In my own way, I did try to save you from your family if not from an earlier death. I thought about having my mother become your legal guardian. That way you would have a safe place to go to when your parents went too far.
But there were too many logistics involved, minutiae that were out of my control. Your parents would have to do something that would take you away from them or worse, give you up to foster care. There would be papers to fill out and strangers sticking their nose into your life. I don’t think you would have appreciated that violation of privacy. As horrible as your life was at the time, it was still yours.
That didn’t mean I stopped being scared for you. I searched your arms for bruises when I thought you weren’t looking and felt for cuts when I kissed your skin. You practically lived in my room, making a shield out of the dingy four walls that my mother couldn’t be bothered to repaint.
I laid on my bed, watching your thumbs move across the screen of your phone as you told your mother that you were over for yet another sleepover. No sounds of fighting reached our ears from across the street. I didn’t notice this until we were halfway through our assignments. The silence was eerie. I heard my own breathing, suddenly conscious of all the little noises my body made.
“Your parents …” I placed down my pencil, walking toward the window. The quiet air expanded in my room, blanketing us in that strange absence of noise.
“My dad is out drinking. No one’s dead,” you joked half-heartedly.
“And your mom?”
You frowned at the mention of her. “She didn’t respond to my text.” You checked your phone again. “She might be sleeping, but it’s a bit early for her bedtime.”
We didn't know then, but your house was completely empty at the time. Your mother was having an affair a few houses down and your father was trying his hardest to drink himself to death. Meanwhile, we continued with our homework, none the wiser and safe in the bubble of my room.
You talked about the future a lot. It was always about college, the places you’d travel, and the jobs you hoped to have. Sometimes we talked about having children, cycling through a list of baby names. Would we adopt or have a test tube baby? My egg and the sperm of some male relative of yours or a kid off the street? The family we might or might not have. Anything so you could escape the present.
We dreamed of Japan and Ireland in those days, thinking about a trip to see family members whose names we couldn’t remember. A dozen honeymoon destinations popped up with a simple question to the search engine. We talked about Paris and Venice like we had the power to hop on a plane the next day. It was a fantasy of yours to elope to some exotic location and never return.
I never admitted this to you, but I didn’t want the future to come so fast. I was happy that year. 2016 was the site of our halcyon days. We were together. I didn’t truly desire anything more than that. I would love you no matter the timezone, language, or destination.
But you were trapped. Our small town suffocated you. You told me multiple times you would rather be anywhere else, rattling off the names of big cities in a desperate chant. I was convinced that you thought the faster you talked, the quicker time would pass.
Call me selfish, but I wanted you to be present with me. I knew you weren’t happy and that life was terrible in so many ways that I could never understand. But wasn’t I enough to ignore it all? Couldn’t you love me deeply enough to forget everything even for one second?
You looked toward heaven when I tasted you, calling me a sin for granting your desires. I never shook that Catholic guilt from you. It was me against God when my head was between your legs. Sometimes, I won, but not enough to change your mind.
I blamed the boarding school you were in before you moved here. The life-sized Jesus impaled to the cross in your living room certainly didn’t help. The worn-out Bible on the desk in your room didn’t either, but you swore that there was nothing in there against us.
You blamed your parents, the way they clipped your wings and made you uncomfortable in your skin. To them you were Eleanor Moore, their perfect straight-A, star swimmer daughter. To me you were Elle, the love of my life.
I did what I could to make you stop hating yourself. I said the right things and bought your favorite flowers, sneezing through half a dozen bouquets. You appreciated all of these gestures, but I knew deep down none of it was enough.
After all, I was the expert on self-hatred.. You were never supposed to sink to my level. And yet time moved, slipping out of my grasp. Things changed.
I dreamed of a better life for us, looking at cities closer to home that we could move to. I had my eye on San Francisco and Los Angeles in particular, places known to have communities of people just like us. You could still swim, go to a good school, and make more money than either of us could ever dream of in those cities. I would have room to figure things out, discover what I’d like to do.
It was my turn to be the one to chart our future. I even made a vision board, accidentally gluing my fingers together as I pasted what I thought our life could look like on a piece of cardboard. I included a backup plan of what would happen in the likely event I couldn’t go to the same college as you, naming a few universities nearby. The next few years could be flexible, especially if I was going in undeclared with my major.
“I’ll be there for you no matter where I am,” I said, showing you the hastily constructed collage. A picture of our potential apartment in Los Angeles was already peeling, hanging by a single corner. “It’s going to happen no matter what. I don’t care what your parents say or what my mom says. We’ll be together for the rest of our lives.”
Little did I know that I would be eating those words in the future. If anyone could live on empty promises, it was me. I grew accustomed to the taste of shattered hopes and broken dreams.
But back then, I allowed myself to think that things could be different. I thought saving the meager pay from my part-time job at the library could buy us a future. If you told me that you would be dead in a couple of months, I would have known that we needed more than a pair of wings to fly.
Nevertheless, you believed in my plan. We thought we were going to make it, hiding in the shadows and pretending that our lives were fine. High school would be over before we knew it. Living in a one bedroom apartment while taking classes in a big city was a breath away. It would be just the two of us in the long eternity to come.
What a cruel joke. I should have known better to want more than I already had. Your death was a lesson I couldn’t forget.
Was it your mother who took your life, gentle Mrs. Moore overcome with a fit of rage when you saw something you shouldn’t? Or was it your father, Mr. Moore with the bad aim when he drank too much? What were the chances that they were both in on it, each with a hand in pushing you to your inevitable doom?
You weren’t afraid of anyone else during those months. No one had that kind of power over you except them.
There was also another detail that supported this theory. When you went missing, so did the rest of your family. You were the only member of the Moores that the authorities could find since then. Maybe your mother and father were in hiding, evading the police because they were indisputably guilty.
It would make sense. The pieces fit neatly together like a story I read in the paper before. There was just one missing component. Why didn’t it happen sooner?
If your parents were the kind of people who couldn’t control themselves to the extent of killing you, you would have been dead when things started getting rough at home.
It was a far cry from the picture you painted of them. They were loud, but you were never caught in the crossfire, at least not physically. When furniture was thrown, they took care to never hurt you. I would have never taken your word for it, but your unblemished skin spoke volumes.
Whoever murdered you was waiting for the right time to strike. It was someone who resented you but didn’t have access so they needed to rely on a moment of weakness.
Once I figured out who they were, I would destroy them.
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