The Open Door - Sean and Kaycee

25. The Truth

Kaycee

I watch his face. Confusion, at first. He thinks he's heard me wrong. He scratches his head as if he were trying to decipher the meaning of those three words, but he can't--those three words have only one meaning. His face morphs into disbelief. Then he looks at me. He blinks three times, as if my appearance has changed somehow and he can't recognize who I've become.

Sean opens his mouth to talk, but it's like his tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth. No words come out. It would have been funny if the situation weren't so damn horrible.

So we sit awkwardly for a few minutes--him unable to speak, and me too afraid to break the silence. The momentary calm before the storm.

"Who? Who was it?" he blurts out suddenly. "Who did you--" He can't say the word. Murder.

My jaw is glued shut.

"Kaycee, tell me. Please. Who was it?"

"My sister," I whisper, almost inaudibly. The two words slip out of my mouth and crash onto the floor--the words that I haven't acknowledged for over a year.

Yes. My sister. I killed my own sister.

The shock in his eyes is evident. It makes him look like a deer in the headlights--caught in a situation that he cannot understand or escape from.

"See," I say softly, "You despise me. What did I tell you."

"I--I don't--I can't--" His mouth snaps shut. Finally, sounding out-of-breath, he says. "Back up. I need--I need to hear all of it. How it happened, when it happened, why it happened. All of it."

His voice is strained and steely. I'm not surprised or taken aback at his tone. I'm just relieved that he isn't doling out sympathy or the "it probably wasn't your fault"s. Because I don't deserve sympathy. And it is my fault.

"You're right," I say delicately. "I--I probably shouldn't have gone about it this way. Let me start from the beginning. I guess the first thing I should clear up is that I'm not lost, like I told you I was. I ran away."

He looks up at me, concerned. "Was it... bad at your home?"

Of course Sean would ask that. He would expect the best of me. He would expect that even though I did something horrible, I had a morally justified cause. And I'm about to prove how wrong he is to have faith in me at all.

"No, no. At least, there was never anything wrong. Never anything particularly right either." I frown. The words aren't coming out the way that I want to. "The thing was that... my parents didn't want me to dance. They thought it was stupid, a child's dream. They never understood me. They always tried to make me into something that I wasn't."

"And... that's why you ran away?" he guesses.

"Yes and no. Do you remember the day of the dance audition in New York? When--"

"We ran into each other on the subway? Yes. I remember that day." he interrupts, looking up at me strangely.

"That was the day that everything both started and ended for me. I came home from the audition and my parents were furious. I hadn't told them that I was going to go. They forbid me from ever dancing again." I pause to catch my breath. "At that moment, I hated my home. I hated my family. I hated the fact that my parents didn't understand me. That they never took the time to even try to understand me. And so... in the heat of the moment, I packed my bags and ran."

"But where does your sister--"

I interrupt him swiftly. "It didn't take long for Kylie to realize what I was planning to do. She was always the only one who understood me. More than anyone else ever had. We were... close. Very close. She was my sister, but also my best friend, and in a way, she was also my mother. She could read me like a book. She seemed to know more about me than I knew about myself. And so she knew exactly what my intentions were when I asked her how to withdraw money from the bank."