I leaned against my bedroom door. I heard Darian slam his own door moments later. The walls were thin enough that I could hear his footsteps on the other side. Our rooms were situated next to each other, while Mom’s room and office were across the hall. My legs gave out and I slid to the floor, back against the door to my room. I buried my face in my hands, feeling the moisture of my tears and the heat from my face. I dried my eyes and let my head fall back against the door. 

I was surprised that Darian wasn’t playing some video game. His bed squeaked as he collapsed onto it and more squeaks followed as he moved around to get comfortable. I assumed that he was going to fall asleep and emerge from his room sometime around midnight to get some form of dinner. He would go back to his room an hour later and play games for the rest of the night. In the morning, he’d complain about schoolwork while he wolfed down five or six pieces of toast and two glasses of orange juice. He wouldn’t do the schoolwork; Mom would get emails and he would get grounded.

In the morning, Mom would forget what happened today. She would be in her office, hair messed up with a cup of coffee in her hands. She would murmur a good morning to us when we passed the door, then half-heartedly tell Darian to do his schoolwork. 

It was dinner that I dreaded the most. Mom would hear my footsteps outside her door if I ventured out of my room. She would come out and confront me, cry, yell at me then retreat. That’s how all of our fights went. 

“Darian?” I knew he could hear me. We talked like this a lot. His bed squeaked as he moved. 

“Yeah?” 

“What’s Mom doing?” 

“Sleeping. What else? You really tired her out this time,” he replied a hint of bitterness. 

“It’s not my fault,” I huffed, anger beginning to boil again, “she starts it. It wouldn’t have even happened if she had just let me go. I don’t understand why she pretends to care.” I heard Darian sigh. 

“You sound like a baby.”

“Says my younger brother who whines about school.”

“No, Katie, she does care,” said the exasperated Darian, “don’t you ever see the other side of things? You can’t really blame her anyway, the doctors said she wouldn’t recover from something traumatic as what she went through.”

“Well, we went through it too, didn’t we?” I retorted, “and we don’t cry every second of our lives.”

“Not like she did,” Darian said, “it was worse for her. That’s what the doctors said, anyway.” 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever the medical professionals say,” I snorted, “it’s not like they ever talked to us. I bet you heard all of that information from eavesdropping.” Darian was quiet for a minute. I knew I was right. He had spent hours with his ear against the door of Mom’s hospital room, listening to what was being said. He never really told me what he heard, but he claimed most of it wasn’t important anyway. 

“Hey, Katie?”

“What?” 

“Did you ever think that Willa isn’t really dead?”

“No, why would I? They found her body and everything, even if they left it in the lake. She died in the car with Dad.” There was a pause.

“Yeah, but they never did an autopsy or anything. We don’t know who they actually were.”

“Yeah, we do,” I sighed, “it was our car and the two people in it were Willa and Thomas Lark. Dad and Willa.” The bed squeaked and I didn’t hear from Darian anymore. 

I pulled off my shirt and put on a tank top that was much more comfortable for sleeping. I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my black jeans and checked the time. 6:23. I slid off my jeans and dug a pair of sweatpants that was buried in my pile of blankets and pillows. I flopped onto my bed and stared at the ceiling. 

My thoughts began to wander. Why would Darian think that Willa wasn’t really dead? Why not Dad? It was stupid. I had been to their death site. I had seen the back of the car peaking out of the water. I knew that they were long, long gone. As much as I missed both of them, they weren’t coming back. 

Dad was tall. When he met someone, the first thing most of them would say is, “wow, you are very tall.” He was the kind of guy who would buy an ice cream sundae for you because why not. He enjoyed every moment of his life. He had a loud laugh that would turn heads in a restaurant. Mom looked like a dwarf when standing next to him. He was our expert jar-opener and he would always come home from work smiling, no matter how bad the day was. He had many lines around his green eyes and a stubbly beard. He was thin, like he had been stretched out. Mom called him a giant string bean. He had thick, dark hair that he kept close-cropped. He had a wide mouth and a big smile.  

