If you had told me that my dead sister would take me on the ride of my life, I would have laughed in your face and told you to lay off the meds. Of course, that was before my sister showed up in my dream one night....she may have been dead for the last seven years but she'd been plenty busy...
***
I hitched my backpack on my shoulder and figuratively kissed the school goodbye by sneaking out one of the side doors that would lead me to the street closest to my house. I didn't always skip my last class but I'd had a considerably rotten day up to this point, I wasn't feeling much up to attempting to learn math. I hated math anyway and it was no secret that there was no love lost between the teacher and myself so I just did us both a favor by not even showing up. My house was practically within spitting distance of the school so I didn't have far to go and I would reach home well before the security personnel could notice a student left earlier than allowed. I just hoped the person manning the cameras didn't inform Reggie, head of the Student Affairs department of my absence because he had no problem hauling my butt back to school; I made that mistake twice but now I'd gotten smarter. If Reggie knocked on the door, don't open it!
As expected, I was home within two minutes and was laying face down on my bed when the house phone rang. Knowing better than to pick it up, I let it go to voicemail and soon I could hear Reggie's voice echoing throughout the house.
There was an audible sigh. "Come on, Melissa," he sounded tired. Seemed like he wouldn't be making a surprise visit to my front door today. I had to suppress a smile, "How many times are we going to do this?"
"Until you give up, Old Man," I muttered to myself.
"You know you'll have to come to the office first thing in the morning," he continued. "And don't make me pull you out of your first hour otherwise I'm putting you on lunch duty again."
I groaned even has he hung up the phone. Gah, I hated lunch duty. The kids all stared at you as you picked up the trash left behind and I didn't know about other high schools but the students in my school had a nasty habit of making things hard for others. Most often they would make ten times the amount of mess than normal if there was a student assigned to lunch duty. At least Reggie gave me an option, I guess I was going to go to the office first thing in the morning to receive the normal punishment--detention. I had racked up so many detention hours in the last four years that my guidance counselor, Mrs. Kamthen, told me graduation might be highly unlikely unless I did something about them now. At the time I had shrugged and paid no attention but I was thinking maybe I should start worrying about it, it was March after all. Only three more months before graduation.... Yeah, I'd definitely check into that tomorrow morning. I wasn't worried about not graduating, despite the detention hours, because I was actually quite a good student. Of course, math was the only class I'd ever really struggled with and even then I always achieved an average score.
My impeccable academic record notwithstanding, adults usually type-casted me as the troublemaker or underachiever because I rarely participated in class or even showed up to class at all. I'd always been good at learning, I'd just never been one to follow the rules, much to my parents continued frustration. Of course, I'm sure my sense of style was also the reason people assumed I was a nuisance; on any give day I could be seen with jeans and a plain t-shirt. Not the tight, skinny jeans that were fashionable nowadays but the comfortably lose jeans, I mean who wanted to actually wear skinny jeans that constricted movements? Every once in awhile I would make myself fancy by wearing a sweater cardigan or flannel button up but only if it was cold. I just had no time for nice cloth, I would rather be comfortable. That was probably the reason I didn't have many female friends; well that, and the fact that I thought girls were whiny. Myself, notwithstanding of course,
Resigning myself to my fate, I got up from the bed to erase the message off the voicemail, confident that that'd be the only evidence of my rebellion. Reggie knew better than to call my parents, it never mattered, to be honest. He used to call them every time I left unexcused but he learned pretty quick that ratting me out to the 'rents didn't make much of a difference.
He also learned pretty quickly that sending me to the guidance counselor was also of no use because I didn't exactly fit the profile of a troubled kid. My parents loved me and never abused me and I loved them just as much. My parents and I had a great relationship as long as we weren't discussing my life as a student--which almost never came up. I had no lingering emotional turmoil or horrifically traumatizing events in my past. I also didn't have a problem with authority and always managed to be respectful with adults--not so much in my head but that wasn't really the point, was it?
