by Unknown
Daisy needed to mature and solve her own problems. I had my own.
"Let's go!" I shouted up the stairs. Daisy came to the front door reluctantly.
"Alright! You don't have to shout," she mumbled.
It was getting dark fast, and I grabbed Daisy's arm in an effort to get there faster.
"I am not a little kid! Get your hand off of me!" She spit, her eyes fiery. That girl could really go from turtle mode to ferocious lion mode at the drop of a hat.
"Look, I'm sorry, alright?" I sighed. "You know, homework? Mom won't leave me alone?
Love you to death, but you're adding to the equation lately."
"Oh my gosh! This is exactly what I'm always saying! I know I'm kind of unbalanced and emotional right now, but it's not all about you Dahlia! You're so self- centered sometimes!"
"Aren't we all?"
"Yeah, but..."
"Never mind. Let's talk about something else," I blurted out, in an effort to keep the conversation from blowing up completely.
"Jack has a girlfriend! Up at college. She sounds really cool," Daisy said, a huge smile plastering her face.
Maybe she just needed some bipolar meds? Girls... We blame it all on hormones half the time. Who knows how many of us are really mentally ill?
"Yeah I know! What did he say her name was, again?"I asked absentmindedly.
"Allison. But hey," Daisy smirked, "why don't you have a boyfriend?"
"What is that supposed to mean?" Suddenly it felt hard to breathe, although we were outside.
"Well, you're really pretty! But I don't need to tell you that. What about that guy... what's his name again? Tom?"
"I do not like him-"
"You so do! You talk to him all the time. You talk about him all the time," Daisy interrupted with a smirk.
If I could blush, I would have then. Because it was true. I really did like him. Tom and I had been good friends in middle school, but when high school started, it was like we had never known each other. I was older. He was older. Maybe that was all there was to it.
Tom was one of the best looking guys at school. He was hilarious, but he could be serious as well as amusing. He was a good person, without being boring or overly nice. I missed the conversations I used to have with him.
And one day, I started thinking about him more. And more. Until I couldn't stop
It was all over now. Thinking about him was pointless.
Unless my family moved again, I still had a year and a half left to go at Portland High. Another year and a half of feeling trapped in some sort of void.
My family moved a lot when I was a kid. Come to think of it, my parents packed up everything and unpacked it again in a new house about every other year.
Jack and I loved the moves. We thrived off of every detail- the picking out of the new house, the packing and unpacking, the repainting and fixing. Daisy hated them as much as we loved them. She was self confident and upbeat just about all the time- unless we were moving. Basically, unless there was any adversity.
No matter what you believe, you can't deny there's something or someone out there greater than us all. And nothing happens for no reason. That's why I loved change. It opened new doors.
But not for Daisy. Whenever something in our lives changed, Daisy would get upset. She was very attached to every stuffed animal, blanket, and toy that a kid could possibly be attached to. I always sort of pitied her. It must be awful to be so "close minded, and dependent," I had thought. I was just irritated. A girl with big dreams and a lot of times, no patience. I spent so much time with my friends and on my hobbies that I never realized my little sister was growing up, and we were slowly growing apart. If even Daisy had noticed that I talked about him a lot, then I probably did. I barely talked to Daisy enough for her to know much about me. She'd always been just my cute, strange, little sister. Much littler sister.
***
When Daisy saw Tom two aisles down in the Sunfresh, she began jabbing me in the ribs. Hard.
"Look who it is! I think he sees you!"
What was up with her? She never acted like this. The whole way to the store she had persisted in teasing me at every opportunity. It was all I could do to block her out, because that's how I dealt with things- by blocking them out. She couldn't understand.
When I finally did turn around to say something, Daisy was no longer behind me. She was two aisles down. She was talking to Tom.
My heartbeat sped up. Daisy was definitely crazy but this was beyond crazy. This was downright unbelievable.
Tom looked at me. Stared, really. I couldn't make out the expression in his eyes. Daisy was giggling and looking back and forth between us. I was so mad I couldn't see straight. She'd probably told him I liked him, twisting and elaborating every minuscule detail until she had painted a picture of a girl secretly in love.
That was one way we were alike- Daisy and I both were quite the storytellers when we wanted to be. Only I had reserve. I had common sense. I wasn't a blithering fool.
I skirted around the back of the aisles to try and overhear what I didn't really want to hear at all.
"Yeah. She likes you a lot. Writes your name all over her diary-what? Um, yes."
What was she talking about? I don't even have a diary? The kid clearly needed to stop watching Mean Girls.
I couldn't hear what Tom was saying, if he said anything at all. Daisy was completely out of line. No. Just no. I had never messed with Jack that way. Teased him maybe, but not humiliated and fabricated personal stories about him in cold blood.
