{7}
When Mia died, I almost expected for my mother to show up at the funeral, or for the phone to ring in the middle of the night. I pictured answering the phone and hearing her voice on the other side asking if it was true, and I caught myself thinking about what would happen after I told her that her oldest daughter was in fact murdered. But the call never came and she never showed up.
It was sort of like how every morning I expected to hear my sister singing at the top of her lungs in her bathroom as she prepared for the day. Yet, every morning I woke up to utter silence. The only sound came from my blaring alarm clock on my bed side table but even then the only thing I could hear was the defining silence in the background.
Friday morning though, instead of waking up to silence, I woke up to loud footsteps echoing throughout the top floor along with deep voices.
“Malia, honey, are you awake?” my father asked as he knocked twice on my bedroom door before slowly pushing it open.
From underneath my covers, I groaned and buried my face deeper into my pillow, “No.”
“It’s time for you to wake up, sweetheart.” My father said as he moved towards my bed and peeled the covers off of me.
“What time is it?” I asked sleep coated in sleep.
“It’s five,”
“In the morning?”
“Yes, now wake up Malia. I think you need to see this.”
Slowly sitting up in bed, I kicked off the rest of my covers and slowly slid off of the bed. Slightly glaring at my father who stood in a pair of black sweats and a grey jumper; he looked tired just like I felt.
“This better be important,”
And it was. As soon as my father guided me down the hall towards Mia’s room and pushed me into it, not only was I confused by the amount of police officers in it, but the chaotic state of my sisters room threw me off.
“What’s going on?” I asked glancing over my shoulder at my father who was running a hand through his hair.
“Someone broke into your sisters room; destroyed the place.” He mumbled.
“What the hell? How did they even get in?” I asked.
“The window,” an officer dressed in black answered as he came up to us. Sanchez read his tag. He was a young guy, maybe in his early/mid twenties, with dark blonde hair cut and sticking up at odd angles. And if it had been any other time, I would have taken longer to look him over- he was hot. But he spoke and my attention was brought back to the important situation at hand. “After they destroyed the room, they left a note.”
“A note?” I repeated a bit confused.
Sanchez nodded and took a step to my left and revealed the wall behind him. Before the room had been destroyed, that wall had contained hundreds of photos. Photo’s that displayed the life of my sister before someone killed her off.
But now the wall was bare, half torn photos were still on the light pink walls, and red stained letters were in the place of the photo’s before.
I stared at the words, unable to form words or think a rational thought.
She wasn’t so innocent.
++
I stuffed a sweater into my bag and shouldered it as I grabbed my keys off the kitchen counter. School didn’t start for another hour but I couldn’t stand being in the house for a second longer.
Someone had broken into my home, trashed my dead sisters bedroom and written on her walls.
She wasn’t so innocent.
I shook my head and walked through the dining room, into the living room and through the foyer. My hand had just gripped the doorknob when my father’s voice called from behind.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“School,” I replied.
“It’s still dark out,”
I shut my eyes and squeezed them tight. “I can’t be here Dad.”
“Malia, everything is going to be fine.” My father tired to reason but my nerves were going haywire. I was aware to everything around me. The air conditioner was running, the coffee pot in the kitchen was on and the grandfather clock in the hall kept ticking.
I couldn’t stop being aware of my surroundings ever since I stepped out of Mia’s room.
“No it won’t,” I replied. “Mia’s dead, Dad. Someone broke into the house and trashed her room.”
“We’ll find who did it, Malia.”
“For which crime?” I snapped turning around until I was facing my father.
“Both of them,” my father replied, before he turned around and slammed the door to his study.
I remained standing still at the front door, hand wrapped around the metal doorknob before I finally found it in me to twist the doorknob open and walk outside.
And the entire time it took me to walk from the front door until my car door, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened merely an hour ago.
As I twisted my key in the ignition and started the car, the words that had been dripping from Mia’s wall left me in a daze. It was no secret that my sister was no saint, yet I never once thought someone would be brave enough to break into the home of the Chief of Police, destroy a dead girls bedroom and vandalize a wall baring a statement.
She wasn’t so innocent.
She wasn’t. Because if she was then she wouldn’t have of been killed. Mia did something, something grand to piss off someone capable or murder. Whatever she had done, whatever it was, whoever had killed her, wanted to make a statement.
And that they did.
