Sin

I knew the second I had closed the door behind me that something was wrong. It took me a moment to pinpoint the source of my unease; I had hardly been inside for more than five seconds. Then, I realized that my arrival to the house hadn’t been greeted with a volley of barks and growls. Where was my dog? Normally he would have jumped up on me the second that I walked through the door, but there was no sound.
         “Hunter? Hunter--here boy!” I whistled for him, and jingled my keys to try and attract his attention. When he didn’t respond, I wondered if perhaps he had had a haircut or some other appointment today that I hadn’t remembered.
         “Hey, Mom? Where’s Hunter? Does he have a haircut today or something?” I called towards the back of the house as I dropped my bookbag into the living room floor. I went to the kitchen and grabbed a partly-finished glass of cranberry juice, waiting for an answer. After about ten seconds, I repeated my question as I moved back into the living room (my mom was getting to be a little hard of hearing). When she didn’t answer, the faint feeling of unease crept up into my neck. Where was mom? I knew she was home, her car was in the garage…
         Still holding my cranberry juice, I walked into my parents’ bedroom, only to find it empty. The windows were cracked open and the fan was on like she had been in there, but it was devoid of all human life. Where was everybody? Were they all planning some sort of elaborate joke on me? If they were, it had lost whatever marginal funniness it ever had held.
         “C’mon guys, this isn’t funny.” I complained, pushing open the door to my room. I walked in, fully expecting to find my sister trying to hide (unsuccessfully) in my closet, or my mother hiding behind the door. My family was just weird that way.
         But they weren’t there.
         This was dumb. I was working myself up over nothing. Maybe my mother, sister and Hunter had all gone for a walk, and forgotten to leave a note, as usual. I went into the pantry, and looked on the broom rack, expecting Hunter’s leash to be gone…but it was still there too; it hadn’t been moved from when I’d walked him two days ago.
         I went to the kitchen wall-phone, and picked it up. I dialed my mother’s cell phone number, and waited.
         Brrrrrriiiinnnnggg……Brrrrrriiinnnngggg……
         The phone rang and rang, and eventually her voicemail picked up, but I didn’t hear the ringing anywhere in the house. I gently put the phone back in its cradle.
         Now I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I stopped moving, listening so hard that I could hear a faint ringing in my ears. There was no movement in the house. Nothing whatsoever; and that convinced me that there was indeed something very wrong.
         I went into my room and put my purse and notebooks down. I placed my glass of juice down on my dresser, and reached down in the space behind it. I pulled a large wooden katana from behind it, and gripped it tightly in my fist. My friend and I had got each other wooden swords as a gag gift last Christmas, but it had so far just lain behind my bed, useless. Now, I was glad that I had it ready for me.
I felt more secure now that I had a large blunt weapon within my grasp, but was still nervous. I slipped my shoes off, so that I was walking around in socks; my footsteps were muffled. Something weird was going on here, and I was going to get down to the bottom of this.
         I must admit that I felt mildly silly, creeping through my house with an upraised sword and a fierce expression on my face. But the lack of movement, coupled with the absences of my family was making me highly paranoid. I could feel adrenaline being pumped into me in waves, so that all my senses seemed to be on high alert.
         If this was all a stupid prank, someone was gonna get it.
         I walked through the entire upstairs, opening doors and peering around corners, prepared to strike…but there was nothing. Just when it seemed that I really was just being overly-cautious, I realized that I hadn’t checked everywhere. Not in the basement.
         Poised at the top of the steps, I felt like something unpleasant had just settled in the pit of my stomach. Most dark and creepy areas normally gave off bad mojo, but our basement had windows, and it was still a light spring day outside. But at that moment, I felt like someone had poured a pitcher of cold water into my spinal column. If there was ever deadly mojo, it was emanating from my basement in waves.
         I walked down the staircase, and instead of easing the door open slowly, I pushed it open swiftly, my hand still on the knob so that it wouldn’t whack loudly into the wall.
         But there was nothing. Again.
         As I stepped forward, I caught a rather unpleasant smell. It was faint, but it seemed to cling to the back of my tongue; disgustingly metallic. The smell reminded me faintly of old coins. Perhaps the sump-pump had backed up?
         I stepped farther into the room, peering around the edge of the wall where the basement widened, looking for a sign of wet carpet or water. There was no water, but I did notice something else.