Would Tom believe her? I didn't know. The old Tom wouldn't have... but lately he seemed so different. So who knows what he was thinking?
Who cares, anyway? You know the truth. That's all that matters, I kept reassuring myself. It didn't help. I was furious and my head was pounding. She had no right!
I ran down the aisle, grabbing Daisy's arm as I went past. I rushed out of the automatic doors, kicking at them in a pointless effort to open them faster.
"What is wrong with you?" I spat. I was seething with anger.
"Me?!? I was helping you!" She looked at me incredulously.
"No you weren't. Just shut up."
The pounding in my head had stopped, but my vision was blurring. I kept pulling Daisy along behind me until she tugged me sharply to a stop.
"Um, Dahlia? We're not supposed to go home this way."
It was dark, and we were walking past the woods on Penn Road. Our parents had told us never to go near them in the dark. Anything could be hiding within its rocky, tree-lined depths.
"You know what? I don't care! Don't tell me how to be safe when you just acted like a complete imbecile!" I screamed.
The woods were even closer now.
"Did not!"
The woods were right next to us.
"This is pointless! Shut up!"
A hand shot out from the darkness.
Then I heard a scream. Loud and long. And then another one that carried on into the night. Daisy. What did the hand do to her? Everything spun around, dark with shards of light. Then a darkness so empty it wasn't even black.
Eventually, I came to my senses. I pulled myself off the ground, and began calling Daisy's name frantically. I was running in circles like someone who was completely mad.
What had happened to Daisy? Was she okay? Someone, or something, had been in the woods. Just like my parents had warned us over and over. Had they hurt Daisy? Thrown her off one of those rocky cliffs?
But when I looked down at the body lying twisted and crumpled in the rocky dirt, it wasn't Daisy. She was nowhere to be found. The body was my own.
***
They say that before you die, your whole life flashes before you like a dream. But maybe, for me, it was only a dream to begin with.
When I was lying in the rocky dirt, my life flashed before my eyes. It didn't stop when I was looking down at myself lying in a heap. If I was dead, what was I still doing here?
What was realit
y? I wasn't alive, but I wasn't dead. This had to be a nightmare. A nightmare so real, it put all others to shame.
{Four}
So now you know how I ended up like this. Dead, yet alive.
But what if all those memories about my childhood, my friends, my family… what if they were only conjured up by my wild imagination? In the words of my Aunt Karen, "Life is the most vivid of all dreams."
Because now... now, everything feels sharper, clearer, colder. It doesn't feel hazy. When I look back on my life, it's seems nice and good. Everything had a reason. I could see every one of them now. It feels like looking back on a strange, happy dream that made no sense- but you followed where it took you. Then you woke up, and everything was crystal clear. Is this one of those surreal, true stories about someone who awakes from a coma and what they experienced during that time? That someone being me? That time being my life? Somehow, then and now are both a little too real for either to be a dream.
I don't know how long I stood there staring over that cliff before I came to my senses. I subconsciously checked for my watch, and finding that it was still on my wrist, I discovered that it was 6:30. The Brandons would have arrived back at the house half an hour ago. No doubt this would be a dinner party they would never forget.
Was Daisy okay? Was she even alive? Whoever had done this to me might have tried to hurt her too...
If she was okay, she probably would have made it home by now. Did she run frantically, or walk there in a daze? What did she say to my family, who were probably wondering where we were? Knowing her, she probably wouldn't say anything for a while. She'd probably just stand there, her eyes empty as they always were when she was scared. My parents would know something was wrong when only one of their daughters arrived back home in the dark of the night.
My mind was trying to find shelter from the tornado of anxiety enveloping me, but my efforts to calm down were useless. The funny thing is, they always tell you death is a peaceful sleep.
What I was experiencing was anything but a peaceful sleep.
People spend great amounts of time wondering what life will be like after death. You know that you’re going to be judged, and that you're going to go somewhere, but that's about it. We haven't been dead, so how can we know or understand what it's like? Or what's going to happen?
Maybe without fully realizing it, we like to think about how ignorant people used to be. They didn't know the earth was round. They didn't know there were so many islands and continents yet to be discovered. They didn't know about vaccinations, electricity, or ballpoint pens. They had no idea what was out there and what they were capable of doing. It's like, now we know everything.
But we don't know everything. We don't know very much at all, really.
That's the thing about knowing- you don't know what you don't know, because you don't know it. And you don't know what being dead is like until you're actually dead.
So why did I think I was still alive?
Marina said death was probably playing songs for God on a trumpet, up in the clouds of heaven. Maybe you'd get a harp if you'd been an exceptional person.
