“Why did you do this?” I sob.
“I had to.” It’s the same answer she gave when I asked about Dad’s death. “You’ll be fine.”
Liana turns me to face her, but I can’t look. The girl close to me is the same putrid green color as the one in the tub.
“You’ll be fine. I promise.”
“I won’t.”
I expect her to argue, to attempt to assure me that everything will be okay, but instead, I get a sinister laugh.
It bubbles out of her, somehow sounding exactly like Dad did when he was dying.
The tears don’t stop. I don’t know if they ever will.
“You did this,” she says, her voice vile and filled with hatred. “You’re the reason I did this.”
I shake my head.
“You hid. You let him hurt me, let those other men hurt me. My death is your fault.”
I want to deny it, but I can’t. I was a coward, always staying hidden, always trying to be the best daughter I could be because I saw what misbehaving included.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my head hung low.
Once again, warmth covers my cheek, and I’m almost tempted to lean into it, but she’s being so mean to me.
“You can end your pain, too,” she urges.
I shake my head. I could never do what she just did. It would hurt too much.
“I’m not brave enough,” I confess.
“You are,” she urges. “We can be together again. You’re older. You have access to ways that will be quicker, less painful.”
“Older?” I look up at her, once again confused.
But she’s gone. The bathroom is gone. Even the sound of running water has disappeared. I’m standing in blackness with nothing but silence. I scream into the pitch black, but only my voice echoes back at me.
I’m too scared to move, too scared to run.
It’s in this darkness that I realize that the pain is gone. My heart is no longer racing. My skin isn’t clammy. My mind is blank. I don’t know what I’m missing, but even that sense of isolation fades away until calmness takes over.
Did I do it? Did I manage to finally slay my own demon?
“Lauren?”
The voice is like a bomb going off. It bounces around me until I have to cover my ears.
“Lauren?”
My eyes flutter open, the warmth on my face from Angel’s hand on my skin.
I feel so out of place and disoriented. I know it was a dream. I’ve had it many times. I know I never witnessed my sister’s suicide, never had a conversation with her ghost. She never opened her mouth to blame me. That finger pointing was read in her diary, her only outlet for the pain she’d been suffering for years. Her diary was a mix of rants about my father and the abuse, about the way he brought other men into the house to hurt her the same way he was. The other half were hearts and flowers, and how much she loved him and hated that he claimed the world wouldn’t understand the way they loved each other. She was tired of the secrets.
I feel sick just thinking about it, my body hot and shaking from the dream that just gets more real every time I suffer through it.
Angel watches my face silently, but the sinister man is gone. All I’m looking at is pity. He feels sorry for me, and that is a cut I can’t survive.