         About three feet from the large recliner in the furthermost corner of the room, where two small reddish spots stained the carpet. I walked over there, and knelt down. I reached out and touched one of the drops lightly with my index finger, and then looked at it. It had come away slightly tacky, a spot of drying copper in the middle of the pad of my finger.
         I was very sure that it was blood. And that it was still fresh.
         I looked over to the guest bedroom; the door was closed, which was unusual, and I knew that any answers that I needed to find were behind it.
         I walked, dreamlike, feeling simultaneously like one of the clueless girls in a cheap slasher flick and like a doomed convict headed toward the gallows. I didn’t even know why I was having these feelings; the only thing they made me think of was a school substitute teacher I once had who insisted that women had a “sixth sense” or ingrained intuition about dangerous situations. I only supposed that’s what I was experiencing now, or else I was going crazy.
         I stood before the closed door, and for a moment I doubted my intuition.
There’s nothing wrong, Renn. I told myself, using my nickname even in my thoughts. You’re just being irrational. It’s probably just the sump-pump, anyway…and your sister probably just spilled some juice if she was down here earlier…nothing to worry about.
And for a moment my body relaxed and I thought perhaps I would just go back upstairs and drink the rest of my juice, but my traitorous fingers had already closed upon the cold doorknob and twisted it. The door swung open silently, pushed by the still-firing nerves in my fingers.
         It was funny; before my intestines had been filled with lead, they now seemed to have vanished. I never dreamed that my day would end like this; the sun had been shining, there was a cool breeze and the sky was literally, a forget-me-not blue. I had no homework. Life was good. But as I pushed open the door, it seemed that every good thing in the world had been spoiled like rancid meat right in front of me.
         There was blood spattered all over the opposite wall; it covered the pictures and paintings that hung there, and was spilled all over my fathers’ neatly organized fountain pens and stationeries. There were even drops of blood drying a maroon color on the ceiling.
         The carpeted floor was stained and spattered with gore; there were gobbets of some unspeakable substance strewn all over the dark wooden coffer in the corner. It seemed that the entire room had been attacked by Jackson Pollock, armed only with a can of red paint and a trowel.
         What?
         It took only a second for me to see this. In the next second, the smell hit. The air seemed to thicken, like some vile second-skin that coated my palate from the first breath; almost choking me. It smelled moist and blood-metallic and ugly; like what I imagined a slaughterhouse might smell of.
         For one horrible moment, my guts manifested themselves in my throat, and I though that I might throw up; but then my eye caught the sight of something new.
         Numbly, I took four small, stumbling steps into the bloody room, my eyes seeing nothing but what lay at the foot of the guest bed.
         I would not have known the body there to be my mothers’, were it not for her feet. They looked to be the only thing not mangled beyond all recognition. She lay at an awkward angle, legs crossed and arms flung out, as though she were tossing and turning in a bed. But I couldn’t make out her face, or anything below her neck. Her feet were untouched though; her toenails still shocking magenta from her last pedicure.
         I tried to push the door open a wider with nerveless fingers, but it was stopped by something that lay behind the door.
         I don’t want to look, I shouldn’t look, I should just turn and go back upstairs and call the police-
         -but too late. I pulled back the door, and took a quick peek behind it; I was queerly unsurprised to see the nude body of my mutilated sister.
         I did not examine disfigured body. Instead I turned to leave; I could not stay here any longer. As I turned, I saw Him.
         I don’t know how I missed it before, he lay in plain sight. The man who had killed them.
         No one can be that stupid.
         That was the second coherent thought I had since entering the room. There had been no horror, no sadness, no anger. I think I was in shock, but even in that state, I could realize the utter idiocy of the man lying before me.
         He was on the guest bed, curled on the edge closest to the wall. He was turned towards the door as though he had been expecting someone, but his eyes were closed. For a moment, I though he was dead, but I saw the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest and I realized that the man was asleep.
         Asleep. No one falls asleep at the scene of a murder. I thought murkily. It was a senseless though, and seemed entirely out of place in my head, but I couldn’t help it. I felt like I was drifting apart; the edges of my sight were wavering gray and foggy. It was harder and harder to concentrate-
         NO.
         I couldn’t faint here. If he woke up and found me…
         I blinked hard, and the grayness retreated.
         I took a step closer to the bed, drawn to him by some morbid attraction. I looked closer at the killers’ face, feeling some spark of memory. I had seen his face before. Where?
