My head fell gently to one side as I stared at him and tightened my hold over my own chest. Every part of my body was begging me to move, to make some kind of gesture to shake away the unease at someone being so frank with me, but I held my position, not wanting to go anywhere. Not even home.
“Then what kind of guy are you?”
Alexander took a small step closer, his smile growing ever so slightly as the wave of his boyish aftershave washed over me and tried to steal every breath I’d ever owned.
“The kind that doesn’t want someone else seeing the shy, pretty girl walking home alone, and have him thinking he can be the one to take advantage of her.”
“Oh.”
Alexander grinned. “Indeed.”
“That was kinda charming.” I beamed unintentionally, pulling my chin back just a touch to try to hide how impressed I really was.
“Maybe it was just the truth.” Raising a brow, he copied my head tilt and stared me down. All I could see was the colour hazel, and I began to wonder why I’d never noticed just how much brighter and more beautiful hazel was than all the purples of the world put together.
“Maybe,” I whispered.
“So…”
“Yes?”
“Shall we get you home?”
“Okay,” I answered quickly, rubbing my lips together once again before I dragged my teeth over my bottom lip repeatedly and spun around. My chin dropped down to my chest. It wasn’t anything to do with his company, more a habit I’d developed in the last six months, one that was beginning to feel increasingly more natural than I would have previously liked. The ground held few challenges for me, whereas when I looked up, the whole world now seemed more dangerous than it probably really was.
We walked in silence for a while, although a while wasn’t really very much time at all. I tried to keep my steps slow, the exact same way he was doing, somehow unusually at ease walking side by side with this person I didn't know.
“I haven’t seen you around here before,” I said softly.
“You obviously haven’t been paying attention,” he replied quietly.
“Guilty as charged.” I smiled again, wanting to peek up but instead, keeping my eyes trained on the floor in front of me. “But I’m pretty sure I’d have seen you around school before now if you went to Calverley High.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I... I never forget a face,” I lied. I forgot faces all the time. I swallowed again, hating the way the lump in my throat seemed to get stuck on its way back down every time I discreetly tried to find some composure. “So where do you go?”
“As of next week, I’ll be at Calverley. I used to go to Whitecross, but…”
“They’re closing it down,” I finished for him.
“Exactly.”
I stopped in my tracks and waited for him to do the same, and when he did, he turned and looked back at me with no expression on his face at all.
“How do you know where I live?”
“Excuse me?”
“You told Sammy you were heading my way. How do you know where I'm going?”
He smiled slowly. “I pay attention.”
There wasn’t much explanation for what I was thinking or what I was feeling. This didn’t feel like the kind of instant crush every teenage girl developed at the sight of someone new arriving on the scene. I wasn’t even sure it was a crush at all, more an appreciation for what he was and what a good job his parents had done in creating and moulding him to be the kind of fifteen-year-old boy that walked a lonely girl home. The world was a dark, unfair place at times, and no one knew that more than I did now. But Alexander had come along out of nowhere just a matter of minutes ago, and something about him felt almost… light.
Like he was hope itself.
Like he was a reminder of what could exist beyond the dark world I now knew.
My smile grew and grew as I watched his face crease up in confusion.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, taking a careful step back towards me.
“Nothing,” I answered with a small shake of my head. “Nothing at all, Alexander.”
“Call me Alex.”
“Alex,” I repeated almost reverently.
And just as I was about to sigh in a small moment of contentment, my whole body stiffened at the sight of someone running towards me when I glanced over Alex’s shoulder. The sound of her feet slapping against the concrete must have caught his attention, too, forcing him to spin on the spot as he prepared himself for whoever was sprinting our way.
The look of horror on my mother’s face as she charged towards us said it all. The tearstains down her cheeks were obvious even from a distance, and the pain she was suffering with every breath she wheezed out had my body turning to ice.
There wasn’t anything else in the world that mattered as soon as the words broke free from her strangled throat.
“Natalie! Elizabeth, she needs you. It’s time…”
TWO
By the time I’d run into the room, breathless and already weary, I had convinced myself that this couldn't be my reality. The words ‘It’s time’ ran on a constant loop in my mind, right up until I saw the look on my sister’s face as she lay underneath the duvet of her otherwise perfectly made bed.
I’d imagined this moment a lot. I’d dreamed about it, had nightmares, and lost hours of my life in a vortex of relentless wondering, what ifs and dread. Now that it was happening, I was certain it couldn’t be real.
She didn’t look grey or heavy the way I’d prepared myself for her to look. She didn’t look in pain or uncomfortable. She wasn’t writhing around with tears falling down her face, begging us to save her. She didn’t seem upset, worried, or even a little bit scared.
Elizabeth looked calm.
Peaceful.
Almost happy.
If my eyes hadn’t fallen to her chest and seen the slow, mesmerising rise and fall, I would have thought she was already dead.
For the first time in months, she looked like my older sister again – older by ten years, but somehow younger at heart. Although her skin was pale, the slightest tint of rose coloured the apples of her cheeks, just enough to make her seem as though all she was doing was taking a nap.
