Remembrance

I was always trying to get back to her. I dreamed of the ocean again, the cool salt breeze whipping at my face. I stood knee-deep in the ice-cold water as it rushed past me in moderate waves. She stood next to me, her hand in mine. The grip loosened, then dissolved, and I looked next to me and she was gone.

I woke up with an electric shock running up my spine. The emptiness pervaded my soul as I clung to the dark, grappling my way over to the light switch.

“Sam?” I called out in the hallway for my brother. I could hear him snoring heavily in his bedroom. I shouldn’t wake him this early, but I was all shaken up. He didn’t answer though, so I just padded into the kitchen to pour myself some tea. Tea. I never drank tea, in fact, I had scorned those who’s constitutions were too “weak” for a nice black coffee. But ever since everything had happened, my stomach constantly ached, and coffee made it churn and burn with acidity.

The kettle screamed. Steam billowed out when I poured my cup.

Looking through her things, I had found a short story she had written in third grade, “The Barn Owl.” The summer prior we had stayed with my aunt and uncle on their farm in Montana. Lizzie was mesmerized with one particular barn owl that came at night. “He speaks to the angels,” she said. I wonder if he’s speaking to you now, Lizzie.

Lizzie was my identical twin. We were like each other’s shadows growing up, never apart. Then that fateful night happened, and I lost her forever.

Two nights prior to the night she died, she had called me in a panic. “I think something bad is going to happen,” she blurted out, fear ringing in her trembling voice. I shrugged it off as my sister being paranoid. “Everything is fine,” I said, exasperated, dismissing Lizzie’s concern. As usual, I wasn’t very patient or understanding, two of my biggest character flaws.

I stroked the picture of the barn owl, resting next to Lizzie’s story. Every morning I looked at it as I drank my tea, re-reading her written words over and over. I’m sorry I didn’t listen.

Lizzie had gotten involved with the “wrong crowd” in the last few years. I had moved across the country to New York City to study at Columbia, but she had stayed behind. “I don’t know what to do with my life,” she had told me. “I just want to be Peter Pan.” Our parents encouraged her to go to a few community college classes. “Just try it,” my mom urged, not-so-gently.

Try it she did, and she failed almost all of her classes. She ended up taking a semester off. The friends she had made at school were into partying. Partying led to carefree experimentation, which slowly but surely led to a downward spiral.

Why Lizzie, why? I asked myself this question all of the time. It was the same question my parents had asked her, when she would topple home and crawl into bed high. We had a reasonably normal childhood. We lived in a nice neighborhood. We went to a private school. What had happened to Lizzie that she would go down this knotted, twisted path? Eventually, my parents kicked her out, and she later moved in with her new drug-dealing boyfriend.

I would be in the middle of class when I would hear my phone ring. I would get text messages and voicemails. “Sara, I think I did too much. I’m scared…Sara, I don’t know where I am.” I would rush out of class into the hallway, frantically dialing my phone. I started having panic attacks that year. Everywhere I would go, I would worry. Do Mom and Dad know where Lizzie is? Why hasn’t she called me?

And then, that fateful night, my last voicemail: "He has a knife. Help—" The voicemail cut off on her stammering out that last word she ever uttered. I immediately called 9-11.

I took the first flight I could find home. Back to sunny California, where my sister had been found dead the night prior. Stabbed twenty-six times. Her boyfriend had supposedly caught her cheating on him, and flew into a jealous rage, while wielding a knife.

Twenty. Six. Times.

How did this happen? The question played itself on a repeating loop in my mind. Even six months later, after I had taken a leave of absence from Columbia to move back home with my parents, I would find myself thinking that question…when I was doing the dishes, or folding laundry. An image of my sister stabbed and dead, lying on a dirty kitchen floor, would skate through my imagination, and I would ask myself, How did this happen?

It’s not easy to lose a family member, let alone your twin. It felt like my right arm and leg had been chopped off, and I was left incomplete. Not even close to whole. I had no heart anymore, just a concave, sinking chest that was hollow inside. My clavicle bones popped out now, along with the outline of my spine. I had stopped eating. If I did eat, I usually retched it up in the toilet, running the faucet so that my parents and brother couldn’t hear.

Twenty. Six. Times.

My mother had run out into the street, wailing, tears rolling down both cheeks. Bent over, nearly collapsed, still wailing. I had only seen her cry twice in my life. Now she was practically a pile of spilled spaghetti…a heap of wet noodles. She never left her bed anymore. Sam became the one who would check on her, bring her soup and feed it to her. My father had left; my parents separated. This was my life now.

I blamed myself. If I hadn’t gone to school across the country…If I had checked my phone earlier…if I had moved back home to be there for her when she needed me…

My hope for life and the future died with Lizzie. I was supposed to return to Columbia in the fall and continue my Political Science degree. I had wanted to be a lawyer since I was fifteen. Now, that seemed like a pipe dream hanging on a shaky wire on a windy day.

I put my lips to the mug and sucked in a sip. My tea had gone frigid cold.

I stroked the picture of the barn owl, one solid tear drifting down my sunken cheek. It was starting to get worn from my finger rubbing it so often.

Twenty. Six. Times.