         I looked long and hard, observing his matted black hair, his tattered clothes, his bloodstained fingers and hands. He carried no weapons that I could see, but I noticed that his lips and jaw were smeared with red; as though he had been messily eating strawberry jam.
         I looked at the gore spattered on the rough whiskers on his face and lean, muscular arms, and I remembered seeing something in the news-
         -Carter Shaw-
         -a few days back.
         And I remembered. His name was Carter Shaw; he was wanted for the murder and partial consumption of thirteen people. Gnawin’ Shaw, they called him, because of his habit for removing certain parts of his victim’s bodies…and “snacking” on them as he continued on his killing spree. He had been on the run for two weeks, appearing in various parts of the state, but I had never thought that he was this close. Or that he would end up here.
         Why? Why had he done this?
         Every rational particle of my body urged me to leave, to call the police, to get help, do something other than stand here like an absurd stone statuette, but I did not.
         I should have felt scared, having a dangerous cannibal-murderer in my house, in this bed right in front of me, but I wasn’t. He was nearly a foot and a half taller than me, and probably sixty pounds of muscle heavier, but I found that I didn’t care. I felt my emotions began to return, and as they did, I grew angry.
         I grew murderous.
         What right did this man have, jumping my mother when she was unprotected, snatching my poor young sister who, in a week, would’ve been twelve? What right did he have to obliterate an innocent young girl’s expectations, and future? And now, after eating unspeakable parts of my family, he was going to fall asleep in our guest bedroom, without a care in the world? That he would destroy what had been a perfectly happy, peaceful family in one day? No. No.
         I never knew that it was possible to feel so much rage and hate. I felt like I could’ve spit poison, if I’d wanted. I felt like my bones were going to melt under the weight that my newly-returned emotions were piling on me. I felt like someone had set a fire under me, and then sent an electric current through my muscles, charging every particle of my being with a fury so great, I felt that I would die of it.
         I looked at my hand, expecting to find my katana, but it wasn’t there. I looked over, and saw it lying in the doorway. Apparently I had dropped it when I had gone into shock. I went and picked it up, and then reversed my grip on it; so the handle was away from my body. The heavy weight and bluntness of it felt good in my hand; it pleased some primeval part of me that I had not know had existed until now.
         I looked at Carter Shaw, sleeping like a gluttonous wolf that had gorged himself on two piglets. Well, he would not get the third. How he had not noticed my arrival home, my walking around the house and voice, I did not know. Why he would be so stupid as to stay here, I didn’t know. But if he had been careless enough to fall into this arrogant sleep, it was an unlucky mistake for him.
         It seemed that my acrimony had expanded so that it could not be encompassed in my body anymore. I felt nothing as I raised the end of the wooden katana high, gripping it as a ferocious club.
They were dead, dead, dead because of him, he had killed them, and I…I wanted to…
         I thought no more.
         And I brought it down upon his head.          
         His fingers twitched in a surprised motion, his arms jerked on the coverlet. He made a surprised noise through the ruined cave that had been his nose. His eyes opened wide, and for a moment he held me in an electrifying blue gaze. I caught my reflection in his eyes, and smashed it to bits.
         I lifted the blunt handle up again, and brought it slamming back down. I did it again, wondering where that harsh cawing noise was coming from. I struck and struck and struck until droplets of blood flew in the air, until the strength ran from my arms and hands, until I could raise them no longer. Whether it had been a minute or ten, I did not know. I was panting and sweaty; I tried to release my weapon, but could not. My hands seemed to have cemented themselves to the wood.
         I noticed that my forearms were covered with a thin spray of blood; it also marred the front of my new white tank top. I looked at the unrecognizable mess on the bed.
         I wonder if Mom’s nose is in all that mess.
         I felt a giggle rising in the back of my throat like noxious bile, but I fought it. It persisted, wanting to be spewed forth, but I couldn’t let that laugh out. If I started laughing, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop.
         I stood there for five seconds, thinking of nothing, and swallowed hard. The silvery tickle-feeling was gone, to be replaced by weariness so great, it seemed impossible that I had lifted that katana and wielded it with such force. I wanted to lie down, to let the house fall down around me, to let my body become a hill from which flowers would grow…
         But Momma and Kensey were dead. Dead and gone with their insides eaten by a bad man. I had to do something.
