She's Gone and I'm Lost

09 | the illusion

dedicated to my cat for always sitting directly on top of my keyboard. thanks, Whiskers (note the sarcasm)

09 | the illusion

December 31st | 11:11 pm

Marleen looked at me oddly. She could tell that there was something wrong, she just didn't know what. She had been talking to Will and showing him the note that Alex had left behind, when she noticed that I had my eyelids squeezed tightly shut. I opened my eyes to see her staring at me. She mouthed the words 'What's wrong?' I nodded towards the sketchbook that was lying on the rock. It was Alex's star map. I didn't want to have to see the stars that were starting to brighten in the sky. She got the message and quickly wrapped up her conversation.

Will wrote his phone number down on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. Marleen and I said our goodbyes and started the walk back to my truck. I expected Will to follow us out of the woods to go back to his house, but he stayed seated on the rock. I wondered if he was going to stay there until the stars came out. I wondered if he knew how much Alex loved the stars. I remembered what he had said about his family, how they ignored him because he looked too painfully similar to his late father. I couldn't imagine what that would be like.

My brother, Isaac, and I were never very close. But he didn't completely ignore me. I got an occasional phone call from him, although he never came for the holidays. He said he had a girlfriend who's family lived near us and she refused to come anywhere near them. So he stayed with her instead of coming to visit his family.

Growing up, Isaac was six years older than me. I always assumed that we never got along because of our age difference. But when I was thirteen, Stella was born, and I immediately stepped into the big sister shoes. That's why I didn't understand why Isaac and I were never close. If I could bond with a sibling that I was thirteen years older than, couldn't he at least try to have a brother-sister relationship with his sibling that he was only six years older than? 

"Do you think my parents will even let me leave the house again?" I ask Marleen on the ride back to my house. They would probably get suspicious if I asked to go on a road trip. They were still being lenient because they felt sorry for me, but I could only stretch that so far.

"I'll talk to them, your parents love me," she said. I knew that she wanted to add 'They probably love me more than my real parents.' But she didn't, considering the situation. We still hadn't talked about what we had learned from Will either. But was there really anything to discuss? It was all in the past, and we couldn't change it. If I could time travel, and go back to change one thing, I would go back to last year. I would tell myself to pay more attention to my best friend, to notice more things about her, notice how sad she was. Maybe she never would have ended up on that bridge if I had. 

"They're going to want a reason. We'll have to make something up," I replied. If I told the truth, that I was going to see my dead best friend's secret sister with Marleen and some random guy named Will, they would never agree to let me go. I wouldn't blame them either. If I were a parent and my kid told me that, I definitely wouldn't let them go.

"Why don't we just tell them it's a grief road trip? Just like the trip to the cabin, we told them we needed some space to think about things. Can't we just do that again?" she asked.

"Okay, we'll try that. But we need a backup plan, at least."

We both thought about it, but came up with nothing that would work. So we were left with only one card to play. We would have to make the most of it. We stopped to refill the gas tank about ten minutes later. Marleen worked the gas pump while I went inside to get a snack. I hadn't eaten anything all day since I hadn't had any of the pancakes that morning and had avoided all food at the funeral. But I still didn't have an appetite, so I settled on some coffee. I got two cups, one for me and one for Marleen. I paid, and then started to walk back to the truck. But something stopped me.