1.1 | Lost & Found

viii. stranger

She pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs.

"Can you at least pretend to have manners?"

And then she looks at me and a smile quickly replaces her frown. It's a thousand-watt smile, one that makes your insides feel warm. I can't help but smile to myself, Olivia reminds me of the fairy lights illuminating a Christmas tree. The effect is almost magical.

Olivia has mom's smile.

My older sister is the Sun. Her golden hair sparkles with a sort of majestical delirious euphoria and her eyes twinkle like shimmering stars in this dark abyss of a world. The prettiest eyes shine from the inside out, and it definitely applies to Olivia Clarkson. The silence elapses into small conversations around the table.

"Don't you have your soccer game next week? You better win, we lost quite badly in the last game." Ezra starts,

"Oh, shut up, it wasn't that bad," Dakota responds, much to Ezra's amusement.

At the same time, Olivia and Isaac talk in soft whispers across the table.

"How's it going at the bakery Liv?"

"Good, the cheesecakes are a hit, but yesterday the oven stopped working,"...

I tune out to their conversations. My head pulls me back in. I've never felt so lonely. So my mind gets to work and once again, I am sitting in the grass fields with my best friend, and we are laughing and giggling under the thumbprint sky. Another memory flashes past: It's a memory I treasure. One of Mom and I chasing butterflies and listening to pieces of old prose while eating strawberries.

A never realized a lone tear slipped down my cheek, while my head pulled me in.

I am a stranger to my own siblings.

Sixteen years of my life were lost because of a mistake our parents' made, and now it seems like no matter how close we get there will always be an invisible glass wall dividing me from the five of them. It's like looking through a hazy smoke screen.

It's all so unfair.

I never knew Olivia worked at a bakery. I never knew her cheesecakes were a hit. I never knew Dakota plays soccer. I never knew anything.

Because I'll never really be their sister.

I'll just be the stranger that came along sixteen years later.

And in some unknown way that makes my heartache.

Not the kind of ache you get from eating pizza late at night, but the kind that makes you want to drown in your own ocean of tears. Now the numb feeling is back.

When I was little, I used to think about running away all the time. Just to make someone think that I was lost, just so that someone, anyone really could hold me close and stroke my hair telling me it was all going to work out in the end.

But then I walked home every day to hear a very drunk mom yelling slurred words at me, or seeing her passed out on the couch, and I would be reminded that nobody actually cared. So I stopped caring.

I excused myself and walked to my room, shutting the door behind me.

In quick motions, I scattered the pictures across the floor.

Mom and I eating s'mores in the moonlight.

Me sitting on Mom's shoulders while making funny faces at the camera which mom holds up.

Mom and I all curled up on the couch.

Mom taking me to my first day of first grade.

In each one, the two of us are smiling. And in each one the smile is genuine.

Tears flood my eyes, and all I can think about is Mom's death.

I sink down against the wall and finally, finally let the tears come.

There are a lot of them—I haven't cried, really cried, since her death, and now that I've started, I'm not sure I'll ever stop. Grief is a wild thing within me, a rabid animal tearing at my insides and making everything hurt.

I'm trying to be quiet—the last thing I want is to draw more attention to myself—but it's hard when it hurts this much. In self defense, I wrap my arms around myself and start to rock, desperate to ease the pain. Even more desperate to find a way to hold myself together when everything inside me feels like it's falling apart.

It doesn't work. Nothing does, and the tears just keep coming, as do the silent, wrenching sobs tearing my chest.

I don't know how long I stay here, battling the pain and loneliness that comes from losing mom in the blink of an eye but all I know is that I cried for quite a long time.

Long enough for my chest to hurt.

More than long enough for the tears to run dry.

But deep down, somehow, I knew that running out of tears only makes everything hurt worse.

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