The Replacement Sister

Part 2

It started out as any normal Saturday.

We were driving my ten-year-old sister, Maya, to her soccer game. It was forty-five minutes away, but my parents had promised to get me ice cream, so I didn't mind so much. I was a different person then. I had a lot of friends and was the star of the basketball team and the most infuriating thing that had ever happened to me, was when my buddy Alex dropped my new sneakers in a mud puddle.

Maya was popular too, and athletic, and the role model of every girl in her class, but there was something more to her. She understood more; thought more deeply than anyone would've expected. I hadn't noticed, of course, because I spent most of my hours with friends and trying to get away from my boring family.

My parents were complaining about the Board of Education, I played a basketball game on my phone, and Maya stared out the window. She accidentally elbowed me when she shifted to a more comfortable position.

"Maya, can you quit shoving me?" I whined loud enough that my parents would hear.

"I'm not touching you!" she snapped.

"Guys, please." Mom twisted around in her seat and raised her eyebrows threateningly at us. I stuck my tongue out at Maya. She rolled her eyes and went back to staring out the window.

Silence. I tapped a rhythm on the plastic drink holder. Maya and I could hear Dad's radio station playing folk music faintly from the backseat. The engine's white noise grew louder and louder, like a tsunami wave approaching.

I have some trouble remembering what happened next. It's all flashes.

A massive force from behind slammed us forward. I screamed. The impact had jerked Dad's hands, tightly gripping the steering wheel, to the right, and our car veered off the road. We blasted into the steel barricade, throwing Maya into the car door, and then on top of me.

The car drove away, leaving us in the dust.

Silence.

"Maya!" I cried. Her head now rested on my lap. A trickle of blood ran down her cheek.

She groaned.

I held her in my arms. When I realized this wasn't a nightmare and I wasn't going to wake up, everything drained away but the sound of her sobs.

"It's going to be O.K.," I whispered, my tears staining her shirt. "We're going to be O.K."

Of course we weren't, but what else are you supposed to say as your sister dies? Could she even hear me?

Dad and I just had bruises and cuts. Mom had gotten a broken arm. But it was Maya who was rushed into the emergency room. It was Maya who had so many IV tubes stuck into her that she didn't even look like a person. I should've been mad. I should've been furious. All I felt was a connection ripping, a inseparable bond separating, that smashed everything else in our world with a hammer of love while it was at it.

I could feel the last threads wrenching apart before the nurse even came in to tell us.

I remember Mom and Dad crumpling to the floor, sobbing. I just stood there, not quite believing.

It has been a year since my sister was killed.

I switched schools. Mom became a ghost. She and Dad would hold each other's hands and cry together through the night. There were times when I was completely forgotten, but I like it that way. I'm not good at talking anymore. I don't ever know what to say.

And now my parents are convinced a new daughter will regenerate what Maya took with her when she left. They want to replace the irreplaceable. And they haven't yet realized that's impossible, and that it'll only damage us more, and that Lucy doesn't deserve to be nothing more than a substitute for who we really need. So now we have a little girl who looks nothing like any of us about to grow up in our home, learning to love a family who can never truly love her.