Broken: Emily's Story

19

Ellie used to listen to this band. I was kind of surprised when she showed it to me.

Emily, I have to show you something amazing, she had shouted when she got home one day. She was still in fourth grade. Just a year before she died.

What's up Ellie? I had asked her, looking up from my math. I was glad to be distracted from my math. Graphing sucked.

Can I use your laptop? She asked, an excited gleam in her eyes.

Sure, I say, grabbing the laptop on my desk that I would throw against a wall a year later. I only ever used it for homework and when Ellie and I watched videos on this really popular website. We even put a few videos on it.

I turn it and slide it in front of Ellie. She starts typing. She could type way better than I could. I had always been jealous of that.

Once she finds what she's looking for she turns the computer so I can see it too. It was a music video. She clicked play and we watched the video. It was great, as was the song.

We spent the next few hours looking up music by that band.

Eventually, I got it all on this little MP3 player that I played music on which would also get thrown against a wall a year later.

The day after Ellie died, I snapped. I threw my laptop, MP3 player, and a few of my pictures of her. Everything I did reminded me of her. Maybe that's why I stopped doing the few things I did do. Because I always did them with Ellie.

This one time, we uploaded a video of us singing a song really off-key. We were laughing through the whole thing. It was a really popular song too. We did it without the music. I know there's a word for that, but I forgot it.

I find an app for the website. I open it and search for the video, still not as fast at typing as Ellie ever was.

I find the video and hesitate, my finger hovering over it. After a bit though, I click on it.

Our names pop up on the screen and then Ellie's voice plays through the speakers, Hi, I'm Ellie and this is my sister Emily.

When she says my name, I wave shyly at the camera. We made this video a month before she died. We look so happy.

We start singing and laughing. I start to laugh a little too. Silent tears stream down my face. How much I wanted to be in that moment again I couldn't begin to describe. When the video stops, I rewind it, to hear her voice again, to hear her laugh again.