No, Mrs. Kamthen couldn't categorize me into any of those neat little boxes that most students fit into, I just...didn't have a lot of ambition. I lacked direction, she said. I needed a challenge...I guess I didn't disagree with her totally, in fact, I really thought she had something with that theory. I just didn't care...
My parents came home a few hours later. They were conservationist so they drove together to conserve on natural resources, despite them both owning cars. They used to take the bus until my mom got robbed once while riding the bus. It scared her enough that my father agreed to start taking the car to work.
It was comical how routine both my parents were. I was reading in my bedroom when they both came home and without closing my eyes, I could perfectly trace their movements. My mother would walk in first and plop her keys in the key dish which preceded my father's keys only by a mere second. My father would take my mother's coat and hang it in the closet while my mother walked to their bedroom to change. My father would check the voicemails and turn on the TV to channel 5 to watch the evening news. Any second now my mother would knock...
"Honey, what do you want for dinner," right on time, I thought. I closed my book and headed out the living room.
"I'unno, Mom," I sat next to my father on our dark brown couch. "Daddy-O, what do you want for dinner?" When it came to food, I was never picky but my father was. My mother had been raised on a farm with eight other children and often had to eat whatever my grandparents were able to provide. I had gotten my taste buds from her, that much I was sure of. Other than that, I was completely my father.
I'd inherited his dark brown, almost black, hair which was sadly stick straight. I would have loved to have my mother's blonde curls but I hadn't been so blessed. As it was, I kept my hair short in a pixie-cut. No muss, no fuss for me. My father and I shared the same hazel eyes and straight sharp noses. Even my smile was like my father's, it quirked to one side when we smiled and showed barely any teeth. I never wore make-up and much preferred my tomboyish style of a natural face. I felt bad for my mother, sometimes I wished I could be more girly for her but sadly, that would have been my sister.
I glanced over at the picture that sat on the mantle of our fireplace which was surrounded by two angel figurines. We had been twins. We were thirteen when my sister, Alissa, she got viral meningitis. We hadn't caught it fast enough and she'd died within four days. That was seven years ago but I could still feel her absence in my heart. I think my parents do too. Of course, you never get over something like that but the pain seemed to hurt less and less as the years went by. We still bought her a birthday cake and added the appropriate amount of candles every year on her birthday. Then we'd all make a wish and blew them out at the same time. She'd been the girly one; long blond wavy curls with almond colored eyes. She preferred pink most but was perfectly happy in purple. She used to be so fascinated with my mother's make up and she'd make me be her model. She'd test different eyes shadows and blushes on me, just to see what fit me better. She used to think she'd be a make-up artist when she grew up. She never liked to be in the lime light, just behind it.
To this day, I'd never had a guy tell me I was pretty but my sister insisted that I was pretty with a good coloring. Whatever the hell that meant... At thirteen she knew what she'd wanted in life and me, well, even at eighteen I had no idea. I never really thought about it and even with my impending graduation, I still hadn't made a plan of what to do afterwards. I sighed audibly which caught my father's attention.
"What's up, Mel," he nudged me with his shoulder.
"Just thinking," I finally looked away from Alissa's photo and back to my father. His face had grown old. I think losing a child aged a person more than they actually were. Even my mother was prematurely gray despite only being 48. My father's face seemed to get these haggard lines around his mouth when he smiled. As if his body didn't want him to smile any more. My mother had similar lining around her eyes.
"About what," he asked.
"Hmm, nothing in particular," I shrugged. "I'm going to go see if Mom needs help in the kitchen."
"Okay, Baby," he said and went back to watching the news.
My mom was busy cooking ground beef in a skillet in the kitchen. She had on her Hawaiian-esque apron and she was humming to a song in her head. "Whatcha humming?"
"Patsy Cline," she answered and started singing the lyrics. The song was "She's Got You" which always seemed depressing as hell to me but it was one of her favorites. I asked her once why she liked that song and all she said was, "First loves are always the most powerful."
