comforter on her bed.

I must have been lost in my head because the room now looks different than what I remember. Small polaroid pictures are strung together on fairy lights on the wall her bed is pushed up against. She got that Polaroid camera at the start of her senior year as a present. She takes that thing everywhere with her now taking pictures. I didn't know it was for her dorm room.

The small wall above her bed is a collage of posters. Some are of models and others of places she has always talked about traveling to. She always wanted to be a professional photographer.

The tan desk is moved to infront of the end of the bed like her roommate did. Her yellow laptop sits right on it next to the white Polaroid camera along with small little notebooks.

I take a seat next to her laying my head on her shoulder. She pulls my dark brown hair that matches hers out from under me.

"I don't want you to leave," I find myself confessing.

Her small hand rubs my back lightly in circles, "I'm only an hour away. I can come home on weekends to see you. Or you can drive up here for a weekend and see me."