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It was all her fault.
It was a perfect day, sunny, cloudless, bright, and warm. Alex hated everything about it. It should have been cold and miserable. The very skies should have been crying. Her world has ended, all the life had gone out of it, and yet the world showed no signs of its condolences: the grass blew gently in the wind; the flowers were bright and pungent.
And so, life went on. Nothing outside of the group of people dressed in black standing around a long hole in the ground gave any notice that a life had been ended.
Alex stood, stony-faced and rigid, watching as half of herself was slowly lowered into the ground. Silent tears streamed down her face. Beside her, Alex could hear her mother sobbing.
The funeral goers began to file past the hole: first Alex's parents, her father supporting her mother, walked by, then Alex stepped up to the grave and looked down. Inside was a plain wooden casket. Sobs shook her body as the face of her twin burst clearly into Alex's mind. She could see John, smiling and laughing like he always was. Now that smile was gone forever. Alex did not throw a flower into that hole. It was impossible that she had not thrown in a part of her soul, taking the form of a single white rose.
Alex's feet carried her away from the grave without any input from her mind. It refused to leave John, and she could barely see through the tears swimming in her eyes. She wanted to throw herself into the hole, she had no point in living without John anyway, he was her twin, her best friend, half of her soul.
She could have prevented this.
"Alex, hurry up, we're going to be late!" John calls from the bottom of the stairs.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Alex laughs as she runs down the stairs, pulling her long, dark hair into a ponytail. "Don't worry so much. We'll be fine."
"Yeah, sure. Just get your bike and let's get out of here."
Alex collapsed against a tress, no longer able to support her own weight. Passerby tried to console her, but she ignored them, lost in her own grief. Nothing was real anymore, nothing mattered. John was gone.
Three days later, Alex sat in what used to be John's room. She drank in the room, taking notice of everything. It had not been touched since he died. The sheets were still bunched on the bed, unmade. A math assignment lay on his desk half-finished. And there, on his bedside table...Alex gasped and reached for the small photo in a silver frame. She had never noticed this before, but it was a picture she knew very well, because it sat on her own bedside table. It was a picture that had been taken on their last family vacation to California, a shot of Alex and John on the beach.
Her chest clenched, but she did not cry. Three days of crying had exhausted all of her tears.
She held the picture in shaking hands and continued to look around the room. Clothes lay scattered across the floor, there was his favorite shirt, a black tee with "Out of my mind, back in five minutes" printed in white lettering across the front, lying right next to her shoe. His closet door was half-open, and Alex could see a few shirts hung haphazardly inside. Dark curtains hung on the window to her right, blocking most of the sunlight that tried to creep inside. Had Alex turned the light on, the room would have been bright and cheery. As it was, the room was dark and drab, reflecting Alex's mood perfectly.
She had caused this.
The two speed along the quickly darkening streets. They are riding side-by-side, but suddenly Alex, laughing, puts on a burst of speed and calls "RACE YOU!" behind her. John pauses only long enough to yell out "CHEATER!" before speeding off after his twin.
Alex furiously pushed the memory from her mind. She could not bear to relive that again, not while she was awake, at least. It was bad enough seeing it every night as soon as she fell asleep.
Standing shakily, Alex headed for the door, lest staying in the room any longer brought back that horrible memory. She paused at the threshold, but did not look back.
Her mother waited at the top of the stairs. Her cheeks were tear-stained. "Alex!" She called, voice heavy with sorrow and pity. Alex ignored her, turning toward her room. However, her mother persisted. "Alex, please. I know this isn't easy, but don't shut yourself away. Come downstairs, please, you haven't eaten since...You haven't eaten in a week." Her voice was wavering, and Alex couldn't stand it. Her mother began to speak again, but Alex cut her off. "I'm not hungry." she said shortly, taking the final few steps toward her room and shutting the door with a snap behind her.