Willa smelled like a cherry blossom. She was fair skinned with Mom’s brown eyes and full lips and Dad’s dark hair. She wasn’t very popular at school, but it didn’t matter because she was always kind and patient with almost everyone. She would sit for hours and hours with me, helping with homework and laughing about the stories from school that I told her. She curled my hair on the weekends and braided it when I asked her to. She loved to read, and she did well in school. She was level-headed and always knew what to do. I wanted to be just like her when I got older. She would wait for me after school and play video games with Darian. I drifted off to sleep thinking of cherry blossoms and green eyes.         

I was jolted awake by a very loud squeak. It was dark outside. When I peered out of the window, the lights in our neighbors’ houses were turned off. The moon was full, and the streets were empty. Even shadows stood still in the dark night. My stomach growled. I had missed dinner. 

I swung my legs around so that I was sitting on the edge of my bed. I looked around, then stood up. The floor creaked softly underneath me. I made my way across the room and opened my door, praying that it didn’t make a sound. The door opened silently. The hallway was dark and quiet, like the rest of the world around me. I looked to my right, Darian’s bedroom door was closed. I looked across the hall, my mother’s door was closed. 

I crept over to my mother’s door and peered through the keyhole to see if anything was out of the ordinary. She was fast asleep in the center of her bed. Darian was also asleep when I checked on him. He was curled up, facing away from me when I opened the door. His window was open, which was odd because he almost never opened his window. He must have wanted some fresh air. I closed his door and snuck back into my own room. 

I gazed at the moon outside of my open window. My eyes travelled down to the road, where I swear, I saw a girl walking. 

I thought nothing of it and drifted off to sleep.

Mom was screaming. 

I didn’t know what to say. I knew I needed to say something, anything, to calm her down. Her wails just got louder and louder. Nobody but me was there to keep her quiet. Maybe I should calm myself down first, maybe I should look away from his glassy eyes, maybe I should pull mom away from my brother’s dead body, maybe I should remember to breath. 

His hair, clothes and sheets were all soaked in blood. He was still facing the wall that his bed was pushed up against, but the early morning light illuminated his face. It was horrific. His eyes were widened and there was silver duct tape over his mouth. His hands were clamped over his stomach. His hands were bloody from the open wound and his body was cold. He had been dead for almost the entire night. 

Mom had thrown herself on top of him. She was holding onto his arm and wouldn’t let go. I was frozen in time, it seemed like everything but me was moving. I was too shocked to feel sad. Was this a dream? Maybe this was all a dream and I just needed to wake up, but my arms felt too heavy to move. I couldn’t find the strength to pinch myself. My stomach was churning, and I wanted to vomit, but couldn’t open my mouth. Darian was dead. He wasn’t coming back.

My head felt heavier and my eyes stung. The air felt like poisonous gas that burned my throat when I inhaled. The world was dangerous and painful. My mother didn’t stop wailing and my hands shook. I mustered up the strength to move my legs, down the hallway to the kitchen. Then, I fell down, into a dark world where everything was black.

There is something to be said for silence. It’s strange, silence is louder than thunder, yet no one hears a thing. Silence is powerful and frightening but at the same time, we only hear a lack of sound. Stillness and silence could be an illusion, for humans except something to be happening at every moment. Silence is peace in a busy world. But it is also unrest. 

The darkness is the same. Darkness is lack of light, yet we still see something. In a cold, dark, unloving world, darkness is our best friend and our worst enemy. We learn to love it, yet it still scares us silly at times. Darkness is the unknown and the predictable at the same time. Just like silence, it is peace but unrest. 

The silence and darkness that I fell into was a void that I wish I could’ve stayed in forever. I was not “in it,” I was part of it. I felt nothing, no fear, pain or sadness. But I still felt tension. In a void, there is a lack of. In life, there is no such thing. 

