All I see is red. I see it to the right. I feel the red dripping down the side of my face. Looking down I see a puddle of red. To my right is a body. It’s Evelyn hunched over herself, with her forehead against the dash. Now, I only hear the sound of my own heartbeat. It sounds like a bird running into a window. Thump. The sound of someone hitting a microphone. Thump. Like the thump of Dorothy’s favorite pair of heels. My eyes snap to the backseat to find Dorothy sprawled out with one arm hanging down to the floor. I wish either Evie or Dee would talk to me to relieve me of my loneliness. All I see is red and the bodies of my sisters and all I hear is the overwhelming thump of my heartbeat. Until I hear nothing at all.
That exact same nothingness is what wakes me. Except now I am laying in a room, bundled in white. My father is sleeping in a chair next to the bed. I can hear my mother crying “My babies.” I wish I could tell her that I was sorry and that it was all my fault but those words are too insignificant.
“I want them back,” she mumbles, “I need them.”
“Mommy.” I cry to her. I watch her slowly raise her head and look into my room. Her eyes are puffy and her skin is three shades paler than I remember. Her eyes are sunken in and devoid of any life. “How long?”
As she walks into the room she whispers, “Three days, four hours, and thirty-nine minutes since you arrived at the hospital.” Gathering herself she sits on my bed, “Three days, four hours, and two minutes since your sisters were pronounced de.. dead.” My mother lost it. She started sobbing uttering Dee and Evie’s names. Her words seeped into me, tattooing me. I smell a wiff of vanilla on mom, looking down I notice that she is clutching Evelyns bloodstained t-shirt.
I remember buying that shirt with her. We got matching shirts so that I could be a twin too. Evie always wanted me to feel a part of everything. She is-was such a proud and confidant person. I wanted to be just like her. I even went as far as buying the same perfume as her, vanilla.
“The funerals are this Friday” Daddy informs me. In two days they would have been officially Eighteen years old, and graduated. Now, it’s two days until my role models are six feet under. It would be completely over. But in my head this will never be over. I will always hear the screams of Dorothy, the cries of Evelyn. The thump of my beating heart. “They would’ve wanted to have their funerals together,” he added.
“They did everything together. It is only right.” I almost added that they died together. But I didn’t want to go into that discussion at the moment. My parents would probably tell me that Dorothy and Evelyn should have lived, not me. And I would have agreed. Evelyn should have lived so she could’ve gone to Missouri State University to study Dance. And Dorothy should have lived so that she could’ve gone to Stanford University to study Science. But because of my stupid inability to do anything right they are laying in a morgue.
I bet Dorothy would be asking the doctors all kinds of questions. She was always such a nerd, but that’s what I loved about her. It was also one of the only reasons we would hang out. She would help me study. My worst class being science and her best being science, it was like we were meant to be. She thought I would grow up to become a cosmetologist because I was always begging to do her hair and make-up. I told I only asked because she never did her own but I knew she was right and that it was my dream. She knew me better than I gave her credit for. And she shared everything with Evelyn, which meant they always had blackmail on me.
Which was why we were out that night. Dorothy had figured out who I had a crush on and she used it against me. She told me I had to give both her and Evelyn a ride to the party that was at Kenny’s house. He lived about thirty miles out of town which made me extremely nervous since I had gotten my license only a week ago. I guess I should have sucked it up and let her tell everyone. It would have been better than this hell.
In my head will be the replay of my last moments ever with my big sisters. Dorothy had told Evelyn that they shouldn’t stay too long because Dorothy had a meeting with the principle tomorrow about her role as valedictorian. You could almost touch Dorothy’s smugness at that point. Evelyn had also been in the run for it. My sisters never fought. And if they did they were pretty civil about it, because I never knew. But this one time where they did happen to have an argument in front of me, I kill them. They didn’t even get to make up or hug it out. They had to die being angry at each other. That is what kills me the most. But I can’t tell anyone that because they don’t deserve the punishment of knowing something so horrible. Only I can take this punishment and it still isn’t worth what I did to them. My sisters were heaven on earth. And I took them away from it.
