Sister, Sister.

I. Not Katie

I. Not Katie

THREE MONTHS, ONE WEEK AFTER

Karlie

Mum scowls every time she sees me in Kat's room.

She probably feels I will condemn the place with my Karlie-ness and all traces of Kat's Kat-ness will be lost. It is one of the things she and Dad fought about during their numerous post-Kat's death fights.

After the funeral, Dad wanted me to move into Kat's room so Krystal will have the bedroom we share to himself but Mum would not let it happen, over her dead body. I secretly sided Mum. I don't want to sleep in Kat's room. I still dream about her. Sometimes in the dreams I have, she is alive and stable - the way she was before she attempted suicide - but sometimes, she is dead. Stiff and unmoving. She would try to pull me down with her into her watery grave. I would wake up screaming, my whole body covered in sweat and shaking with sobs. If I sleep in Kat's room, her ghost will kill me.

Other nights, when I am not being haunted by bad dreams, I will lie on my bed, insomniac. Could I have stopped Kat from dying? Then I remember it was out of my control. Nothing would have changed what would have happened.

I sneak into the red bedroom. Everytime I come here, I am overwhelmed by the matching red walls and red curtains. I have begun to notice them more. The audacity of the colour presses down on me, suffocating me. The only thing that is not in a shade of red is the white bedsheet with fairies on it.

The room still smells like Kat; it smells like coconut oil, shea butter and vanilla. The room is too bright so I pull the tall curtains shut. Kat would have done so too.

Sometimes I come to carry her hidden bottles of alcohol and consume them late in the night. Whenever I think I have gotten to the last bottle, I would uncover another under her bed, or in her laundry basket or behind her toilet. The alcohol made it hard for me to sleep. If my parents have noticed the dark circles around my eyes, they have said nothing about it. I wake up groggy, staggering around the house with a foul taste in my mouth. My Mum is too busy grieving to notice.

I notice how clean the room is and arranged the room is. There is no crease in the bedsheets, no piece of furniture is out of place. Mum cleans the room every Saturday evening whilst singing praise songs under her breath. She is the person who opened the curtains.

I walk to the switch and fan regulator by the door and switch on the lights then put Squeaky on. Squeaky groans and squeaks so much that Kat feared it will fall from the ceiling and slice her in her sleep but Squeaky did not get her, the Atlantic ocean beat Squeaky to it.

There was a time that Katherine was not Kat but Katie.

That was before she got admitted into the University, before she started wearing crop tops, mini skirts, lots of jewellery and nude makeup. It was before she started buying and hiding bottles of expensive alcoholic drinks in her wardrobe, before she started ignoring me and treated me like there was not a mere one year gap between our ages. It was before she met her soulmate, Daniel.

When Katherine was Katie, she used to sing soprano in the church choir and her only makeup was scented white talc powder and clear lip gloss applied in moderation. Her hairstyle was always modest and neat cornrows; her favourite clothing was t-shirts and skirts that were knee-length. We used to attend catechism on Saturdays and she used to do my homework for me.

She wanted a cat; she would have named her Cat, but my parents did not want any pets.

We used to play ten-ten even though Mum said we were too old to play. We would suck ice cubes from the freezer so the water would roll down the length of our hands to our forearms then drip off our elbows to the ground. We would take goofy pictures with Dad's camera on Sundays after morning mass, posing in our church clothes and big grins. In the evenings we would cook instant noodles with scrambled eggs in it and eat outside with only bermuda shorts and bra tops.