Not sure why you'd want to read this, but I wrote it as an assignment for English at school, and I'm quite proud of it. It's called
The Depressive Memoirs Of A Teenager's Mourning;
It buzzed round and round in my head, the cold minty chill overwhelming my throat and mouth. I scrubbed as hard as I could with the toothbrush, almost wanting to taste the harsh, acrid blood from cut gums mixing with the frothy peppermint in my mouth.
It had been just over a year since that day. That awful day when my entire life was torn apart. “You’ll never understand what it’s like to have a twin unless you do,” someone once told me. You’ll also never understand what it’s like to lose one. I know it seems hard to imagine, but losing my twin sister was worse that losing a grandmother or an uncle – and those events are hard enough to handle as it is. Losing Louise was like losing a part of myself. Every day since then, it’s felt like I’m betraying her if I sing a song she liked, or if I eat a custard cream. Custard creams were our favourite biscuit. I can’t even look at a custard cream now.
Eventually, I took a deep breath. I spat, noting the red streaks through foamy white with a satisfied sigh as I washed them away. I hastily grabbed my straggled black hair and tugged it back from my face with a purple scrunchie.
Mum handed me a banana as I stumbled down the stairs, hauling my schoolbag after me. I managed a weak smile of thanks, and hastily scrambled for the door. I might have been able to avoid my parents every morning, but as hard as I tried, I was forced to look straight into the old music room, untouched for more than a year, on my way to the front door. I tried not to acknowledge the dusty piano, which I’d happily sat at every night while Lou sang beside me. I hadn’t touched it since she died. The school psychologist had told me more than once that he thought I should start playing again; “You are terribly talented, after all, Carrie,” he’d said. I didn’t care how talented I might be, the shrink was just sitting there for an hour a week because it was a well-paid job. He didn’t give a toss whether or not he was helping me. I’d made it very clear right from the start that he was doing a lot of things, but not one of them was helping.
I realised I’d been standing there for several minutes, staring at the piano. So much for ignoring it, then. I blinked twice, turning away, pulled my bag firmly over my shoulders and yanked the door open – perhaps with a little too much force.
“Bye, Carrie!” I heard mum call from the doorway. I didn’t turn round.
I drew in a shallow sigh as I came to the wheelie-bin at the bottom of the drive. I looked down longingly at the banana in my hand. It was the same every morning; I’d stand there and will myself as hard as possible to just take a bite – the way I would have if Louise had been there. Louise...
Her name brought a lump to my throat, which I tried to shoo away by opening the lid of the bin and dropping the untouched banana in. Yesterday’s toast and jam still lay intact on top of the pile. Still the lump persisted, forcing me back to that terrible day just over a year before...
I squeezed my sister’s hand, feeling the hot, sticky beads of sweat roll from my palm to hers, and down onto the starched hospital sheets. The beep... beep... beep... of life support machines mingled with the muted notes of Frank Sinatra’s ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ – Louise’s favourite song, which had been playing on repeat since she fell into the coma – in the back of my mind. I scanned Lou’s face urgently for any flicker of life - a twitching eyebrow, a gulp for air. Anything. I could hear people in the corridor outside. A soft click - had someone come into the tiny, alien room in which my twin and I sat silently, side by side? I didn’t care. I didn’t turn to see if I was right. I didn’t even acknowledge that anything had changed. I just sat there staring at Lou’s pale, flawless face, desperately hoping that she would wake up and smile at me, the way only Lou did, and only Lou ever could. I felt a soft hand on my shoulder. Still I didn’t glance up. The hand stayed, unflinching. It felt like it was resting there for hours, but then maybe it was only a few seconds. Was someone speaking? I could have sworn I heard my name... And Louise’s...
“Carrie? Carrie, honey. Carrie! Would you listen to me, please?” My mother’s voice was pleading, not authoritative in any way. I turned my head slightly and looked up, blinking drowsily as if waking from a long sleep. Mum’s face was wet. She’d been crying. No, not crying. She’d been weeping.
“Carrie, love, they’ve got to...”
I must have been staring blankly. For the first time, I noticed my dad behind her. He stepped forward. Had he been crying, too? Dad never cried...
“Carrie, they’ve got to turn the machines off. There’s nothing more they can do.”
I didn’t understand. What machines? Nothing who could do?
A doctor appeared in the doorway.
“Are you ready?” She asked, her eyes full of sympathy.
Ready for what? What was happening?
The woman moved past my parents to the end of Louise’s bed.
What?
Those machines?
My sister’s machines?
The doctor flicked a switch.
“NO!” I cried, reaching out towards the machine as the familiar sounds slowly faded... beep... beeeeep... beep... beep... bee...
And the room was dead.
“Lou?” my voice had shrunk to a whisper. I felt as though my soul was fading with Lou’s. Her hand went limp in mine. I heard the doctor slip from the room, but all I wanted to feel was Lou’s soft hair in my face as I cried into her cold, stiff neck.
I could feel the tears welling behind my eyes as I walked along the pavement that separated the tarmac road from the immaculate gardens of the middle-class houses on my street.
‘No,’ I thought. ‘Not again. You can’t let them see you crying again. It’s been more than a year...’
I wiped the moisture from my eyes and looked up to see an old woman standing at the gate of number 33, smiling up at me through wire-rimmed, half-moon glasses. Her hair, which looked much like the steel wire we used in craft at school, was spewing out over her head in all directions. The house she stood in front of wasn’t so different from my own – we lived on the same street, after all. The garden, however, evidently wasn’t nearly as well looked after as the ones surrounding it. A gnarled old tree, which may have borne fruit of some description in the past, rose up from a browning lawn patched with clovers and thistles. The wrought iron fence was almost entirely obscured by an untameable bush which could once have been a neatly trimmed hedge. This same hedge was reaching out spindly green fingers to brush the old woman’s wrinkled cheek.
“Stop that gawking, would you?” the woman broke into my thoughts. “Your sister’s not in the tree, so you can forget that.”
“Excuse me?” I said, startled and confused.
“Louise. Your sister? I’m sure you haven’t forgotten about her, the way you’ve been moping about for the past year.” The woman pushed her glasses up her nose. “I understand that you’ll always be grieving, but you can grieve on the inside, underneath everything else. Underneath a life.” I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. And from a complete stranger! “Carrie, sulking is all you ever do these days. And the crying! That, my dear, has to sto—“
“How dare you!” I cried, cutting her off mid-sentence. “How dare you presume to tell me to get over her? My best friend!” A startled look flitted momentarily across the woman’s face, before she turned calmly and walked away without another word.
I could feel the tears coming again – and there were a lot of them. Instead of continuing on my journey to school, I turned and ran as fast as I could back home. I noted mercifully that my parents had left for work – the strange woman’s lecture must have lasted longer than I’d realised.
I burst through the door, flinging my bag down onto the ground. I threw myself onto he piano stool. Almost before I’d even sat down, the tears started. I don’t know how long I sat there, but it was an awfully long time...
When the river of tears finally ebbed away, I righted myself, spread my fingers before me, and out came the opening notes of ‘Fly Me To The Moon’.
