"Can I go with? I want to go with," I asked the EMT.
He shook his head. "Stop talking like that or you'll be overnight in the psych ward. You're going back to your dorm room to call your family."
A warm numbness spread through my body as the EMT escorted me downstairs to the campus security guards. Everything seemed far away and soft. I imagined my life becoming a video game, the origin story of some dark superhero. The flashing lights of the police cars, the open doors of the ambulance, the arrival of the coroner's van, they were all on a screen. I was safe on the couch in my dorm room, dozing as I watched the introduction.
If only it had all been a bad dream.
And then, I was on my dorm room couch. My roommate paced the floor in front of me. Her long, delicate fingers weaving together and squeezing with nervous energy. She spoke to me, occasionally sat next to me and tried to talk, but I could not hear anything she said.
"It's all over campus by now. I'm not sure you should stay here. People are going to be coming by and now's not the time. Right? Quinn?" she asked.
Darla kept going to the door. She never opened it, just called through, but the knocks kept coming at regular intervals. I could feel Darla's nervousness growing. She wrung her hands and stood exhausted in the middle of our small room. In my hazy mind, she became the gatekeeper. Was I a prisoner or the hidden princess?
Sienna had been the princess. My father called her Princess all the time. There was no way she would be sitting in a fog during a crisis like this one. She would have had everything organized by now.
I felt like I could not even blink without a colossal effort.
The next knock on the door was a rapid, insistent rap. Darla leapt to answer it and this time she pulled the door open. Alice Bonton slipped in our dorm room and locked the door behind her.
"She hasn't called her parents yet. She hasn't even moved," Darla told Alice.
"Quinn, honey, we need to call your parents. Let's do it now so they can come here and get you," my advisor said.
I shook my head. Somehow this was all my advisor's fault. If I had not answered the phone call from her, none of this ever would have happened. Sienna would still be alive and studying her night away. And, I would be slipping into the world of Dark Flag with Darla at the gamer party.
"I'm going to dial the phone and hand it to you, alright?" Ms. Alice asked.
"What I am supposed to say?" I croaked. "They are never going to believe me."
"Believe you?" she and Darla both asked at the same time.
"Sienna would never do something like that," I said. The images came back to me and the room in front of me faded away to darkness. Every time I tried to think of why, how Sienna could do that to herself, a giant chasm opened in my mind.
"Do you want me to tell them?" my advisor asked.
The phone was ringing and my mouth went dry. I nodded just as I heard my father's voice.
"Hello, Mr. Thomas? I'm sorry to be calling so late. This is Alice Bonton from UCLA. I'm your daughter Quinn's advisor. What? No, she hasn't done anything. Quinn is fine. I'm actually calling about Sienna."
There was a long pause on our end. I assumed my father had launched into a righteous lecture about the rudeness of the late night phone call. He was a busy man, probably due in court early the next morning, and he did not put up with such thoughtlessness from people.
If I had called, the lecture would have been the same.
"Yes, I did say I was calling about Sienna," Ms. Alice said.
And that was the difference. When it registered the phone call was about my sister, my father changed completely. I could almost hear him politely giving my advisor leave to speak, even though she stood a few feet away from me.
"There is no easy way to tell you this, but there has been an accident and Sienna Thomas is dead," Ms. Alice said. She looked as if she had fumbled a live hand grenade. "No, you're right, I should be more specific. Your daughter was found in her dorm room bathtub. She had cut her wrists. She was pronounced dead at the scene."
My father was a lawyer and must have switched into default mode because Ms. Alice spent the next 10 minutes giving short, factual answers to his questions.
Finally, she cleared her throat. "Sir, I have your other daughter here. Wouldn't you like to speak with her?" Ms. Alice did not wait, she just handed me the phone with a barely disguised expression of relief.
He was still talking when I took the phone. "I'm going to need the name of the detective and the uniformed officers. I have her roommate's contact information somewhere."
"Daddy?" I asked.
"I'm going to have to lie to your mother until this is all cleared up. She can't handle news like this. We'll tell her Sienna was hurt in a car accident. I'll be there in the morning, Quinn, at 8 am sharp in your lobby," he said.