When the Lights Go Out {complete first draft}

Day Three: Will You Dance With Me?

day three of being Friday

It hadn’t worked. Nothing was going to work. I tossed and turned, but couldn’t get back to sleep. My brain was getting used to the wake up call from a drunken Vincent that I just woke up by myself this time. In a few minutes, he’d ring, and I’d start this fiasco all over again. If there was any silver lining in this, then it was that I had Vincent back. I didn’t need to say goodbye to him. But what confused me even more was that I couldn’t understand why it was changing. My days were getting shorter, now that I’d died in the afternoon, rather than in the evening like all the other times. But here I was again, I was alive, and I was living this Friday again.

                  I didn’t know if I should have altered the day from the beginning, but I just took a moment that I thought was appropriate. Racking my brains, I tried to think of what happened the actual last day I was on earth. Vincent had rung, first thing, trying to get me to pick him up from the party. I’d asked Kendal to do it, but he told me she wasn’t there and I’d found that out by checking on her in her room. The one thing I never bothered to think about was why? I didn’t find out why she hadn’t gone, if she’d planned to.

                  Maybe I should do that? Maybe, although I was just guessing now, this wasn’t about me at all. Maybe this was about someone else: Kendal, possibly?

                  I tossed the covers away and pulled on a dressing robe. It was worth a shot, wasn’t it? I mean, what did I really have to lose to spend this day figuring out if my sister was the reason all of this was happening? If Vincent wasn’t the answer, maybe Kendal was. This couldn’t just be about myself, after all – it was bigger than that.

                  In that moment, it felt like something was pulling me towards Kendal’s room, something was telling me the answer was in there. So I padded along the hallway, and into my sister’s room. I didn’t want to wake up the whole house, but I had to wake up my sister. Even though she was peacefully sleeping, I knew I had to wake her up and have a conversation with her. If I was to figure out if she was the answer or not, I had to get some answers out of her. I had to spend some more time with her, and see if she was the key to all of this, because something was.

                  “Kendal,” I said as I shook her vigorously. “Wake up. I need to talk to you.”

                  “Marisol!” My sister groaned. I stepped back, and watched her for a moment to see if she would get up, but she only stirred. I pushed myself down onto her bed and got as close to her as I could. She smelt of lemons, and I listening to her heavy breathing. Already, she was going back to sleep, and already she was beginning to snore.

                  “Kendal,” I tried again. “This is important and I need you to wake up, so I can talk to you. This can’t wait until the morning.”

                  “What is it?” my sister grumbled.

                  I paused a moment, closing my eyes. The last thing I wanted her to do was to wake my mother or my younger brother up. This wouldn’t be important to them at this time in the morning, they wouldn’t care. And besides, I wouldn’t be able to explain it to them anyway. I remember – thank goodness, because there was so much I was forgetting now – that Kendal was always the hardest to wake up in the mornings. Once, on Christmas Day, though, she’d woken up first and had dragged the covers off me, telling me Santa had been. I told her he hadn’t, that he wasn’t real, but she didn’t believe me. There are presents here from dad, she’d said, arguing with me. Santa could be the only one that brought those here over night because daddy’s not coming until tomorrow. I’d smiled, sweetly at her, and told her she must be right. But I knew they were from my mom, because I’d seen her frantically writing out loads of cards behind our backs on Christmas Eve. I recognised the cards straight away when Kendal pointed to them. Still, our father did come with small gifts the next day.