Page 1 of Come Out, Come Out

Aiden

December 13th, 2019

Everything changes tonight; I can’t sit here drowning in my grief any longer.

Drowning.The word brings back an onslaught of memories I wish I could erase, but then I would be getting rid of a piece of her. As devastating as the last time I saw my sister was, I could never let it go. I tried;goddid I fucking try. I moved across the country, putting nearly three thousand miles between me and this place and the memories that cling to its walls like old tobacco. Five years–fivelong,achingly lonely years–away from my support system and nothing’s changed. The second I stepped foot in this house, it came over me like a plastic bag meant to suffocate, leaving no way out. My first instinct was to struggle, to run back to New York, but my need for familiarity was so much greater. I walk these halls and breathe in the decay and yearning my parents have allowed to grow here. It’s everywhere like the most persistent mold. Spores have spread and toxins weep from the photos of me and her.All I see is my loss.Smiling faces and rosy cheeks run into streaks of red; the once-innocent faces oozing blood and death. I stop in front of my sister’s door, my forehead resting against the spotless wood kept clean by a mother’s love. Instead of Becca’s obnoxiously sweet perfume, I smell iron and rot. My parents’ refusal to let her go is pungent; it turns my stomach.

I don’t want to blame them, can’t really. I didn’t do anything to heal the gaping wound she left either. I ran, yes, but the memory of Becca followed. My grief has festered within me, in the space that the thrumming connection to my sibling used to occupy. That volatile twin bond that used to buzz between us has flatlined. Sometimes, late at night, I grasp at straws, clawing in the darkness for the string of fate between us that was once pulled taught. Instead, it’s limp and dangling from my wrist like a wrought-iron chain that’s dragging behind me with every step I take. There’s no escaping the heavy burden of her loss. The oppressive metal of it is fused with my bones.

Every time I look into my own reflection, Becca’s gaze follows me, watching me live with little to show for the extra years I got while she decomposes in the ground. I begged my parents not to put her there, in that hard box, in the cold soil of the earth amongst people she doesn’t know. They told me Becca loved nature, that she would want to be there. Parents trumped sibling; I can’t even bring myself to visit. I don’t think I could bear the idea of her resting beneath where I sit. So close, yet so far.

The funny thing is, I can behere. In the eye of the storm, allowing myself to get torn up in the violence of it.

Instead of avoiding the very spot where my sister killed herself, I can’t seem to stay away. It’s like the last piece of her soul resides here and, still, five years down the line, I can’t bear to leave her alone. I already failed her. That truth was brought to light under the fluorescence of the liquor aisle at the market down the street.

“Aiden?” The familiar voice of my sister’s best friend called in disbelief. “Umm, hey. Didn’t expect to see you here.” The comfort in her eyes had dimmed with somberness when I finally met her gaze. Did she see Becca there, too?

“I’m here for the next month, visiting for the holidays.” The need to escape the conversation I knew was coming drove me to grab one of my least favorite beers.

“Oh, I know. They told me you were coming. Just didn’t think I’d see you out in the wild. They were so excited to have you home it’s practically all they’ve talked about every time I’ve stopped by to check in on them.” Megan is a good person. The best I could have asked for to watch out for my sister–and now my parents, apparently. “I can’t imagine how hard it’s been for you, between losing your sister and…whatever it was that you had with Nate.”

“What does Nate have to do with anything?”

“Well, everything, doesn’t he?” I’ll never forget the confusion and then the pity in her eyes. I know that look so well, the one where I’m the one out of the loop. “You know, how he and his friends were commenting on all her pictures. How they were telling her …”

The clank of nearly-shattered bottles meeting the metal shelf had her retreating before she finished the sentence. “What do you mean commenting on her pictures?”

“They had been cyberbullying her for months before she . . . She never told you?” And then I saw it, the regret I felt too, of not knowing exactly what was going on in Becca’s head. “She said she would. I assumed she did. I even blamed you for a long time–I’m so sorry, Aiden–but I did, I blamed you for not putting a stop to it, for not saving her.”

Despite the last few years of my life flipping on its head, that part stuck out the most because I blamed me too. More so every minute.

“Shit. You really didn’t know? It’s still there for everyone to see. Your parents never deactivated her profiles.”

