One-shots

She Was Right

“Don’t fall in love because it can kill you. It will make you go crazy.”

That’s what my older sister always told me ever since I was ten years old. The first time she told me this was when she broke up with her third boyfriend of sixteen months. She came home crying and immediately locked herself in her room. She wouldn’t open the door when my parents would knock and so they gave up trying and went back to their rooms. I watched it all from the small crack between my bedroom door and the doorframe. I decided to walk out and gave it a try to knock on my sister’s door. Fortunately, she opened it once she knew it was me. She gestured for me to sit next to her on her bed and she started sobbing about what happened with her and her ex-boyfriend and I never really understood how a simple break up or how the concept of love could make one go insane…until now.

***

My eyes opened abruptly and I was fully awake once I heard the familiar screams of my sister from her bedroom. I quickly scrambled out of the bed sheets and bolted out of my bedroom. I ran straight to my sister’s bedroom where the door was always kept open so I didn’t have to struggle opening it in a panic state. I frantically looked around and found her slumped down on the floor, next to her bed and her back on the wall. I rushed to her and bent down so we could be in the same eye level. She was still sobbing and I calmed her down by shushing her and soothing her hair with my fingers, telling her that everything was going to be alright when it clearly wasn’t going to be okay at all.

“Did you have the same nightmare again?” I asked with pity, not even trying to hide it anymore because I truly felt sorry with what my sister had to go through. She has been having the same nightmares about the last boy she dated who died in a car accident while driving to our house and my sister somehow thinks it’s all her fault for even inviting him over. I don’t think she should blame herself because nobody knows what’s going to happen next and nobody could control what fate has planned for us.

She nods as she tries to wipe away the tears that were still running down her cheeks with the back of her hand. I wrap my arms around her as she lays her head on my chest, sobbing through my now wet shirt. I try to calm her down once more.

“He wouldn’t want you acting this way; he’d want you to be happy. Can’t you hear him right now? You can hear him saying he loves you and none of this was your fault.”

It would be odd saying these things but she has been telling me that he has been telling her things like these. It’s as if she couldn’t let go of the fact that he’s gone but I don’t tell her that, instead I believe her and the things I say, he’d probably say to her if he was still here.

She suddenly pushes me off her and puts both her hands on her ears, shutting her eyes tight. She starts crying all over again and it hurt to watch her go through all this pain.

“That’s the problem, Chloe,” she says as she opens her eyes and looks at me with tears still brimming at the end of her eyes and tears pouring at her cheeks. She holds my stare for a bit longer before putting her hands to her knees that were pulled up to her chest and then looking at her hands “I can’t hear him anymore.”

I roll my lips in my mouth and give out a sigh. I tug at her arm gently and stand up. She follows suit and I lead her back to her bed. I tuck her in and kiss her on the forehead “Good night, Amelia. You’ll hear him again, I promise. He’ll always be here,” I say as I place my hand on where her heart should be.

She still had the frown on her face but she finally stopped crying. She gives a slight nod before going under the blankets and even if it was barely audible, I heard her say good night. I carefully sit down on the edge of her bed, careful not to wake her up since she sounded like she was already in a deep sleep. I sit there for a while, thinking about what my sister always said and I still can’t fully understand since I haven’t experienced going insane but every time I look at her, I imagine how it must feel like to fall in love and the things I’d do that would label me as “crazy”.