I must have fainted because I woke up on the kitchen floor. I couldn’t hear my mother crying anymore. The world spun when I tried to stand up. I crawled into the hallway, where I found Darian’s room boarded up and no mother. I dragged my half-conscious body into my room, and I daresay that my bed was more comfortable than the cold tiled floor of the kitchen. I rolled over on my side, where I could peer out the window and sighed. I almost forgot the pain of the morning. Alas, I didn’t. Tears pricked my eyes and a single droplet made its way down my face. Why him? Why the only person that would understand and speak to me when I was at my worst? And why like that? He could have died less painfully. The way he was killed made my heart twist in agony. It was unfair. He didn’t deserve it. If anyone deserved to be murdered like that it was…

I knew what my mind wanted to say. I knew my mind wanted someone to blame and a person that should have been the victim. I would not let myself think like that. My mother was the only person I had left. She did not deserve to die. No one deserved to die like that. 

Pain is what she feared most. She hated to be in pain and every decision that she made was to avoid pain. She didn’t know how to deal with it. She just wanted it to stop. Pain makes you grow, my father always told me, for a price. She needed to pay a price to grow, but she refused to pay. She was afraid. 

My eyes focused on a figure in the yard. It was my mother. She was in the backyard near the big oak tree, filling in a big hole. She was almost done. I rolled away from the window and climbed to my feet. I walked cautiously from my room into the living room where the sliding door was that led to the backyard. Mom had left it wide open. I sighed and stepped out, closing it behind me. I scolded myself for not feeling worse. My brother had been killed and here I was complaining about cheap doors. Something was comforting about the doors. It was so normal. Compared to the events of the morning, familiarity was a treasure. 

My mother waved to me when I arrived at the foot of the oak tree. She was grinning and patted the ground with her shovel.

“It feels really great to be out here on such a nice day,” she said to me, looking at the stormy gray skies with a nostalgic smile. “I just called Darian, he’ll be out here. He’s probably in his room, playing his games.” My stomach hurt all over again. 

“Mom?” there was no answer, “Darian is…” I held my breath. I didn’t want to upset her.

“No…” she whispered. I recoiled and backed up, “he’s not dead. He was playing a game, silly. He was being a bad boy. He will be outside soon.” I bit my lip until I tasted blood. I swallowed my fears and tried again.

“Remember, Mom? You found him this morning.” She laughed and shook her head, but I saw tears glistening in her eyes. 

“Don’t say that, he was playing. He made a little mistake. Just a little mistake,” she replied, “go inside and call him, I’ve been waiting for a long time.” I nodded and continued to back away before turning and fleeing. 

I slammed the screen door and locked it with shaking hands. I heard hawks scream with the first bursts of thunder.

I buried my face in my pillow. My skull felt like it was slowly breaking into pieces. I let tears soak into the fabric. Mom’s reaction hurt me more than I’d admit. Seeing her so happy, so sure of herself when everything was so wrong was painful. Why did she get to be so happy and at ease when I was suffering? It hurt when she talked about Darian like he was still breathing. It made me feel the pain of the morning all over again. She was living in her very own world. 

To me, this morning's events had shattered my entire life. To see him lying there, to know that I was in the room next to his. I felt useless. I felt like I had failed. It was unfair to me and to him. Who would do that to a family? What does it take to be that twisted? What cruel villain was crazy enough to take a kid’s life?  

Why? Mom knew that he was dead. She found him in his room what morning. She hadn’t reacted like this after the incident, why would she do this now? She couldn’t bring him back no matter how much she believed that he was still alive. I thought that she at least had enough brain power to figure that out. She must be crazy. Or guilty. 

It clicked in my brain all of a sudden. Mom had killed Darian. She snuck into his room last night and took his life and crept back to hers before I got up to check on him. It was too obvious. She really must have thought that I wouldn’t figure it out. Of course, she would do this. Why wouldn’t she? She was bitter and a bit crazy.

“A bit crazy” was too kind. She was a monster. She killed her own son and probably arranged the accident too. My thoughts were running around in my head to the point where I couldn’t regulate them anymore. They were getting out of hand. Yet, maybe she did mastermind this entire situation. She would. She probably hated our family. She didn’t care, she never did. Her entire goal was to get rid of us. But why?

A new though surfaced. Maybe I was overreacting. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t even stand the sight of blood, much less take another life. She always seemed to care...or did she?

The battle between my thoughts waged on. I felt helpless to stop it. My mother might be plotting to kill me next. I closed my bedroom door and shoved my dresser against it. I sat down on my bed.

