The cemetery was rather quiet at the moment. All you could hear were the dying leaves on dying trees and the occasional car rumble past. I was staring at the slab of stone with her name engraved on it. I kicked at the firm dirt I was standing on and took a drag of my cigarette. I held it inside me until my lungs burned more than they usually did. I just stood there, staring. As I kicked the dirt, butts of my cigarettes from the other days became uncovered. I moved my eyes off the grave to look around this hell hole. When I visited, I didn’t cry anymore, I just felt the pain and tried not to think about it that much.

I looked behind me at my aunts old car. It was parked where it always was, right under the big maple tree. She sat inside, her bulging stomach and thighs sort of spilling out over the seat. The passenger door was open. I dropped my cigarette into the pile of the others and walked over to the car, my hands were tucked into the back pockets of my tight jeans.  

I sat down onto the stained polyester seat with cigarette burn holes covering it like a pattern it came with. I slammed the door shut loudly to wake her. Her eyes opened abruptly. Her raspy voice was deep and would be startling to someone who wasn’t familiar with it.

“Anais” She coughed loudly “hand me a cigarette.”

I flipped open the box of Marlboros, pulled out a cigarette and lit it for her.

She started the engine and grabbed the tobacco out of my hand.

Her breathing was loud and deep.

The old car shuttered as it made its way down the pothole filled road. I shifted my body weight from side to side in my seat as the car went in and out of ruts.

I reached into my back pocket and grasped my phone. My dirty white headphones were coiled around the device waiting for me to unravel them and listen to something.

I don’t exactly remember when the last time I went to school was, but I knew I didn’t want to go back, not without her. I also didn’t exactly remember when the last time I had seen my parents was, but I knew they didn’t want me back. Maybe I didn’t want them back either. I didn’t want any of that back. The town, the house, the school, the cats, the death.

The death; October 15th. She was my sister, she was my best friend.

I remember waking up with her to in the mornings. Waking up, but not actually minding being awake like I do now. She had the top bunk. She would climb down the creaky wooden ladder, flip on the lights and sneak down stairs to start a pot of water. She’d wake up the twins and our parents.

I guess I really did miss the twins. Lilly and Arthur. They were still in nursery when my parents moved away and took the two with them. I had been driven down the road, taken a left on Jefferson street and planted at my aunt’s house. I didn’t remember if they were in year 2 or 3 now. I just tried not to think about it, not to feel.

We were almost back to my aunts crappy little house. We didn’t fit in where we lived. We never talked to our neighbors anyways though, it didn’t really matter. As we pulled into the driveway the old cat that lingered around, skittered out from under a bush. My aunt swore

“Fucking old son of a bitch cat why can’t the old thing die already?”

It wasn’t like my aunt took care of the cat or did anything for it. Why did she care that it still hung around? I looked out of the window as the old car shuttered to a stop, slightly bumping into the bushes. Margaret moaned and pulled herself out of the car. I waited until she unlocked the front door and went inside, then I got out. As I let the car door slam, I saw my pale face reflecting from the window. My eyebrows were thick but angled nicely and my eyes were like blue almonds. My hair was always strung up into a ponytail, but it was long enough that putting it in a ponytail didn’t do much to keep it out of my way. My natural hair was chestnut brown, but the ends were still a little bleached out from the sun. I was exceptionally short. My height was actually something I really liked about myself. I was quite skinny as well. For one, I never have been someone who ate a whole lot, but last year I was in and out of the hospital for anorexia.

My aunt didn’t seem to care about me most of the time. She never asked how I was doing, but I knew she was trying her with all she had. Maybe all she had wasn’t a ton, but it was something. She was the one who kept admitting me to the hospital. She would sit at the table and watch me eat. Sometimes things would show up for me like a new jacket from the Salvation Army or a pack of pencils at the beginning of the school year. She hadn’t wanted kids in the first place. There were no “thank you’s” or “you’re welcomes” or “I’m sorries” in our relationship, but we got along alright. We were all each other had, and we both knew that. There was a mutual hatred of life, and a mutual, unspoken of, appreciation of the little that we did have.

I made my way inside now. I heard the TV playing loudly in the living room. I tossed my phone onto the table and went to my room. Clothes were scattered around the floor. My mom would have yelled at me to pick them up, but I wouldn’t have listened.

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I walked along the small pieces of gravel. The souls of my feet burned as the rocks indented my skin. I felt the wind start to blow harder, my hair began to fly, I pinned it down with my cold, shaking hand. I smelled cigarette smoke and no hope. I felt the warm cigarette in my hand and I took a drag of it slowly, letting the smoke rest in my cheeks for a moment before letting it out. My view was now fogged by the gray smoke in front of me. I could hear the wind, picking up speed then slowing back down once again. I could hear my breaths; in out, in out, in out. I squeezed my toes together as my feet started to walk on concrete now. I was almost home, almost back to where Margaret was probably asleep on the couch. I let my too long sleeves drop over my hands, the cigarette sticking out of my fingers, grasping it tightly. The sleeves were worn and stained. They felt soft on my dry hands, though. I felt a shiver roll down my spine quickly; I kept walking.

Nights were my thinking hours. Nights were when the demons came out from the shadows and choked me with my own mind. I reached into my back pocket and grasped the slip of paper I had been keeping in there. The paper was flexible and had been crumpled and uncrumpled many times. I unfolded it, my heart beat a bit faster. My handwriting was scrawled across the paper. Messy, and uneven, the letters tilting just slightly to the right. This is what I did. I wrote letters that I would never send to someone, the pile of them just built up in my room, concealed under my bed.

I felt my eyes become watery. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried, I wasn’t prepared for this. I wiped my eyes with my sleeves, letting the cigarette drop to the ground. My whole body shook, I sat down on the sidewalk with my legs crossed like they make you do it in nursery school. The taste of tears in my mouth seemed to drown out the taste of smoke. My hair was half covering my face. I felt numb and lifeless, I couldn’t seem to stand up and leave. I hear sirens in behind me and I looked down at my cracked phone. 2:38 AM.

Sometimes I go out at night, not to meet anybody or steal anything, just to walk and smoke. It was calming to me. At night there is a different side to this world. No one is awake unless they want or need to be, and anyone who is up doesn’t bother you to ask you questions or talk to you, because they know that you’re only up if you want or need to be. Like everything else in this world, there is an unspoken language. A language for people roaming at night. But you never saw anyone else at night, even if you knew they were there. You felt incongruous with the rest of the world.

Like I said, nights were my thinking hours, and I had finally made up my mind.

I am sorry.

I tied the rope like it was delicate lace. My thin fingers twisting it around itself. I never wore dresses, but today I was. With black tights and my mom’s old ring. I looked at myself in the mirror ahead of me. I really was beautiful. I could see it now. I could see it, but it didn’t matter. I smiled at myself as I took my place, standing on the chair. I placed the thick rope around my neck, still keeping eye contact with myself. I closed my eyes letting my head finally fill with emotions. I felt a tear slip down my cheek. I let it dangle at the bottom of my chin, tension welling up. I looked down at my feet, closing my eyes. “Thank you Auntie” I whispered to myself.