Shard

grubby adolescents.

I watched as a nurse finished straightening out the already immaculate white bed sheets for the fifth time. The hospital staff was still edgy around Rena, as if waiting for her to suddenly jump up and grab someone's throat. I almost felt bad for them. They had no idea what to do. They'd never seen a case like this before.

Rena's eyes were closed now, but not peacefully. They looked like they'd been forced shut, and her body lay stiff and uncomfortable on the hospital bed. Out of place. My parents walked out of her hospital room to where I'd been standing, peering through the cracked glass window. I knew that I'd been the one who kicked it in the first place, when I'd found out what'd happened to her.
My anger had a way of sparking out like a novelty firework, devouring the world in chaos. I'd been an awful sister, I knew it. An awful, awful sister who'd been much too harsh on the person that cared most in the world. 

"Are you sure you don't want to talk to her? She misses you." My dad didn't like that I wouldn't talk to my little sister. But he didn't understand. Besides, she's basically just been unconscious ever since she got back from the hospital.

"Maybe later," I mumbled, starting to walk towards the hospital exit.

"How about right now?" Unfortunately, my mom wasn't going to budge as easily as Dad.  I hesitated, then slowly dragged my feet towards Rena's room. Knocking twice, I entered through the glass door. Rena's eyes sprang open, darting to meet mine for half a second before snapping closed again. I quirked a brow. Unconscious, huh? Maybe the little dweeb was just pretending.

But then I got a good look at her face. The pink skin under her eyelid said that she'd been crying recently. And her eyes, for a split second, seemed to plead for help. I blinked away tears, remembering how much I'd missed her while she was away at her boarding school.

When my parents had realized that my imperfect grades in school wouldn't get me anywhere, they'd decided to try a little harder on Rena. She was sent off to Vernace Academy, a really good private boarding school a couple miles away, in Massachusetts. And then she was sent back, after nearly two years there.

Last week, we got a phone call from her headmaster, saying that they'd found her, unconscious and barely breathing, on the dusty tile floor outside the girl's bathroom.

•••

I almost wasn't surprised when I got home to random 13-yr-olds munching on what was left of my Halloween candy. (Of course, it was only the gross cheap stuff, because I had already hogged all the good chocolate.)

We just kinda stood there for a while, facing off. Well, technically, it was just a face off between me and a particularly grubby looking adolescent. I watched, disturbed, as green Jolly Rancher juice dribbled down his chin. Finally, I sighed.

"You're here to ask about Rena, aren't you? Friends from school?"

The green candy snatcher nodded, then, using his response as a distraction, he quickly threw the candy bag on the couch behind him. Nice. A candy snatcher and a liar.

"Is she okay? We didn't even get to meet her before she was taken away by the ambulance." Another boy had spoken, and he looked at me expectantly. His chin was relatively clean and juice-free, so I decided to answer.

"Uh- yeah. She's doing--" I hesitated, "she's doing okay." No, she wasn't okay. She was a character out of some horror movie. She was possessed or something.

The grubby kid, following my eyes to the bag of Jolly Ranchers he'd just chucked on the couch, chose that moment to speak.

"I'm so sorry about the candy. They just don't allow it at the Academy and I haven't seen Jolly Ranchers since this summer and we traveled all the way here without lunch and I'm really sorry, I swear." Then, softer, "so she's still unconscious?"

"Yes." Although I thought I'd seen her move a couple times.

"Can we go see her?"

"No! Unless you know how to break into a hospital, no."

"I do." This time he looked me straight in the eyes, and the others (there were five of them, two boys and three girls) looked just as earnest.

"Are you insane?! What do they teach you in that fancy academy?! Breaking and entering 101? I'd thought that during those two entire years at Vernace, Rena had been learning Advanced Geometry or something."

"What do you mean an entire two years," interrupted one of the girls. "Didn't she come home for summer vacation?"

"No, because she sent us a letter telling us about a smartypants summer math program. We haven't seen her since spring break." And now, in the middle of September, she was back again. Unconscious, but returned all the same.

"But there is no summer school. Our school doesn't do that." The girl looked anxious now. "Our school is kind of.. different."

"But then-" I was cut off by the sound of the garage door opening. My parents were home. "Quick," I said urgently, "hide in here." I shoved the kids towards a broom closet. Luckily, the closet was just big enough to hold the four of them. My parents couldn't find out about the kids, or about Rena's weird school yet. You know how adults are, they ask too many questions and always screw things up. I would have to figure this out myself.