Never having had a first love myself, I just had to take her word for it. I'd never even had a boyfriend. I didn't really know what I was missing and love seemed to finite to me. It didn't seem to really be worth my time but granted, most of my friends were of the male variety and none of them had really caught my eye as boyfriend material. Honestly, I preferred it that way.
"So what's for dinner," I asked, taking a seat at the table.
" I thought we could have tacos today," she answered before turning off the stove.
"Ahh," I said noncommittally. I watched as she added the taco seasoning and pulled out the other ingredients; tomatoes, lettuce, sour cream, etc. Soon dinner was done and we were sitting at the table holdings hands.
My parents had become rather religious after Alissa's death but me, I tended to believe she was happy and leave it at that. I tried the whole church thing and it just didn't suit me. My parents never pushed me and always made sure I knew the church invitation was always open but I respectfully declined. However, that didn't stop me from hanging my head with my parents and praying before dinner every night. If it made my parents feel more at peace then I would do what I could to help them.
After dinner was done, I helped my mother load the dishwasher before disappearing to my room under the pretense of doing homework. Instead, I opened my book again and went back to reading. My current book was about world cultures and their differences. Michael, one of my closest friends, had bought me the book for Christmas. It was actually pretty fascinating how different the world was considering we'd all started as part of one continent named Pangea. Somehow, after a bazillion years, the parts of the world evolved drastically which allowed for the different races. I was currently reading about the cultures of Asia and it was interesting enough for me to put my homework on hold. But before I could stop myself I was falling asleep...
I very rarely dreamed of Alissa but when I did, the dreams were always intense. This time was no different. Sometimes Alissa would appear in my dreams as the thirteen year old I remembered, all bright smiles and laughing eyes. But then there were times like this where she appeared as how I imagined she would have looked had she lived. She was breathtakingly beautiful; blond curls and brown eyes in a cream colored face with my mother's full lips and pointed chin that somehow made her look soft rather than stern. Today she was wearing a long black skirt with a pastel purple cable knit cardigan. Refined, like my mother.
She looked sad and my first instinct was to make her smile.
"Hey, Sis!" I smiled at her, "Chin up!"
It was a pretty weak attempt but she smiled for me anyway.
"I keep checking up on you but somehow you never change," she didn't say it in a mean or hurtful but rather she looked at me in a sad pitying way. I somehow felt naked; not in the physical sense but like I was vulnerable. "You should be different by now," she said and reached out for my hand.
"What do you mean," I looked at myself. Of course, even in my dreams, I wasn't nearly as elegant as she was. I was wearing jeans and one of my better shirts, at least it was all black but it was also one I'd originally bought from the men's section...
"I mean your light, it's brown. It's always been brown," she said and looked at me. Or rather not at me, but around me. I looked behind me thinking maybe there was something there but we were just standing in our living room and it looked normal.
"I'm...sorry," I said questioningly.
"I would expect you to glow or at least change, maybe a green or blue, but it's always brown...just brown...brown, brown, brown," she was mumbling by now and waving her hands around my head. I took a step back, this was just too weird. She stopped muttering and looked back at me, "You don't understand what I'm saying, do you?" She asked me with a small smile.
"Umm, honestly, not in the slightest," I told her. Did she mean the couch? I mean the couch was brown, sure. This had to be the strangest dream I'd ever had of her.
"It's ok," she said and pulled me into a hug which I returned, I mean how many times do you get to hug your dead loved ones. Dream or not, real or fake, I wasn't passing up this opportunity. "You'll understand soon enough, I'll make sure of it."
"Liss, what're you--" I started to ask but she interrupted me.
"I'll be back," she pulled away from me and kissed my forehead like she used to when we were kids. "Be ready!"
"Be ready for what?" I shouted at her fleeting image. Just as I was about to run after her I fell into the black nothingness of normal sleep. Little did I know that I'd be seeing her again and things would only get weirder...
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After posting this, I decided to make a slight alteration:
Alissa was originally Melissa's older sister by two years. I've decided for the sake of the story line to make Alissa, Melissa's twin sister instead...
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