The Mercer Girl: A Julie and the Phantoms FanFiction

Chapter 2

*flashback (Age 2)*

No one woke me up that morning. I quietly walked down the stairs. Mommy saw me first. She was sad but she wasn't crying. She patted the spot next to her on the couch and I climbed up into it. Daddy was sitting in the chair on the other side of the room he was sadder than Mommy and he was crying.

"Why are you sad?" I asked.

"It's your brother darling," Mommy said, her voice cold, "He's gone."

"What does that mean? When will he be home?" I asked.

"He's not coming home Annalise, he died! He's gone because he died!" Daddy said.

*end of flashback*

Annalise's POV (Age 8)

I didn't fully understand what was happening. Not until the funeral. Not until I saw him. Not until they put his casket in the ground.

The worst part was all the yelling that happened after. I knew my brother was gay and I knew that it wasn't ok for some reason. I knew that it made my mom mad. But after he died that topic always came up and it always ended in screaming. I don't have a single memory of my parents together where they weren't fighting about that.

Mom died a year later. They said it was an accident, but I've seen the footage, the photographs. Mom never forgave herself for how poorly she treated Alex when he was alive, eventually, it became too much. I lost a sibling and parent all before the age of 5. And when you are that young to don't understand how horrible that is. Only now, at 8, am I starting to put the pieces of the tragedy together.

I stood in the bus line to go home from school and spent the whole ride thinking about mom and Alex. Today was the anniversary of their deaths, they died exactly a year apart from each other.

Dad was on the sidewalk waiting for me when the bus pulled up to the house. He looked sad and I knew he had been crying. I hugged him tightly and then we walked into the house together. After a snack and some homework, I sat on the floor of the living room and stared at the photo albums trying to decide which one the look at. I heard dad come in and sit in his chair so I picked one quickly and sat on his lap.

"Can you tell me about the pictures like you sometimes do?" I asked.

"Of course," he said.

The album I choose was all pictures of Alex and I. He made it for my second birthday. It was 4 months before he died, but he added pictures to the album right until then. Dad told me about every picture. About how Alex picked my name, how he always called me AJ. He said that Alex would sneak into my room and night and lay on the floor beside my crib and watch me sleep. He did it so often that dad put a mattress on the for Alex so he wouldn't hurt his back.

"She loved you so much, Annalise. It kills me that he and your mother will never see you grow up," dad said starting to cry. I wiped his tears away and closed the photo album.

I grab one from when Alex was little so dad could just talk about him. The pictures were always easier to look at if I wasn't in them for some reason. We went through 4 albums in total.

"Can I take my bike out for a while?" I asked.

"Sure, be home in an hour and I'll have dinner ready," he said.

I agreed and then ran out to my bike. I rode in silence to the cemetery and found my mom's and my brother's gravestones. I fixed the flowers and added some fresh ones before sitting down and tracing the lines on Alex's stone.

"I miss you, big brother. I would give anything to see you in person just one more time," I whispered.

I kissed my mom's stone before going to find Reggie and Luke's stones. I liked to make sure that theirs always looked nice. Sometimes I would run into their parents but not this time. I then took my bike home and ate dinner with my father.