It seemed so logical. She was the only person in the house other than me and Darian, and someone had clearly killed him. Darian wouldn’t have killed himself, and given the circumstances, no one should have been out of their houses. There were no signs of a break in. I struggled to remember the details. Everything was so fuzzy in my mind. There was no duct tape in his room, last I checked, and I would have heard him get up. Mom was the perfect culprit. She never even called the police. It was all too simple.

No one else was outside, right? No one would’ve been outside. We were all quarantined. Stuck in one place. If Dad was here, he would know what to do. He would believe me. He would protect me. He loved his family more than anything. Even when he came home late at night, he would always come to check in on us. If only I had someone else. Darian was an anchor, a shoulder to lean on when I got carried away. I needed someone else. I didn’t want to die.

I sat on the floor, next to my bed, contemplating what to do if my mother suddenly burst in. Would I hide under my bed? It was heavy enough that she couldn’t drag in away. Could she reach underneath to find me? Maybe she had a flashlight. If she did find me, would she try to reach for me, or would she give up? She wouldn’t give up. Maybe I could hide in my closet. Should I open my window now or try to do it later? Would I have enough time to escape? Would she try to come in through my window if I opened it now? It was already half-open. Maybe she wouldn’t see me if I ran away.

Then it hit me. 

Where would I go?

Family was never important. Blood never determined who I bonded with or liked. If I liked a friend enough, they were family. My family never had to be my friends. Friends and family are one of the same, except you live with family, even if you’d prefer to live with friends. We were still quarantined, nonetheless, and no one was allowed to leave their houses. Would they make an exception? No one was at the police stations anymore. Illness scared workers away from their desks. Who was there to call? Where was there to go?

I could run, but I couldn’t run forever. The idea of constantly running from something did not appeal to me, but the alternative seemed worse. 

Or was it? If my friends wouldn’t open their houses to me, were they really friends? All I had left of family was a mother who wanted to kill me. Was living worth it?

I quickly shook that thought away. Of course, it was worth it. Death is permanent. Death is something everyone fears. Fearing death is universal. I didn’t want to die. Dying sounded bad and painful. 

Yet, if I fear pain, was I really different from my mother? Did I know my mother at all? What else had she been hiding all these years? Would I ever find out? Or would it forever remain a mystery? If I lived, I might find out. I knew that I had to live. Dying wasn’t going to solve anything. My friends still cared, of course they did. I felt around in my pocket for my phone and pulled it out of my pocket. I scrolled through my texts to find my best friend’s number and typed out a plea for help.

  Listen, I really need your help. My mom killed my brother and I need a place to go. Can I come to your house? Like, I’ll be there in a few minutes. 😊

I clicked send. The delivered sign popped up, then the read sign. I waited. I turned my phone off, then on. Still no reply. I opened the message app again. She had blocked me. I blinked. 

I heard a crash that made me practically jump out of my skin and temporarily forget the pang of betrayal. I dove underneath my bed and stayed there, hands over my mouth, not daring to move. The minutes that followed felt like years and years. Everything was quiet, just like the night before. Still, silent. I thought that death was close. I felt tears running down my face. I wanted this to be over. 

I heard someone walking around outside the house. Strange. Soft treads across the dry grass. Going further away, then coming back. Someone was pacing. I crawled out from under my bed and perched on the windowsill, expecting to see a person in a blue uniform. 

My heart stopped.

The person standing over my mother’s dead body was Willa.

It couldn’t be. Willa had died, right?

Her hair was long and matted and her hands were covered in blood. Her face showed no emotion as she looked down at the lifeless body before her. Drops of rain fell from the sky and tree rustled in the wind. The sky was a dark shade of gray. The storm was only beginning. She had the prominent side profile that I remembered perfectly and the same dark eyes. I was too far from her to hear what she said as her lips moved, but her face changed. She almost looked as if she pitied the person on the ground in front of her. 

