Page 115 of The Truths We Burn

And I think that’s Rosie’s way of telling us we will get through it and that she’s okay.

Sage

Every day out of the year is a bad day for someone.

June twenty-fourth could be your birthday, the best day of your life, and somewhere across the world, someone is being murdered.

October tenth could be the day you got married or engaged. A day you couldn’t dream up any better. Yet, three houses down, there is a little girl who lost her parents to a car crash.

Your best day will always equal someone’s worst.

I’d never really thought of that before. I don’t think a lot of people do until they experience it for themselves.

April twenty-ninth went from a normal day, usually sunny, mostly spent in school, a day that I would fly past and move forward from without a second thought, to being one I’ll never forget.

Today, the split in my soul aches a little harder. The nerves that had been severed throb for connection. My brain reminds me a little more persistently that the person I came into this world with is gone.

I went to her grave this morning and saw someone had already left peonies, her favorite flower, but I decided to leave the ones I’d bought as well. She deserves all the flowers. I wanted to sit, to stay and talk. To update her on my life, but everything felt so negative, and I didn’t wanna burden her with that.

How silly. I didn’t want to burden a tombstone with my problems.

I wanted to stay there, close my eyes, and feel as if we were under the covers in her bed. Chatting about our lives, laughing, dreaming of our futures. I wanted to feel that connection I had when she was alive.

But I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t feel her there.

It was just a headstone with her name on it.There was no Rose.

I thought, maybe I’m broken? You’re supposed to feel something at the graveyard, right? So if I couldn’t feel her there, where was I going to? Was I ever going to feel that bond again?

That’s what today felt like. Constantly searching for her and knowing that I was never going to find her.

I push the door to my dorm open, thankful that my roommate is in class. It means I’ll be able to curl up in my bed and cry with no one asking any questions. Flipping my shoes off carelessly, I walk to my bed and crawl under my blankets.

I turn my body towards the wall and let out a shaky breath I didn’t notice I’d been holding in. The tears fall slowly, dripping onto the white sheets. I’m a bundle of different emotions, all of them swirling around inside of me like a child finger painting.

Guilt. Sadness. Anger.

But the one that hit the heaviest was unworthy.

I’d been the shitty twin. I was the one with the baggage, the one that was jaded and mean. I didn’t deserve life, and Rose did. She would have done so much more with her future than I was going to. Her dreams were brighter, more achievable than mine.

The world stopped when she died. And if it had been me, it would’ve continued to spin.

It should’ve been me.

That’s what I’d screamed to my father after I watched that video. When I saw him pick Rosemary so easily over me.

It should’ve been me.

And because he chose wrong, I decided he didn’t get to keep his meal ticket. He took her from me, so I was going to take his money from him.

I’d originally planned on killing him after I saw it, but I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to know this pain, to live out his days broke, hungry, and empty.

So I confronted him in our living room and did the thing that got me sent away. It was convenient for him, the perfect excuse to lock me up and keep me quiet. But I hadn’t expected to live. I’d read that if you did it a certain way, there would be no way to survive it.

The vertical scars down both of my wrists pulsed.

Apparently, I hadn’t done enough because the doctors were able to stitch me up just before sending me off strapped to a stretcher. I wanted to die because Rose wasn’t here, because it felt unfair for us to not be here together, because my father had no right to choose something like that.