Drip, Drip, Drip

Drip, drip, drip. The water was trickling down my face. My hair wet, my eyes squeezed tight. I hate water in my face. Yet love being submerged. The water was warm and cradled me as I tried to forget any problems I might have.

            It had only been a month since the accident. One month seems like a long time. Not to me, to me it was yesterday. Yesterday the car hit the tree, killing three people. The driver who hit the car, he was dead. Justin, he was dead too. The innocent lady walking her dog, she was dead as well.

            The water began to get cold, my body shivering. The water heater still wasn’t fixed, not that it was of any concern to us all now. Cold water was sometimes refreshing when you were about to breakdown. I was about to break down.

            “Too long in the shower! Get out!” There was a bang on the bathroom door. “Now!” I could hear my mom stomping down the hallway, away from the bathroom.

            I turned the water off, feeling its last soggy attempt to stay warm. The pipes moaned and rusted. My heart felt older then this house. Old and tired, sick of doing all the daily choirs that ask so much.

            Justin was my brother.

            He was nineteen years old. It was his birthday, he didn’t drink. The person drinking was the man who hit him. It had been him that caused Justin to swerve into a tree and impale the poor women and her dog. The scene was horrific, too ugly to ever forget. I had survived. My brother never got into the hype of turning the legal drinking age. He thought it would be fun to take me, his little sister, to a movie instead. I told him I would pay, he said I was going to pay whether I wanted to or not. We had laughed. We had laughed the whole night. Being twins, you have a very close bond. I turned nineteen too, ten minutes after him, just the next day, and the exact time the accident had happened. We had been high fiving our new age as the car struck the right side on the front bumper; spinning the car around and causing the drivers side to become pierced by the tree.  Justin had been driving.

            The lady, Susan Arkin was a well respected woman around town. We had known her well. She had been Justin’s and my baby sitter for several years as children. Her dog, Barney, was gentle and kind. I suppose you could say he was like the dinosaur, though he wasn’t purple.

            I finished drying off and left the bathroom, sneaking down the hall to avoid getting yelled at. My life was like walking on eggshells. I never knew when my mom or dad would be to upset to get angry, or when they were willing to take out their anger on everything, including me. Sometimes I could get away with murder. There were days when we all wouldn’t talk to each other. The house was quiet and dull. The life had just been sucked out of us all, like it had been for Justin too.

            Before leaving my room I stooped, staring at my bookcase. On top was a photo frame that I had made when I was five. It held a picture of Justin and I on our fourth birthday. I was missing my two front teeth, he was missing his bottom. I was holding the stuffed giraffe that I had just received as a gift. Justin held his new hot wheels track. The giraffe was lying on my bed now, scruffy and worn out. I wondered how old he was in giraffe years.

            Making my way down stairs to get something to eat before school was a normal everyday activity. Lately though, it was a chore, like most things had become. Eating when I needed to was a challenge, eating when I was filling an empty void, that was easy.

            Sometimes my heart would pound like a jackhammer in my chest, trying to escape this miserable rut I was stuck in. Sadly, it couldn’t get out. My mouth would stop during the middle of a sentence while I was with a group of friends, waiting for Justin to interrupt me with the exact words I was going to think of saying. The words never came, leaving my statement hanging.

            “Dawn?” My father sighed as he walked into the kitchen, “I wanted to talk about today.”

            I stopped pouring the milk into my tiresome cereal. My dad usually wasn’t one to talk about things, let alone bring them up first for any discussion.

            “What about it?” I replied quietly, the mood sombre.

            “It’s been a month since the accident.”

            I nodded, looking into my almost soggy cereal. “I know.”

            “I want you to understand that this is hard for all of us.” His voice began to quiver. “We are all here for each other okay?” He watched as a tear fell off my cheek and into my cereal. “We all loved Justin very much. I was just wondering if you were up to visiting him today? You don’t need to go to school today you know.

            I was quiet for a moment, the kitchen gray and dim. “Okay.”

            My father smiled slightly and left the kitchen.

            I dumped my cereal down the garbage disposable in the sink and toasted some bread.      

            I hadn’t entered my brother’s room since that night before we had left for the movies. None of us had. My aunt had gone in his room to find a suit for his funeral. My mother didn’t have the strength to do it herself. I decided I was going to go in.

            I opened the door to the usual mess that was all over his floor. His guitar was teetering on a stack of books. I hesitated before picking it up and almost strumming a few chords. I didn’t because I wanted him to have been the last person to play his guitar. I sat down on his bed, instantly jumping back up in pain. Removing the pencil from where I was sitting I sat back down again. His note book was lying open on his bed, with the last song lyrics he had been scribbling right before I came to tell him I was finally ready for the movies.

            “Why do girls take so long?” He had asked me several times that night, like he did every time we ever did something together.

            “We want to look pretty for you boys.” I would always respond, smirking.

            Justin would make his predicable grossed out face. I’m your brother; you don’t need to impress me.”

            “I don’t care about you brother dearest, I care about any hotties that might be around.”

            “Yeah right,” He would say with a laugh. “Good thing we aren’t identical twins.”

            “Whys that?” I would always ask him.

            “If it takes you this long to get ready, you must be pretty damn ugly before!” He would grin at me innocently before running away from the flying hair brush.

            I began reading his scribbled letters on the paper. Tears began to stream down my cheeks, the words beginning to blur.

            If I died tonight

            Would you still be alright?

            Imagining you alone

            Makes my heart turn to stone

            Leaving you is not my choice

            I hope you can remember my voice

            It would tell you to move on

            To never feel alone…

            He hadn’t been able to finish the last word. Trembling I picked up the pencil and wrote one single rhyming word on the tear stained paper.

            Dawn.