If Willa was still alive, why would she do this? She was always my sister. She didn’t do this. She couldn’t have done this. Perhaps she walked in on someone else murdering my mother, maybe my mother killed herself or…

I quickly decided that she could not have done this. She was part of this family. It was alright. Everything was alright. She was here to rescue me. She had tried to save Mom, but Mom was already dead when she arrived. She was going to be the hero and get me out of here. I wanted to do so many things at once. I could barely stay still. I wanted to run out and greet her and ask how and why. I wanted to tell her what had happened. I wanted to ask her if Dad was still alive too, and what to do now that she was here. I had to go and greet her. It would be rude not to. 

Her eyes landed on me through the window. She turned away.

My legs moved themselves and carried me in the direction of the kitchen. My eyes were unfocused, and my heart raced. But why? Willa was finally home. It must have been out of excitement. What had taken her so long to come home? Why now? Maybe she wanted to bring us some joy in this boring time. She was always so kind. 

I took some time to look at the house. I remembered when Willa and I used to play mermaids or princesses in her room. I remembered how baby Darian would toddle in and wave his arms around, as if he knew what was going on. Willa would let him play too, no matter how much I protested. Fond memories flooded my head. Willa would never hurt us. 

Mom was the culprit; it was all too obvious. She had probably killed herself out of guilt when she finally came to her senses. Willa had rushed to her side, asking her what happened. Mom explained what was going on while taking her final breaths. She implored Willa to protect me and never abandon me. What a perfect story this was. It was all settled now, anyway. I was going to be safe. 

I made my way into the kitchen. The room was still. I felt as if I was floating. Everything was going to be alright. I just had to wait for Willa to come inside and take me somewhere safe. I rushed to the sliding door and unlocked it with a light heart. Willa turned and started to journey across the yard, to the door. I sat down on the couch and waited. The closer she got, the more uneasy I began to feel. I thought of locking the door, but a locked door would not keep anyone out for long. 

Her mouth was set into a straight line and her eyes were narrowed. They were not the same kind, patient eyes that I remembered. They were cold and untrusting. Those eyes unsettled me. I felt as if I did not know this girl anymore. Was this really my sister?

I shook it off. Of course, it was. This was Willa. The one who made me sandwiches when I got home from school. The one who took me to her middle school dance after I begged and begged to come with her. The one who sat on my bedroom floor next to me and flipped through magazines. She was alive. She was here. She was going to keep me safe. 

But was she? Her clothes, hands and face were stained with blood. She wasn’t smiling. She was as mysterious and tense as the brewing storm. 

As the battle in my head raged, she had already reached the door. The squeak as the door slid open jolted me back to reality. I wanted to smile, but the knife in her hand wouldn’t let me. 

“Well, well, well. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”

“Willa?” I struggled to find the right words, “you…you’re…”

“Alive, yes,” she said dryly, “what an astounding observation you’ve made.”

“How? Where are we going to go?” I asked. Her voice sounded so different.

“We? We’re not going anywhere,” she sneered, “but you’re going to be dead.”   

“What do you mean? You wouldn’t hurt me, right? That’s what you promised Mom before she died, right? We’re going to the police to report Mom and Darian’s deaths. Isn’t that what we’re going to do?” Willa looked confused and slightly disappointed. My heart raced. She wouldn’t ever hurt me. She wouldn’t hurt anyone in this family. Right?

“I really thought you were smarter. You saw me leaving the house last night, silly. I saw you, too. Besides, are you really that shaken? Are you shaken by the death of your mother, who never really cared for you at all? How stupid.”

“It’s not like that! She killed Darian, Willa! We have to get out of here. She’s probably still alive.”

“You are truly hopeless,” she chuckled and shook her head, “Katie, I killed that pathetic excuse for a human. He never saw it coming. He got what he deserved.”

“But- he…”

“Tell me, does Darian ever leave his window open?”

“No…”

“I heard your footsteps. I knew you woke up. I never closed the window so that the rotten scent wouldn’t reach anyone before I was a safe distance away. I turned back and saw your face through your own window after you saw me. I knew you wouldn’t think anything of it until it was too late,” she pointed her knife at me, “you can’t do anything now. The only way to escape this house is by dying, which, fortunately, is the plan.”

“Why?” I whispered. 