I don’t know how long I stood there for, over-analysing every single detail about her, but the heavy hand upon my shoulder soon brought me back into the moment, and as I turned to see the lost look in my father’s eyes, I knew what I had to do.
I had to say my final goodbye.
My chin trembled as I sucked in a breath and held it high up in the very top of my chest. The room was stifling hot, but I’d never felt colder than I did as I took those slow, agonising steps towards her bedside. The single chair that sat beside her was still warm from whoever had sat there before me, and my imagination went wild as I thought of the words my mother and father had no doubt already spoken before my arrival.
The plain, dusky pink duvet was marked with teardrops, and in a desperate attempt to focus on anything but the death of my sister, I reached out to try to rub them away. I knew it was futile, but I didn’t want Elizabeth seeing any signs of sadness when she had been so strong for everyone else around her.
Her fingers twitched on top of the material, and my own slid across the soft surface to graze hers and touch them just one final time. There wasn’t a crease in the fabric cocooning her. There wasn’t a chipped nail on her hands or a stray hair out of place. She’d asked for everything to be perfect when she slipped away. She’d asked for us all to be ready. We’d been preparing for weeks. Now that it was time, I wanted to scream out in agony and lash out in a fit of rage, mess everything up and throw off her covers, just so she had a reason to stay.
“Tatty,” she croaked through dry lips.
“Lizzy,” I said quietly, running my tongue over my mouth to try to gain some movement. I was choking on nothing at all, but I was choking. Someone had their hands around my throat and was squeezing tight. I just couldn�
�t see whoever or whatever it was.
Elizabeth sighed softly, the weight of the air she forced out of her lungs bringing a small, tired smile to her face as she continued to speak with her eyes closed, while my fingers worked calming infinity loops over her open palm and wrist.
She’d never looked more beautiful to me than she did at that moment.
“I’m ready,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“Don’t be sad.”
“I won’t be,” I lied.
“You already are.”
“I just wish I could come with you,” I said, so quietly I wasn’t even sure she heard it.
“I’ve had a good life. You have to...” She paused, inhaling sharply and smiling once again before she continued. “You have to stay. It looks like someone else needs you now.”
“Mum and Dad can take care of themselves,” I assured her, dropping my chin to my chest to try to find just a small ounce of strength that would stop me from crying as hard as I wanted to. I had no right to beg any god for any kind of reprieve, given what she was going through beside me, but I begged anyway. I begged silently, unashamedly and pitifully. I begged because I was weak, because I wasn’t as strong as Lizzy, because I could never dream of being as strong as her.
“And what about the other person in this room?” she asked, her head rolling to face me in slow motion. As soon as I heard her hair moving against her cotton pillowcase, I looked back up again, tears coating my eyes as I stared at all her features.
“You’re the only other person here, Elizabeth. It’s just the four of us now. It will always be the four of us.”
“You have eyes, little sister, but you still do not see.” I continued to massage her hands and waited for her to say something that made sense to me. “I wish you’d see. I wish you’d feel.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Step out of the bubble, Nat. Look around you.”
Blowing out a shaky breath, I somehow tore my attention away from her to glance back over my shoulder.
When I saw him, I stared openly. I had no reason to attempt to hide my shock. I had no reason to try to close my open mouth, wipe my tear-filled eyes or clean away the damp from my forehead. He was here. In my home. In the same room as my dying sister.
“Alex?” I whispered in disbelief.
He stood there, completely out of place, his hands joined in front of him, and no football in sight as his head hung low.
“What are you doing here?”
Alex didn’t look up for a few seconds, and the silence allowed me to feel the curl of Elizabeth’s one finger around my own before she gave it a weak squeeze. I glanced back at her in shock, unable to process anything I felt at all.
“I promised I would walk you home, that I would make sure you were okay,” he answered quietly behind me.
I glanced back at him again, then at my father. My father. The man who hadn’t let anybody in here beside the three of us and the nurses that had been trying to keep his firstborn child as comfortable as possible during the final weeks of her life. Not even friends he’d known for decades had been allowed to see her as anything other than perfect. He’d forbidden it. He’d refused to bend to anyone.
Yet here we were, in her final moments. And there stood Alex. A boy I’d known for a matter of minutes.
“Dad?”
“It’s fine, Natalie.” My father’s voice was weaker than I’d ever heard it, but he meant what he said. There was no lie to his approval.
“But…”
“I invited him in.”
“Why?” I asked softly, confusion tearing through me, even though it shouldn’t have mattered who was here at all. I had minutes left. Moments. The time for questioning and problem-solving could wait, couldn’t it?
Lifting his head, my dad looked straight into my eyes and I watched as a heavy tear made its way down one side of his agonised face.
“Now is not the time for restrictions. Your sister’s orders.”
“I don’t understa–”
Elizabeth’s short but raspy cough brought all my attention back to her at lightning speed. I spun in my chair and leaned forward, pushing myself up against the edge of the mattress as she tried to open her mouth and say my name. “Natalie.”