         I let the heavy wood stick slip from my fingers, which had unlocked at last. I walked over to a small side-bar at the other side of the basement, opened the sliding door that covered it, and withdrew the phone inside from its cradle. I moved sluggishly back into the slaughter-room, and moved Kenseys body next to Mom with what little strength I had left. I lay down in the gore all around them, the phone still clutched in my rigid hand. I dialed my Daddy’s cell phone number with arthritic fingers, and pressed the speakerphone button.
         I set the phone in the blood, and listened to it ring. Then Daddy’s voice came on.
         “Hello? Matt Fenson speaking.”
         “Daddy?” I whispered. It was so hard to even speak, I was so tired. My throat felt like it had been peeled raw.
         “Is that you, Renna?” He said, seeming a bit bewildered. I normally didn’t call him after school.
         “Dad…Mom and Kensey are…d-dead.” I sighed. I stuttered on the last word, having to pause for breath there.
         “What? What are you talking about, hon?” he said, not understanding.
         “They’re dead, dad. A bad man killed them. Can you call…911?” I asked. I hoped he could, it was getting harder and harder to put thoughts together. I didn’t think that I’d be able to talk to a police officer, let alone dial the number.
         “What? Wha-” he started, but I interrupted.
         “Please…daddy…don’t ask.” I said thickly. Darkness seemed to be closing in over the edge of my eyes. I could feel my eyelids slipping closed.
         I heard him say something else into the phone, but I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand anything, anymore.
         I haven’t called him Daddy since I was ten…
         I thought wearily, before the darkness claimed me.
~~~*~*~*~~~
         I was barely aware of strong arms and hands lifting me up, touching my face. Fingers underneath my jaw line, checking my pulse. A finger lifted up one of my eyelids, and I caught a glimpse of a blurry face. I became aware of many voices that were chattering so quickly that I only caught snippets of conversation.
         “Well, she seems alright, just tired—”
         “What the hell went on in this room, it looks like a freakin-”
         “Is that a dog in the closet? Where in the heck did that-“
         “Look at this stick, Dobbes! It’s covered in blood-”
         “Holy Gawd, did she do this?!”
         “This guy looks like he went through a friggin’ meat grinder, I hope there are fingerprints left to I.D. him, ‘cause I can’t tell just by lookin’-”
         Don’t be silly, I wanted to say, that’s Carter Shaw, the wanted man…
         But I had no strength still. I let the hands and arms carry me away, back into blessed, silent darkness.

I was five again. I had just come home from school, crying because a boy named Kyle Sadner had pushed me down in the playground today. I told my mom that tomorrow, I was going to push Kyle back, and that would show him, alright!
         My mother took me into her arms, hugged me, and dried my tears. She told me that what Kyle had done was wrong, but that I shouldn’t push him back.
         “Why?!” I demanded. Kyle deserved to be pushed down! He had hurt me, and now I would hurt him back.
         “Because, sweetie, if you do, the cycle will never end. Just because Kyle was bad doesn’t mean that you need to be bad, too. You need to forgive Kyle; don’t be mean, be nice in return. If you can’t forgive, you cannot end the cycle of hate, and that is not our way.” she said.
         It took a bit more persuading, but my mother didn’t give up. She convinced me that an eye for an eye made the whole world blind.
         I grew more on that day as a person than I had ever grown in my life, and I told Mom later that I would never take a tooth for a tooth.
         
         I awoke later in the hospital. I had no idea how long I had been asleep, or how I had gotten to the hospital in the first place. I remembered the hands bearing me away, the snippets of conversation that made it sound like Dad had called the police after all, but after that, it was dark.
         I tried to crane my neck, looking for a clock, and—
         “OWWW!”
         My muscles protested against the movement, feeling like hinges that hadn’t been oiled for decades. I tried to bring my arm up to massage some of the tension out of my neck, but—
         “OWWWWWW!!”
         My arms felt, if it was possible, worse.
         Why the heck did they hurt so much? What on earth had I been do-
         And I remembered. The blood-covered walls, the dead bodies.
         The sleeping man.
         I had bludgeoned him to death. I had actually killed someone. I had broken one of the Ten Commandments. I had sinned greatly.
         What will Dad say? I thought miserably. If I could’ve, I would have buried my face in my hands. I didn’t really care that dad wasn’t here with me right now; I was almost glad. I didn’t want to see his face, to see him when he looked upon his murderer-daughter.
         Come on. Carter Shaw KILLED your mother and sister! It was justifiable killing!          