It was there amongst the violating cold of the freezer aisle that I realized I was even more of a failure of a brother than I’d ever realized. How could I have been so oblivious?

Maybe the answers of what to do next are below the now-cold water, etched into the porcelain. I test my theory and submerge myself, not bothering to take off my hoodie and jeans. My knees jut out of the water but I manage to flatten my shoulders against the bottom so my upper body and face are completely underwater. My clothes become heavy, weighing me down, and I give myself over to sinking into it.

I listen to the muted sound of the water as it sloshes against the tub, straining my ears in hopes that maybe I can hear her pleas for help that I somehow missed. Of course, there’s nothing down here but the faded stains of that one black bath bomb Becca tried that one time. My smile comes and goes in seconds. Inside my head, I’m calling out to her; we never had that twin telepathy thing people talk about, but maybe some fragment of her spirit is still out there waiting for me. No matter how hard I concentrate, my screams into the void go unanswered. I force my eyes open and peer up through the blurry surface.

“Fuck,” I yell, letting the water rush in until it cuts me off, but I don’t stop it from flooding my lungs when movement catches my eye. My heart pumps violently in my chest when a figure takes shape above me. Hands plunge beneath the surface; they’re warm as they dig into my chilled skin.

“Aiden!” My mother’s panicked voice breaks through the moment of confusion. “What are you doing?” Anger and fear make her voice crack as she shakes me.

I sit up and take a deep breath. “I was just . . .” An explanation evades me. “I’m fine Mom.” I cover her shaking hand with mine and hold her gaze. “I promise.”

“And if you’re not, it’s okay.” Drops of water flick in every direction as she runs her fingers soothingly through my dark brown hair. “I’m here for you, Aiden.We’restill here. Don’t go chasing ghosts, or I’ll lose you too.” Reluctantly, she lets me go and leaves the bathroom with a pleading look over her shoulder.

When most people visit their hometown, they catch up with old friends and hit the bars. That’s for people who come back on happier terms. I’m attending my own pity party and lighting up a joint in memory of my sister. She wouldn’t have approved but when I flick the lighter and blow out the first puff of hazy smoke, I can hear her scold me so clearly that it sends a chill down my spine. That echo of her is why I’ve gone through the majority of my stash that was supposed to last my entire visit. Anything to be close to Becca again.

The ironic thing is, I feel closer to her than I have in a long time. We had a fine relationship–but weren’t attached at the hip like most twins. Becca and I were worlds apart. I’d loved her of course, but our lives were just too different for us to have that typical twin dynamic. She was a straight-A student who never put a toe out of line. I’d always been the rebellious one with a knack for disappointing my parents and drawing the attention of the sexually repressed jocks who hated themselves more than they hated me. Where Becca was a try-hard, eager for everyone’s validation, I was perfectly fine with being an outcast.

At least I thought so. That was before I was well and truly on my own in this fucked up world. Before, I’d always known that when things got really bad, when I just needed a bit of comfort, I could bust into Becca’s room and throw myself on her bed, sending her papers flying. She’d roll her eyes and huff, but she’d let me stay and be my silent comfort. We weren’t really the kind of siblings that talked about things, but we were there for each other in our own way—or so I’d thought. In the end, I guess Becca didn’t feel like she could come to me when she needed it most. I wish she would have told me about Nate. Finding out from Megan five years after the fact was a punch to the gut.

Dazed, I’m transported back to that night when I found her. I remember it too clearly—a bathtub filled with red, her limp wrist dripping with beaded bracelets, dangling over the edge, my sister’s eerily pale skin, and her vacant eyes no longer looking just like mine. If there was anything in my stomach, the memories would have forced it out of me. Instead, misery sits idly in the empty pit.

Stinging pricks my eyes and the tissue in my throat constricts. I punch my fist into the water disrupting the unwanted detour down memory lane. What-if’s plague me as the I run through the last year of her too-short life for the millionth time. I’d had my head stuck way too far up my own ass to have noticed. Even if I hadn’t been a twenty-three-year-old selfish prick, it’s unlikely I would have known anything was wrong.After I’d decided to go to junior college instead of the state university with her, we became even more distant than before, both caught up in our own lives.

“You’re a fucking selfish bastard,” I remind myself under my breath.

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