"What is going on?" I asked. I gripped the side of the passenger seat and refused to get out.
"There's been a…um, well, an accident," my advisor said. She reached for my hand.
"My sister? Is Sienna alright?" I slapped away Ms. Alice's hand and vaulted from the s
ecurity vehicle. The rotund security guard tried to stop me, but he was too slow getting out of the back seat.
"Wait, Quinn, stop. Let me tell you what happened," Ms. Alice said.
The raw agony in her voice made me stop, but I could not turn around. She slipped around to stand in front of me and held out her hands. I crossed my arms tightly and waited for my advisor to speak.
"Sienna committed suicide tonight."
I laughed. The sound fired out of me. The two security guards backed off, as if I brandished a gun. "That can't be right. Sienna would never do that."
"Quinn, I'm so sorry. Her roommate came back from the library and found her in the bathtub–"
"She slit her wrists?" I asked. The world was spinning away and getting smaller. It felt as if everything around me was shrinking onto a television screen and some terrible afterschool special was on.
"Please, Quinn, come sit down," my advisor begged.
I yanked my arm away from her reaching hands. Before my thoughts returned to my body, I had started running. I dodged around the ambulance before the fat guard could catch up. His lanky partner tried to cut me off on the front steps, but I spun out of his reach. The guards keeping the front hall clear were too shocked to move. I slammed into the stairwell and ran up two steps at a time.
Sienna lived on the second floor at the end of the hall.
"Quinn, no! That's her sister," Sienna's roommate cried as I ran past where she sat wrapped in a blanket in the stairwell. The EMTs in the doorway called out, but I could not stop.
A detective in a gray suit looked up as I barreled through the door of Sienna's dorm room. His bright badge and ashen face stopped me.
"Is it true?" I asked.
"You're the sister?" he asked. His gray eyes swept towards the bathroom door. "I wouldn't."
He made no move to stop me, seeming to understand that I had to see for myself. I lurched towards the bathroom and stopped two feet short of the threshold. A wet puddle of bath water mixed with dark blood inched towards the door.
Sienna was gone. My perfect sister with her flawless beauty and driving ambition was gone.
I sank to the floor, unsure gravity could keep me from spinning away. I clung to the rug with both hands – Sienna's outrageously-priced woven rug she had begged our parents for last Christmas. I gritted my teeth and swallowed hard. Sienna would never forgive me if I threw up on her rug.
#
Sienna's dorm room was not more than a small box. The forensic photographer worked around me while two police officers joined the detective. They spoke at a regular volume, fully aware that shock had rendered me deaf to their words. I could not understand what they were saying.
"Everything seems to line up: high-pressure major, friends say she was very focused, her schedule is intense. There's no major event, no tipping point so far," one of the uniformed officers said.
"Pretty typical," the detective agreed.
I gripped the rug so hard I felt my knuckles creak. The tears were building, a hard pressure pounding in my head, but they would not come. Only ragged breaths escaped, and each one hurt my throat. I wanted to cry. I had no idea what else to do, but I could not.
Sienna always knew what to do next. I always joked she would have made an excellent cruise director. At home, she had all of us scheduled down to the next five minutes during the holidays. I needed her to tell me what to do now.
I gasped for air. The detective stepped to the door of the dorm room and waved an arm down the hallway. In a moment, one of the EMTs sat on the floor next to me.
"Here," he said. "Take this. It’s a low dose anti-anxiety pill. It'll help calm you down."
It was something to do, some small action to get me off the rug and standing on shaking legs. I took the pill and let the EMT help me up. He stood firmly between me and the bathroom and held out his arms to usher me out of the dorm room. Two men and a black stretcher waited in the hallway.
They were going to take Sienna's body away.