Jade

I start biting my fingernails. I can't do this. I don't want to do this. I can't do this. Me and my sister, no, my sister and I, I correct myself. What's happening to me?! I'm majoring in English, and I'm making stupid grammatical errors in my head that a second grader wouldn't make. My dad and I, there ya go, Jade, are helping my sister Iso, move into her dorm at her college. Not my college, because she's not going to the same one as me. We're not twins, I'm just a "smart" person so I'm just skipping high school and going straight to college. Yay. The thing is, I'm really not smarter than the rest of them, they just had a life apart from studying and reading.

I have no one except for Iso and my dad, and now she's leaving and I'm being forced to leave my dad. I REALLY don't want to do this, but I guess it's better than having to go through high school. According to my sister, I'm lucky. But I don't feel lucky. I pick up another box while I'm lost in these thoughts, and I trip on a cord. It falls from my hands, and I hear glass breaking.

I hope in my heart that it's not what I think it is, but I helped Iso pack, I know what the only glass thing she packed is. I open the box. It is. It's the one thing Iso has, had, to keep our mother in memory. I got the snowflake necklace I haven't taken off since it was given to me when I was 8, and Iso got the snow globe. Since she was 4 years older she got the glass, breakable thing, and she's kept it polished to a shine on her dresser for all these years. And now I broke it. I check inside the box to see the damage, and know there's no salvaging it.

I start crying my eyes out and trying to pick it up. The tears obviously do nothing to help my vision, and I get glass cuts in my fingers. My sister's going to kill me. I hear footsteps on the stairs, I cry even harder, thinking it's my dad, or worse, my sister.

But it's not, its a boy, so I go back to my sobbing and cleaning. I'm hoping he's just going to walk by, but he stops and looks at me curiously for a good solid minute, then, without a word of asking why, stoops down and picks up the glass with a broom he procured from a nearby closet, he sweeps the glass into a dustpan, and is about to walk off when I do something I never would have done.

I croak out, "Thank you." He turns back, walks back to me, and asks me, "What's your name?" kindly.
I go back to my bawling and he sort of nods and walks away.