“Bloody hell.” I mutter as I slam the door to my apartment. “Takeaway guy needs to get some manners.”

I set the cartons down on the small table in my kitchen and grab a plate from the cupboard. My chef’s clothes are in a heap on the floor in front of my washing machine, and I kick them to the side.

I’m a chef and ordering takeaway for dinner. But really, a guy who cooks for ten hours in a shit hot kitchen doesn’t want to cook at home as well.

I dump the food onto my plate and take the ten steps into my front room. I sit on the sofa, swing my legs up, and switch the tele on. Just as I’m about to get comfy my phone rings.

“Uhhh,” I groan, leaning my head back. “Jesus.”

My steaming plate earns a place on the coffee table as I grab the phone – and groan again when my brother’s name appears on screen.

“Jase,” I answer. My favorite brother. Actually, my only brother.

“Mum was wondering if you were dead. You haven’t called her.”

“So she has my barely-legal baby brother calling to make sure her eldest son is still alive?” I snort. “Save me the sob story, Jase.”

He sighs. “She’s on deadline–”

“And only has however long to get however many designs of her fancy shoes into her office. Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all.”

“Right.” He pauses, and the line cracks a little. “Well. I think she misses you.”

I snort again. This one full of disbelief. “I’m her biggest disappointment, bro. I was supposed to follow in Dad’s footsteps and go into the firm with him, but instead I decided to ‘cook fancy dinners’, as she puts it. Then I came to New York to do what Tori and I always promised each other we’d do, and she hates that.”

Jase doesn’t say anything, and even though he’s so much younger than me I know he remembers her. There’s no way he couldn’t. As usual, the mere mention of her name silences the whole family. Like they won’t forget – like I’m the only one who can remember the way her eyes sparkled when she laughed and the way she flicked her hair over her shoulder when she was playing up the daddy’s girl act. The way everyone loved her, because she was just the kind of person you couldn’t help but love.

“She doesn’t like to remember. It hurts her, Blake.” His excuse is lame, and he knows it. I don’t like to remember and it hurts me but I still do.

“She’s dead, Jase. She existed, as much as our parents would like to believe she didn’t. Tori was real and pretending she wasn’t and her death never happened won’t make it better.”

“It just hurts Mum that you left, and the fact you left to do what Tori wanted to do rubs salt in the wound.”

“Juilliard wasn’t – isn’t,” I correct myself, “just Tori’s dream. It never was. It was always our dream, and you know it.”

“What’s wrong with dance school here? You could get into any London school you wanted!”

I swallow as I remember the honest reason I’m here. That conversation that the twelve year old me didn’t understand.

 

~

 

“Blake?” Tori had knocked on my bedroom door softly, pushing it open a crack.

“Yeah?” I looked up from the science homework I was working on and into my big sister’s wide green eyes. We had the same eyes – we were the only ones of all six of us that had Mum’s green eyes. Jase, Laura, Allie and Kiera all had Dad’s blue eyes.

“Can I come in?”

I looked at her feet inside my room and laughed. “You already are.”

She looked down, shrugged, and laughed with me. “I suppose I am.” She moved across the room with the grace of the dancer she was and jumped on my bed. My homework scattered everywhere, sheets of paper flying onto the floor, and I chucked my pencil at her.

“Dammit, Tori!”

“I’m sorry!” Her amused tone said she was anything but. I glared at her for a minute before breaking into a big grin. I could never stay mad at her. She was both my sister and my best friend, both of us the black sheep of the perfect family for our dreams.

“I need to ask you something.” Her tone was hesitant and more serious than it was before. I froze, stopped grabbing my work from the floor and looked up at her.

“What is it?”

“Did you mean it when you said you wanted to go to Juilliard? To dance?”

“Of course I did. Why? Did you think I didn’t?”

“I did wonder.” She chews her lip. “I wondered if you were just saying it for me.”

“No, Tori. I want to go to Juilliard. We’re gonna take on the world, remember?” I smile at her, and she smiles back almost sadly.

“Right. The world.” She pauses. “I want you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

Tori climbed from the bed and knelt in front of me. She pressed her palms against my cheeks, cupping my face.

“Promise me, Blake, that no matter what happens, you’ll go to Juilliard. That you’ll go to New York and live our dream.”

“What?”

“Promise me. No matter what.”

I stared at her, not understanding why she was saying that. But I promised. I always would. I’d promise Tori anything.

“I promise. No matter what.”

She stroked my cheeks with her thumbs and pressed a kiss to my forehead as she stood up. Then she turned and walked away, pausing for a second at my door. Her head turned slightly, and her shining, wet eyes met mine.

“Thank you.”

 

~

 

I swallow, wiping at my eyes. “I promised her two days before she died I’d go to New York and get into Juilliard. I promised her no matter what, Jase.”

I’m halfway there, I remind myself. Halfway there.

“Right. Look. I gotta go,” he says in a slightly thick voice. “Going out. Bye.”

The line clicks dead, and I fight the urge to throw my phone across the room. Same old response, same old thing every single time her name is mentioned. No one wants to talk about her, about the blot on the family name, about the perfect family’s dirty little secret.

No one wants to remember her. If my parents had their way, she’d be wiped from every family photo she was ever in, our house would have one less bedroom, and my mother would have a handful less stretch marks. If my parents had their way, my eldest sister would have never existed. They would have had five children, with Kiera being the eldest. As she is now, by default.

I look at my dinner, still steaming slightly, and chuck my phone on the sofa instead of at the wall. I glance at the plate again, shake my head, and walk into the dingy bathroom.

My family may pretend Tori never existed, but they weren’t the ones who spent every spare second with her. They weren’t the ones who knew her hopes and dreams.

And they weren’t the ones who found her body.

They can try to forget all they want, but that’s the one image I will never, ever be able to erase from my mind. That memory will haunt me forever.