day could have been different and Cindy could have lived. It’s torturous, heart-wrenching, but it keeps those mangled legs, that single dangling hand, out of my mind’s eye, because they are what I really can’t stand.
Even so, I feel my fingers tremble, my heart rate try to accelerate even though I’m lying completely still. I need to do something , something dangerous and reckless, to distract myself and expel the emotions from my brain. Something legal.
I know just the solution.
I vault off of my bed, one bare foot feeling the gauge in the floor. I almost choke as the emotions rise up inside me and I sprint out of my room and into the narrow hallway. I stop in front of Cindy’s bedroom door.
The adrenaline that courses through me is sudden and immediate, like a jolt to the heart. All my emotions are shoved to the side as my heart races, staring down the door handle as though it has eyes of its own and is meeting me eye for eye.
Do it, I tell myself. And then aloud, because I haven’t moved, “Do it, you coward. Just do it.”
My hand doesn’t seem connected to my body anymore. I watch it as though it belongs to a stranger, watch as it reaches out and grasps the doorknob. Turns it slowly. Pushes it so the door swings open.
My eyes close of their own accord before I can actually look inside the room. I’m arguing with myself, telling myself to open them when Cindy’s scent hits me. It practically knocks me over. Trapped inside this room for over a month, it’s potent and heart-achingly familiar. It’s not like Evie’s fruity, sexily exotic smell. It’s… younger, more innocent. Vanilla and sweetness. Sugar cookies. It reminds me of Christmas.
I take a step inside and open my eyes. The room is just how Cindy left it, untouched. Bed, desk, and a long bookshelf shoved against one wall, large flat mirrors and a real barre along the entire other wall. I’d helped Dad to install it as a birthday present when I was thirteen, just before my mom got sick. Cindy had actually screamed with joy the first time she’d seen it.
I take a few more steps and slowly, carefully, sink down onto Cindy’s bed. I take in a deep breath, embracing at least Cindy’s scent, if I can’t actually hold her. I look to my right, at her nightstand.
There’s a lamp, a clock, and two framed pictures. I drew both of them. One is old; my mom, back when all was well. Before she got sick, before she ran off and left us and showed me how selfish the world really is. It’s a good drawing, colored and precise, done as a gift on our last Mother’s Day together. She’s laughing and there’s a light in her dark eyes that I remember being thrilled about capturing.
Before I realize it, my blood is running hot and I’ve reached out and knocked my mom’s picture off the nightstand. It lands face down on the hardwood floor and I hear glass shatter and something crack. It gives me a small measure of satisfaction.
“It’s what you deserve,” I mutter, and then I pick up the second frame.
It’s of Cindy, mid-ballet leap. The picture I drew of her. The last drawing I did, almost two months ago. At her funeral, I vowed never to draw again, and there was more force behind this than when my mom left. I want Cindy with me forever, I don’t want to tarnish her memory. She will always be the last, and I won’t sully her memory by drawing anyone or anything else.
A tear slides down my cheek, blazingly, fiery hot, burning my skin as it trickles down my chin and around the curve of my jaw and underneath.
“ No ,” I say aloud. Order, really. I take a quick breath in and it sounds dangerously close to a sniffle. “Hell no.”
I close my eyes and take deep breaths, trying to think innocuous thoughts. School. Cameron. Tessa. Working for Dr. Parker.
That thought gives me a flash of irritation, which banishes the urge to cry. Exhaustion suddenly hits me, and I allow myself to fall sideways onto Cindy’s pillow, pulling my legs up onto her