One part of my mind complained, trying to reason with me. The other half of my mind argued that Carter had been SLEEPING.
         You could’ve just called the police and told them to come with their sirens off. That voice chided.
                   The two sides of me argued; the perfect image of the shoulder devil and angel. The voices escalated until I couldn’t take it anymore; I shouted into my own head, and then tried not to think of anything. But it was very hard.
         The scene was depressing me. The walls were white, the furniture was white, my sheets were white, EVERYTHING was white, except for my hospital gown, which was a faded green color. I felt dirty, contaminated. Unwilling to sit like some tainted spot surrounded by the pristine whiteness of the room, I tried to sit up. All the muscles in my body protested, screamed, and felt like they would tear in two.
         In fact, my painful endeavors became so loud that they eventually summoned a tall, thin nurse who appeared a bit flustered.
         “Oh! You’re awake!” She said, hands twisting in her lap. “I’ll go notify your father.” I noticed that she didn’t meet my eyes while she was speaking to me, which troubled me greatly.
         She bustled out of the room without so much as telling me her name.
         Which left me to my own mind, once again. The two sides began to argue again, once the distraction of the nurse had vanished.
         Any sensible person would have just called the police, insisted one side You could be convicted of murder for killing when you didn’t need to. This wasn’t making me feel any better.
         Oh come on. It’s justifiable homicide! You had every right to bash that bastard’s head in—
         But on some level, I disagreed with that voice. I had never ever had any violent tendencies before. I had never even hit anyone (apart from my sister, of course. But sibling rivalry was always justified).
And I had just murdered another man. In cold blood.
         And you liked it, too. That other voice said, slyly. I found that I couldn’t refute it.
         I put my head in my hands, horrified.
         It felt like all my emotions came back again, and were now twisting into one great monster in my head.
         Now I was just as bad as him, because I had sinned like him. And I liked it.
         When my dad entered the room two minutes later, I reached up and hugged him tightly, despite my screaming arms.
         And I cried into his neck for longer than I can remember.

The days blurred together; after I had been released from the hospital, the police questioned me. They said that it hadn’t been my fault, that they didn’t blame me, but they wished to know everything about the murder. Everything.
I told them as much as I could remember. I didn’t care. I told them all the details so they were satisfied, and then buried the memory away. I felt sick and full of sadness, bloated with vile feelings that would go away. So I tried to hide the feelings so deep inside that they were almost forgotten, except for the feeling of hopelessness that now seemed to penetrate to my very core.
I spent most of my time tucked in on myself, asking over and over the same questions.
Mother, are you listening? I did a bad thing Mother. What should I do?
For a long time, I was in a stupor.
Only a few things ever roused minimal emotions from me.
The first thing was the funeral, which took place a week and a half after I was released from the hospital. During the entire service I sat grim and unmoving, only standing to read a short epitaph about my sister and mother. Then I sat down, my face rigid at stone. The only emotion I could muster was a sort of morbidly dark humor as I realized that the lids on the caskets were closed, instead of open like normal. I guess no facial reconstruction could’ve helped them.
I felt like my tears had been sapped forever.
The second thing was the newspaper article in the paper that had appeared one day after I had been released from the hospital. My father had taken it to me, and showed me the front page of that day’s paper.
I looked at it. The headline blared boldly:
Teen Girl Defeats Cannibal Criminal in her Home
“Defeats”, huh. I thought, That’s an interesting way of phrasing it.
I tossed the paper aside. I didn’t need to read it to know it was filled with undue glorifications of my bloody actions. Those people were so stupid.

As the weeks passed, many of my friends came over to visit me, which I found a little annoying. I wasn’t motivated to do anything much anymore, so I always looked disheveled and tired. My hair needed a trim, and I hardly ever changed out of my pajamas. I hadn’t been to school in two weeks, so they brought me my homework and books, but then hung around to talk with me and express their sympathies.
I knew that they just wanted the details of my attack from the eager nature of their visits, but I was not willing to relive them again. So when they didn’t get any information out of me, the visits became less frequent and more business-like, just the way I wanted it.
I didn’t want their pity.
