writingwithstyle
She wasn't like other girls.
She'd made sure of it when she came through the machine, grabbing the ink blotter and adding an extra freckle to each cheek. Even robots don't want to be direct copies, right?
Mercy is my father killing the dog last Tuesday. His hands, wilted and strong, holding the gun to Cassie's head when the blood spread from her stomach to her mouth. Bullets are cheaper than vet bills, and vet bills are cheaper than the pain that comes from having a wolf bite into your stomach. I wanted her to live, because there's gotta be someone in the story who doesn't want the dog to die, right? But I didn't throw my body on top of her, or grab my dad's gun away. Even as the shot sounded, and I cried, but I didn't flinch. Because if I begged my dad to give Cassie mercy, to give her little ears the chance to flop once more, he'd just say that giving someone the dignity to die is mercy too.
We were always sisters, even when we were didn't share blood. That's what happens when you fall in love with a friend, fall in love with the way her shiny black hair falls out into your hands when you braid it, splaying across your fingers like they were veins. I remember the day we made it official, slitting our ankles since they would later be covered up with socks. We did it in her backyard, because she had a tree that could fit two people at once. We swore, our mouths dry with lipstick stolen from my older sister's closet: Sisters until death. My hand was still soft, because I hadn't developed callouses yet, when it pressed drops of my blood into her cut.
I know it's weird, but sometimes I still find her hair under my pillow. Every now and then it creates words on my shower wall, and I like to ask it questions. Mostly I ask it about the weather, or what TV shows it likes to watch, because I know I'm not the only one it visits, and people like her mother ask questions harder to answer, like, "Where did you go?" and, "Please tell me how to find you."
I try to make it fun, when I find the strands in my pasta. "Did you see what happened in the Project Runway Finale," I ask when the black hairs hang on my freshly done laundry. But one Sunday morning I was taking a bath even though I didn't have to go anywhere fancy, just trying out bath soaps that were too expensive to be wasted like this, and the hair wound itself around the faucet. I could tell it was there to stay for a while. "Did you mean it?" I asked, leaning forward in the bubbles. "When you said we were sisters?"
The water was almost cold by time it twisted itself into words on the wall. "Sisters until death," it said.
I guess I'm an only child, then.
He lines his shoes up by the door, so he could wait until the very last minute to decide which ones to slip into. He had never been good at decisions.
That's what Hannah had said, anyways. He could still remember the conversation.
"Do you, Jay?" She'd asked.
"What?" He knew what. He was indecisive, not stupid.
"You know." She glanced across the table at all the other customers in the busy diner. He could see the way she latched onto women's hands, looking to see if they were wearing a ring. Jay had seen her studying her own hand late at night, pulling every wrinkle taught. "Do you want to stay together?"
He's already a couple minutes late now, but he can't choose between the loafers and the boots. He didn't know which was better.
He didn't know. He didn't know. He didn't know.
Maybe the shoes will be gone by time he decides. Maybe they will walk themselves out the door. This is what it is like to be barefoot: You foot still curved in the absence of what it used to know but wasn't quick enough to keep, balancing against air and the cold, cold floor.
Sometimes when the sky turns red she walks down to the shore. If she squints, she can see the purple that the blue sea makes at the horizon when it meets with the clouds above. The shells are always sharper on red days. She swears that everything is harder, that everything is tinted rouge, like the layer of blood was on top on the skin instead of under, but her friends don't understand. "It's blue," they say, like it's easy. "If you just remember the sky is blue, maybe you won't have to go down to the shore so much.
But she can see the is red in their eyes.
Stay steady. Don't fall. This was the sort of thing I was thinking as my hands began to shake while trying to hold the rope that was hanging from the gym ceiling. My knees did their best to stay clenched, but I could feel them wobble. I felt the gaze of my 2nd grade classmates, was Mrs. Wellington herself watching? She was. 16 pairs of eyes followed me, watching as I fell down - hard - onto the feeble mat bellow.
The role I played in it all was small. The man at the desk didn't care. "You participated?" He asked, rolling the tip of his beard between his thumb and index finger. "Not the way you'd think." "You participated?' He repeated. I had to nod. He smiled, cracked yellow teeth leering.
She wanted to be graceful. Grace Kennedy graceful. Graceful like the girl at the bus stop who made waiting look like a dance an opera house would exhibit. Instead, she trips over words, trips over floorboards. She tripped through her days, each fall worse than the next. The only thing graceful about her were her eyebrows- wasn't it elegant, the way they dropped when she sat alone under the bus stop cover, waiting for chances that never came?
He was smiling, but she could tell. Tight cheeks, eyes that narrowed over the cobblestone path, clenched hands at his sides, proper posture, too perfect, stiffly adjusting the length of his sleeves. She knew. He wasn't happy. Her heart plummeted. What did that mean for her?
The way she had arranged the evidence looked like armor. Printed text message after printed email, the dress with the lace that she found in her closet that was two sizes too small. She laid them on the floor, overlapping, like the metal on chainmail. How would he cut through this defense? She knew he couldn't. There was no excuse for this. It didn't stop her from hoping.
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writing since 2016 · 13 entries · 13 days shown up
each square is a day—lit means Vivian showed up.
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13days written
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the words Vivian reaches for
handsstopgracefulfallstaybloodsisterswaterhappydogmomentsilencenoweyeswordsred