She took a step forward and I immediately recoiled.

“Why? This family…all of you are the same. That woman you called Mom asked me the same question. ‘Why, Willa, why would you do this?’” she mocked, her frown deepened.

“B-But, we never did anything wrong!” I cried, “you’re my sister, don’t you remember?”

“You did everything wrong!” she screamed, slamming her hands on the coffee table, “this entire family did everything wrong. You want to know why you deserve this? Fine, I’ll tell you! It started with Dad and Ellie.”

“Ellie?”

“Must you repeat everything I say? Yes, Ellie.”

I remembered Ellie very well, she was the one who committed suicide the day after Willa died. They had been best friends. Ellie and Willa were often mistaken as sisters, for they were so close, and they had similar colored hair and skin. The difference was that Ellie had large blue eyes and Willa had brown eyes. Ellie was shorter and thinner. She was also extremely popular and social. 

But what did this have to do with her?

 “She was a liar and a temptress. She was…horrible. She was awful. She was no better than any of the other people at my school,” Willa snarled. She looked upset, “she was never my friend, not after I found out about her and Dad. I knew weeks before the night of the ‘accident.’ I didn’t know what he was planning until it was almost too late. Andrea, one of Ellie’s gossip magnets, accidently let it slip when she was intoxicated and careless. I didn’t believe it at first, but the more I watched Dad, the more it seemed obvious.”

“He wouldn’t! Dad would never cheat.”

“Sure, but he did. He most definitely did. It’s funny that you blurted that out before I confirmed that I knew he was cheating.” I froze. It was obvious what she was getting at.

“You said that they were part of the problem, so I just assumed that…” I paused. She had a goal at the end. What did she want from me?

“Very amusing. You knew, or at least your subconscious did. You knew that he was coming home later and later every night. You knew that Ellie’s suicide was perfect timing. Except, what you don’t know is that it wasn’t suicide.”

 “What do you mean? She jumped off the bridge when she found out that-“

 “I died?”

It made no sense. Willa never died. She faked her death; but wouldn’t she tell Ellie? Or would she? Maybe this whole cheating thing was all in her head. She wouldn’t have killed Ellie and Dad? She wouldn’t have arranged this entire thing. She couldn’t have.

“Let’s go from the top, shall we?” she said sharply, “Dad started coming home late. It wasn’t normal. He excused it, said it was extra work. He went to bed without even saying goodnight to us, and sometimes he slept on the couch. He became distant. I got worried, I thought that maybe he was drinking. I checked his texts one night and I saw a phone number with no contact name. I recognized the number from somewhere. They were ordinary texts, but something made me want to read between the lines. There was something suspicious.” She stopped and looked at me with almost pity.

“I went to Andrea’s homecoming party two nights later. She was intoxicated before the party even started. All she wanted was more gossip, something that would shake up the school. Ellie and Andrea were bound at the hip that night. Ellie blacked out and Andrea started to gossip. She didn’t seem to realize that I was around because she started to talk about Dad. She revealed that Ellie was in a relationship with him. I called Mom to pick me up soon after that. I didn’t tell her. I didn’t believe it.”

“Dad started to come home even later. He would always go to the couch and fall asleep without a care in the world. It was easy to check his phone. He was being less careful about covering his tracks.  He still hadn’t named that number in his contacts, but it was easy to tell. He was sending hearts and winking emojis and all that cliché crap. He was calling that mysterious person Elle. He said that he wanted to run away with her and that he would leave us, his family, for her. He was obsessed. He had been moving his belongings into an apartment a few towns away where they were going to live. She was going to get a job as a waitress at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant and he was going to show her off to all his sleazy friends.”

“I quickly realized that I had to do something about it. I wanted to reason with him or confront him or give him a reason to stay but the more I read those texts, the angrier I became. He didn’t deserve mercy. He didn’t deserve our love or our trust. He needed to be taken out with his little love interest.”

 “Why?” I cried, “you didn’t have to actually kill him! You could have told Mom or something, anything but what you actually did!”