Tina pictured death as an abyss of everything that had ever been.
Liz said it was everything and nothing at the same time.
For all we knew, this was what death was supposed to be like. This feeling like you just woke up from a nightmare. Where you feel safe and numb. And horribly afraid even though it's all over.
I shook myself from my trance and started walking. There were no rules in this game. If I could see and hear like the living when I was dead, why couldn't I walk like them as well?
At first, I was walking in a completely random direction. It was more of a test to see how alive I could be when dead, than a mission to arrive at a certain destination. Soon I was headed for home.
The street was quiet, and my home looked warm and inviting. I missed it already. Could I go inside? Ghosts can float through walls, right? I shoved up against the front door.
No. They can't. If I was alive my head would have been throbbing furiously right then, but I felt nothing. My body is very much there, but it's numb. I'd probably have plenty surprises with this whole "ghost" thing.
There was one supposed rule-of- the- dead, thought up by the imaginative living, that I didn't question. Could other people see me? No. I wouldn't have to worry about giving my family a heart attack. Still, they would be able to see their front door opening on its own.
Fortunately, I remembered that my father always kept at least one window in the house cracked. Hot or cold, rain or shine.
"Dad, that's just strange," I had told him one cold October day when I was about 8. He had just laughed.
"Dad, it lets the cold air in."
"It lets the fresh air in. It's a sort of metaphor for life. Remember Dahlia- if you don't expose yourself, be a little vulnerable, you'll never live. In order to do anything worthwhile, you'll have to take risks."
Sure enough, the living room window was open, and I climbed in, landing noiselessly on the rug.
Daisy had got home all right, and told them all they needed to know. I was not prepared to watch the after effects of my death. I was still seeing my family as I did every day, while they were definitely not seeing me as they saw me every day. I was like an outsider looking in.
Daisy was sobbing. Not only crying, but sobbing. What happened after I fell? Was she hurt too? What did she see? Of course. She was crying because her sister died. I was right here, aware of myself, aware that I still existed. But my family- they only knew that their daughter and sister was gone.
My father was pacing around the room as he yelled at the phone, absolutely furious.
"No. I didn't see it. What? No, she doesn't know what happened. Said someone came out of the woods. Yeah. By the Sunfresh on Penn Road.
She won't tell us what happened after... I guess she just ran home? No! I don't know! Please just go there! Find the body? Yes find the body!" He slammed the phone down.
"Whoever did this..."
He couldn't continue because he was sobbing now too. A horrible, wrenching sound. He crumpled to the floor, his head in his hands. I'd never seen my father cry before.
My mother was in the kitchen, staring out the window. Her eyes were empty and dull. Mrs. Brandon was rubbing her back and asking if there was anything she could do.
The poor woman must feel so out-of-place and strange. Trying to feel what my family felt. No. Her child was just killed. Murdered. You can't do anything. Go home.
My mother finally shook her head and smiled faintly at her. "No. Just go home and take care of your family," she said quietly.
"Take very, very good care of them."
***
After I left my house, I found myself wandering back down the road. Towards the woods. Towards the cliff. And towards the place over the edge of the cliff- the place where my body was.
What did I expect to find there? Why did I want to find something? I didn't know. But I ended up there all the same.
Police cars were everywhere. It looked like a cliché crime scene out of a movie. A movie where they're looking for something unidentifiable. Then they find it, and that thing turns out to be a body. Decaying and disfigured, it once belonged to someone beautiful and healthy and full of life. So much life. The body was mine.
It took them four hours to find it. The woods were especially rocky and slippery in the dark of the night, and they were losing hope.
"Are you sure she fell off the cliff? You're sure she wasn't abducted?"
"All I know is that she is somewhere over this cliff . That's what my daughter kept saying, over and over."
My father was there. He must have left the house about the same time as me.
"Sir, we have no idea what we're looking for. Maybe we should all go get some rest-"
"She's here. She's down there somewhere. Just find her," he interrupted frantically. "Find the damn... body."
I knew what he was thinking. I wa
s so much more than a body. I was a person, full of hopes and dreams, mistakes and shortcomings.
Jack once said that your body was either your prison or vehicle to success, and all you had to do was learn to control it. "Don't let your mistakes bring you down. Cliché, I know- but you can't move on with the future unless you get over the past. Get up, get out of bed, and keep going. Always."
I still have a sort of body, but it's cold. It no longer radiates life, and no one can see it. It's empty. I don't feel pain, get hungry, or breathe. It's funny how you never really notice when you breathe, but you do notice when you don't. How do I have any sort of body right now? Shouldn't I be a floating, transparent form, or simply nothing at all? I don't get it. I mean, I saw it lying there. It was definitely mine. And it was definitely dead.