She could not stay here. This house held all the memories she did not want to remember. Her parents would not leave her alone, they insisted on trying to help her. She didn't need help, because nothing could help her anyway. She quietly strode across the room and to the window. The room was on the second floor, but the garage roof was directly below Alex's window. Lightly she jumped onto the roof, then to the ground. She stole off silently under the cover of the trees lining the road. She walked without any real purpose. Where she was going really didn't matter, as long as it was far away from where she'd been.
Alex's shadow was becoming steadily longer as the sun sank below the horizon, and she stopped to rest for a moment. She'd been walking for hours.
How could she have let this happen?
The two are reaching an intersection. Alex is still ahead, but John is quickly catching up. If she just darts in front of this car, before John, he'll have to stop. She'll make it easily, but there's no way he can. She reaches the other side of the street and glances back at John.
She could not, would not let her mind replay the scene any longer. Despite her weariness, she forced her tired limbs into a run. Focusing on moving would stop her from having to see that scene any longer.
But as she ran, the streets became horrendously familiar. Straight ahead was the intersection she kept visiting in her nightmares. If she crossed it, on the left was the cemetery where John was buried.
She halted, looking wildly in every direction but the intersection. Alex wanted to run as fast as she could away from that cursed corner, where so short a time before she had lost her twin brother, but something kept her still. Alex knew what she had to do. If she ever wanted to stop the nightmares, she had to. And gradually, step by heart-wrenching step, she walked up to the tombstone bearing John's name.
She ran her hand over the inscription, closed her eyes, and allowed her struggling mind to finish playing the worst night of her life.
The night she'd caused his death.
He's not stopping. John looks at the car and, instead of stopping, speeds up. A screech of tires, metal hitting metal, John's screams blending with Alex's as he flies through the air. Alex leaps off her still-moving bike and runs to him. "JOHN! Please be okay, please, you have to be okay!" She cries, clinging to the mangled figure. He raises his head a fraction of an inch and opens his mouth, but the effort of holding up his head is taking up all his energy. Meeting Alex's eyes, he manages a weak smile and squeezes her arm with all the strength he has left before his head drops to the ground.
"John..." Alex whispered, her hand upon his name engraved into the marble stone. "I'm s-so sorry. It's all my fault. Please, please, just forgive me." As she said it, Alex heard a rustling behind her and turned. She gasped, blinking rapidly for a while before finally allowing herself to believe what she was seeing.
Standing there was John. His image was blurred slightly, as if Alex were looking at him through a fine mist, but he was there, and he was definitely John.
"I...I'm going crazy, aren't I?" She asked the figure, voice cracking with emotion.
"Naaah." John replied, laughing. "It's that twin telepathy thing on a whole new level."
Alex's mouth twitched upward, the closest she'd come to a smile since John had died.
"What? Now that I'm dead, I’m not funny anymore?" John pouted.
"Don't."
"Don't what? Say I'm dead? It's true, Alex."
"Don't joke about it...it's...it's...Oh, John, it's all my fault!" Alex's eyes were rapidly filling with tears once again.
"So, you pushed me in front of that car?"
"John..."
"I'm serious. It wasn't your fault. I rode out in front of that car. It's my fault. You had nothing to do with it. I was stupid, that's all there is to it."
The tears overflowed. How long she cried she didn't know, but she cried with such relief and sorrow that she knew she would never feel this powerfully again in her life.
"And Alex..." John said as Alex sat hiccoughing. He was getting fainter, as if fog around him were thickening. "Please don't cry. I never could stand it when you cried, and to be the cause of it is driving me mad. I'll always be here if you need me."
At the last word, he faded into nothing. Alex shivered; now that it was dark, it was getting chilly. The figure of John seemed to have been keeping off the cold while it was there, but now he was gone she felt the cold full force. She had no strength to stand anymore, so she slid to the ground, her back to the cold marble of John's tombstone. She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed with shaking hands.
"Dad? It's Alex. I'm at the cemetery, could you come pick me up...Thanks...I love you."
It wasn't her fault.
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