“Don’t speak, sis. It’s okay. I know it hurts. I don’t want to see you hurt anymore.”
“Can’t… let a little pain stop me from saying what needs to be said.” Her voice was already angelic, and I wondered to myself just how long her chosen god had been preparing to take her away from me. How long had he been working on her as his newest masterpiece? She was ready to go to him – that much was clear, even to me. She was ready to be one of the good ones. One of the pain free.
“Nothing is as important as you are right now.”
“You are. You are important to me. To Mum. To Dad. I know me being ill has kept them busy, but…” She paused again, inhaling slowly.
“Lizzy.” Lifting her lifeless hand, I dropped a kiss to the tips of her fingers and left my lips resting against them. I wanted to feel her warmth, to hang on to it for as long as humanly possible.
“Just promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
Her dry mouth parted again as she hauled in a breath. That knowing smile refused to leave her face, despite what she was feeling, despite how frightened she surely must have been.
“Never let the end of one thing stop you from enjoying the beginning of another.”
Then there was silence. Silence because I didn’t know what she meant, silence because I couldn’t stop staring at the way her eyes rolled behind the backs of her eyelids, and silence because I suddenly felt the need to say something profound, but couldn't think of one single, tiny little thing to say at all.
“Let him be here,” she mouthed so only I could hear. “Let him in.”
The life was leaving her voice now. I’d already had so much more of her than she probably thought she could give me, but it didn’t stop my one final plea as I reached out to smooth her hair away from the sheen of death that was creeping over her forehead.
“Don’t leave me,” I begged pathetically. “Please, Lizzy. Don’t leave me. I don’t know how to be anything without you. I can’t… I can’t…”
It was unfair. It was cruel. The risk of my last words to her making her feel guilty was too much, but I couldn’t help it. She was all I’d ever known and the thought of life without her crushed my soul and made me want to beg death to take me instead.
“Elephant juice,” she mouthed to me in complete silence. It was the one thing we’d always mouthed to each other to declare our love when the words had often been too embarrassing for us to say aloud. “Elephant juice, Tatty.”
Tears streamed down my face as I said my final words to my sister.
“I love you, too, Elizabeth. I love you so much.”
The moment her fingers froze and her shoulders dropped, I could have sworn I saw her last breath drift out from her smiling lips and rise up towards the sky. Tainted with purple.
Just for me.
THREE
I didn’t see Alex again for some time after Elizabeth passed. Truth be told, I didn’t see anyone or anything. There were only sounds of life and blurred images all around me. I was stuck in some kind of tunnel – a tunnel that was leading me on a path to an unknown destination. I couldn’t see where I was travelling, because all I could ever see, awake or asleep, was her.
The next few months felt like they didn’t happen. Every second was forever etched in my mind and there wasn’t a moment that went by where I didn’t try to think of things I could have done differently. There were so many words I should have said to her, so many things I could have said, but time and reason had collided head on. Both were shattered on that cool April evening.
Life after Elizabeth meant picking those two things back up with trembling hands and somehow finding a way to piece them back together until they made sense again. I had no rea
son left in me, and I had no clue what our time on this earth meant to any of us.
My limbs moved of their own accord, but I was otherwise lifeless and immune to everything. Spring and summer passed me by without significance. I even turned sixteen along the way, but all of it was irrelevant without her. After the burial, nothing seemed to hold my attention. Every night I would fall asleep to the vision of her being lowered into the ground. Every morning I would wake to the sound of my own scream clawing its way out of my throat as I dug away at the earth and tried to free her.
Friends came and went from the house. I made the right noises when I needed to, but otherwise, I was just waiting. Waiting until the sun shone again.
By autumn of that year, routine was the main thing keeping me going. School became something to look forward to, simply because it kept my brain active without me having to get creative at all. I sat in the middle of the bus every morning, and I sat in the same spot on the way home. My friends always congregated more towards the back, never once questioning my need to be free from all the laughter that they had every right to enjoy. That didn’t mean that I missed the way Sammy would squeeze my shoulder twice a day as she walked by my seat. It didn’t mean I missed the way that she would glance down and smile, wink or even whisper a really bad joke in my ear. It just meant that they respected my wishes. They knew I needed time. They knew I was lost in a place I hadn’t even realised I’d begun to wander into.
It was a Wednesday when the routine of just another day was altered. The leaves on the trees were falling hard and fast now. Every street the bus drove down was lined with an array of golds, browns, mustards and oranges. I hadn’t been sitting for long when I felt the wheels slow and heard the engine grind to a slow chug instead of the usual heavy, endless whirring sound from behind me. We didn’t normally stop here and my brows knitted together slightly as I stared out of the window and straight onto what I knew to be Dr. and Mrs. Williams’ house across the road. Theirs was one of the biggest homes in our village, and everyone who lived within a mile of here had, at some point, been on the receiving end of Dr. Williams’ treatment and unwavering kindness.
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