Prosperity Assignment: Short Story

Sharon Ettinger

“Dost thou love life, then do not squander time,

 for that’s the stuff life is made of.”

-Benjamin Franklin

It always amazes me how strange even the most familiar things can feel. Everyone is a stranger. Why now—why did everything have to happen in this exact turn of events for us to realize the stinging reality of who we’ve become?

            I hear my mother close the door behind me, and she slips past me off to the left—her office—without saying a word.

            My room is the third doorway down the hall. As I pass my sister’s room, I don’t allow myself to glimpse its gaping emptiness. She won’t be sitting there. Don’t look.

            As I enter my room, I pass my smudged mirror and fully take in my bony face for the first time since everything fell apart. Alexandra had always been the prettier sister. It was like all of our features matched; yet hers were noticeably more delicate. Like the chestnut brown hair—both ours, but mine is frizzy and knotted while hers would shimmer down her back in silky waves. While my freckles messily scatter my face, hers almost inconspicuously covered her nose, complementing her sharp and stunning features. But my recent refusal to eat has made me take after her so startlingly well: my once fuller face now resembles her defined jaw and high cheekbones. What’s left of me is just a reminder of her.

            My sister and I never had any sort of a sisterly relationship. While my jealousy of her utter perfection usually clouded any sort of interaction we had, the distance between us was enforced by the gap in our ages. With her having twenty-seven years on my sixteen, we neither had anything relatable to discuss nor any somewhat frequent physical interactions between each other. And as she developed into a graceful and talented dancer, I tried increasingly harder to stray from her footsteps under the pressure that her unique and perfect self burdened me with.

            My parents gave up on keeping me on the path they wanted. They reluctantly accepted the life I’d chosen, which avoided my sibling’ academic and artistic talent at all costs, and they routinely drove me from sports game to practice to game and grasped any chance they had to have my indifferent siblings drive me instead.

            Which brought us to the car crash in the first place.

            “Hey, Lily.”

            I turn. My brother is standing awkwardly at my doorway, his lightning blue eyes are wide and nervous as they hold my gaze.

            “Hi, Charlie.” The sob in my throat surprises me.

            We stand facing each other for a few more long seconds before my feet wake up and I’m suddenly crossing the room into his hesitant arms. The hug feels unnatural, and it crosses my mind that embraces like these are incredible rarities that would be almost foreign even without what happened.

            I can’t keep it out of my mind any longer.

            It was the morning of my basketball tournament, and I had awoken early that Saturday morning to pounding sheets of rain against every inch of our rooftop. Alexandra cautiously began to drive, and even if we would have been able to hear each over the splatter of rain to metal, not a word was spoken. The silence stretched between us and after the first forty-five minutes of tension passed, I found myself wondering why I was so conceitedly making my sister fight through these dangerous roads, and why she seemed like a subdued stranger instead of the loving sister that she was to my brother. Why I was the one who separated us—the roadblock to the genuine affection that the rest of my family so gratefully shared. I sniffled.

            “You okay?” She stole a quick glance towards me.

            One quick glance. That’s all it took for her to lose track of the sharp approaching turn in the road. To not notice the truck hydro plating towards us with such intense velocity that I swear my heart stopped when I watched it finally break through the surrounding curtains of rain.

            The last things I remember before blackness were her eyes. Wide and panic stricken, with that deep blue color that we somehow inherited so identically. But wondering what her eyes held—was it fear? Worry? Blame?—was the last thing that crossed through my head before it collided with the window that plunged me into darkness.

            “You okay?”

            The last words that Alexandra will ever chant in her melodic voice. Her blinding beauty, her outstanding talent, her mesmerizingly bright mind, her kind heart—all sucked up into the black hole of the world that escapes everyone’s mind so smoothly. And the only thing to blame—the only reason for the universe to have clicked in this devastating way—is me.

            Charlie gently releases me, and I avoid meeting his eyes again.

            “How are you?”

            The question seems wildly out of place, although it warms me that he asks it. I can’t even imagine what would be happening in any other family—hugging, crying, checking the wounds. An unsure jumble of rejoicing and mourning.

            “I’m okay.” 

            He nods. My heart twists as I realize he has nothing more to say. And neither do I. Did he miss me? Has our relationship ever been heartfelt enough to express such obviously simple sentiments?

            As my brother stiffly runs a hand through his thick jumble of curls, I step away to escape from the reality of my life that before now has seemed so painfully ordinary that I have always accepted it without reconsideration.

            I make my way towards the lake, where my favorite oak tree rises boldly from the fresh, green grass. Among the healthy greenery, a single patch of dirt by the base of the tree trunk is visible. The gnarled roots twist across the lawn, claiming as much land as they can, and my patch of dirt is right where it’s always been—between two curved roots that loop around each other to form the perfect sort of perch. Finally breathing in the fresh scent of the lake, I slide down into the packed dirt and relax against smooth, thick bark.

            I recall once when Alexandra found me here. Situated just on the other side of the trunk and facing the opaque water, my position is always hidden from anyone’s gaze from my house. I’d drifted into a peaceful slumber here, and it ran far too late into the day. Dinner was steaming on the table, and being the saint that she is Alexandra ventured out in search of me.

            The sun was drooping in the darkening sky, and the luring smell of my parents’ cooking was beginning to waft along the lawn and into the fresh air about the lake. I can’t say how long Alexandra had been searching, and I hadn’t asked after, but when she did find me she didn’t hide her exasperation.

            But that night was no doubt the closest we’ve ever been to truly acting like sisters. For her exasperation soon turned to awe as she took in the beauty of our home that I had been rather selfishly keeping to myself, and although I admit I was initially frustrated that someone else was intruding on my serenity, I ended up appreciating the rest of the evening. Alexandra stood above me for a minute as I blinked away my evening drowsiness, and as I began to get up she sat herself right down next to me with her eyes still trained on the water.

            The water was more fascinating than I’d expected when I finally mimicked her stare. Soft, silent ripples across the silvering surface gave the impression of graceful waves of liquid mercury, and the sinking sun cast a hue of oranges and purples across the sky that dripped into the flowing liquid before us.

            “This is amazing.”

            I had no response, but she wasn’t expecting one. We sat together in tranquility, for once not plagued by the awkwardness of our selected silence but instead treasuring each other’s presence. Before too long our mother’s agitated call signaled for us to break away from our entranced gazes and head inside to dinner, but the moment lasted long enough for me to be fully grateful that it happened at all. A few times after that night however, I noticed her standing out there, simply captivated by the heavenliness that now just the two of us shared.  One night a few weeks later, I listened through my closed bedroom door as she and my mom got into a heated argument over Alexandra’s rapidly flourishing dancing career. Too much dance here, not enough school there. It ended with the slam of the back screen door, and as I scrambled to the window, I caught a final glimpse of her silky hair before she disappeared behind my—or rather our—tree.

And now she’s gone. All I had in my short lifetime with her was a quick moment like that to recognize what a wonderful person she truly was. To feel briefly connected to her; to actually enjoy her as my sister.