(Do You Remember Them?)

YEARS AGO

(Adena)

The door slowly opened and I rolled over. I clutched the covers tight, part of my mind convincing me I was eight years old and monsters were real and were finally coming into my room to eat me.

Well, it was a monster coming into my room… but she wasn’t going to eat me.

It was Anna.

“Adena?” she called out.

“Yeah?”

“I can’t sleep.”

I rolled my eyes.

Why don’t you call Evan? Isn’t that what you always do? Keep stealing his attention…

“Come here,” I said.

I pushed up in the bed and put a pillow behind my head.

Anna walked into the room and shut the door. She wore a long t-shirt and probably had nothing else on under that. Her legs were super long, everything about her skinny and perfect. Her hair was down, her natural curls so beautiful. She looked innocent. That was the crazy part of everything. The fact that my little sister could still look like that… like my little sister. The girl I kept close when she was scared. The girl I hugged tight when she was confused. The girl who held my hand for hours when we first got to Aunt Beth’s house because she was nervous that Aunt Beth was going to be an evil witch.

She climbed into my bed and put her head on my shoulder. I rested my chin on her head. She smelled like cigarette smoke so bad. It made my nose curl. I hated that smell because of her. Even though when Evan smoked it looked cool.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“What were they really like?”

“Who is they?”

“Our parents.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Why did they have to die?”

I ran my hand through Anna’s knotty and greasy hair. “I don’t know, Anna. I don’t make those rules.”

“You don’t miss them, do you?”

“I never said that.”

“But you love Beth so much.”

“She takes care of us, Anna. If it wasn’t for her, we might have been split up.”

Anna was silent for a few seconds. “Still… you love her more than them. Why?”

I swallowed hard. “I never said that. Aunt Beth is good to us.”

“Our parents were mean, weren’t they? They were bad people.”

“No they weren’t,” I said. “They had problems. That’s all. I think they were really young to have kids. But without them we wouldn’t be here.”

“They hit you, Adena. I remember it. But they didn’t hit me.”

“You remember that?” I asked.

Anna turned her head and looked up at me. “You would let them hit you so they wouldn’t hit me. Right?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “I mean, you were too small to know what it was.”

“I remember it.”

“That’s okay.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“When they hit you… why did they hit you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “They would get angry. I don’t think at me. But I was sort of a target.”

“Like Beth and me,” Anna said. “She’s my target.”

“She shouldn’t be. She loves us.”

“She’ll never be our mother.”

“She’s not trying to be our mother, Anna. She just wants to take care of us. Give us a chance at life.”

“I call bullshit,” Anna whispered. “Nobody should take care of me. Sometimes I wish I died with our parents.”

“Don’t ever say that,” I said. “Hey… why would you say that?”

Anna hugged me tighter. She didn’t want to look up at me now. She didn’t want me to see her crying.

“Were they ever nice?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me a story then. About when they were nice.”

“Well, they were happy when you were born,” I said. “I remember one time you were in this bouncer chair. We were watching cartoons. I was sitting next to you, eating a snack. You kept reaching for me, like you wanted the snack too. But you were too young to chew food. I wiped my hands and started to talk to you. Making you laugh and smile. Mom came over to see us and she started to laugh. Watching you and me together, Anna.”

“She really laughed?”

“Yeah. You were giggling like crazy when I touched your stomach. It was such a deep giggle too. It made me and her laugh.”

“That sounds nice,” Anna whispered. “We were a real family.”

“Yeah, we were…”

There was another side to that story though. Anna ended up giggling so hard she spit up. Pretty normal for a baby, right? Well, not so much. A second after she spit up, my mother kicked me in the shoulder. She called me a fucking moron for making Anna throw up. That formula was expensive and I just wasted some. She grabbed my hair and forced me to my feet. I had to clean up Anna, which was fine. Then our father came downstairs. The laughing woke him up from his drunk-slash-high hangover and I was the first thing he saw. I was just glad he hit me and not Anna.

“I love you, Adena,” Anna whispered as she started to fall asleep.

“I love you too, Anna,” I whispered back.

She was asleep a few seconds later.

I held her. My little sister. Forever my little sister. I would do everything I could to try and keep her on the straight path, even though that was the biggest lie I would ever tell myself.

I turned my head and felt a stray tear fall from my eye.

The strange part was that I didn’t know where the tear came from.

Talking about the past? Knowing I would never be able to stop Anna from hurting herself and those around her? Or maybe it was just both.