I was in what my dad liked to call a “funk” of sorts. I spent most of my time in my room, lying in bed with the television on, or a CD playing. There was a great hole inside me, where Mom and Kensey had been, where they had gone; I didn’t want to be alone with that silence. Sometimes I would try to sleep, but most of the time I was floating in a state that I had dubbed “Emotional Avoidance Drowsing”. Every time I drifted into one of those states, the world seemed to recede and fade; it felt like I was floating underwater. There I felt nothing, and it was easier to tuck away the horrible memories that threatened to splinter and shatter my waking and dreaming life. My father thought it was unhealthy that I made no pretensions about “moving on with life” or “looking forward”, but I didn’t really believe his attempts to either. He put on a brave face though, because he now had to work to support us, and tried to smile away his pain. I noticed that every time he thought I wasn’t looking, the smile slid off his face.
He insisted that he was all right, but he worried about me. He didn’t say it, but I knew that he was unnerved by my lack of emotion. He suggested that maybe I should start seeing a therapist; an offer I quickly declined. So instead of moping around the house all day, I reluctantly took up walking.
Each new morning I would wake up, eat breakfast, put on something comfortable, and go outside. I would visit Hunter’s small grave, wishing that Carter Shaw would’ve at least spared my dog. I tried not to linger over Hunter’s grave, but instead wandered the more secluded roads and wilderness around my house. “The fewer prying eyes, the better” was my philosophy.
I walked to the graveyard, and stood before their graves often. I touched the smaller headstone that signified my sister, and felt nothing but the cold stone. I wished that I had emotions with which to properly grieve them, but I did not. Not anymore.
I did not linger over their graves either but walked through the thinner woodlands, finding secluded groves where I could lay for hours and listen to the world.
I always returned home before sunset, as my father required. I wished that I could stay out there and see it in all its glory, but my father didn’t want me to get “lost” (kidnapped) on the way home.
It was on the way home one evening that I noticed something odd. There was a piece of folded blue paper stuck in one of our hydrangea bushes. There was no reason that it should’ve caught my notice, it was really small and I ordinarily wouldn’t have paid litter any mind. However I felt compelled to pick it up, so I did. I unfolded and looked at the small words printed elegantly on one side.
It read in thin, looping handwriting:
         People who sin say this, "That they had to, to survive." People who sin say this, "it's too late now to stop." The shadow called sin follows them from behind, silently, without a word. Remorse and agony are repeated only to end up as despair in the end, but the sinners just don't know that if they'd only turn around there's a light there, a light that keeps shining on them in their loneliness. A light that will never fade.
         I could do nothing but stare for a moment. This writing sounded so much like some of the things my mother had told me many times over the years; the writing on the paper could have been hers, but she was dead. I stared at that slim slip of blue paper for a long, long time. I could hear the beating of my heart in the silence, could feel it shaking my body.
         Am I wrong? Was I wrong?  I wondered.
         I dimly realized that my hand was shaking. Was this a sign? Had it appeared by chance, or had this note been meant for me? I turned it over in my hands, but there was nothing written on the other side. These seemed like it could almost be an elaborate joke. This seemed too unbelievable to just be a coincidence. It was just like one of those “divine intervention” stories I had read about in the magazines.
         But I didn’t want to believe that it was a joke. I wanted to believe that my mother could be speaking to me from wherever she was. I clutched the paper tightly in my hand.
         Are you hearing me, mother?
         Who could’ve known that those simple, mysterious words could make such an immense difference? I felt a strange sensation; I can only compare it to the shattering of crudely-formed pottery. The unhealthy barriers I had constructed around my heart had been wedged apart. All the emotions that had been pent up for nearly two months welled up and overflowed from that secret place, bringing me to my knees with their intensity.
         It hurt.
         I clutched at my heart with my other hand; I could it racing in the growing darkness.
         Was I truly justified? Was it really not my fault?
         I stood up shakily, thinking furiously.
         Can I really find redemption?

         I walked into the house, trying not to show any emotion, like normal. When my father asked me how my day had been, I replied as normally as I could. Apparently he didn’t notice the slight tremor in my voice, because he let me go to my room without any further questions.
         I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling.
         Thinking.
         At that moment I missed my mother terribly, because there were so many things that I wanted to ask her. I wanted her to tell me that I wasn’t wrong. I wanted her to tell me that she loved me, no matter what.
         I know she did, though.
         I turned over, pulling my sheets over me, even though I was still fully clothed. I closed my eyes, holding the image of her and my sister in my mind’s eye.
         Are they happy there?
         I made a new promise to her, and myself.
I will vow to find happiness, because the ticket to the future is always blank.