Last Thursday

Our Mother

  Have you ever wondered why memories seem like a blur? Why you don't know if things really happened?

It all started one June morning.

Mom kissed my sister Genesis and I goodbye going to work. She was finally a nurse, just like she'd always wanted to be. She studied for hours. And days. And weeks. And months. We never really saw her out from behind her office door. She failed her classes so many times. She got depressed, and sometimes we didn't see her for weeks because she'd just lock herself in her room and sob.

That June morning, though, marked a new chapter for us, we thought. She had finally passed the courses and today would be her first day. I could feel how nervous she was. I felt like she would do okay. And when she got home, we would finally get to see her for more than 3 minutes at a time. She hurried out the door, and we never saw her again.

Genesis cried in my arms for hours. My fingers got lost in her tangled, blonde hair. Only when she looked up at me with her drained green eyes did I start to tear up.

I'd never been a crier. People wondered how I could be that calm at a time like that. They even got suspicious of whether or not I knew something about the disappearance. I got pressed with questions for hours.

"Your father told you to kill her, didn't he, Juniper? And he disposed of the body, Juniper?"
"Did you kill her to be with a boy, Juniper?"
"Did you do something for money, Juniper?"
"Don't make this difficult. Who did this to your mother, Juniper?"

I didn't understand what was happening to me. Or why they'd pick on someone as young as me. I felt rage more than sadness now. I'm lucky I didn't have a breakdown. Maybe that's what they wanted. They wanted to make me seem unstable. They wanted to blame me for anything they might find. They wanted to believe I killed my mother.

They never found Mom's body. They never found a trace of her. She vanished, and whoever or whatever took her wasn't going to give her back. I didn't know my mom. That's the only thing that made me emotional about the situation.

Genesis is a couple years younger than me, but she understands much more than you'd think. She stood right next to me during my trial. I was proved innocent with lacking evidence against me. Even if I had been convicted, no one was going to take me away from my sister.

I trudge through the newly-formed rain puddles in the forest Genesis begged me to walk through with her. It's the last day of June- what would have been our mother's 40th birthday.

The peace and silence of the woods was shattered by a huge blast that rang through our chests. Lightning had hit a nearby tree. Genesis looked at it in horror. I soon realized why. The huge evergreen slanted in our direction no sooner than it had burst into flames.

Genesis' screams faded, and everything went black.