“Shut up!” she hissed, “I had to permanently get rid of him, it was the only way to stop him from hurting us. I was going to go to some girl’s holiday party when I found out his plan. He was going to drop me off and drive around the block once and pick Ellie up and leave. He was just going to leave with her.. That was the life he seemed to want. I was disgusted. Why did he get to have his happy ending while his real family suffered from his immaturity and infidelity? You wouldn’t understand, would you? You know nothing of loyalty as I know it, Katie. You wouldn’t go to such lengths to keep this family together. You still don’t see why I had to do what I did, but one day you will.”

“I offered him a drink that night in the car. He took it gladly because he was in such a good mood. He didn’t know that I put stronger alcohol in it beforehand. After he dropped me off, I stuck around until I saw Ellie get into the car. I ran ahead a bit so that I could drag a branch onto the bridge. I knew that he would mistake it for a person. I watched him from the shadows. I watched him speed up to the bridge. I watched the car go over the edge. It was satisfying. It’s so easy to kill someone, Katie."

“Honestly, I didn’t plan the whole ‘Willa and her father died then Ellie ended it herself’ thing, but it worked out alright anyway. I moved to the apartment that Ellie and Dad were supposed to live in. It was great. They had already paid for it, too. I didn’t plan on killing all of you either, but you know too much. I made a big, bloody mess out of all this. The doctors were beginning to figure it out and that simply wouldn’t do. Darian had overheard their speculations. Darian had talked to Mom. Mom wanted to talk to you. I am not selfish. I don’t deserve punishment from law enforcement. I did it for the better of our family and none of you would ever understand it. You would rat me out to the police to save your own skin and I couldn’t afford that. Not after everything I’ve done. Not after all of the good that I’ve done for this ungrateful family.” She stopped talking and steadied her breathing. Her knuckles were white from gripping her knife.

“Now, I’m going to kill you. When this quarantine is over, this family will be forgotten. Everything will be over. I can finally be at peace. So, Katie, do you have any last words? Are you going to ask me why one more time?”

I barely processed the pain. I felt numb. After everything I had heard, a knife to the heart almost felt painless. I remembered her sad expression as she turned away and I fell to the floor. I laid there, waiting for everything to go black.

 I laid there and wished that I knew exactly what was going through my sister’s head. I knew I was running out of time. My heart felt heavy in my chest and my hands shook. I would never understand her. I needed to let go.

 I thought back on my memories, but all of them seemed dull. My entire family was broken all that time and I hadn’t even realized. I wanted everything to be over. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t seem to move.

Every part of me felt so betrayed. Every muscle and bone in my body ached. I knew that I would never feel again after this. I knew that these were my last moments. I wanted darkness and nothingness, in a way. I hated life. Had she spared me; I wouldn’t have wanted to live anyway. The pain was overwhelming. 

The only question I had was why. Why didn’t Darian tell me? Why did Dad do what he did? Why did Willa try to take justice into her own hands? Why did Mom leave me in the dark? Did I even know the people that I called my family?

Despair overtook me. It filled me up. I hated everyone and everything. I felt so helpless, so useless. I knew I was nothing more than prey to a hawk. 

        The wind rustled my hair. I let the knife fall, down, down, down…

        It hit the water with a splash.

         I had done it. Everything was alright. I was happy. I had completed what I swore I would complete. Now all I had to do was jump.

         I had walked over, taking the same shortcut that I had taken the night my father and friend died. I found a brick in the forested area near the bridge. I found some twine in the garage back at the house.

         I didn’t really want to die, but there was no reason to live. My head hurt and I couldn’t focus my eyes. I felt unsteady. Killing people was so easy. It was justice. But it was so wrong. My last actions had been so selfish. I needed to punish myself. I deserved to die for killing my sister. I had been afraid, I supposed, that she would tell someone. She was so innocent, so blind to the faults of people. She was the one part of that family that didn’t deserve death.

         I didn’t want to think about anything anymore. I craved silence and nothingness for so long. I needed to die. Everything was worked out. I had moved out of the apartment yesterday. The world didn’t need me anymore.

         I closed my eyes and jumped. I let myself fall into the water below, the promise of death. I felt the water surround my body and I didn’t bother gasping for air until the moment before my world went dark.